The world is at a grave time of despair and is witnessing a great clash of extremes. The French incident demonstrated a crystal example of the result the clash of two extremes; a liberal interpretation of freedom of speech as well as an extreme act of violence that was a reactionary response towards the other extreme. Neither should we accept the acts of violence committed on innocent lives nor should we agree for people to be given the freedom to insult.
HAMAS, often times labeled as a terrorist organization, projected their voices of disagreements towards the French incident. This is echoed by Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu as he voiced out his concern on the reactionary rise of Islamophobia when he said, “Our participation in the Paris march is a strong message for groups that want to blame the Islamic world, especially Muslims who live in Europe.” It is in this time that we are able to contrast the real faces of Islamists across the world that are often times regarded as extreme by western-funded organizations.
Before the dusts of the French incident settles, the Director of US-funded Lawyers for Liberty, Eric Paulsen decided to test the waters when he intentionally sent out a seditious tweet attacking JAKIM, claiming that Friday sermons have been propagating extreme ideologies. His remarks were indeed baseless and in itself a direct attack on the Islamic faith.
I consider this as another case of Islamophobia where Eric Paulsen and his long list of anti-Islam statements has really crossed the line this time. To be honest, his remarks seems to be more like a publicity stunt. Eric Paulsen, a staunch supporter of the anti-Sedition Act has a circle of friends that has been acquitted under the Sedition Act before. It seems almost incomplete and unheroic if he himself did not join the bandwagon. Perhaps it could’ve seem to be more ‘heroic’ if he did not delete his tweet after realizing the circumstances of his words. After all, a lawyer should know better as to what is clearly offending the religious institutions in Malaysia and what is not? Well, he is a lawyer, is he not?
Perhaps the anti-hudud Eric should know better that Malaysia, a unique country that upholds rule of law in maintaining peace and stability does have provisions to prevent from violent incidences such as the French incident from occurring in our country. It is unfortunate for Eric that in order to maintain peace in Malaysia, he (and many others) has to hold back his itch to make baseless and offensive accusations towards Malaysia’s Islamic institutions.
Malaysia stands behind the IGP’s decision to detain Eric Paulsen under the Sedition Act. We should never allow such seditious remarks to be made against our religious institutions and disrupt the peace and stability in our beloved country. Even more when those accusations are totally baseless.
Yusri Jamaluddin
MSc Business Analytics
New York, USA
***The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of, and should not be attributed to, ISMA or ISMAWeb.
