Federal Constitution: Protection For All - forum protested, but allowed to continue

Technorati tags: Malaysia, Religion, Islam, Politics, Commentary

Update (Jul 22 2244hrs): The reduced and recycled blog has a first-hand report of the forum in JB.

Today was to be an important day for many. Saturday, July 22, 2006. Fortunately, as of 4pm today, it's just another Saturday (a nice day, earlier, allowing Walski to do some gardening, before it rained).

To certain individuals they saw this day as a day of battle between "good" and "evil". In a sense, Walski agrees. Whatever protests BADAI, UMNO Youth, PAS and those similarly misguided, put up against a legal, peaceful meeting of minds, it was about good versus evil - with the exception of which party exhibits what attribute.

As it turns out, thank God, the forum went to without any disruption, this time, unlike the Penang forum. There were approximately 500 protesters outside the Hotel Selesa, Johor Bahru, as reported by The Star online, and again, thank God, the protests were peaceful. The police did their job this time around, which is a good thing.

For sure, Article 11 of the Federal Constitution is a very touchy subject - the mere mention of this article evokes all kinds of emotional responses. If anyone is interested in finding out what the Article 11 Coalition is really all about, visit their website.

But for the parties opposed to the Article 11 Coalition, they have their own idea for why the coalition should be opposed. Walski will address this in a future post. In the meantime, go look at what the coalition website and learn first-hand what it is they are asking.

The misguided barking up the wrong tree (from Article11.org,
during the Penang forum that eventually had to be aborted)

In the end only dialog can put to rest misunderstanding and dispute - mob behavior, beligerant denial and unintelligent actions only make matters worse, and only adds fuel to the opinion of some that Islam is something to be feared.

There's nothing scary about Islam, really. Some of its followers, however, is an entirely different story.