When it comes to immoral acts committed by teachers and wardens in religious schools, what really is the PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s top priority?
Are the teachers’ reputations prioritised over the well-being and mental health of the children?
Is the safety of the children being traded for the school’s reputation?
Parents have absolute trust in our teachers, religious schools, regulatory bodies and government, but when things go wrong, must we also keep silent?
Hadi said the media hypes immoral acts committed by teachers and wardens in religious schools and because of this, people despise Islam and its teachings.
He claimed that sexual crimes involving perpetrators who are not religious were covered up. What evidence does he have to support this?
Islam in Malaysia
Hadi is wrong and he knows it.
Islam does not need the media’s help to be portrayed in a negative light and have its teachings despised, and this is because some religious leaders and racist politicians are doing a brilliant job of tarnishing the religion, all by themselves.
Islam in Malaysia appears to be more about religious dominance and uprightness. The human element and basic values are pushed aside.
It is all about political Islam and this is what Hadi wants to protect, and develop.
Every other week, we read about teachers or wardens in religious or tahfiz schools raping or sodomising their charges. Many are forced to perform unnatural acts on the teachers.
Most victims are underage children. All have been warned not to report these acts because they will be denied entry into heaven.
A Malaysian cultural attitude
Just imagine what goes through a child’s mind when he is told this. From a young age, he will have been taught that a religious person is “good”, and that he must fulfil all his religious obligations like praying five times a day, performing various rituals, and believing in God. He will go to heaven if he does all this.
Just imagine the confusion of a child who is sexually abused, especially by a teacher, the person who has been entrusted by the child’s parents to protect him. The child’s future is wrecked. He develops mental health issues or may not know how to form healthy relationships as an adult.
Other children are punished further by more beatings and more sexual abuse if they dare to report these crimes. There are also cases where the children are told that if they were to lodge a complaint or inform their parents, they will bring shame to themselves, to the community, to their families and to their school.
Don’t think for one minute that this is just a religious school failing. It is not. It appears to be a Malaysian cultural attitude.
In 2021, teenager Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam was ostracised by her fellow students and school staff for exposing the shocking “joking about rape” teacher in her school.
This was a normal government secondary school. What were the students thinking? How does one explain the silence of the parents? Were the teaching and administration staff in her school not concerned that among them was a teacher who trivialised rape?
The Marang MP is disingenuous to claim that the media hypes the immoral crimes in religious schools. But why should they?
It is highly probable that for each heinous crime committed by the religious teacher, several go unreported. They represent the tip of the iceberg.
The apparent explosion in cases involving religious teachers is probably because more children and parents are willing to come forward to lodge reports, unlike in the past.
In our Asian culture, talking about sex is taboo. Who will believe the word of a child against the word of a person like the ustaz, a man of the cloth? It is the teacher’s word against the child’s.
Many adults will think that the child has made things up because, in their reckoning, the ustaz is religious. In their eyes, he is morally superior.
Who would dare say bad things about him? He prays five times a day, in most cases, he has probably been to Mecca, he can recite the Quran and his knowledge of Arabic phrases is second to none.
When Hadi criticised the media, we wondered if the communications minister would react. Will he come to the defence of the media? Does he think that Hadi is right?
Feeling safe
The response of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim should also be interesting. On May 27, he said that he was not overly concerned about Malaysia’s 34-place drop in the Word Press Freedom Index. So, would he agree with what the PAS president said about the media?
Hadi knows that the rakyat is worried about the shocking reports of sexual crimes perpetrated by teachers and wardens in our religious schools. For every immoral crime that has been reported in the papers, others who work in the medical field, in social care and in women’s NGOs, know that many other cases exist but have not been made public.
Does Hadi know the root of the problem? We encourage whistleblowers. There must be no repercussions or sackings, and or student expulsions for speaking out.
We want both students and teachers to feel safe in their educational environment.
How does Hadi intend to prevent these heinous crimes in our religious schools? - Mkini
MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army, and the president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, X.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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