The academic with the University of Nottingham Malaysia and other critics say JAKIM is responsible for creating religious schisms in Malay society. Political analyst Bridget Welsh described JAKIM as having “an annual budget of approximately $300 million and thousands of staff involved in monitoring social behavior.” “An Islamic/fascist body, controlled by little Napoleons, it filters the level of intelligence and what the rakyat /students/audience can endeavor to be exposed or strive to learn from.” They represent the effective arm of JAKIM to control/define what is permitted to be ‘fed’ to the populist/students/staff etc.,” he wrote. “The Pusat Islam is the moral policing/vigilante body for many of the government and even quasi-government institutions. In a Facebook post, Ramli lashed out at the center, known as Pusat Islam in Malay. The dancer said the center was an arm of the federal Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM), which plays a key role in the planning of Islamic affairs and is part of the Prime Minister’s Office. In June 2021, the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia canceled Ramli’s talk on art transcending race, after the campus’s Islamic Center advised against it. Take the case of Ramli Ibrahim, a Malay Muslim and renowned practitioner of the Indian dance form Odissi, which conservative Muslims frown upon as un-Islamic. In some other cases, PAS has not even needed to step in, and fellow ideologues have done the job. Ramli Ibrahim performs a dance in Kuala Lumpur March 30, 2007. Despite the Selangor sultan’s admonition to Ahmad, his and PAS’ stance on Muslim attending the festival remains the same, local media reported on Thursday. Celebrations of Bon Odori are scheduled for next month in Shah Alam, Selangor state, and in Penang.Įarlier this month, Minister Ahmad, from the conservative Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), advised Muslims to not join the festival because, he said, it contained elements from other religions.
Other communities include ethnic Chinese and Indian Malaysians.īon Odori is a Japanese cultural event with roots in Buddhism, but experts quoted in Malaysian media say the tradition, celebrated in Malaysia since the mid-1970s, has shed its religious meaning. Malaysia is nearly 64 percent Muslim and slightly more than half of the population is ethnic Malays, who generally practice Islam. … Today is about Bon Odori, what will be next?” “In Malaysia, religion and race are being used to gain political mileage by some parties. We are becoming far too right nowadays,” Sani told BenarNews. “Malaysia is regressing, and the intolerance that we see here is worrying. There is cause for concern, says Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani, deputy managing director at market advisory firm Bower Group Asia. The mood in Malaysia is filled with a pandemic-driven economic malaise as the country faces the prospect of a general election months away or next year. “nderstand the difference between religion and culture,” he said via Facebook in publicly scolding Minister Idris Ahmad, of the Islamic Party PAS, which is a partner in the country’s ruling coalition.Ī potential diplomatic to-do was averted, but the incident has left observers worrying about a climate of fundamentalism in this religiously and racially mixed Islamic-majority nation.
“Hands off,” the Sultan of Selangor indicated. When one of Malaysia’s powerful sultans recently slapped the religious affairs minister with a rare rebuke for saying Muslims shouldn’t participate in a Japanese cultural festival because it had un-Islamic elements, the incident cast a spotlight on growing intolerance here.
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