PETALING JAYA: Umno veteran Shahrir Samad has dismissed claims that Islam and the Malays in Malaysia have come under threat in the past seven months under the unity government.
He said there has been no such issue since Anwar Ibrahim was made prime minister, arguing that Islam’s position was greatly threatened during the former Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration with Dr Mahathir Mohamad as prime minister.
Shahrir said the attempt to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) had sparked anger among the Malay and Muslim communities, prompting the then government to make an about-turn on the convention.
The former Johor Bahru MP claimed that there was a push towards secularism, despite Malay leaders like Mahathir, Bersatu president Muhyiddin Yassin and former PKR deputy president Azmin Ali being part of the government at the time.
“The biggest protest against the PH government’s plan to ratify ICERD took place on Dec 8, 2018, seven months after the PH 1.0 government took over the reins of the country’s administration.
“Although Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Azmin were in the government, the push towards secularism was happening openly … perhaps because of PKR and DAP, since both parties have secularist ideologies,” he said in a Facebook post.
While DAP and PKR are now part of the current government, he said, the bigger difference is that BN is also part of Putrajaya while Mahathir, Muhyiddin and Azmin are not.
“They are outside, while BN is inside. After seven months since the formation of the unity government, there have been no issues threatening Islam the way ICERD did,” he said.
