NECF chairman Rev Dr Eu Hong Seng said that the NECF has been organising annual 40-day fasts for 10 years now and they usually ended on Independence Day, adding that this year was the first time the fast coincided with Ramadan as it was scheduled to end on Malaysia Day.
“The purpose is to pray and fast for the country,” said Eu.
Some Christians say that their fast and prayer of blessings for Muslims was motivated by many factors, such as not taking their freedom to worship for granted and exercising forgiveness.
“I believe God has given us a glimpse of what it is like if our freedom of worship were to be taken away, to remind us that we must not take it for granted,” college student David Gu told The Malaysian Insider recently.
Glad Tidings Petaling Jaya (GTPJ) main pastor Rev Dr Vincent Leoh said that his church, which is scheduled to organise a 10-day fast starting on August 31, would be praying for religious harmony amid the Allah issue and the church attacks earlier this year.
“We will pray for religious harmony and racial harmony (as) this year, there was the burning of the churches and the Allah issue,” said Leoh, expressing hopes that the recent convictions of the Metro Tabernacle arsonists would mark the end of the attacks. The torching of the Metro Tabernacle church on January 7 this year was the first in a string of attacks against nine other churches in the wake of the controversial High Court ruling allowing Catholic weekly The Herald to use the word “Allah” in its publications.
However, the government won a stay of execution, preventing the Church from using the word until a Court of Appeal’s decision.
Rev Dr Eu echoed Leoh’s points in praying for religious harmony during the fasting season and said, “We are praying for a commonsense resolution of the Allah issue.”
