Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy said the meeting was also to raise with the ruler the feelings of the non-Muslim community over the message in the poem, which was deemed offensive to Hindus, posted on Asri’s Facebook page yesterday.
“We want the meeting to raise the concerns of the non-Muslim community in Malaysia who are angry with the poem by the Perlis mufti insulting the Hindu religion, and practices adopted not linked to religion and mischievously portraying it as a religious practice.
“We would also be making a request to the Raja of Perlis to sack the mufti, who has on two occasions written statements that crossed his boundary and interfered in the beliefs and practices of the Hindu religion,” Waythamoorthy said in a statement released today.
He added that there was no objection to Asri speaking on Islam, but that he had no business denigrating other religious practices.
“Both Muslims and non-Muslims have been practising their religion in peace and harmony for almost 60 years. However, of late there is a growing agenda of Islamic radical thoughts being planted in the mindset of Muslim youths to hate and develop feelings of contempt against non-Muslims.”
Yesterday, the Perlis mufti posted a caustic poem on his Facebook page which targetted people whom he said “idolised cows” and at the same time defended an unnamed preacher against attempts to hand him over to an “evil government”.
“When those who idolise cows as God unite, and call for our preacher to be fettered, to hand him over to an evil government that worships the fire and practises the sati, burning widows, in that continent, a teaching that divides humans into castes,” Asri had written in his “Friday morning poem” in a Facebook post.
Sati refers to an obsolete Hindu funeral custom banned in India, where a widow immolates herself on her husband’s pyre.
While Asri did not mention names, he had in the past criticised Hindraf over its opposition to the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) founder Zakir Naik being in the country.
However, today, Asri posted another message on Facebook to defend his controversial poem.
The Perlis mufti said it was not directed at Hindus in Malaysia, but instead at Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s administration, which he alleged had allowed Muslims to be killed over the slaughter of cows, animals that are considered sacred by Hindus.
“For those who do not idolise cows, there is no need to be slighted. The poem only concerned the state of current affairs in India,” Asri wrote on his Facebook page.
Waythamoorthy suggested the “esteemed” mufti was “under the influence” of the controversial Islamic preacher from India.
“Inviting Zakir Naik into Malaysia has invited great unrest in the mindset of many Malaysians. If Naik can corrupt the Perlis mufti to come out with such a humiliating poem openly, then Naik has succeeded in radicalising and distorting the mindset of such an ‘esteemed’ Mufti.
“Therefore, Hindraf seeks an urgent meeting with the Sultan of Perlis to brief him on the danger of hate preachers like Zakir Naik who are harboured in Malaysia when he is wanted in India for terrorism-related activities and money laundering.”
The group also planned to highlight the hate that is being spread on social media, which it said has reached a dangerous point in relations between the different races and people of different faiths in Malaysia.
“Sixty years of Merdeka and peaceful co-existence has over the past two years been destroyed by a hate preacher who has infected even a highly-qualified personality in the Islamic religion, that is the Perlis mufti.”
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