News:

On February 2, 2015, Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak outlined three important principles that must be practiced and complied by every citizen in this country to ensure Malaysia remains as a country that is peaceful, stable and harmonious as well as become a model of harmony to the world. The three principles are to practice moderation, respect each other and the importance of being fair, he stated in a speech after participating in the "Harmony Walk" in conjunction with World Interfaith Harmony Week.

The World Interfaith Harmony Week is celebrated each year on the first week in February including in Malaysia and Indonesia. Various activities have been planned throughout this week including interfaith dialogues and will end on February 7, 2015 in Putrajaya.

Najib claimed that people must adopt moderation in all forms of action, decisions, attitudes and words as well as reject all extreme beliefs, fanaticism or violence because this will only trigger problems. "I always say that interfaith problems are not caused by the religion itself, on the other hand it happens by the creed of extremism, fanaticism and choosing the path of violence."If they chose moderation, believe in harmonious dialogues, negotiations, reject extremism ... I believe the world will surely be more peaceful and harmonious," he stated. During this event, Najib spent almost two hours walking as he visited five houses of worship around Brickfields which are the Tamil Methodist Church, the Temple of Sam Kow Tong, Madrasathul Gouthiyyah, Sri Sakhti Vinayagar Temple and Buddhist Maha Vihara Temple as well as donating an amount of RM30,000 to the worship houses.

Comment:

The campaign in conjunction with the World Interfaith Harmony Week (WIHW) 2015 is said to be a great effort to promote the beauty of Islam to non-Muslims. What more in this current condition where the Islamophobia phenomena is rising due to misconceptions regarding Islam.

However, many probably did not realise that the World Interfaith Harmony Week is an annual United Nations (UN) celebration which is fixed on the first week of February every year. This idea was formed since 2007 under the initiative of ‘the Common Word' which calls for dialogues between Muslims and Christians. The World Interfaith Harmony Week was proposed by King Abdullah II of Jordan on September 23, 2010 and has been accepted by the United Nations unanimously.

This celebration is sure to contain a devious agenda of the West to change the way of thinking of Muslims, thus producing Muslims who accept the concept of pluralism, a fruit of secularism. The pluralism concept assumes that all religions are the same. Through this concept, this annual event has received widespread coverage especially among Muslims. This is clear proof how the way of thinking of some Muslims have ‘successfully' been moulded towards what the West desires.

It is true that Islam teaches its followers to do good to people of all nationalities (as long as the race is not hostile towards Islam.) Nonetheless, this does not mean to the extent of displaying favour or fondness towards other religions or acknowledging other religions. This is because the only true faith in the eyes of Allah is Islam as He stated in His Holy Book, ((إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِندَ اللّهِ الإِسْلاَمُ)) "Indeed, the religion in the sight of Allah is Islam." [Surah Ali Imran: 19].

Those who do not embrace the religion of Islam, Allah (swt) has insisted that their final destination in the Hereafter is hell, na'uzubillahimin zalik. Allah (swt) says,

((إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ وَالْمُشْرِكِينَ فِي نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا أُوْلَئِكَ هُمْ شَرُّ الْبَرِيَّةِ))

"Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures." [Surah Al-Bayyinah: 6].

Therefore, if we truly love the believers of other religions, we should preach Islam to them until they embrace Islam (without force), then they will be saved from the hell fire of Allah. This is the genuine and true method to practice if we truly love the good for them, that is inviting them to worship Allah as the only God, because we do not want them to get into the doom / Fire of God, rather than attending their worshipping ceremonies and showing our love to them when they are currently carrying out ‘syirik' (shirk) towards Allah at a huge scale!

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Sumayyah Ammar
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir