Chua Soi Lek on Muslim countries

Following Dr Chua Soi Lek assertion that his remarks had beenwrongly reported, we carry the MCA president's 'talking points' of August 6 as provided to the press.

When we talk about PAS governing the country, the younger generation will not be bothered to learn about the adverse impact that will hurt the country's social and economic development.

According to “Malaysia and the Club of Doom” authored by Syed Akbar Ali, there are 57 Muslim-majority countries in the world and their common characteristics are:

1. They are less democratic because they emphasise more on religion.

2. Although these countries have Cabinets and elections but they also have a Council of Muslim Elders, which enjoys absolute power to override the decisions or policies made by the government.

3. Some of these countries are practicing absolute monarchy.

4. Since these countries formulate their policy using religion as basis, policies formulated will not be in par with the global development requirement. Thus the economic growth of these countries are always not ideal.

The total population of these countries made up 22% of the world population, however they only contributed 5% to the global GDP, hence most of these Muslim-majority countries are poor nations.

Some of the poorest nations in the world are the Muslim nations such as Somalia and Ethiopia.

A lot of emphasis has been put on religion more than education as they are only 600 universities for the 57 countries with a total of 1.4 billion populations.

Although India has as many people as these 57 countries, it has 8,400 universities in the country itself.

The number of illiterates in the 57 countries are very high especially women as out of 1.4 billion people, about 800 million of them are unable to read and write.

The figure shows that basic rights like receiving education are sidelined for women in these countries.

Over the past 100 years, these Muslim-majority nations had only produced 8 Nobel Laureates; while China some race with only 14 million people had produced 107 Nobel Laureates.

The incomes of the people of these Muslim-majority countries are relatively low therefore they also suffer from high unemployment rate.

Religion-based administration of these countries has also created a lot of controversies especially on the different interpretations of the Quran.

Furthermore, many countries leaders are fundamentalists and that they are unable to cope with the fast development in the world.

Although Malaysia is also a Muslim-majority country, we are luckier because of the moderate and pragmatic policies implemented by the Barisan Nasional government.

However, when Umno and PAS used religion to strengthen their influence, we can see that some non-progressive policies are made and that the country has been trapped as a middle-income nation for more than 10 years.

We notice that Umno has become more conservative to compete with PAS in getting support from the Malay community.

We raise this issue because we want to let the Chinese community to think about it.

Do not be too optimistic that once PAS rules the government, the country will be free from corruption and other problems.

Bear in mind, some of the most corrupted countries are Muslim-majority countries.

courtesy of Malaysiakini