Wanita MIC urged the government to use the Sedition Act against the person who created the religiously inflammatory slides for a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) module. — Facebook/Wanita MIC

KUALA LUMPUR, June 14 — The government should use the Sedition Act against the person who created religiously inflammatory slides for a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) module to teach haters a lesson, Wanita MIC said today.

The Barisan Nasional (BN) party’s wing said “firm action” must also be taken against the public university’s vice-chancellor for letting slip the controversial slides that misrepresented Hindus as a “dirty” people and Guru Nanak for founding Sikhism as a combination of misunderstood Islam and Hinduism.

“We should charge the person responsible of creating slides/modules under sedition to teach others a lesson,” the political group said in a statement.

It added that the UTM vice-chancellor’s admission of a mistake to the module was insufficient and insisted that such an incident was “not an error nor mistake but blatant disrespect” towards non-Muslim religions and had resulted in “many similar incidents” because no immediate and stern action had been taken to nip them early.

“It is precisely for this hatred teaching in the varsities that even a doctor who is a Malay Muslim became a fanatic to the extent to destroy idols in temples recently,” it said.

While Wanita MIC did not elaborate on the desecration incident, it is believed to be referring to the case of a 29-year-old houseman who reportedly ran amok in a Hindu temple in Ipoh in April and smashed some statues there. He has since been charged in court.

“Open revulsion against other races must be stopped at any cost,” it said.

Wanita MIC suggested an interreligious organisation or the government set up an independent body to screen all teaching materials on religion, culture and ethnicity to prevent any recurrence.

“Tolerance is the antidote to racial intolerance yet there is a limit to it. Stop making mockery of other religions and ethnicity,” it concluded.

Leaked slides from UTM’s religious educational module sparked uproar after they were posted online, outraging the local Hindu community with claims that they considered the dirt on the body as part of their religious practice to achieve nirvana.

Among others, the slides also claimed that Islam had introduced civility to the lives of the Hindu community.

On 2013, the government made the Islamic and Asian Civilisation Studies module mandatory to all tertiary students regardless of their religion.

Critics of the module had then alleged that it was a front to push an Islamic supremacy agenda in the country.

UTM vice-chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Wahid Omar has since issued an apology for the slides, which he asserted to be an “isolated incident” and pledged a thorough investigation.

Wahid admitted that the slides were not government endorsed and did not reflect the true content of UTM’s TITAS module.