Senate President Senator Raziah Ahmed has come under fire from the Muslim community for presiding over the bill to regulate the gambling and betting industry in the Senate on Tuesday. Chairman of the Muslim Social and Cultural Foundation, Inshan Ishmael, started an avalanche of Facebook comments when he condemned her decision to preside over this matter.
“To my dear Muslim sister Raziah, you should not have found yourself anywhere near that Gambling bill...With all due respect, please, please have some decency when it comes to your beliefs,” Ishmael wrote, His post generated over 40 comments, the majority expressing solidarity with his position. One user under the name Asad AbdulMalick wrote, “She is setting a bad precedence and a bad example.” Another posted, “Nobody can’t tell me she don’t know she wrong for doing what she doing and she have no good excuse for doing it.”
Allister Wellington simply wrote, “May Allah have mercy on her.” Nazir Mettalica Ali also posted, “Mr Inshan Ishmael a few months ago the Muslim page was congratulating Mrs Razia Ahmed. Now you see why I was against that Muslims on the whole shouldn’t enter politics. In my view its totally haram yet again what can I say. We live in a multi-religious country and we have to abide by the kafir rule. Not me and politics again.”
Ishmael said in keeping with the tenets of her faith, the Senator should have recused herself and allowed someone else to chair that debate because gambling fundamentally conflicts with Islamic principles.
“It is something Muslims object to. It is not something we support. Our religion teaches us that if something is not good you cannot make it better. Gambling is a disease which has caused many families to lose their homes and possessions. It has broken up relationships and therefore you cannot make something bad better. To us, with all due respect, she should have recused herself from that debate and allowed someone else to preside. She should not have allowed herself to be witness over that sort of thing,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday evening.
Government was forced to adjourn debate on the bill as independent and opposition senators failed to give support to the legislation.