-The Star filepic
KUALA LUMPUR: Fadhlina Sidek has called a recent viral video of her speaking about banning the word "kafir" at home as malicious and taken out of context.
The Education Minister said that the video was edited to cause a commotion on issues related to 3Rs (religion, race and royalty) by distorting the true meaning of her speech so that she would be blamed with hate speech and false accusations in addition to threats to her safety.
"The viral video was a clip taken from a private meeting with a certain group, which was taken by another party and disseminated with a distorted interpretation and out of context.
"The post was deliberately produced to create a polemic to distort the original meaning.
"I mentioned that I do not allow my children to say the term "kafir" which has the connotation of hatred towards non-Muslim citizens who live together in our beloved country.
"The issue of the term "kafir" or "non-Muslim" is not my act of prohibiting the use of words in the Quran, let alone denying the terms used in the Quran," she said on Facebook on Sunday (March 31).
She said the fact was, there was no issue of preventing the use of terms in the Quran and there was no denial of terms from the Quran as claimed by certain parties.
"Anyone who listens to the speech in the video can judge the real context.
She then apologised if she had hurt the feelings of any party, for the misunderstanding.
"However, I do not compromise on defamation and malicious accusations, as well as deliberate distortion of context, especially threats to the security of my family and me," she said.
Fadhlina, who has been receiving negative reactions online, including threats to her safety, following the viral video, also said that a police report was lodged over the issue.
"This was following hate speech, false accusations and even threats of security received in cyberspace.
"At the advice of my legal team, all evidence from posts, comments, and personal messages on various social media is being gathered and legal action will be taken.
"Maybe there are those who act on purpose, and there are those that act recklessly out of ignorance," she shared in a post on Facebook.
In the police report lodged by Fadhlina's aide, it said the report was lodged due to safety concerns following a surge in online attacks against the minister.
