KUALA LUMPUR, May 14 - While there is joy within the Christian West and the Muslim world in the move by the Vatican to recognise the Palestinian struggle for statehood, local hardline Muslim group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) took the news with scepticism.

The act of recognising Palestinian statehood by the world’s Catholic authority was seen as a crucial moment in the liberation struggle of a Muslim-majority nation devastated by decades of Israeli occupation – a move that can help get Christians and Muslims closer – but Isma president Abdullah Zaik Abdul Rahman warned against trusting the gesture.

“They must first prove their sincerity first,” Abdullah Zaik told Malay Mail Online when asked if the Vatican’s recognition of Palestine should put to rest Muslim suspicion towards the Christian community.

“Ask them to stop Israel from jewifying (sic) of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the illegal settlement and return Palestinian land and stop the Gaza strip blockade,” the Isma chief added.

Isma has repeatedly claimed that there is a genuine global conspiracy by a secret Jewish-Christian movement to wipe out Islam and dominate the world, and that the movement aims to brainwash Muslims into leaving Islam and submitting themselves to a form of materialistic religion which he described as “Christian-Jewish capitalism”.

The group claimed local Christian missionaries and opposition lawmakers act as the movement’s agents who try to indoctrinate Muslims by confusing them by promoting. ideas like liberalism and human rights.

Abdullah Zaik had also said that the conspiracy to annihilate Islam from the world stemmed from the crusade wars, where the Christians first declared Islam as its sworn enemy.

But outside Malaysia, Muslims and Christians worldwide embraced the news of the Vatican’s endorsement of Palestinian statehood with much more optimism, and that the treaty was crucial in bridging the Christian-Muslim divide.

One of them, Jamal Khader, rector of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Jerusalem, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Pope Francis and his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, that the move was significant in creating “a new reality” in the Middle East.

“The wider Arab world often thinks that it’s a Christian West against a Muslim East. So this is an important step from the Catholic Church to show that, no, it is standing with the rights of Palestinians and with the right to a state of Palestine,” he said in an immediate reaction.

But Abdullah Zaik remained sceptical when this was pointed out to him.

“They will still need to prove it. How can you support the Palestinians but support Zionism at the same time,” he said, referring to the Vatican’s support for peaceful co-existence between Israel and Palestine.

Ties between Malaysia’s Muslim and minority Christians have worsened in recent years following the latter’s legal claim to the right to use “Allah”.

The long court battle, however, favoured the Muslims and while the Christians accepted it, many felt their right to practiced their faith freely had been violated.