The Malaysian Islamic Organizations Coordination Council (MABIM) condemned the banning of a mosque in the Malaysian state of Johor, from entering the Rohingya refugees, to pray in it.
A statement signed by the Speaker of the Council, Azmi Abdel Hamid, called the Religious Affairs and Fatwa Department to investigate placing a sign in front of the mosque, preventing the Rohingya people from entering it, describing the decision as extremist and contrary to the teachings of Islam and contradicting the principles of equality and brotherhood.
The Malaysian government announced last Sunday a major reduction in the procedures to trap the emerging corona virus (Covid-19), and to enter the stage of recovery from the epidemic, starting tomorrow, Wednesday.
Malaysian Defense Minister Ismail Sabri - responsible for the security aspect of the Corona fight - stressed that opening mosques excludes foreigners, with the aim of making room for Malaysian citizens and avoiding crowding in them.
The Planton Baru Mosque singled out the denial of entry to the displaced Rohingya people from Myanmar, and comes amid a campaign on social media platforms that politicians and human rights activists described as racist and that it targets foreigners, especially Rohingya refugees.
After the mosque was announced, it launched a counter campaign on social media platforms, making fun of discrimination decisions in worship countries, and politicians and jurists expressed their disapproval of what they described as a campaign of hatred against foreigners.
They also called on the government not to be drawn into the populist campaigns, although some preferred to wait and not comment on what they described as the mosque incident, pending the announcement of the position of the religious authorities in the country.
Although observers of Malaysian political developments absolve foreigners of the responsibility for starting the spread of the Corona virus in the country, and cite government reports at the beginning of the pandemic, they confirm that the direction of the media speech differed after weeks to highlight the foreigners, especially the workers from them.
The influx of refugees
The Malaysian authorities arrested about 270 Rohingya refugees yesterday while trying to reach the shores of Langkawi Island in the north of the country, and they found the body of refugees on the boat they were traveling in.
A statement of the police and coast guard said that 53 irregular refugees threw themselves from the boat when the joint force reached it, in the early hours of yesterday morning.
She added that they were swimming towards the beach where a police force was waiting for them to arrest them, and that the Coast Guard was unable to keep the boat out of the Malaysian territorial waters due to its breakdown.
The Coast Guard police statement added that approximately 400 Rohingya refugees and 11 smugglers were arrested as of last Saturday, and that the Coast Guard forced 20 boats away from the Malaysian coast.
The Malaysian authorities have adopted a policy since last February to keep boat refugees out of their territorial waters, which has resulted in widespread human rights criticism, especially after the death of dozens of refugees at sea.
Human rights organizations say that deporting or chasing ships that seek help in the sea violates the international laws of the sea and pushes those in it to death.