Madani Muslims join nons to rue Firdaus Wong ruining national unity with his divisive preaching

 

APPARENTLY not all Muslims are impressed with the face-off between Muslim convert preacher Firdaus Wong Wai Hung with the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) over enforcement action against the Multiracial Reverted Muslims’ (MRM) 14-year-old “Street Dakwah” @ Bukit Bintang mission.

While it is a known fact that many non-Muslims are already aghast with the MRM founder as evident with their mocking him as “more Malays than the Malays”, “a peanut that forgets its shell/skin” and many other derogatory labels, it is somehow a rarity for Muslims to tick him off for his confrontational preaching style.

This is till – perhaps – pro-Madani keyboard warrior Raja Mohd Shahrim rued Firdaus’ animosity with DBKL with a one-liner on his Facebook page: “Well, DBKL is at fault, DBKL is under the Federal Territory (FT) Minister, this must be an order from the Minister who is anti-Islam.”

Their number maybe small – and are even branded as “DAPig bootlickers” by detractors – but the very fact that they stood in solidarity with non-Muslims to condemn the celebrity preacher for cultivating Islamophobia and tarnishing the image of Islam is praiseworthy.

“Tell him to revert to his original faith, it’s a waste of time to have a convert who spread slanders … Islam teaches its followers to unite, not to divide the people. Really dumb,” fumed a self-proclaimed Penang Muslim to a slew of somehow hilarious responses from non-Muslims.

“Brother, please don’t tell him to convert back. We don’t want a slanderer either,” quipped one Kedahan Chinese with many echoing a similar sentiment.

One Muslim commenter who hailed from Pasir Puteh, Kelantan but lives in Kuala Lumpur slammed Firdaus’ tendency to find fault with others which she claimed “does not run parallel with Islamic teachings” while another ‘wickedly’ wished that he should have been “put to sleep during the COVID pandemic”.

Few Muslims opined that while Firdaus is free to preach via his various Islamic outreach programmes, he had somehow gone astray – knowingly or unknowingly – by “engaging the entire nation to condemn, insult and slander each other”.

Others are of the view that Firdaus’ knowledge of Islam “is not deep enough to preach” with one reflexologist berated the use of religion to attack others, “thus undermining the dignity of Islam”.

Interestingly, some Muslims have begun to wonder if the Firdaus’ modus operandi by behaving as if “he’s more Muslim than born Muslims” is the way for Muslim converts to earn a living.

Eventually, some have come to realisation that “this Chinese has become a firebrand which provokes Malays to fight (non-Muslims)”.

The bottom-line as aptly pointed out by an observant Muslim commenter is that “the mualaf (Muslim convert) is more Malay than Malay”.

“All this while, I see that many mualaf who are so-called influencers are more interested in promoting themselves within the Malay community so that they can be Malay-nised … as if they want to be batu api (instigator) to disrupt racial unity/harmony in the country.” 

- focus malaysia