KUALA LUMPUR, April 30 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak must tackle the rising religious extremism in Malaysia if he intends to be seen in the same light as US President Barack Obama, said former Cabinet minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim.

Describing that the US leader as “courageous” in making difficult decisions and standing by them, the de facto law minister during the Abdullah administration said Najib now has the same opportunity to stamp his own mark on Malaysia.

“For a start, Najib needs to address the radical and misguided Muslims in our country — those hell-bent on destroying the basic framework of the country. He needs to defend the present democratic way of life and our freedoms, which are surely going to be threatened by the ‘Taliban’ coming to power,” Zaid wrote on his blog yesterday.

Among others, he pointed to the gathering momentum for the introduction of hudud, the Islamic penal code, in Kelantan that was spearheaded by PAS but also supported openly by Najib’s own Umno.

The former Kota Baru MP noted that Najib had not openly rebuffed the Islamist party’s plans to remove the legal obstacles towards implementing hudud in Kelantan, but instead said that Putrajaya did not reject the Islamic penal code.

“Obama would have said that Malaysia was a Federation of States in which penal laws must be acceptable to all the states,” he wrote in his blog post titled “The Obama ‘aura’”.

Zaid also pointed to other instances of religious extremism in the country, including criticisms against Muslims participating in non-Muslim holidays such as Christmas and Deepavali, and for their use of the phrase “rest in peace” issued as condolences during celebrity deaths.

“There have just been too many instances of religious bigots extolling dangerous ideologies in the public sphere that it is time our prime minister started dealing with them. I am sure Obama would have done so.”

During his visit to Malaysia across the weekend, Obama cautioned his hosts that the country would not prosper if it sidelined any of its religious and racial minorities. 

“Malaysia won’t succeed if the non-Muslims do not have the same opportunity,” Obama said in a townhall event in the University of Malaya here on Sunday.

His remarks come at a time when PAS is agitating to introduce two private members’ bills in Parliament ostensibly aimed at removing existing legal barriers to its enforcement of the Shariah Criminal Enactment 1993 it passed in Kelantan.

While previous efforts to do so have always been blocked from progressing through Barisan Nasional’s dominance over Parliament, its lynchpin Umno has this time expressed open support for the Islamist party’s bid.

In Islamic jurisprudence, hudud covers crimes such as theft, robbery, adultery, rape and sodomy.  Punishments for the crimes are severe, including amputation, flogging and death by stoning.

Malaysia’s Muslim and Christian are also locked in a stalemate over the Arabic word for God, Allah, which remains unresolved four years after the Catholic Church first won a High Court ruling upholding its constitutional right to use the word in its weekly newsletter.