“Our politicians are just looking for votes. If Malay Sunnis were to rise up and reject the persecution of Shias, tomorrow Umno and Pakatan will fight for Shias.
“Then that will solve the problem,” said sociologist Syed Farid Alatas.
Last month, religious authorities in Selangor and Johor had carried out raids on private Shia events and detained several foreign nationals.
The situation is made worse when Sunnis refuse to trace and embrace similarities between the two branches of Islam, Syed Farid said when speaking at a forum on the future of the ummah at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (Istac) here today.
He said there is an inability and lack of a conscious decision by Sunnis to understand their Muslim counterparts, adding that negative perceptions of Shias is mostly political and results from ignorance.
He said it is difficult to free the community from these perceptions that have been sown by religious leaders and politicians who are against the Shia as these influential figures, who he described as “stupid, evil and arrogant”, are still highly respected.
Prior to this, Syed Farid had told FMT that some religious leaders who knew about Shia had malicious intentions and wanted to use the issue as a political tool.
“To fight for the rights of the Malays, they think they have to champion Islam.
“In their context, championing Islam is championing the Sunnah. So to champion the Sunnah, they have to reject Shia,” he said in an interview on Sept 22.
Shia, with a substantial following in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, several parts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan, is the second-largest branch of Islam.
But state Islamic authorities have declared its teachings as “deviant”, with sermons in Selangor frequently condemning its followers as heretics.
Syed Farid called for a review of the existing fatwa against Shia Muslims, describing the recent raids by Islamic authorities as “barbaric”.
“Are they terrorists? Are they asking to overthrow the Malaysian government? Are they supporting violence?
“No. They’re just practising Islam in some ways that are slightly different than us. Do we want to become such an extremist country?” he asked, highlighting that none of the Muslims detained in Malaysia for links to terrorism were Shia.