POSTS MAKING THEIR ROUNDS
Several social media posts mixing religious issues with political discourse have circulated in recent days.
One Facebook post by Islamic religious teacher Noor Deros made a list of demands for political parties. He claimed that only the Workers’ Party (WP) responded. In a subsequent post, he urged voters to prioritise candidates who addressed concerns such as the normalisation of LGBTQ+ issues, regardless of party affiliation.
WP on Saturday said it has no control over foreigners supporting its candidates. It also stated that while a meeting involving some of its Malay-Muslim candidates and Mr Noor took place, no promises were made in exchange for political support.
In another post, Mr Noor criticised Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli for allegedly failing to safeguard the interests of the Malay-Muslim community.
Separately, a Reddit thread shared a Facebook post urging Tampines GRC voters to support WP’s Faisal Manap “to fight for a strong Islamic community”.
Senior Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad on Saturday expressed concern over the mixing of race, religion and politics during the election period.
“So when you have a party like PAS, for example, espousing certain views, asking Singaporeans to vote along religious and racial lines, I think that’s very dangerous,” he said.
“That’s the kind of politics perhaps you can see in Malaysia, where you have different parties representing different faiths or different races, whether it’s UMNO, PAS, DAP and MIC, and you can see how the parties are organised.”
Additional reporting by Louisa Tang and Ang Hwee Min
