GEORGE TOWN – Pakatan Harapan leaders have urged PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang not to mislead Muslims by only highlighting non-Muslims in a corruption study so as to claim that they are the main cause of graft.
Former PKR senator Yusmadi Yusoff said that for a learned cleric, Hadi has been playing politics too much to the extent that he has failed to explain corruption in an accurate context.
The Quran, Yusmaidi said, states that those giving and accepting bribes are both wrong.
“Hadi is too one-sided. In Islam, it is clearly spelt out that givers and takers of bribes are both wrong,” Yusmadi told The Vibes.
Hadi should speak about a bigger and more comprehensive picture of corruption, he added, instead of bringing in race and religion.
Yusmaidi also said PAS leaders should instead define what constitutes corrupt practices and uphold the rule of law.
Hadi’s remarks last month that non-Muslims are the “roots of corruption” continue to draw outcry, while 28 police reports have been lodged against the Islamist party’s president.
Yesterday, PAS central committee member Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki defended his party president by citing a study by an unnamed local university which found that between 2010 and 2014, 88% of 449 people who were convicted for giving bribes were non-Malays.
However, one of the study’s authors today revealed that the figures the research team obtained from the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commissions’ Corruption Offender Database also showed that 82% of convicted bribe solicitors and takers were Malay.
The author, Christine Chong Siew Pyng, also said the study should not be used to make generalisations.
Amanah vice-president Datuk Seri Mujahid Yusof Rawa meanwhile said Hadi has ended up segregating Malaysians by blaming non-Muslims for the nation’s corruption issues.
“Who takes and who gives (bribes) are wrong in Islam. In the al-Baqarah verse and even in the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, this is mentioned. Hadi should know better.”
All races are liable to corruption and the authorities must use the rule of law to ensure justice, Mujahid added.
He also said that corruption has reached worrying levels and is already beginning to hurt Malaysia’s economy.
Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P. Ramasamy, meanwhile, posted his criticism of Hadi on social media, questioning if PAS was trying to say that those accepting bribes are less evil than those who paid them. – The Vibes, September 8, 2022
