11 November 2006
Indian in Malaysia given Islamic burial amid protest by family
An ethnic Indian man was buried according to Muslim rites by Islamic authorities despite claims by his family that he had renounced the religion, reports said here today.
The case, which comes a year after an ethnic Indian Malaysian soldier was buried according to Islamic rites despite protests by his Hindu wife, is likely to fuel a debate over rights of religious minorities.
According to the Pahang Islamic Religious Department, Chandran Dharma Dass had converted to Islam and acquired the name Mohammad Arfan in 2001. The 28-year-old youth died on Wednesday and both the religious department and his family tried to claim his body for funeral.
The youth was buried in his hometown in Gopeng, Perak.
Chandran's family claimed he renounced Islam in 2002 after his plans to marry a Muslim woman did not materialised, Bernama news agency reported.
Chandran's uncle, Mohan Dass Muniandy, said his nephew eventually married a Thai woman in 2004 and did not practice Muslim traditions.
However, Kuantan Islamic religious officer Syarifuddin Aisa Osman said the deceased had not embraced any other religion after converting to Islam.
"Based on this, clearly the deceased was a Muslim and should be buried according to Islam and this cannot be disputed by his family or other parties.
"However, on his family's request to see the remains for the last time, we agreed to take the remains to Gopeng for burial at a Muslim cemetery there," he said.
The remains of Chandran was taken under police escort.
POSTED BY www.hindu.com
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Although politically dominated by the Malays, modern Malaysian society is laced, with substantial Chinese and Indian minorities.
The only major violence the country has seen since independence was the May 13 racial riots in the wake of an election campaign based on racial issues. Nonetheless, Malaysia is considered to be a model of racial harmony.
Malaysia is a multi-religious society, and Islam is the country's official religion. The four main religions are Islam (60.4% of the population), Buddhism (19.2%), Christianity (9.1%, mostly in East Malaysia), and Hinduism (6.3%), Malaysian constitution guarantees religious freedom
Posted by: Ustaz | 13 November 2006
Dozens of religious groups have moved in to Aceh, looking to help tsunami victims - and convert them and others, creating tensions in the disaster area.
The arrival of Western Christian groups with records of aggressive preaching risks confrontation with local Muslim leaders which could jeopardise the provision of aid to the 600,000 local people made homeless by the disaster. The death toll in Aceh stands at around 110,000 and is expected to rise.
Reacting to the attempts of one American group to fly hundreds of local children to a Christian orphanage, Din Syamsuddin, head of the Indonesian Council of Clerics, said any attempt to spread religion under the cover of aid was wrong.
'The Muslim community will not remain quiet. This a clear statement, and it is serious,' he said.
Posted by: Christian Aid Groups Try to exploit Victims | 14 November 2006
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters; the Viet Minh; - had finally defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2 billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all (most non-Buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South. With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman, the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman Catholicism. The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read:
"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of Buddhist protesters and monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of Buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned themselves: in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - ; mostly in street riots ; - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of American GI's lost their life.
Posted by: Catholic terror in Vietnam | 15 November 2006
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