KUALA LUMPUR, June 17 — Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) needs to show transparency in its internal investigations into its disastrous Islamic and Asian Civilisation Studies (TITAS) slides that belittled minority faiths in the country, the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (Abim) said.

The first Muslim group to publicly address the issue commended the university’s management for admitting readily to the factual errors in its educational slides, but said more concrete measures must be taken to determine whether the slides were taken out of context or truly ill-intentioned as many believe.

“We need to know the context of how the slide was presented. Right now judgement against it is based on a photo, but there are possibilities it could have been something the lecturer was refuting, so it has to be subjected to a transparent investigation,” Abim president Mohamad Raimi Abd Rahim told Malay Mail Online when contacted yesterday.

He said UTM’s immediate response showed the university understood the sensitivity of getting facts of a religion wrong.

“We are of the opinion that any false understanding of a religion must be corrected because misunderstandings like this can breed prejudice and negative behaviours between communities of different faiths.

“In this case, the management of UTM themselves have recognised that there is basis for action to be taken and we welcome their immediate response because it shows they know that this is a sensitive issue,” he added.

UTM vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Wahid Omar had on Tuesday apologised and pledged a thorough investigation into the “isolated incident” where leaked slides painted Hindus as less than hygienic for revering dirt on their bodies, and claimed that Sikhism borrowed elements from Islam, triggering a public furore.

Wahid admitted that the slides were not part of the Massive Open Online Courses endorsed by the Higher Education Ministry.

The TITAS module was made mandatory to all tertiary students regardless of religion in 2013.

Critics of the module had then alleged that it was a front to push an Islamic supremacy agenda in the country.