{"id":6447,"date":"2010-04-06T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T14:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/?p=6447"},"modified":"2010-04-06T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T14:48:00","slug":"inter-religious-committee-coming-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2010\/04\/06\/inter-religious-committee-coming-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Inter Religious Understanding Committee coming soon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not sure how this committee is going to function. I’m still waiting \u00a0for some numbskulls who will be protesting on the basis of some supremacy nonsense to start their drama.<\/p>\n

Its good that the minister says committee should not be having politicians, but the chairperson herself is an ex-MP, so it doesn’t really seem to be politically independent. Probably need to get a declaration from the committee members that they are not members of any political party as first criteria. However, this is Koh Tsu Koon’s justification (guess we have to take it at face value):<\/p>\n

\n

Koh elaborated that Ilani was the right person for the job.<\/p>\n

“She is a\u00a0hajah<\/em>. She is the former MP for Kota Bahru but she has not been active politically for quite a while. Very significantly, she has been in good personal contact with all the major religious leaders in the country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Star reported<\/a><\/strong> as inter faith committee (article title) when in fact its not:<\/p>\n

\n

“We don’t want to call it an inter-faith panel, but a special committee to promote understanding and harmony among the various faiths.<\/p>\n

“The idea of the committee is for the members to hold informal dialogues, not on only one issue, but also matters such as inter-marriages, religious conversions as well as custody of children.<\/p>\n

“The committee will exchange their views and we will get feedback and get a better understanding on religious issues,” he told reporters at the Parliament lobby on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Malaysiakini reports<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\n

An ‘Inter-religious Understanding Committee’ is being set up under the National Unity\u00a0and Integration Department to promote harmony between the different religions in the country, Minister in Prime Minister’s Department Koh Tsu Koon told Parliament today.<\/p>\n

“It is a committee to promote understanding and harmony, straightforward. Purely leaders of various religions sitting together with the relevant government departments. Let the religious leaders with all their spirituality sit down and have a dialogue.”<\/p>\n

Koh (left<\/em>) said the committee would be chaired by Ilani Isahak, the former MP for Kota Bahru, and would comprise senior representatives from the Islamic Development Department (Jakim), the Institute of Islamic Understanding (Ikim) as well as from the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST).<\/p>\n

Koh said the special committee was not a rigid structure and was just a framework to provide an interaction and interchange of ideas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If we take two representatives from each group\/religion, then it should be 2 from Jakim, 2 from Ikim, and two each from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Taoism for a total of 14 members. If one each, then its 7 in total. Or if “imbalanced” representation is used, then expect the number of people from Jakim+Ikim to be more than the total of others.<\/p>\n

How about lesser known faiths like Bahaism, the indigenous people’s faith, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism etc?<\/p>\n

So, would Indira Gandhi get her baby back? Would her children still be Hindus? Would converts who repent able to return to their original religion? Would there be a legal mechanism to monitor conversions? My expectation is for such a committee to “help” solve these kind of problems by providing the right inputs to cabinet, and I don’t think it will be wrong to assume that right-thinking Malaysians would expect the same. Anything less, and its would be just another empty talk and waste of tax payers money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not sure how this committee is going to function. I’m still waiting \u00a0for some numbskulls who will be protesting on the basis of some supremacy nonsense to start their drama. Its good that the minister says committee should not be having politicians, but the chairperson herself is an ex-MP, so it doesn’t really seem to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[92,278,302],"class_list":["post-6447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borninmalaysia","category-religion","tag-conversion","tag-ngo","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6448,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6447\/revisions\/6448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}