KL quiets tensions with interfaith body
JAKARTA (JP): A Malaysian scholar believes his ethnically and religiously diverse country has escaped major religious conflicts in the last hundred years because rumblings of discord are handled in their early stages.
Tan Sri Dato Seri Dr. Ahmad Sarji bin Abdul Hamid told a seminar on Islam and the West here yesterday that minor isolated incidents which occurred in predominately Moslem Malaysia never escalated into riots on a national scale.
Sarji is chairman of the Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia.
He attributed this to the government dealing with sensitive religious and ethnic issues in an approach that effectively nipped problems in the bud.
"We always try to avoid conflagration of any problems," he said in the seminar jointly organized by the British Council, Yayasan 2020, the Goethe Institute and Friedrich-Nauman Stiftung.
He discussed the solution which was used when a Moslem community complained about noise from a Hindu temple.
"Our solution (was) not to burn the temple down, but to ask the Hindu community to move to another place and the government (would) provide the land."
The issues are handled by an interfaith council called the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs, which was established in 1983.
Sarji said Malaysia was often cited as a pluralistic society exhibiting religious tolerance.
Moslems greet members of other communities on their particular holidays, like Christmas or the Chinese New Year, he said, and vice versa. Holidays of the different religions and ethnic communities are included in the official government calendar.
"We also visit other believers' funerals and church weddings. But, in line with Islamic teaching, we don't pray during the occasions," he said.
He was unsure if the ulema were as receptive to such practices.
"I suspect the ulema don't do it, but they are the minority. And the fact that the ulema also enjoy these holidays is already a degree of acquiescence," he said to the about 40 participants, most of whom were intellectuals and university lecturers.
Sarji said non-Moslems Malaysians were beginning to put their faith in Islamic financial services.
"Although the Islamic financial facilities are mainly subscribed to by the Moslems, non-Moslems are also beginning to show a great interest in them," Sarji said.
He added that more than 50 percent of the customers of the Islamic Bank of Malaysia were non-Moslems.
The Vision 2020 Unit Trust Scheme, administered by Moslems, is another example, he said. The majority of 60 percent of the 830,000 unit holders in the scheme are non-Moslems.
Malaysia has established many Islamic financial institutions and instruments, he said, citing the Islamic banking services, Takaful insurance schemes, the Pilgrims Management Fund, Islamic mortgage and leasing facilities and Islamic unit trusts and securities. Islamic-managed counters at the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange have also been established. (hbk)