Hasan, don't preempt by offering to resign

Catholic Bishop Paul Tan Chee Ing appealed to Selangor executive councilor Dr Mohd Hasan Ali not to sidetrack matters by offering to resign but instead offer evidence that Christians were trying to proselytize Muslims at a church function last week that was disrupted by Jais and defended by him.

"The nub of the issue is that were Christians indeed proselytizing Muslims at the church function last week that was disrupted by Jais?" said the head of the Catholic diocese of Melaka-Johor.

Hasan, who holds the Islamic religion portfolio in the Selangor state cabinet, was reported to have told Utusan Malaysia that if defending the sanctity of Islam is culpable, he would resign.

"He should offer the evidentiary basis for his defense of the action by Jais of intruding into a function that was organized by a Christian denomination," said Tan, who is concurrently president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malaysia.

"He is a senior official of a political party that holds their officers to a higher standard of intellectual rigor and religious rectitude than its competitors," asserted the Jesuit-trained prelate.

"Therefore he has to show the basis for his defense of the Jais action and his claim of Christian proselytizing of Muslims," argued Tan.

"His party has sought to unify Malaysians and not divide them. Not for nothing has the slogan 'PAS for all' resonated among the population.

"Now comes the time when they should match deed to word when a grave accusation has been preferred against a minority group that has been the target of a lot of unsubstantiated stories lately.

"This is a good instance for Christians to consider what wrong they may have done or to nail a false accusation to the wall," said the bishop.

"There are no two ways about it. This accusation is either true or it is false. We will take the necessary corrective and contrite action if it is true and if it is false, an apology is in order.

"This is a litmus test of the veracity of Hasan's (above) party's claims to be for all," remarked the bishop.