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Tag: Bahasa Malaysia

  • IS Uses Malay-Language In Push For New Recruits In Southeast Asia

    IS Uses Malay-Language In Push For New Recruits In Southeast Asia

    KUALA LUMPUR — The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group is in an “aggressive mode” in reaching out to Malay-speaking communities by making reading materials in the Malay language more accessible online, a move that could have wide-ranging ramifications for countries in South-east Asia.

    The Malaysian authorities say ISIS is spreading its propaganda through more “localised news reports” and “articles” that glorify its fighters, especially those from Malaysia and Indonesia who have travelled to Syria to take up arms with the militant group.

    These “articles” are uploaded on ISIS websites in Malay, which also share information on ISIS activities in the provinces they conquered.

    One of the websites is a portal containing articles taken from the ISIS magazine Dabiq, which are then translated into Bahasa Indonesia and Malay.

    Online recruiters in Malaysia and Indonesia also use forums and blogs to reach out to potential recruits.

    Malaysia’s top counter-terrorism official, Mr Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, said the ISIS recruiters would include articles on martyrdom and life in the organisation.

    “They feed their sympathisers with fairy tales,” said Mr Ayob.

    It is understood that there are currently about six to seven ISIS websites, forums and blogs in Malay.

    Mr Ayob said these websites use servers abroad to avoid detection from the authorities in both countries.

    The ISIS social-media unit has also taken the initiative to include Malay subtitles in its radio programmes broadcast in English and Arabic through ISIS’ official radio station, Bayan, which was made available on YouTube three months ago.

    A check on YouTube, which provides access to recorded ISIS radio programmes, showed that Bayan attracts between 700 and 2,000 visitors.

    International Islamic University Malaysia’s Political Science and Islamic Studies lecturer Ahmad Muhammady said the emergence of ISIS websites in Malay indicates an “offensive approach” taken by the terror group.

    “Before this, they took a ‘defensive approach’, that is to respond to the accusations made against them, and it was done either in Arabic, English or Indonesian. Now, they changed tact,” Mr Ahmad said.

    “To me, it is not surprising. Currently, the term ‘jihad media’ (ilami jihadi) is getting popular among the pro-ISIS chatters. This term is coined … to encourage young people to join the ISIS media team to take an offensive approach against their ‘enemies’.”

    Last month, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a regional security forum in Singapore that South-east Asia is a key recruitment centre for ISIS.

    “ISIS has so many Indonesian and Malaysian fighters that they form them into a unit by themselves — the Katibah Nusantara (Malay Archipelago Combat Unit),” said Mr Lee, who also warned that ISIS could establish a base somewhere in the region and pose a “serious threat to the whole of South-east Asia”.

    His remarks followed the recent arrests of two self-radicalised Singaporean youths, including M Arifil Azim Putra Norja’i, 19, who had planned intensively to attack key facilities and assassinate government leaders if he was unable to leave Singapore for Syria.

    Mr Ahmad said ISIS’ use of Malay-language materials as a recruitment tool was a worrying development for Malaysia. “Currently, there is an increase in interest among youths in rural areas in the east coast, especially among secondary and college students,” he said.

    He said the use of Malay as the medium was all about penetrating deeper into Malaysian society.

    “Those who are not educated in English still rely on the Malay website as a source of reference.”

    The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) said so far, no ISIS websites in Malay have been shut down.

    Its monitoring and enforcement division head Zulkarnain Mohd Yasin said MCMC was aware of the emergence of the ISIS sites.

    “So far, we have not blocked any such website, but we did take down a few videos on YouTube,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • Malaysia Has More Religious Freedom Than US, Singapore, Christian Group Says

    Malaysia Has More Religious Freedom Than US, Singapore, Christian Group Says

    There is more freedom of religion in Malaysia compared to Singapore and the United States, both of which imposes stricter laws against various faiths, a prominent Christian preacher said today.

    President of a new non-governmental organisation Christians for Peace and Harmony Malaysia (CPHM), Reverend Wong Kim Kong said that an individual preaching a different religion can be prosecuted in Singapore but not in Malaysia.

    “In Singapore, if you preach other religions in a sermon, or you pray to a god made of wood, they’ll report to the police under the Singapore Religious Harmony Act, you’ll (be) prosecuted.

    “In Malaysia, even if you talk bad about a different religion, not that we want to, they won’t disturb you,” he said during a press conference ahead of CPHM’s official launch.

    He claimed Malaysians are also allowed to freely practice their religions at any location while Americans face difficulty even when wanting to pray.

    “For the Christians, the Buddhist, the Hindus, you can build a shrine anywhere, you can open a church in any shop lot.

    “You can even form a church without registration because the constitution allows you to practice your religion.

    “Even in America, you can’t pray. So it just depends on which angle you look at,” he said.

    He also noted that the debacle over the usage if the word Allah, an Arabic word that means god, in Bibles using Bahasa Malaysia has also been misinterpreted as an attempt to convert Muslims into Christianity, which it is not.

    “I want to assure you that the accusation is actually not true. The church, as far as I know, never use the word Allah to preach the gospel,” he said.

    “But the word Allah is used by our Bahasa Malaysia-speaking congregation to denote the god that they believe. So it’s not a tool for evangelism,” he added.

    He further explained that the usage of the term was in no way an attempt to coerce others into Christianity.

    “But I cannot deny the reality that sometimes overzealous Christians share the good news, every religion has this type of people, but by and large the Malaysian Christians are not extremists.

    “We don’t coerce, some may out of enthusiasm, but generally they are peace-making,” he said.

    This comes amid religious tensions silently brewing in Malaysia, with right-wing Muslim groups like Perkasa and the Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) pitting themselves against various interfaith groups.

    The country’s minority groups have repeatedly lashed out at the authorities’ allegedly nonchalant responses to remarks issued by Muslim fundamentalists against the sensitivities of the non-Muslims here, insisting that their inaction have only emboldened these groups and others into inciting more violence and hatred.

    Earlier this year, influential UK paper Financial Times columnist David Pilling had written that growing religious intolerance in Asian countries could turn into a “disaster” for the region.

    He cited Malaysia as an example of yet another country with “hardening ideology” but did not elaborate on the disaster this might cause.

    Malaysia also made international headlines when it banned a Catholic Church publication from using the word “Allah”, which is deemed here as exclusive to Muslims, as well as the seizure of Malay and Iban medium Bibles from the Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM) last year.

    In April this year, a group of Muslims protested against a church’s hanging of a cross on its facade, claiming the symbol was a threat to them and their religious beliefs.

     

    Source: www.themalaymailonline.com