Ak57’s Weblog

Self-proclaimed ‘failure guru’ Billi Lim is on a matrimonial mission to promote unity in the country. And if he gets elected, the first thing on his to-do list is to encourage more inter-marriages.Why inter-marriages?”It’s the only genuine way to unite this country nationally. Let the people decide which religion they want,” he told a press conference yesterday.

- quoted from an article published in Malaysiakini on 29th February 2008 (link)

This is great news actually – finally a candidate with forward thinking ideas! It is unfortunate that what he meant by ‘inter-marriages’ was not explained by the author of the article, though my understanding is the legalised marriage between people of different faiths.

Currently the main issue that I have seen is between Christians and Muslims. While it is legal in Islam to marry Christians, it is not legal in Malaysia for Malaysian Muslims to do so (the government seems quite happy to ignore this rule from the Quran). So this creates a lot of tension and prevents unity.

Malaysian Christians on the other hand have the freedom to marry any non-Muslim, there is no requirement to convert though that depends on which denomination you belong to. I have known Christian-Hindu and Christian-Buddhist couples, all of whom had their marriages accepted by their families without question.

I hope that even if he is not elected, that this sort of thinking is budding in the minds of other MPs out there, because interfaith marriages is a step in the right direction to achieving unity.