Editor’s Note: Readers’ discretion on religious openness/maturity is required.
SUCH is the message that liberal-minded Siti Kasim wanted to convey although it triggered some rather ‘heated’ yet enlightening exchanges between the human rights activist/lawyer and surprisingly some non-Muslim commenters in her recent Facebook (FB) post.
This came about as Siti Kasim re-posted this FB post by a UK-based Malaysian who hails from Terengganu:
“I am surprised some of the comments which simply cannot see what I saw when I first came across the original posting,” remarked the Orang Asli advocate in an update of her FB post.
“Needless to say, this has got nothing to do with religion. This is about the followers of the faiths. This is happening globally including our beloved country.
If you can’t see what a lot of us saw, well, don’t start by trying to show you are the cleverest person on earth because you will look downright ignorant. 😉”
Whether this is about political correctness or the Malaysian society as a whole “is not ready for an intellectual debate without hurling insults or calling the police as though they were the experts in religion” as one netizen put it, it was the fact that few non-Muslim commenters ticking off Siti Kasim for her post that caught the eyes.
“Don’t share these tasteless but dangerous posts. They have no good intentions in them,” berated one non-Muslim netizen with another seconded his view.
This was when Siti Kasim had to personally responded to seek an answer herself to which the commenter justified “how can the post say other religions have no problem with each other and just target one religion (Islam in this case) to ridicule?”
Another non-Muslim commenter who claimed to have grown up with Muslims and work with them further rebuked Siti Kasim for insensitively “trying to stir racial disharmony” among multi-faith Malaysians.
In her defence, the human rights activist took a jibe at the commenter by pointing out that “he can’t see the bigger picture” and that she has never implied that “all Muslims fall into one category”.
Another non-Muslim commenter who claimed to be living with a Muslim noted that she faces “no problem at all” to which Siti Kasim told her to look at the bigger picture as “this posting is not about bashing Muslims in general but we must face this worldwide [phenomenon reality”.
Well, there are many more insightful comments in the said post about human co-existence sans the exploitation of religion by the clerics or politicians which eventually swayed followers of a religion to the so-called destructive path. – Dec 7, 2024
