TTF: On the 17th of April 2017, DAP’s M Kulasegaran urged the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) government not to “take sides” by providing a safe haven for Islamic preacher Zakir Naik.
Months later, on the 28th of November 2017, Amanah’s communications director Khalid Samad defended Zakir against accusations that the Indian Muslim preacher was promoting terrorism.
The conflicting positions taken by Kula and Khalid prompted the DAP’s P Ramasamy to pen his ‘think’.
On the 11th of December 2017, Samy wrote that Zakir’s continued presence in Malaysia would make it difficult for the country to join hands with the international community to fight the menace of terrorism.
The back and forth between the trio, made to look like opinions exclusive of one another, demonstrated the stark differences in positions that existed between the DAP and Amanah regarding Zakir and his presence in the country.
Amanah was then being funded by the DAP.
Its leader, Mohamad Sabu (Mat Sabu), did not want to offend his paymasters and probably left it to Khalid to do the talking.
But everybody knows Sabu is a Mahathirist.
Yesterday, his newfound mentor and grandmaster, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, announced that Zakir could stay in Malaysia as long as he did not commit an offence or cause unrest.
The announcement courted scorn from Gerakan’s Baljit Singh, who publicly accused Indian Pakatan Harapan leaders of failing to convince the Prime Minister that Zakir needed to go.
Baljit’s criticism was met with equal scorn by fellow countryman Gobind Singh Deo, who insisted that he had undertaken to raise the issue along with Kulasegaran and Xavier Jayakumar at a Cabinet meeting.
However, Gobind stopped short of providing the exact reason Mahathir seemed to favour Mat Sabu’s Amanah more than he did the DAP.
Gobind is a member of the DAP.
He knows as well as I do that the Malaysian Cabinet is better represented by his party than it is by Amanah.
Yet, it seems to escape him that Mahathir just put the DAP in its place by telling its leaders to “go fly kites” regarding the Zakir issue.
The Prime Minister more or less told the party to “stay clear of Islamic related issues or risk losing the Malay vote.”
By doing so, he effectively turned the DAP a “toothless tiger” that has very little choice but to do his bidding.
Put differently, the DAP is at this very moment “Pakatan Harapan’s MCA” and is as ‘useless’ and as ‘toothless’ as the Barisan Nasional component party was once accused of being.
Now do you believe me that Mahathir is a maverick?
His strategy has always been to keep Muslim based parties at flash-point with the non-Muslim based ones without actually turning them against one another.
That is precisely what he did with UMNO, the MCA and Gerakan, which explains why he went over to a Gerakan delegates’ conference in 2001 and announced that Malaysia was a fundamentalist Islamic state.
After dropping the jaws of all delegates present, he quickly announced that the non-Muslims were free to regard the country as being secular or whatever they wished.
So you see, Gerakan has been in the game for quite a while and knows precisely what the Prime Minister is up to.
Gobind, on the other hand, is as green as a new government minister can be and actually thinks Mahathir is going at it with the spirit of consensus.
I weep for Gobind.
KUALA LUMPUR: The Indian government confirmed that it formally requested Malaysia last January to extradite Islamic preacher Dr Zakir Naik back to his home country.
Indian Ministry of External Affairs told news portal Malaysiakini that the Indian government has been in regular contact with their Malaysian counterparts on Dr Zakir, who is a Malaysian permanent resident under investigation in India for terrorism offences.
“In January this year, we made a formal request for the extradition of Zakir Naik who is an Indian national, who is living in Malaysia and who is wanted (for) criminal cases in India.
“Our extradition request is under consideration (by) the Malaysian authorities,” Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Shri Raveesh Kumar was quoted saying.
Malaysia and India signed an extradition treaty in 2010.
Human Resources Minister M. Kulasegaran said earlier today that Cabinet has discussed deporting Dr Zakir but decided that the Attorney General would only be consulted after India makes a formal request.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has said Dr Zakir can stay in Malaysia provided he does not commit an offence or cause any unrest.
The Mumbai-born Islamic televangelist is also wanted by the Indian government for alleged money laundering besides terrorism.
He is under investigation for issuing alleged hate speeches that inspired the 2016 terror attack on a cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Source: The Malay Mail Online
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