Moderate Muslims in Singapore must speak up

A Singapore company Al-Benyahya Enterprise hogged the media limelight recently for the sale of alleged ISIS flags. The owner has denied links to terrorism and lodged a police report to protect his reputation.

(Photo: Today)

The familiar black flag is often used by terrorist organisations and its afflicates for their propaganda campaigns. The flag is known to thewest as the Black Standard. Due to heightened threat posed by ISIS, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameroon has declared the possession of the flag is illegal.

(Photo:Harianblogger.com)

Besides the flag, terrorists who appear in their own propaganda materials often have their right index finger raised, depicting the “number one” sign — the sign of unity of the Ummah, or the universal Muslim brotherhood.

(Photos: Hardwarezone Forums)

At a time of heightened uneasiness over radical Muslims who flew to Iraq to join the ISIS militants and the beheading of U.S journalist James Foley, Al-Benyahya Enterprise and its associates had openly sold the Black Standard Flag and posed with the flag without giving second thoughts about the impression that they are portraying.

(Photo: Facebook)

One of them, Zulfikar Shariff has praised Osama Bin Laden in 2002 in a media interview. He then fled to Australia citing fears of “political persecution” but returned recently and managed to stay out of trouble despite showing support towards ISIS terrorist group.

(Picture: AllSingaporeStuff.com)

Under such context, the Malay Muslim community in Singapore should unite and speak up to counter the image that ISIS and local extremists have portrayed on the whole Muslim community. Funnily, the local Muslim community were so vocally anti-Israel when the Jewish state launched ground offensive against Hamas with some even called for the boycott of McDonalds but the community were muted when it comes to ISIS and its local supporters.

The Malay Muslim community must take the initiatives to show Singaporeans that they can be entrusted with more responsibilities especially on defence matters.

Instead of preaching to the non-Muslims that the fear of putting a SAF Malay (Muslim) serviceman behind a machine gun is over, WP MP Pritam Singh should urge Malay Muslims Singaporeans to speak up against extremism instead.