Minister: Tread on racial and religious issues very carefully

KUCHING: All Malaysians, including ministers, must “tread very carefully” on racial and religious issues to maintain harmony, says a Sarawak minister.

Everyone has the responsibility to ensure that goodwill and harmonious existence would always prevail in the nation, said Datuk Fatimah Abdullah.

“We must be very careful, ministers included, to make sure that what we say is not wrongly interpreted,” said the Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development Minister

“We don’t want a situation where there is uneasiness or suspicion among us,” she said after opening an international conference on innovative science and technologies here yesterday.

Fatimah was commenting on Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik’s recent statement in Parliament where he appealed to religious teachers from Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah who were teaching in Sabah and Sarawak not to return home in view of the lack of religious teachers in both states.

Maszlee had also urged the religious teachers to make Sabah and Sarawak their Islamic medan dakwah (propagation field).

Fatimah concurred that Sarawak was short of about 500 religious teachers in primary and about 200 in secondary schools.

She said efforts were being made to ensure that the state would eventually have sufficient local religious teachers, but this would take time.

“So, on the part of the statement saying that religious teachers should continue serving in Sabah and Sarawak, we support their service because there is a need here.

“The other part on making Sabah and Sarawak medan dakwah; if this is in the context of religious instruction for Muslims students, then I think it’s acceptable.

“But if it is dakwah in a wider and more general context, that would not be acceptable because we should respect each other’s religion,” said Fatimah.