GABUNGAN Seni Khat Action Team (Sekat) will be holding a national Jawi congress on December 29 to pressure the Education Ministry on the introduction of the Jawi module in the Bahasa Melayu syllabus as well as to achieve consensus on the matter.

“The objective is to exert pressure on the Education Ministry to go back to the negotiation table,” Sekat secretary Arun Doraisamy told a press conference today.

Bulldozing the move through would not provide an acceptable resolution for all Malaysians, Arun said, adding that all races should be represented at the negotiations for consensus.

He said the matter of teaching Jawi to vernacular schoolchildren was a national issue rather than the racial one it had been made out to be.

“There should be a discussion based on (public) interest,” he added.

The congress also aims to delve deeper into the Arabic script and what it meant in the Malaysian context.

The event to be held in Petaling Jaya will feature six speakers including Arun, lawyer cum rights activist Siti Kasim, academic Prof Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi and Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Jawi Teaching Special Committee coordinator Eddie Heng Hong Chai.

The congress will moot resolutions which will be put to the vote. The decisions will be presented to Education Minister Maszlee Malik the next day.

Meanwhile, Siti said the government had to do what was best for the schoolchildren, and that the addition of another module would particularly burden the vernacular pupils, who already had to learn the Rumi script as well as either the Chinese or Tamil language.

She said the group would not object is the lessons were elective instead of mandatory.

She asked if all cabinet members were themselves well versed in Jawi.

Siti also said lack of knowledge of Jawi did not make one less patriotic.

Heng urged the government to listen to the group and make the Jawi lessons elective.

Heng said the congress would complement a December 28 event held by Chinese education group, Dong Jiao Zong to protest the Jawi module in vernacular schools.  – December 23, 2019.