Sabah Christians band together to stop conversions to Islam

A Christian group, representing various denominations in Sabah, is embarking on a major religious revival campaign following dubious attempts to convert some of their flock to Islam.

Perpaduan Anak Negeri Sabah (PAN) will go on a six-month campaign to gather indigenous Christians to unite and urge Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to speak up on the “Allah” issue for Christian Bumiputeras.

“We want the PM to say something. He is not a PM for the Malays only but a PM for everyone,” PAN chairperson Esther Golingi told The Malaysian Insider.

PAN is reviving the spirit of an old Kadazan Dusun Murut war cry “mamangkis” which was a used by their ancestors to rally warrior troops for battle.

However, Golingi said the calls now are being “contextualised as a Christian clarion call for revival.”

PAN will hold a mamangkis event in Ranau tomorrow as part of its statewide programme. It expects several hundred Christians to turn up.

PAN’s mobilisation effort comes amid reports of a group of about 64 people, including children, from three villages in the remote Pitas district – Kampung Layung Maliau, Dowokon and Sosop – being tricked into converting to Islam.

They claimed a neighbour told them “some people from Kuala Lumpur” were offering them “financial assistance” of RM800 but only if they went to Pitas to collect it.

On New Year's Day, they did. Instead of receiving the financial assistance at the Pitas town hall, they claimed they were made to go to a nearby mosque instead.

There the villagers were given RM100 and asked to put their thumbprint on a document. They were then told to stand in a line and recite some "foreign words".

The villagers claimed they only realised they were converted when some of them brought home the document and showed it to their church leaders.

Upset over broken promises by Putrajaya to Sabah when Malaysia was first formed, PAN said that it is worried that the religious freedom guaranteed in the Federal Constitution was no longer being upheld.

“We hold nothing against Islam if it was embraced with free choice. But we condemn such conversions as they were done through deceit, intimidation or bribery,” she said.

“We want to worship God. We want to be united as Christians. With more than 30,000 Sabahans working in the peninsula, what happened to our religious freedom?” said Golingi, adding that Sabahan Christians can no longer carry their Malay language Bibles, Alkitab, with them when in the peninsula.

Groups in Sabah and Sarawak are growing restless over the “Allah” issue as most indigenous tribes, who are Christians, are feeling the religious tension as the issue boils over from the peninsula to the two states.

“Today, we have lost our God-given freedom in every sense of the word. We are not even allowed to refer to God as ‘Allah’ in our liturgical language. Worse, we are not even allowed to teach our children and their children about God, whom they know as ‘Allah’, the almighty creator of the universe and all that is in it.”

Golingi said that religion was now used as a political tool and that Malaysia should go back to basics.

“We need to uphold the Constitution of our land and it says we have our freedom of religion. Freedom of religion means freedom of religion.”

Religious tension between Muslims and Christians in the country heightened after the Selangor Religious Affairs Department (Jais) seized some 300 copies of the Bible in Malay and Iban.

The raiding party also detained BSM chairman Lee Min Choon and manager Sinclair Wong.

Following that, Muslim groups had protested near a church in Klang against the right of Malay-speaking Christians to worship in Bahasa Malaysia using the word “Allah”.

Prior to the 2011 Sarawak elections, Putrajaya had endorsed a 10-point solution to allow Christians in Sabah and Sarawak to use “Allah” in the Malay version of the Bible, which was negotiated by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala.

The editor of Catholic weekly Herald Rev Father Lawrence Andrew is being investigated for sedition after he had been reported by The Malaysian Insider as saying that churches in Selangor would continue using the word “Allah” during their Bahasa Malaysia services.

His statement was in response to Jais's announcement that it would write to all churches in Selangor and tell them not to use the word "Allah" in their worship and publication.

Last week, church leaders of various denominations had come out to say that they were united with the Catholic church on the stand that Bahasa Malaysia-speaking Christians should be allowed to use the word "Allah" in their worship.

Throughout this, Putrajaya has kept silent on the issue even as Christians looked to Idris Jala for an explanation.

Christians form about 9% of Malaysia's 29 million population. Almost two-thirds of Christians in Malaysia are Bumiputera and are largely based in Sabah and Sarawak, where they routinely use Bahasa Malaysia and indigenous languages in their religious practices, including describing God as “Allah” in their prayers and holy book.

Besides the Bumiputera Christians from Sabah and Sarawak, some of whom have moved to the peninsula to live and work, Orang Asli Christians in the peninsula also typically use Bahasa Malaysia in their worship. – January 23, 2014.

Najib Razak: The Epitome Of Redundancy, Where is the defender of Wasatiyyah?

Nearly a week has passed since Jais raided the Bible Society of Malaysia, and we have heard nothing from Putrajaya that would soothe the hearts of the many Malaysians who must now be harbouring misgivings about our future as a nation of diverse cultures and creeds.

Prime Minister Najib did not even mention the raid in a recent speech to civil servants about maintaining “maturity and calmness” in handling inter-community disputes. Still, that is not as bad as his deputy’s virtual refusal to rein in Selangor Umno from its plan to demonstrate outside the state’s churches.

The suspicion is in fact growing stronger that Jais was acting not in the religious the interest of Muslims, but the political interest of Umno. The more vocal of the groups defending the raid and protesting against the Christian insistence on invoking God’s Arabic name are the same ones that have been supporting Umno against the opposition parties.

While they speak in the name of Islam, these groups are led by people not especially known to be exemplary Muslims. One of them, the government-funded Perkasa, has as its president someone who has more than once committed calumny with the innuendos that he directed at Anwar Ibrahim. And calumny is a grave sin in Islam.

Furthermore, while supporters of the Christians’ right to call on Allah have quoted from the Quran to back their position, we have yet to hear the other side do the same.

It does not take more than average intelligence to figure out Umno’s probable agenda. It’s the old divide-and-rule game again. Even the most blinkered Umno strategist must have seen—from the first Bersih rally to the recent Turun demonstration—that protests against the establishment have been multiracial in nature, with Malays making up a sizeable portion of the participants.

The problem is that the ruse might just work and Umno would gather more support from those Malays whose only sources of information are the government media and news outlets affiliated with Barisan Nasional. The outcome of the 13^th general election showed us that BN propaganda did achieve results with rural Malays.

It’s a problem not because we grudge any increase of support for Umno, but because it would mean a deeper rural-urban divide of the nation and perhaps an abiding animosity between Muslim and Christian Malaysians.

But where is PAS in all this? Apart from a few voices assuring support for the Christians in their hour of strife, the party itself has not made an official stand on the issue, at least none that is clear.

It would indeed be a balm to ease the national suffering if President Hadi Awang would reiterate the unambiguous statement he made around the  time of the church burnings several years ago that PAS was with the Quran when it came to Allah being God for all. If he did that, he might just upstage Najib as the champion of wasatiyyah.

NGO Sarawak lapor polis kenyataan ‘bughah’ Harussani

KUCHING 7 JAN: Dua NGO Sarawak hari ini membuat laporan polis menggesa mufti Perak Tan Seri Harussani Zakaria disiasat berhubung kenyataannya yang ‘menghalalkan darah’ peserta himpunan membantah kenaikan harga barang pada 31 Disember lalu

Jingga 13 Sarawak bersama Persatuan Anak Muda Sarawak membuat mendesak ‘fatwa songsang’ Harussanu disiasat kerana menghasut rakyat untuk melakukan kecederaan dan membunuh.

Laporan dibuat di Balai Polis Sentral Kuching pagi ini oleh setiausaha Jingga 13 Sarawak, Ramli Mahtar.

“Kenyataan ini merupakan satu hastan dan dorongan untuk melakukan keganasan, kecederaan termasuk untuk melakukan pembunuhan terutamanya terhadap mereka yang hadir di himpunan aman pada 31 Disember 2013 di Dataran Merdeka,” laporan dipetik.

Berita Harian 2 Januari lalu melaporkan Harussani sebagai berkata, semua peserta perhimpunan pada 31 Disember lalu sepatutnya ditangkap kerana menderhaka kepada kerajaan dan ‘dihalalkan darah golongan bughah (pemberontak)’.

Kenyataan mufti Perak itu mendapat kritikan hebat masyarakat, pertubuhan mahasiswa, parti politik, NGO dan ahli akademik kerana tidak peduli kepada rakyat yang terkesan akibat kenaikan harga barang dan perkhidmatan.

Harussani juga dilaporkan tidak berganjak dan tidak mahu meminta maaf atas kenyataan dangkalnya itu.

Short URL: http://www.keadilandaily.com/?p=58092

Trinity Corporation: Selangor State GLC Is The Brink Of Chaos? The grand mosque of cordoba.

Talam Transform Berhad or formerly known as Talam Corporation of Trinity Corporation Berhad.

Why the name change? Trinity Corporation Berhad was a good name right?

We read so much of the skandal in Talam/Trinity. We think that the people in charge of Selangor's GLC must answer this to the rakyat.

We heard about the Fidlot National Shahrizat Scandal, but we did not hear anything about Talam. Both are using the rakyat's money. What happened?

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

The Gunpowder Treason and plot;

I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot

Here is a piece on the Mosque in Cordoba which was converted to a church. 

Known locally as Mezquita-Catedral, the Great Mosque of Cordoba is one of the oldest structures still standing from the time Muslims ruled Al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia including most of Spain, Portugal, and a small section of Southern France) in the late 8th century. Cordoba is a two hour train ride south of Madrid, and draws visitors from all over the world.

Temple/Church/Mosque/Church

The buildings on this site are as complex as the extraordinarily rich history they illustrate. Historians believe that there had first been a temple to the Roman god, Janus, on this site. The temple was converted into a church by invading Visigoths who seized Corboba in 572. Next, the church was converted into a mosque and then completely rebuilt by the descendants of the exiled Umayyads—the first Islamic dynasty who had originally ruled from their capital Damascus (in present-day Syria) from 661 until 750.

A New Capital

Following the overthrow of his family in Damascus by the incoming Abbasids, Prince Abd al-Rahman I escaped to southern Spain. Once there, he established control over almost all of the Iberian Peninsula and attempted to recreate the grandeur of Damascus in his capital, Cordoba. He sponsored elaborate building programs, promoted agriculture, and even imported fruit trees and other plants from his former home. Orange trees still stand in the courtyard of the Mosque of Cordoba, a beautiful, if bittersweet reminder of the Umayyad exile.

The Hypostyle Hall

The building itself was expanded over two hundred years. It is comprised of a large hypostyle prayer hall (hypostyle means, filled with columns), a courtyard with a fountain in the middle, an orange grove, a covered walkway circling the courtyard, and a minaret (a tower used to call the faithful to prayer) that is now encased in a squared, tapered bell tower. The expansive prayer hall seems magnified by its repeated geometry. It is built with recycled ancient Roman columns from which sprout a striking combination of two-tiered, symmetrical arches, formed of stone and red brick.

The Mihrab

The focal point in the prayer hall is the famous horseshoe arched mihrab or prayer niche. A mihrab is used in a mosque to identify the wall that faces Mecca—the birth place of Islam in what is now Saudi Arabia. This is practical as Muslims face toward Mecca during their daily prayers. The mihrab in the Great Mosque of Cordoba is framed by an exquisitely decorated arch behind which is an unusually large space, the size of a small room. Gold tesserae (small pieces of glass with gold and color backing) create a dazzling combination of dark blues, reddish browns, yellows and golds that form intricate calligraphic bands and vegetal motifs that adorn the arch.

Mihrab (photo: Bongo Vongo)

The Horseshoe Arch

The horseshoe-style arch was common in the architecture of the Visigoths, the people that ruled this area after the Roman empire collapsed and before the Umayyads arrived. The horseshoe arch eventually spread across North Africa from Morocco to Egypt and is an easily identified characteristic of Western Islamic architecture (though there are some early examples in the East as well).

The Dome

Above the mihrab, is an equally dazzling dome. It is built of crisscrossing ribs that create pointed arches all lavishly covered with gold mosaic in a radial pattern. This astonishing building technique anticipates later Gothic rib vaulting, though on a more modest scale.

Rib Detail, Mihrab Dome (photo: Manuel Parada López de Corselas)

The Great Mosque of Cordoba is a prime example of the Muslem world's ability to brilliantly develop architectural styles based on pre-existing regional traditions. Here is an extraordinary combination of the familiar and the innovative, a formal stylistic vocabulary that can be recognized as “Islamic” even today.

Text by Shadieh Mirmobiny