The question today is whether the PAS President, Hadi Awang will follow in the footsteps of the Penang PAS Youth leader to retract and apologise for lies and falsehoods which he could not substantiate like his preposterous allegations that DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamophobia?
Permatang Pauh MP and Penang PAS Youth Chief Muhammad Fawwaz Mohamad Jan yesterday apologised over a statement uploaded on his Facebook account saying non-Muslims were working to bring down Islam.
Fawwaz claimed the statement was written and uploaded by another person who was tasked as an administrator of the account.
He said; “I apologise for the negligence and mistake that happened. The posting was not intended to insult anyone or any race.”
Will Hadi follow in the footsteps of Fawwaz for making preposterous allegations which he had not be able to substantiate?
Hadi had not only sullied the good name of Malaysia in international society but also sullied the good name of DAP with his preposterous allegations that the DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamophobia which he could not prove with any iota of substantiation.
DAP has four Federal Ministers, 40 Members of Parliament, a state Chief Minister, a state Deputy Chief Minister, 14 State Executive Councillors, and 91 state Assembly persons. It is part of the Federal Government and five State Governments in Malaysia.
As former Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the Middle East to two “backdoor” Prime Ministers, drawing RM60,000 a month, Hadi should be aware that the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) has an Islamophobia Observatory monitoring Islamophobia on a global and daily basis.
From the annual reports of the OIC Islamophobia Observatory on Islamophobia since 2007, there is no Islamophobia in Malaysia.
If DAP had been anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamophobia, Hadi had been terribly remiss in his former duties as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the Middle East in not reporting Islamophobia in Malaysia to the OIC Islamophobia Observatory.
DAP has never been anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, or promoted Islamophobia. In fact, we have a DAP leader who sacrificed his entitlement to be a Member of Parliament in the nineties for defending the dignity of an underaged Malay girl, which no PAS leader had ever done in PAS history.
DAP has never promoted Islamophobia as we want Malaysia to leverage on the values and virtues of the great religions which meet in confluence in Malaysia to produce a world-class Malaysian nation which can be, in the words of Bapa Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman, “a beacon of light in a difficult and distracted world”.
If Hadi cannot substantiate his preposterous allegations that the DAP is anti-Malay, anti-Islam, communist, and promoting Islamophobia, and is not prepared to apologise, recant, and retract his allegations, he is no more than an irresponsible and immoral political leader who is prepared to make all sorts of preposterous allegations to sully the good name of Malaysia and the DAP to serve his own political ends.
It is pathetic that Hadi cannot even follow in the footsteps of his own Penang PAS Youth leader.
(Media Statement by DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, 19th January 2023)