KUALA LUMPUR, June 24 ― In a mocking entry on its website today, Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) chided national laureate Datuk A. Samad Said for choosing a “deviant path” by casting his lot with secular DAP in his old age.
Isma president Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman said the 83-year-old popularly known as Pak Samad should be paying more attention to his afterlife as he approaches the grave and choose a path that will offer him a “good ending”.
“In the age that is over 80 years old, others think about dying with a good ending. Choose to return to the path of enlightenment and guidance, not enter the deviance of DAP,” Abdullah said on the group’s website.
“Everybody with a basic knowledge of religion knows that the struggle for DAP is not the path of enlightenment, but drifted by secular liberalism teachings, causing many Muslims and groups who act without considering what is forbidden and not.”
On June 13, the Malay writer and poet joined DAP in a low-key event in Kelantan, saying he had longed to join the party for the past two years.
The DAP has been trying to move towards a more multi-racial image, having fielded a Malay woman, Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud, in the Teluk Intan by-election last year that had a significant Chinese electorate.
Last year, Samad had accused Isma of acting on behalf of a “certain power”, and questioned their motives in making demands purportedly for the welfare of Malay-Muslims.
In response, Datuk Dr Badhrulhisham Abdul Aziz, who headed Isma’s Policy Research Unit, said it was national laureate who is being manipulated, until he was unable to see the alleged threats against the Malay and Muslim community in the country that the group has consistently been claiming.
