Shia community in Malaysia believes religious authorities have stepped up the crackdown against the minorities. In recent times, dozens of Shias have been detained in multiple raids in Malaysia.

The small Shia community — whose teachings have been banned in Malaysia for over two decades — complain of ever greater pressure.

Dozens of Shias have been rounded up recently in the country, including several foreigners, fuelling fears that religious authorities are stepping up a crackdown on adherents of the minority sect.

Syed Mohamad was celebrating a key date in the Muslim Shia calendar in secret when officials burst in and detained him, one of several raids in Malaysia that have set the long-persecuted community on edge.

As Syed prayed with a small group in a rented premise in southern Johor state, a 20-strong raiding party scaled a fence and burst in, malaymail reported.

“It sparked fear among the worshippers, the women and children began crying,” he told AFP. “There were four men with face masks… One of them had a gun and they accused me of not cooperating and threatened to assault me.”

In September religious enforcement officers and police raided a series of clandestine gatherings by Shias commemorating Ashura.

In another raid near Kuala Lumpur, community leader Kamil Zuhairi Abdul Aziz and 21 other Shias were rounded up at the center he runs while prayer books and speakers were seized.

Such raids, which have been happening on and off since 2010, have “created a climate of fear among the Shia community”, the 53-year-old told AFP.

In 2016 Shia activist Amri Che Mat was abducted, with witnesses claiming he was snatched after his vehicle was boxed in by other cars. An inquiry last year by Malaysia’s official human rights body concluded he was taken by police, wionews reported.

Shias say they have faced frequent persecution in Malaysia since a top Islamic body issued a fatwa against them in 1996, and religious authorities regularly denounce them as “deviant”.

From 1984 to 1986, the Shias in Malaysia enjoyed social rights and were recognized by the law and the government.

Back in 1996, the Fatwa Committee for Religious Affairs in Malaysia issued a religious opinion recognising Sunni Islam as “the permitted form of Islam” in the country and branding Shia Islam as “deviant”, aljazeera told. In doing so, it prohibited the Shia Muslim community, which has around 250,000 members, from spreading their beliefs and allowed Malaysian security forces to raid Shia gatherings and, therefore, discrimination against Shias was given a legal face and things started to get bad, according to mehrnews.

Shias are not even allowed to keep their own religious books in their homes. They have even been denied government subsidies.

Anti-Shia propaganda has been in rise and, religious programs on television have been portraying Shias as a minority which is the fan of bloodshed, militancy.

But, the mufti of Penang said the fatwa declaring Shia teachings as deviant is subject to revision, as such pronouncements are not sacrosanct in Islam.

Wan Salim said it was not true that the ban on Shia teachings in Malaysia was inspired by prejudice among the religious figures. Instead, he blames it on a lack of knowledge.

He said some Muslim scholars in Malaysia do not have accurate knowledge about Shia Islam, with much of the information coming from the wrong sources.

“We’re confident that by understanding the root of these differences, we can minimise prejudice and misjudgement towards Shia,” malaysia-today reported.

Singapore-based Malaysian sociologist Syed Farid Alatas recently urged for the fatwa on Shia to be reviewed, after he condemned raids on Shia Muslims in Selangor and Johor as “barbaric”.

About 60 per cent of Malaysia’s 32 million people are Muslim and the country is also home to substantial minorities of Hindus and Christians, and the different communities have largely co-existed harmoniously. There is no official estimate for the numbers of Shias in the country, with many too frightened to identify themselves, but observers believe there are between 100,000 and 500,000.

Source: en.shafaqna.com