While there is a flood crisis happening across Peninsular Malaysia, with hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes and more than 20 people dead, s Muslim scholar is defending a religious gathering costing RM200,000 set to happen tonight as an act to “appease God”, reports The Malay Mail Online‘s Zurairi AR.
Preacher Mohammad Asraff Ayob dismissed calls by members of the public to cancel the Malam Cinta Rasul 2015 event set to take place at Dataran Merdeka at 8pm tonight, and to instead donate the RM200,000 operating costs to relief efforts for flood victims.
Mohammad Asraff said the money spent on the event was to “appease God” to get back Malaysia’s “lost blessings”. He also claimed that the floods were not a natural phenomenon, but rather a “test” by a wrathful God put on Malaysians.
He added that there were those who were viewing the current flood situation, involving the peninsular east coast and displacing more than 200,000 people, “too scientifically and logically.”
“The sins that we have done all this while were ‘grand’ too, were they not? Allah has long been wrathful, because we have been calculative with him. We forget him. We colour our lives with vices,” Mohammad Asraff said in a Facebok post.
The preacher also said that the reason a large-scale “concert” was being held instead of the more traditional congregation of prayer and supplication was that “to simply pray and ask for forgiveness means having to go through too many of God’s filters; in our current wretched condition it’s unlikely our prayers will be answered.
“But Islam provides short-cuts to receive God’s grace. Praising the Prophet, who is the main point of God’s grace to mankind, will get us God’s approval more easily.”
The Malam Cinta Rasul 2015 (Night of Love for the Prophet) is being jointly organised by the Cheras Education Foundation, the Kuala Lumpur City Hall, Federal Territories Islamic Religious Council (MAIWP) and state-owned Islamic channel TV Alhijrah.
The “concert” will feature mass prayers and chanting of qasidah, a form of Arabic lyrical poetry, led by Indonesia-born preacher Habib Syech Abdul Qadir as-Seggaf, who professes to be a direct descendant of Prophet Muhammad himself.
