a political analyst and writer, suggests that it's a blessing in disguise that Malaysia Chronicle 's comments did not recieve wider coverage given the current climate."That would have threatened their security and that of many others because his words would have easily been manipulated by the radical right," By using Islam to condemn the acts of other Muslims are you opening the floodgates to a religious war of words?
A war of words that has already claimed the life of Taseer.
Koch's support for King is not surprising. Koch has always been open about his contempt for Arabs and Muslims and his belief that a war of civilisations is now in progress between Muslims and everyone else. He recently wrote: For me, the question is this: will the secular Western civilisation shared by America and Europe, which allows us to enjoy life and its creature comforts, still be standing at the end of that war? Or will radical Islam, with an aggressive culture that treasures martyrdom and death over life, prevail.... [italics mine] For years, Koch, King and others who share their anti-Muslim views hid behind that word: "radical". They said that they have no problem with Muslims as people or Islam as a religion. It is only "radical Islam" or "Islamists" that they can't abide.Lately that caveat has been thrown to the winds. It is now clear that for Islamophobes (actually Islamohaters), "radical" Islam is just Islam. And "radical" Muslims are just Muslims. A powerful example was recently offered by HBO commentator Bill Maher. Maher said in October that he was "alarmed" after reading that the most common name among newborns in the United Kingdom in 2009 was Muhammad. Am I a racist to feel that I'm alarmed by that? Because I am. And it's not because of the race, it's 'cause of the religion. I don't have to apologise, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years? He then added: "I should be alarmed and I don't apologise for it." (After all, those baby Muhammads will grow up to be adult Muhammads).Marty Peretz, former editor of The New Republic, did apologise, in a half-hearted way, for writing during the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy that American Muslims should not be protected by the Constitution. He had written that Muslims simply are not "worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse." His subsequent apology was so weak, and his record of race-baiting was so long and vitriolic that Peretz was forced out by The New Republic and quickly hotfooted it out of the United States for Israel where he told New Yorkmagazine last month that he could not possibly be a bigot. [H]e mentioned two close, personal black friends, one who is "so fucking smart," and then a third, a black student whom he had plucked from Harvard and made the circulation director of The New Republic. "I hired Muslims - I hired Fareed Zakaria," he added. Well, okay then.Then there is David Harris, president of the American Jewish Committee. Under his leadership, the American Jewish Committee issued a study "proving" that, contrary to the commonly used estimate of six million American Muslims, the correct number is 2.8 million. And why is Harris worried about Muslim population estimates? "Six million has a special resonance,'' Harris wrote in a May 21 article in Jerusalem Report magazine. ''It would mean that Muslims outnumber Jews in the US and it would buttress calls for a redefinition of America's heritage as 'Judeo-Christian-Muslim,' a stated goal of some Muslim leaders." That is some scary "stated goal".Even more, Harris is worried that the perception that there are as many Muslims as Jews would give Muslims additional political clout, leading Congress to occasionally actually pay attention to them (but unfortunately, that is not how it works). And now along comes Peter King, who, as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, is scheduling hearings on the "radicalisation of the American Muslim community". No, not on terrorists or terrorist sympathisers but on Muslims in general. It's not just people who are involved with the terrorists and extremists, it is people who are in mainstream Islam, leaders of mosques, leaders of Muslim organisations... So, it goes beyond the terrorists and the extremists and also includes those in what others call mainstream Muslim leadership. King offers no evidence that the American Muslim community has become radicalised (perhaps because there is none).No, drawing on what the New York Times correctly calls his usual "blather" and "bluster", King simply slanders an entire community. He will follow up with a bunch of kangaroo court hearings in which the usual bigots (Steve Emerson and/or Robert Spencer and/or Daniel Pipes and/or David Horowitz and/or Frank Gaffney, etc.) will show up to inform America that the Muslim family down the block might be al-Qaeda. This isn't exactly McCarthyism but only in the sense that (1) there actually is a terrorist threat to the United States while the Communist threat was almost pure fabrication and (2) McCarthy never targeted a specific religious or ethnic group. Of course, it makes sense for King to malign a particular segment of the population, rather than to focus on terrorism itself. And that is because of Peter King's own record of sympathy for terrorism. A 2005 profile of King by the conservative New York Sun told the story of King's long and deep involvement with the terrorist Irish Republican Army (IRA) and, even more damning, his support for Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), a US-based group accused of funnelling guns and money to the IRA. According to the Sun: Mr. King's support for the IRA was unequivocal. In 1982, for instance, he told a pro-IRA rally in Nassau County: "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry." King was defending the IRA while it was engaged in serious violence.[T]he IRA took its campaign to Britain - where London's financial district was twice devastated by bombs - and to mainland Europe, where British NATO bases were frequently targeted. The IRA nearly killed Prime Minister Thatcher and her cabinet with a bomb in 1984, and it assassinated prominent British politicians and members of the royal family. King's support for the IRA was so outspoken that "[b]y the mid-1980s, the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were openly hostile to Mr. King. On one occasion, a judge threw him out of a Belfast courtroom during the murder trial of IRA men because, in the judge's view, 'he was an obvious collaborator with the IRA.' When he attended other trials, the police singled him out for thorough body searches."In 1984, "the Secret Service listed him as a threat when President Reagan made a trip to Nassau County to watch a Special Olympics event." Fortunately, in the 1980s, there was no headline-seeking House chairman to investigate the entire Irish-American community because of the activities of Peter King and his friends. After all, who could seriously suggest demonising a community of millions of law-abiding citizens because of the actions of a few terrorist sympathisers? NORAID and other IRA-supporting groups were, quite properly, investigated. Not a whole population. But now here is Peter King determined to find terrorism-supporters under every Muslim bed. Better, he should look in the mirror. MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. The above article first appeared in Foreign Policy Matters, a part of the Media Matters Action Network. |
A young Christian runaway in foster care awaits her hearing tomorrow when Florida authorities will decide whether she will be forced to return to her Muslim parents – whom she says will kill her for converting to Christianity.
Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, an honor student and cheerleader, was raised in a Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio. She became a Christian four years ago as a result of her interactions with children at school.
Atlas Shrugs’ Pamela Geller has followed Bary’s case closely, reporting that the girl’s friends accompanied her to the school counselor after they noticed bruises covering her arms and legs that allegedly resulted from beatings by her father and brother.
“The middle school, in a serious dereliction of duty, did not report these beatings to child welfare services,” Geller reported. “Beatings were random, violent, unprovoked. Take, for example, when Rifqa and her father Mohamed were driving in the car. He would force her to wear the hijab (head covering), which she hated. In her discomfort she would slouch down, embarrassed, and her father would haul off and sock her in the face so that she never forgot to sit up straight in her costume. The beatings were regular and so much a part of the landscape of Rifqa’s life, she became inured to them …”
Bary, a native of Sri Lanka, hitchhiked to a bus station and ran away from home on July 19 because she says her family will murder her in what is known as an honor killing. In Islamic tradition, an honor killing is the customary slaughter of a person who is believed to have brought dishonor upon his or her family.
Read about Islam’s Mahdi and Christianity’s Antichrist, and the arguments that they are one and the same!
The Christian teen turned to pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz of Global Revolution Church in Orlando, Fla., whom she met through Facebook. She has been placed in foster care by the Florida Department of Children and Families, or DCF, awaiting a decision tomorrow on whether her case will be heard in Florida or in Ohio. Her jurisdiction hearing is now scheduled for 3:15 p.m. EST in Orlando’s juvenile court.
Fox News reported that legal experts have said she will almost certainly be forced to return to her parents’ home in Ohio where she will be required to live with her parents since Ohio does not have an emancipation statute. According to the report, Florida has such a statute, but it requires parental consent.
The teen’s attorney, John Stemberger, filed a petition for adjudication of dependency on Aug 18.
Blake Lorenz embraced the emotional teen as she told her story in the following video posted on YouTube:
“I’m a Christian, and my parents are Muslim. They are extremely devout,” she said. “They threatened to kill me. … You guys wouldn’t understand. Islam is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this. I’m fighting for my life. …”
Asked what her father, Mohamed Bary, told her, she replied, “He said he would kill me. Or he’d have me sent back to Sri Lanka where they’d put me in the asylum.”
She said she left a note for her parents before she ran away: “I said, ‘I refuse to deny Jesus. He is my Lord and Savior. I pray you find his forgiveness and mercy, and I love you both dearly.’ I wrote that, but they never showed it to the police officers.”
Bary warned that if she is forced to return to her family in Ohio, she will die “within a week.”
Asked why she ran away, she said, “I was threatened by my dad. When my dad found out – I had a Facebook, that’s how he found out – and phone calls from the Muslim community started coming in with e-mails that confronted me. And I had a laptop and he took that laptop and waved it in the air, and he was about to beat me with it, and he said, ‘If you have this Jesus in your heart, you’re dead to me. You’re not my daughter.’ And I refused to speak but he said, ‘I will kill you. Tell me the truth.’ In these words, bad words, cuss words. So I knew that I had to get away.”
Atlas Shrugs reported that those members of the Muslim community, from Noor Islamic Cultural Center, warned Bary’s father that his daughter was an apostate, so the teenager sought to escape with her life.
Bary said she would sneak out to Christian prayer meetings and hide her Bible from her parents. After her father confronted her, he forced her to attend several classes, hoping she would return to Islam. However, several weeks later, her mother discovered a Christian book that belonged to her.
“I knew right then that it was over for me,” she said. “I had to leave.”
Fox News reported that the father discovered she had been baptized earlier this year.
The teenager said that in the 150 generations of her family, no one has ever known Jesus.
“I am the first one,” she said. “Imagine the honor in killing me.”
Bary said she wants to remain in Florida so she can be free to worship Jesus, go to church and read her Bible.
“You talk about religious freedom?” she asked. “No! I don’t have that. I want to be here. I want to worship Jesus freely. I don’t want to die.”
Bary’s father, a jeweler, called the church a “cult” and claimed it has brainwashed Fatima.
“This is a cult group who kidnapped my daughter and took her away,” Mohamed Bary told WESH 2 News.
He also denied the charges she is making and claims he does not intend to hurt her. He and his lawyer are in Florida, fighting to take his daughter back to Ohio.
Fathima Rifqa Bary has been the subject of various media attacks in recent weeks. Pakistan Daily reported, “The family maintains that the girls was into drugs, promiscuous behavior and raunchy messages on Facebook. She was discussing sex with multiple older married men. When the parents tried to control her behavior she refused to do so. On her return to the home she conjured up a story of conversion to Christianity. There are serious accusations against the church on holding a minor girl in custody against the will of her guardians and parents. How many more girls will the church kidnap?”
WND located the following photo of Bary with a boy named Tayee Adrian on Facebook. Messages left with Adrian and Global Revolution Church had not been returned at the time of this report.
Geller points out that the media appear to be focusing primarily on “the lies and deception of Rifqa Bary’s devout Muslim family and their lawyers” and smearing the pastors for caring for Bary rather than immediately turning her over to her parents. She also said the Bary family mosque, Noor Islamic Center, is a hotbed of extremist activity, noting that Patrick Poole of Ohio Against Terror has reported extensively on extremist positions of its leaders.
Bary’s Aug. 18 petition to the court states:
The child’s parents are devout followers of Islam and members of the extreme Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Columbus, Ohio. This is where the internationally known Hama cleric, Salah Sultan, was the resident scholar before being banned from the United States. Salah Sultan is known as a global terrorist who publicly advocates the killing of Americans and Jews. The largest cell of Al Qaeda[sic] operatives was operating from the largest mosque in the Columbus area. Columbus is one of the cities under current investigation concerning the U.S. operations of Al-Qaeda [sic]. The child is a target for the radical Muslim community of Columbus, Ohio.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” told Fox News Bary’s life will be in danger if she is forced to return to her parents.
“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” she said. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘presuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”
Chesler continued, “She escaped from her family’s brutal tyranny and shamed her family further through public exposure. Muslim girls and women are killed for far less.”
Meanwhile, International Christian Concern is urging Florida officials to retain custody of Bary.
In a statement, ICC said it is concerned about Rifqa because the Columbus police officer who investigated the case told the press that Rifqa’s father “comes across to me as a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”
However, ICC reveals that a source who spoke with the same investigating officer said the officer indicated earlier that he has spoken with 20 different people who warned him that the girl’s life was in danger.
“We are extremely concerned about Rifqa,” ICC President Jeff King wrote. “… Based on our extensive international experience with fundamentalist Islam, we strongly believe that Rifqa’s life will be in danger if DCF decides to send her back to Ohio. We call upon authorities in Florida to retain custody of Rifqa.”
Fathima Rifqa Bary now has more than 2,000 Facebook fans expressing their support for the young girl. However, one Facebook group titled, “Rifqa Bary’s father 100% correct” was created by a man in Sri Lanka named Hashan Dilshan. The group has only 14 members – each with Islamic names.
One member named Mohammed Rizwan writes, “Rifqa, it’s not your fault. Rifqa, please be cool and think about what you are going to and what you will get from this religion. Rifqa, nothing to worry. Allah with you always if you not close to him, but Allah always close to you [sic].”
In yet another message likely intended for the girl’s father, Rizwan wrote, “Bary, you are correct. No one can do without Allah order! [sic] Go ahead … We are all together …”
Concerned individuals may e-mail Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, fill out a contact form, call his office at (850)488-4441 or (850)488-7146 or fax (850)487-0801.
The Florida Department of Children and Families may be reached by calling (850)487-1111 or fax (850)922-2993.
Verne Melvin, acting regional director of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Department of Children and Families, may be reached by calling (407)245-0400.
A young Christian runaway in foster care awaits her hearing tomorrow when Florida authorities will decide whether she will be forced to return to her Muslim parents – whom she says will kill her for converting to Christianity.
Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, an honor student and cheerleader, was raised in a Muslim family in Columbus, Ohio. She became a Christian four years ago as a result of her interactions with children at school.
Atlas Shrugs’ Pamela Geller has followed Bary’s case closely, reporting that the girl’s friends accompanied her to the school counselor after they noticed bruises covering her arms and legs that allegedly resulted from beatings by her father and brother.
“The middle school, in a serious dereliction of duty, did not report these beatings to child welfare services,” Geller reported. “Beatings were random, violent, unprovoked. Take, for example, when Rifqa and her father Mohamed were driving in the car. He would force her to wear the hijab (head covering), which she hated. In her discomfort she would slouch down, embarrassed, and her father would haul off and sock her in the face so that she never forgot to sit up straight in her costume. The beatings were regular and so much a part of the landscape of Rifqa’s life, she became inured to them …”
Bary, a native of Sri Lanka, hitchhiked to a bus station and ran away from home on July 19 because she says her family will murder her in what is known as an honor killing. In Islamic tradition, an honor killing is the customary slaughter of a person who is believed to have brought dishonor upon his or her family.
Read about Islam’s Mahdi and Christianity’s Antichrist, and the arguments that they are one and the same!
The Christian teen turned to pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz of Global Revolution Church in Orlando, Fla., whom she met through Facebook. She has been placed in foster care by the Florida Department of Children and Families, or DCF, awaiting a decision tomorrow on whether her case will be heard in Florida or in Ohio. Her jurisdiction hearing is now scheduled for 3:15 p.m. EST in Orlando’s juvenile court.
Fox News reported that legal experts have said she will almost certainly be forced to return to her parents’ home in Ohio where she will be required to live with her parents since Ohio does not have an emancipation statute.According to the report, Florida has such a statute, but it requires parental consent.
The teen’s attorney, John Stemberger, filed a petition for adjudication of dependency on Aug 18.
Blake Lorenz embraced the emotional teen as she told her story in the following video posted on YouTube:
“I’m a Christian, and my parents are Muslim. They are extremely devout,” she said. “They threatened to kill me. … You guys wouldn’t understand. Islam is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this. I’m fighting for my life. …”
Asked what her father, Mohamed Bary, told her, she replied, “He said he would kill me. Or he’d have me sent back to Sri Lanka where they’d put me in the asylum.”
She said she left a note for her parents before she ran away: “I said, ‘I refuse to deny Jesus. He is my Lord and Savior. I pray you find his forgiveness and mercy, and I love you both dearly.’ I wrote that, but they never showed it to the police officers.”
Bary warned that if she is forced to return to her family in Ohio, she will die “within a week.”
Asked why she ran away, she said, “I was threatened by my dad. When my dad found out – I had a Facebook, that’s how he found out – and phone calls from the Muslim community started coming in with e-mails that confronted me. And I had a laptop and he took that laptop and waved it in the air, and he was about to beat me with it, and he said, ‘If you have this Jesus in your heart, you’re dead to me. You’re not my daughter.’ And I refused to speak but he said, ‘I will kill you. Tell me the truth.’ In these words, bad words, cuss words. So I knew that I had to get away.”
Atlas Shrugs reported that those members of the Muslim community, from Noor Islamic Cultural Center, warned Bary’s father that his daughter was an apostate, so the teenager sought to escape with her life.
Bary said she would sneak out to Christian prayer meetings and hide her Bible from her parents. After her father confronted her, he forced her to attend several classes, hoping she would return to Islam. However, several weeks later, her mother discovered a Christian book that belonged to her.
“I knew right then that it was over for me,” she said. “I had to leave.”
Fox News reported that the father discovered she had been baptized earlier this year.
The teenager said that in the 150 generations of her family, no one has ever known Jesus.
“I am the first one,” she said. “Imagine the honor in killing me.”
Bary said she wants to remain in Florida so she can be free to worship Jesus, go to church and read her Bible.
“You talk about religious freedom?” she asked. “No! I don’t have that. I want to be here. I want to worship Jesus freely. I don’t want to die.”
Bary’s father, a jeweler, called the church a “cult” and claimed it has brainwashed Fatima.
“This is a cult group who kidnapped my daughter and took her away,” Mohamed Bary told WESH 2 News.
He also denied the charges she is making and claims he does not intend to hurt her. He and his lawyer are in Florida, fighting to take his daughter back to Ohio.
Fathima Rifqa Bary has been the subject of various media attacks in recent weeks. Pakistan Daily reported, “The family maintains that the girls was into drugs, promiscuous behavior and raunchy messages on Facebook. She was discussing sex with multiple older married men. When the parents tried to control her behavior she refused to do so. On her return to the home she conjured up a story of conversion to Christianity. There are serious accusations against the church on holding a minor girl in custody against the will of her guardians and parents. How many more girls will the church kidnap?”
WND located the following photo of Bary with a boy named Tayee Adrian on Facebook. Messages left with Adrian and Global Revolution Church had not been returned at the time of this report.
Geller points out that the media appear to be focusing primarily on “the lies and deception of Rifqa Bary’s devout Muslim family and their lawyers” and smearing the pastors for caring for Bary rather than immediately turning her over to her parents. She also said the Bary family mosque, Noor Islamic Center, is a hotbed of extremist activity, noting that Patrick Poole of Ohio Against Terror has reported extensively on extremist positions of its leaders.
Bary’s Aug. 18 petition to the court states:
The child’s parents are devout followers of Islam and members of the extreme Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Columbus, Ohio. This is where the internationally known Hama cleric, Salah Sultan, was the resident scholar before being banned from the United States. Salah Sultan is known as a global terrorist who publicly advocates the killing of Americans and Jews. The largest cell of Al Qaeda[sic] operatives was operating from the largest mosque in the Columbus area. Columbus is one of the cities under current investigation concerning the U.S. operations of Al-Qaeda [sic]. The child is a target for the radical Muslim community of Columbus, Ohio.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” told Fox News Bary’s life will be in danger if she is forced to return to her parents.
“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” she said. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘presuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”
Chesler continued, “She escaped from her family’s brutal tyranny and shamed her family further through public exposure. Muslim girls and women are killed for far less.”
Meanwhile, International Christian Concern is urging Florida officials to retain custody of Bary.
In a statement, ICC said it is concerned about Rifqa because the Columbus police officer who investigated the case told the press that Rifqa’s father “comes across to me as a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”
However, ICC reveals that a source who spoke with the same investigating officer said the officer indicated earlier that he has spoken with 20 different people who warned him that the girl’s life was in danger.
“We are extremely concerned about Rifqa,” ICC President Jeff King wrote. “… Based on our extensive international experience with fundamentalist Islam, we strongly believe that Rifqa’s life will be in danger if DCF decides to send her back to Ohio. We call upon authorities in Florida to retain custody of Rifqa.”
Fathima Rifqa Bary now has more than 2,000 Facebook fans expressing their support for the young girl. However, one Facebook group titled, “Rifqa Bary’s father 100% correct” was created by a man in Sri Lanka named Hashan Dilshan. The group has only 14 members – each with Islamic names.
One member named Mohammed Rizwan writes, “Rifqa, it’s not your fault. Rifqa, please be cool and think about what you are going to and what you will get from this religion. Rifqa, nothing to worry. Allah with you always if you not close to him, but Allah always close to you [sic].”
In yet another message likely intended for the girl’s father, Rizwan wrote, “Bary, you are correct. No one can do without Allah order! [sic] Go ahead … We are all together …”
Concerned individuals may e-mail Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, fill out a contact form, call his office at (850)488-4441 or (850)488-7146 or fax (850)487-0801.
The Florida Department of Children and Families may be reached by calling (850)487-1111 or fax (850)922-2993.
Verne Melvin, acting regional director of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Department of Children and Families, may be reached by calling (407)245-0400.
Over the past few weeks, the lives of two Malaysians were thrust into the spotlight. They did not ask to be special but they were born in a country where sometimes you simply get to be special without having a choice.
When I was seven, I went to school, came home, played with my micro-machines, watched some Smurfs and went to bed.
Quite a stark contrast to that of the daughter of the first Malaysian in the spotlight – a father by the name of Tan Cheow Hong.
His daughter went to school in Penang on 8 November 2010 like it was any other ordinary day. But it was not.
She was removed from school early by her mother (assisted the police and religious officials) and was then brought to Selangor. On 9 November, she was taken to the Selangor Religious Department and converted into Islam by her mother (who had earlier already converted) without the consent or knowledge of her father.
Her mother, being a new Muslim, had managed to do all this by going to the syariah court and filing for divorce before obtaining an order for custody over the child.
We have seen this before. Time and time again, conversion into Islam is used by one parent against the other to gain custody and control over the children of the marriage.
Make no mistake. Every step taken by the mother in this case was calculated from the time she embraced Islam in August last year and executed three months later with cool precision.
The father is now challenging the syariah custody order at the High Court of Penang in an attempt to recover his children. He has already lost the first round when the High Court awarded temporary custody to the mother pending the determination of the matter.
The High Court may of course decide to order custody of the child to be given to him at the end of the case. But this is unlikely given that the judge, after interviewing the child for less than an hour for purposes of determining interim custody, had decided that the child loves the mother more.
What the High Court will not do is to strike down the unilateral conversion of the child despite the fact that it contravenes Article 12 (4) of the Federal Constitution and Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by Malaysia without reservation.
Article 12 (4) of the Federal Constitution states that “the religion of a person under the age of eighteen years shall be decided by his parent or guardian”. In the Federal Constitution, words in the singular include the plural and vice versa.
Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of Children decrees that “States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern”.
In the Tan Cheow Hong case, the father’s right to decide the religion of his child had been snatched away, probably never to be recovered because no court or Muslim judge in this country would be willing to strike down a conversion into Islam for both political and personal reasons unless Parliament enacts a law that in no uncertain terms, makes such unilateral conversions unlawful.
Until that happens, Malaysians will have to brace themselves for more of the same – religion being used as a tool to trump the rights of another in the cruelest of fashions.
The other Malaysian in the spotlight is the late Teoh Beng Hock.
Watching from above, he would have heard the coroner declare a “neither a suicide nor a homicide” verdict and wonder if he even died in the first place.
He would have also heard the Prime Minister then announce the setting-up of a Royal Commission with the narrowest of scopes that is to look into investigation procedures of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
.
Teoh would of course remember the fact that two other royal commissions – one concerning the police and the other lawyer V.K Lingam – amounted to squat.
.
Teoh would of course remember the fact that two other royal commissions – one concerning the police and the other lawyer V.K Lingam – amounted to squat.
The main recommendation made by the Royal Commission to Enhance the Operation and Management of the Royal Malaysia Police was that there be established an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) aimed at dealing with complaints regarding the police and seeking to improve the professionalism of the force and to ensure that doctrines, laws, rules and procedures are observed and implemented by the police.
Citizens are still dying in police custody and being shot in the streets by the police but there is no sign of an IPCMC.
The Royal Commission on the V.K. Lingam video clip found that the clip was authentic and that Lingam was actively involved in the appointment of Ahmad Fairuz as president of the Court of Appeal, with the possible aim of his further appointment as the Chief Justice.
Mr Lingam still practices law today.
The amazing thing about the Tan Cheow Hong and Teoh Beng Hock cases is that it is nothing new. It is just a repetition of similar incidents that have happened in the past.
Before Tan Cheow Hong, it was two mothers named Shamala and Indira Ghandi who went through a similar ordeal when their husbands converted into Islam and proceeded to convert the children.
Before Teoh Beng Hock, there was, for example, A. Kugan who was murdered in police custody.
All these people were ordinary citizens whose lives were made less ordinary by the fact that those that govern the country prefer to sweep things under the carpet and rule in a piece-meal, fire-fighting kind of way.
The law has to be amended to make unilateral conversions unlawful. An independent complaints commission has to be set up to oversee the conduct of all enforcement agencies.
Until then, we would just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that the next time some kid gets snatched from one parent and converted in secret or the next time some person gets killed in the custody of enforcement agencies, we remain ordinary and merely read about it.
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