Malaysia Needs a kemal Ataturk

It is most gratifying to read professor Dr. Mohamad Tajuddin article entitled 'non-muslims in mosques:the prophet's practice' in Malaysiakini.

Gratifying because there are still good malay muslim religious scholars who are prepared to defend the gentle face of Islam despite the vehement onslaught of some islamist muftis who virtually crucified Y.B Teo Nie Ching for being present in a mosques.

How did Harussani the controversial Perak Mufti concluded that Teo's presence in the mosques was haram in accordance with islamic precepts? If a Mufti cannot even give the correct interpretation of a religious norm then its about time we start questioning his credential of his position as a mufti.

I salute Prof. Mohamad brave stand on this issue because he went on further to rebuke some malays by saying that ' my fellow muslims who are malays would stoop so low to policising Islam in this manner that put all muslims in a bad light'

Instead of showing leadership at a time when partisan poltics should be discarded in search for the truth, our leaders have joined in the fray to criticise Teo's presence in the mosques in order to use Islam for their political mileage. This only portrays the quality of leadership( we have) who would not hesitate to exact and compromise on their principles in order to obtain support from the malay community nothwithstanding whether the religious interpretation was correct or not.

What Malaysia needs today is someone in the mould of the great turkish statesman, Mustafa kemal Ataturk. He was a revolutionary statesman, writer and founder of the Republic of Turkey as well as its first President.(wikipedia).His transformation of the Ottoman empire was awe inspiring and till today after almost a century his legacy is still fiercely protected by the military. What distingush his transformation from many other muslim countries was his radical departure of ensuring that ' Islamic Law was clearly separated from the secular law of the nation and confined to its religious domain'

Can Malaysia and its leaders follow in the foot steps of this great muslim statesman:?The lack of charasmatic leaders in our midst sadly depicts our nation's fraility in any such transformatiom.

Instead, we have leaders who are unprincipled and dishonourable men who don the robes of piousness and give religious interpretations merely to suit their own political agendas.

It is thus fitting to quote Prof. Mohamad's words that 'islam is being racialised or 'melayunized' to rally support for private agendas of political leaders with questionable repute". Those words, I believe were spoken sincerely by a good muslim without fear or favour.