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Muslim
Website Creates Tremor In Singapore
By
IOL's correspondent in South Asia Kazi Mahmood
SINGAPORE
CITY, Jan. 20 (IslamOnline) - A Muslim website, owned and maintained by a young
Malay Muslim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is creating tremors in the tiny
island of Singapore, testing the country’s ability to regulate internet based
criticism news reports said Sunday.
Fateha.com
poses as the voice of Singaporean Muslims and posts messages that say Osama bin
Laden, is a better Muslim leader than the Muslim leaders in Singapore.
The
website is currently under scrutiny by the Singaporean authorities that say they
want to decide on whether to force its CEO, Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff to register
the site with the Ministry of Information.
Registering
the site basically means legal action or other actions can be taken against the
promoters of the site.
Government
and Malay-Muslim leaders in Singapore on Saturday attacked the comments made by
what they call “the fringe Muslim group Fateha”.
They
suggested that the site was politically sensitive and called the CEO the leader
of the Fateha group, probably indicating that actions would soon be taken to
shut down the site.
Singaporean
leaders said the “poisonous” comments by Fateha.com on its website and in
media interviews would divide the Muslim community and drive a wedge between
communities in the country.
Education
and Second Defense Minister, Teo Chee Hean, described the website he had visited
on Saturday morning as “slow poisoning”.
Acting
Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, David Lim, said the site
was clearly political and will have to be registered to make it more accountable
and transparent.
He
disclosed that the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA) had been tracking it
for some time and would now act to register it.
Website
providers who spread, promote or discuss political issues relating to Singapore
must, by law, be registered with SBA, and may be sanctioned if they breach SBA's
Code of Practice.
Spreading
anything that goes against the public interest, public order or national harmony
would be in breach of the code.
Registration
would not prevent anyone making his views heard, said Lim. But people who read
them also have the right to know who is expressing these views, some of which
can be harmful.
In
interviews with the BBC and the weekly news magazine Far Eastern Economic
Review, Shariff said that he, not Muslim MPs, spoke for the Malay/Muslim
community here.
It
was the government, he claimed, that had prompted the terrorist intentions of
the Jemaah Islamiah group, by 'aligning itself so closely to the U.S. and
Israel'.
Thirteen
of the group's members have been detained under the Internal Security Act.
He
criticized Singapore’s support for the U.S. “war on terrorism”, condemned
U.S. military action as an attack on Muslims, and criticized Muslim leaders in
Singapore for backing the Government's “negative views” on Muslims without a
hearing.
Rear-Admiral
(NS) Hean said: “He (Shariff) says some very poisonous things... for example,
that Osama bin Laden is a good Muslim, better than our Malay leaders in
Singapore.”
Yatiman
Yusof, Senior Parliamentary Secretary (Information, Communications and The Arts)
questioned Shariff’s motives, scrutinizing his credentials, and dismissing his
claim to speak for Singapore Muslims.
Yusuf
said that by labeling him a leader of a civil-society group, the foreign media
gave Shariff a status, legitimacy and credibility that he does not deserve.
Shariff
said Malay MPs had worked over the past 40 years to set up the Syariah Court,
Mendaki and mosques, besides administrating the collection of tithes, zakat and
managing the Hajj pilgrimage.
On
the Fateha.com site messages posted seem uncensored and criticism against the
government runs wild.
Singapore
practices strict control of the press and messages posted on the internet can
lend the authors in big trouble.
However,
Shariff denied Saturday that he was trying to drive a wedge between
Malay/Muslims and other communities with his comments about the terrorism
arrests here.
He
also rejected the suggestion that he was trying to justify the actions of the 15
people arrested.
“These
people have not been convicted of trying to attempt any violence. It
is a claim that they are terrorists proposing violence, which has not been
proven in a court of law,” he said.
According
to Fateha.com, it is necessary to hear the other side of the story and allow
people arrested under the infamous Internal Security Act (ISA) to express
themselves or at least present their defense in a court of law.
Shariff
says that he is ready to prove to Hean that Osama bin Laden is a better Muslim
than Singapore's Malay leaders.
“My
counter is that if he wants to talk about it and if he wants me to prove to him
that I am correct, we can do that.”
Shariff
is the head of an informal group of about 20 people who have worked together
over the past 18 months on issues that concern mainly Muslims.
The
group applied recently to register itself as a non-governmental organization.
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