'Let judiciary decide if Bible-burning threat seditious'
MalaysiaKini.com
Oct 28, 2014

Gerakan Youth today said the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) should not have passed judgment on the Bible burning threat made by Perkasa president Ibrahim Ali.

Instead, the AGC should have allowed the judiciary to decide on the matter, said Gerakan Youth chief Tan Keng Liang.

“We understand that the AGC has the discretion whether to prosecute on the said case or not,” said Tan in a statement today.

“(However), we urge the government to advise the AGC to allow the judiciary to decide whether the threat to burn the copies of the Bible or any other religious book is seditious or not.”

The AGC yesterday had stated that Ibrahim’s threat to burn the Malay language copies of the Bible was not seditious.

It said that Ibrahim had made the remarks in the context of an incident in Jelutong, Penang where copies of the Bible were distributed to members of the public, including Muslims.

“As decided by the courts, before a statement is deemed to have seditious tendencies, the statement must be seen as a whole and cannot be separated from the context,” said the AGC, adding that Ibrahim was merely out to defend the sanctity of Islam.

However, Tan (right) said there was no context which warrants any Malaysian to threaten to burn the Bible or any other religious book.

“The threat to burn the Bible or any other religious book is definitely seditious in whatever circumstances or context.

“There must not be any precedent for anyone to burn the holy books of others in order to protect his own religion,” Tan stressed.

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