This is not an article about Internal Security Act. Just a thought about an issue related to this act.
There was a recent incident in the United States where a Christian Pastor planned to burn the Koran. I was having a conversation with a Singaporean, an American and a Danish, and we began to dwell into this topic. Then my Singaporean friend said, "I guess this will never happen in Singapore and the issue won't even get out of hand, simply because, when such a plan is revealed to the public, the Singaporean government is likely to arrest him under the Internal Security Act".
Although I do not agree to the principles of ISA to detain without trial, this could be a case where the ISA can be useful. This led me to think further about the ISA in Malaysia. I am very sure if this US-incident is to happen in Malaysia, the government will without much doubt use the ISA to arrest the person who instigated such provoking act.
However, let us assume hypothetically, there is a Buddhist monk burning the Bible and a Muslim cleric burning the Tipitaka (the sacred book of Buddhism), I wonder will the same ISA principles be applied in all hypothetical cases?
