May 25, 2006

• Here's a letter that I found on Malaysiakini. Can anyone verify this?
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  School textbooks advocating murder

  Very Concerned Mother

  May 25, 06 4:20pm
  

  I wonder if the
  present government is aware that violence and murder is being preached
  through its own curricula and textbooks. This is not an exaggeration. I
  urge the government to seriously consider if its curriculum for Islamic
  Education is what it wants to feed young minds.

  I was shocked
  and disturbed to find out that the secondary school syllabus for
  Islamic Education (Pendidikan Islam) includes learning how to deal with
  apostates and that one of the prescriptions is to kill them off.

  In
  many widely-used Pendidikan Islam workbooks (which base their texts on
  the Ministry of Education’s syllabus), imposing a death sentence on
  apostates is offered as a religious duty. Allow me to extract some of
  what is written (and the original Malay version for readers to check on
  context and accuracy).

  For example, under the heading ‘Ways of Dealing with Apostates’ (Cara menangani orang murtad), the following precepts are given:

  1. Advise and persuade the offender to repent and return to Islam
     (menasihati dan memintanya supaya bertaubat dan kembali kepada Islam)

  2. To impose a death sentence (melaksanakan hukuman bunuh)

  The text also has a heading which reads: ‘The death sentence against
  an apostate who refuses to repent and return to Islam has several
  virtues’. (Hukuman bunuh terhadap orang murtad yang tidak mahu kembali
  kepada ajaran Islam mempunyai beberapa hikmah).

  Among which are:

  1. To show to others at large that Islam is not a religion to be
     mocked at will (menunjukkan kepada orang ramai bahawa Islam bukanlah
     agama yang boleh dipersenda dengan sewenang-wenangnya).

  2. So that no one will dare to denigrate the Islamic religion (supaya tidak ada orang yang berani memburuk-burukkan agama Islam).

  I am not sure now whether the hudud laws passed in Kelantan and
  Terengganu are now being activated. But for the rest of Malaysia,
  punishing someone labeled apostate is nothing but a grave act!

  We
  live in a society where everything mouthed by leaders and the
  authorities (textbooks included) are accepted as the gospel truth. How
  can we be sure that children fed the above commands will not one day
  act to fulfill their jihad?

  Sadly, it is going to be of the
  brutal kind and we shall trace the answers behind such a tragedy to our
  very own government-endorsed textbooks.

  • 6:23 am
  • 2 Comments