“I thank those who asked for an explanation of the incident,” he said in his first reaction to the forum which ended in chaos after slippers, bottles and chairs were flung at the stage and flares ignited.
Three teenagers have been remanded by the police for investigations of the fracas at the forum organised by PPBM Youth at the Dewan Raja Muda Musa di Shah Alam.
The forum was held to enable PPBM chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad to answer questions from the audience.
The disturbance began moments after Mahathir finished giving his answer to the question on the Memali incident which resulted in the death of 14 villagers and four police officers.
Mahathir was the prime minister at the time of the 1985 incident at Kampung Memali in Baling, Kedah.
The incident saw a confrontation between police and supporters of religious teacher Ibrahim Libya, who resisted attempts to arrest him under the Internal Security Act.
Hadi said PAS was victimised after the incident.
“When feelings were still high at that time, PAS ulama declared the victims killed brutally in the police assault as martyrs,” he said.
He said PAS considered the security forces who fell in the fighting at Memali were also martyrs as they were merely following orders to attack the villagers.
However, he said it was useless just to bring up the “old story” without a feeling of remorse and without correcting the wrong.
He admitted that a small number of Muslims at that time also liked to accuse other Muslims of being “infidels”, but this attitude had been successfully overcome by PAS.
Hadi, who was himself accused of calling Umno members infidels in a speech known widely as “Amanat Hadi” (Message of Hadi), claimed the main accusers of Umno eventually joined Umno or became silent.
The result of PAS’ success in checking the infidel name-calling was the current cooperation between the party and Umno “in Islamic matters”, he added.