KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 — The US State Department said its embassy here had tried but failed to meet Islamic government officials to discuss freedom of religion, despite being able to deliberate with other religious groups and government leaders.
The department also said the embassy spoke to government representatives, opposition parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) during a visit to Sarawak last October about allegations of Putrajaya-backed groups offering money to the indigenous in rural areas to convert to Islam.
“US representatives maintained an active dialogue on religious freedom with government officials and leaders, and representatives of religious groups, including those not officially recognised by the government,” the US Department of State said in its 2014 Report on International Religious Freedom released yesterday.
“The embassy’s attempts to meet with Islamic religious affairs departments in the government to discuss freedom of religion issues this year have been unsuccessful,” it added.
The report also said the Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the US Department of State engaged last October government ministers, religious leaders, and Muslim entrepreneurs on religious freedom and concerns about intolerance in Malaysia.
The department noted in the report that Islamic authorities’ actions have increasingly affected non-Muslims.
“The government’s protection and promotion of Sunni Islam has limited the religious freedoms of individuals of minority or officially disfavored belief systems, and resulted in the arrest of over 100 people accused of being Shia, a number of negative outcomes for non-Muslims on family law and free speech questions, and a continued movement to subject non-Muslims to sharia in some states,” said the report.
It also highlighted child custody tussles between Muslim converts and non-Muslim spouses, noting that court rulings mostly favour the former, as well as religious authorities’ disruptions of a wedding and funeral involving non-Muslims.
The department further said Malaysian society was increasingly intolerant of religious diversity, highlighting the Molotov cocktail attack against a Christian church in Penang in January last year over the word “Allah”, as well as the burning of an effigy of Father Lawrence Andrew, editor of Catholic weekly Herald that had failed a court battle to use the word “Allah”.
“Some government bodies are tasked with encouraging religious harmony and protecting the rights of minority religious groups, but none enjoy the power or influence of those that regulate Islamic religious affairs,” said the report.
