Mufti must pay for calling Kadazans ‘invented race’, says Sabah MP

(MMO) - Sabah Mufti Bungsu @ Aziz Jaafar should be tried in the state’s Native Court and be made to pay for calling Kadazans an “invented race”, Penampang MP Darell Leiking has demanded for the perceived slur.

The senior Islamic cleric must also apologise to Sabahans for pushing a personal agenda to make Malay the state’s Bumiputera Muslims, the opposition lawmaker told The Malay Mail Online.

“The state mufti should apologise now especially since the chief minister and government made it clear that this is the state mufti’s personal view.

“He has insulted the Kadazans when he mentioned that the Kadazan is an invented term, he said it very happily and looked so convinced by it,” Leiking said when contacted over the phone yesterday.

He noted that Bungsu’s “Malaynisation” plan had failed to gain traction with state leaders, including Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman (picture).

Yesterday, Musa confirmed the Sabah government has no plans to convert ethnic groups there into Malays, calming fears over the alleged “Malaynisation” ploy suggested recently by the state’s mufti.

Instead, Musa said the controversial proposal was merely a “personal view” of the mufti and stressed that the state would always continue to respect the diversity of the many native groups in Sabah.

Leiking said that he is glad the chief minister had implied that he agreed with their campaign, which celebrates the different ethnicities of Sabahans.

“I’m glad the chief minister supports our campaign, supports the stance that all Sabahans of all ages that our ethnicity is our pride and no religion should determine the ethnicity of the person and likewise no ethnicity should determine the religion of the person,” he told The Malay Mail Online.

Hundreds of Sabahans had flooded Leiking’s Facebook account with photographs of themselves proudly proclaiming their respective ethnicity in response to the PKR deputy seretary-general’s call to protest the mufti’s proposal to convert the north Borneo state’s natives into Malays — a move they saw as akin to stripping their very identities.

“For him to say that we are an invented race, I say to this man, even the chief minister has abandoned him, so he better apologise now.

“He has no other way but to apologise to the people especially to the Kadazans and all ethnic groups in Sabah, for imposing even a personal view on us, by simply associating ethnicity and religion as one, nobody should ever mix the two together,” Leiking said.

A Kadazan himself, Leiking said Bungsu should be marched to the state’s Native Court and face justice there.

The Federal Constitution provides for disputes among the Sabah’s indigenous peoples to be settled by tribal laws, which are decided by a native chief or district chief appointed by the government to assume the role of the judge in the Native Court.

Among the penalties meted out is “sogit”, or compensation, to the injured party.

“We have a punitive sentence called ‘sogit’. It is a punishment of a sort with a very tribal belief that if someone insulted you or community or done wrong to the kampung, he must pay a sogit and it comes in many form, in this case, it will probably a buffalo,” Leiking said.

He said the purpose of the sentence is to give peace to the people who were insulted, adding that the buffalo was among the choice animals used to pay compensation.

He explained that the animal presented as “sogit” would be slaughtered and then shared out among a group of people who were adjudged to be have been the injured party.

“There will probably be hundreds of people who will initiate this, I can’t imagine how many buffaloes he would have to present,” the MP said.

Leiking had initiated the “This is SABAH” campaign three days ago, which drew a total of 984 photo submissions.

He has started a second album following popular response and to refute claims that the Facebook movement divided the natives. The second album had drawn a total of 409 photos at the time of writing last night.

“We, the indigenous people of Sabah were insulted by another from Sabahan [sic] who labelled us with a culture that is alien to a lot of the Sabahans.

“It is pertinent to show that he can’t get off scot-free just because he is a mufti,” Leiking said.

Bungsu had stirred up a hornet’s nest when he proposed a programme to “meMelayukan” or to make Malay the many Bumiputera Muslims in Sabah who continue to identify themselves by their tribal roots.

Before a thousand-strong crowd at a symposium to discuss the “Malay Leadership Crisis” in Putrajaya on September 28, the mufti claimed it was vital for Sabah’s “Malay tribes” who were already Muslim to be made Malay, “for the sake of the Malay Muslim community”.

He also described the Kadazan, who were at one time the majority race in Sabah, as an “invented” ethnic group carved out from non-Muslim Dusun people and mostly Catholics.

Sabah leaders from both sides of the political divide have panned Bungsu for the proposal.

- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/mufti-must-pay-for-calling-kadazans-invented-race-says-sabah-mp#sthash.K8xLSxK0.dpuf