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Malaysian Muslims hold anti-conversion rally
Agence France Presse - October 22, 2011
The gathering of about 2,000 people in Selangor state follows allegations of Christian proselytization in the Muslim-majority country after religious police raided a Methodist church event in August fearing Muslims were being converted.
Newspapers linked to the ruling coalition have also alleged that Christian groups are secretly trying to convert poor Muslims by using welfare such as housing, food and cash.
"Apostasy violates the wishes of Allah, there is no bigger sin," Yusri Mohamad, the event's chief organizer, told the crowd in Shah Alam, the state capital.
"Some people say they [non-Muslims] work hard to spread their religion and there is nothing wrong with apostasy. These are the voices which we want to drown out with our gathering today."
The crowd, filled with middle-aged couples and youths wearing t-shirts and bandanas emblazoned with Arabic script calling for Muslims to unite, chanted slogans of "Malays united means Islam respected" and "Allahu Akbar [God is greater]."
Trader Muhammad Basori Hassan, 38, said he turned up because of fears that there was an increasing attempt to try and get Muslims to convert to Christianity. "The gathering is for us to unite as Muslims because the recent raid on the church has raised fears of apostasy," he said.
Converting from Islam is already banned in most of Malaysia's 13 states and three federal territories, which have Islamic Shariah courts that run parallel to civil courts. Muslims, however, are allowed to proselytize.
Denying the proselytization claims, many Christians say they face increasing pressure in a country whose ethnic Malay-dominated government has long presented Malaysia as a modern, ethnically harmonious Muslim state.
Malaysia has largely avoided overt religious conflict in recent decades but tensions have simmered since a court ruling in late 2009 lifted a government ban on the use of "Allah" as a translation for "God" in Malay-language bibles.
The ban had been in place for years but enforcement only began in 2008 out of fear the word could encourage Muslims to convert. The 2009 ruling triggered a series of attacks on Christian places of worship using Molotov cocktails, rocks and paint.
Muslims make up 60 percent of the country's 28 million people, while Christians account for about nine percent, most of whom come from indigenous groups in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.
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