Man Who "Exposed" The Allah Socks Controversy "Appeals For Calm" - But Isn't It Too Late Now?

Man Who "Exposed" The Allah Socks Controversy "Appeals For Calm" - But Isn't It Too Late Now?

21 Mar 2024 • 8:00 AM MYT


JK Joseph
Repentant ex-banker who believes in truth, compassion and some humour

Credit Image: Kosmo/Facebook


As the furore over the controversial socks emblazoned with the word “Allah” rages on like a wild fire in the country, the man who is believed to have “leaked out” the incident, Firdaus Wong, has rightly called on Muslims in the country to calm down and not take the law into their own hands.


Incidentally, Firdaus, a popular Chinese Muslim convert preacher who has more than 540,000 followers on Facebook and more than 350,000 on Instagram speaks fluent English and Malay while also conversant in Mandarin as well as various Chinese dialects such as Cantonese and Hakka.


For the record, in a recent Facebook post the Selangor-born preacher had warned Muslims not to overreact and violate the law - in spite of their anger - and instead allow the police to conduct their investigations.


It is believed that his statement came after the crisis seemed to have taken a turn for the worse after Xin Jian Chang Sdn Bhd, the company which supplied the offensive socks to KK Super Mart, had expressed deep concerns over the leakage of personal data of its top management in the social media - including their residential addresses!


More disturbingly, the company had also revealed that there have been threats of violence, including burning down their factory and endangering lives. Hopefully, police reports have been made.


Nevertheless, the company had said that they understood the seriousness of the problem and had promised to implement stricter quality control measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.


Interestingly, Firdaus is also the owner of the Merdeka Times website which recently found itself in the centre of another major “3R” controversy over the allegation by Teo Kok Seong, a former professor of ethnic studies in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, that the Chinese community in the country thought very lowly of the Malays, and that vernacular schools were hindering national unity.


But coming back to the sacrilegious socks discovered in KK Super Mart, it's still not known yet if Firdaus will be called in by the police to assist in their investigations as it would seem like he was the first one to expose the finding via social media.


Meanwhile, as expected, the news of the controversy has reached foreign shores with Singapore’s Today Online reporting on March 19 that the country’s King Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar had issued a strong rebuke in a Facebook post that "strict action should be taken against any party found guilty" based on investigations by the authorities. It added that it was a reminder to Malaysians to preserve social harmony by refraining from raising provocative issues on religion, race and the royalty.


In fact, on the same day Malaysiakini had also reported that the country’s Department of Islamic Development (Jakim) had given the popular convenience store chain KK Super Mart a stern warning over the "Allah" socks fiasco.


At the same time, it also called on all quarters to cease raising 3R (race, religion, royalty) issues; probably, that was the most sensible statement to come out in the aftermath of this controversy. But will that be the end of the story? Definitely not!


Indeed, should the boycott called by Umno Youth proceed and results in the affected parties incurring huge losses, wouldn't the latter, having no other option, retaliate by suing them? Won't the matter then blow up further?


In hindsight, maybe what many peace-loving Malaysians may have silently hoped for was that - if only a police report had been lodged straightaway to enable the authorities to investigate immediately instead of making it go viral on social media; wouldn’t that have spared the country of all the pain, hatred, resentment - and whatever is coming next?


After all, anyone would have known too well that the Allah socks issue was a very serious and highly combustible matter which is guaranteed to upset and hurt the feelings of millions of Muslims in the country as well as disrupt public peace and affect inter-racial ties in this nation.


Perhaps, one lesson to be learnt from this whole explosive episode is that in future all sensitive “3R-related” findings must be reported to the police immediately - and should never be exposed to the public via whatever medium; if not, imagine how if a “saboteur” deliberately leaves an item with inflammatory wordings in our office or shop - or maybe paste a seditious or racially-provocative sticker on our car windscreen and virals it in social media!


Do we want another round of such madness that divides and devours the nation? Let's hope this message reaches the relevant ministers in the increasingly “disunited” Madani government - before it's too late!