Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor told Muslim civil servants today to watch out for ‘new Christians’ in the DAP. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

KUALA LUMPUR, April 14 — Barisan Nasional (BN) secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor told Muslim civil servants today to watch out for “new Christians” in the DAP.

The Umno supreme council member declared that he respected all religions, and had no problems with Catholics, but expressed distrust of the “new Christians” or “evangelists” whom he claimed made up most of the leaders in the “chauvinist” DAP.

He added that the DAP’s faith is contradictory to Islam, a religion that the BN has been upholding over the past 60 years.

“We are facing a huge challenge now that there is a coalition where the backbone is the DAP — a chauvinist party whose leaders are mostly evangelists.

“If they are Catholics, I can still believe them but when they are evangelists, they are considered new Christians. It is a problem.

“This is the real DAP and it is Pakatan Harapan’s backbone so we have to be careful,” he said in his speech to a crowd of civil servants at the groundbreaking ceremony of two surau in Precinct 11K and 11F in Putrajaya earlier today.

The event was also broadcast on his official Facebook page.

Tengku Adnan stressed that he is not opposed to other religions.

“I am not against other religions because Islam taught me to respect the religions of others. There is even a Quranic verse that said, ‘my religion is mine and your religion is yours

“That is the beauty of Islam. This is what Islam is about. We must show them that Islam is not a religion of terrorism and other labels that people are trying to associate us with,” he said.

Tengku Adnan called on Muslims to practise the true teachings of Islam and stressed that the religion has all the while protected Malaysia’s sovereignty.

He said if voters do not choose carefully in the elections, the Malay royal institution may be destroyed.

“The sovereignty of the Malay rulers have been safeguarded by Islam as the official religion and the Malay rulers are the backbone of the country’s leadership.

“If we are not careful, this will all be destroyed alongside other things like the special rights of the Malays and even our language,” he said.

He told the civil servants not to be swayed by the Opposition, adding that the BN has worked hard for the people’s wellbeing the past 60 years.

“A lot of people are jealous that we develop a new town for the comfort civil servants. There are others who questioned it because they said we are slow, we are no good and we are useless,” he said, referring to the federal administrative capital.

Named after the first prime minister the late Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, Putrajaya’s construction began during the Mahathir administration.

Tengku Adnan also reminded Malaysians that the facilities they enjoyed today did not magically happen overnight but took long years of sound management.

“I don’t mean to say all these things but look back and remember, all that we have today is a product of proper planning and good governance.

“When we introduced goods and services tax, some criticised us but we only wanted to streamline the tax system to have a proper structure. The previous sales and services tax was wrong so we improve it.

“Little did they remember, when the government rakes in more from GST collection, it also means more money can be channelled back to the rakyat through various financial, education and health aid.

“They think it is easy to run a country, but it’s not,” he said.