Scholar mulls legal action against Ridhuan

UTM's senior lecturer, Airil Yasreen, says he is awaiting advice from the university's legal team before he pursues a case for plagiarism.

PETALING JAYA: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia’s civil engineering senior lecturer, Airil Yasreen Yassin, is seeking legal advice from his university’s legal team over a plagiarised work.

Airil’s work which was uploaded on his blog http://airilsametok.blogspot.com/ was plagiarised by National Defence University associate professor Ridhuan Tee Abdullah.

“I have forwarded a copy of Ridhuan Tee’s research paper (with the plagiarised sub-topics) to UTM’s legal unit and am awaiting its advice on the matter,” said Airil via e-mail.

Airil has also forwared the copy of the e-mail to UTM’s civil engineering faculty dean Professor Shahrin Mohammad and UTM senior legal officer, Abdul Karim Abdul Aziz.

In an earlier e-mail to FMT, Airil said he was made aware of Ridhuan’s plagiarised work after his blog readers alerted him to it when it was first reported in FMT on Feb 27.

Documents made available to FMT indicated that Ridhuan plagiarised entire paragraphs from his paper under several sub-topics.

The sub-topics are, “The importance of postgraduate research”, “Research as a form of teaching and learning”, and “Research as forms of religious acts i.e. ibadah, jihad and dakwah”.

‘No official complaint lodged’

The paragraphs that Ridhuan is alleged to have lifted were initially written by Airil for his research paper. It was uploaded on his blog on May 25, 2009.

Ridhuan plagiarised Airil’s work to complete his individual assignment for the Grade DS51 Efficiency Level Assessment (PTK4) coursework conducted from May to June 2010.

Reports of Ridhuan having plagiarised were first reported last Wednesday and as of March 1, no complaints have thus far been lodged with the Higher Education Ministry.

An official from the ministry who declined to be named told FMT that investigations into the alleged plagiarism would be conducted only after an official complaint is lodged.

Ridhuan, who is featured regularly in Islam-related talk shows, has been in the limelight the past two weeks after an article in his regular column for Sinar Harian demeaned Indians.

In the article, “Kesabaran umat Islam ada had” (The Patience of Muslims have limits) on Feb 18, Ridhuan criticised MIC for pushing for the screening of Tamil movie “Vishwaroopam” and belittled the Thaipusam festival.