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KUALA LUMPUR: The government has no plans to reverse the teaching of Jawi in national and vernacular schools.
Deputy Minister of Education Muslimin Yahaya said his ministry would continue with the decision made by the previous PH government in August 2019 to have jawi taught in vernacular schools.
“This was a decision made by the Cabinet at that time and we at the Ministry of Education, at the policy level, will comply with the decision,” he said.
Furthermore, he said that Jawi’s lessons should not be viewed negatively as it is simply a matter of recognizing words like those seen on Malaysian banknotes.
The process started this year for Primary 2-4 pupils, with the aim of recognizing the Jawi script, Muslimin told Sabri Azit (PAS-Jerai), who asked if the decision to have three pages of Jawi as part of the Bahasa Malaysia curriculum. in 2021.
Muslimin also said that Jawi writing was an art and that the ministry wanted people to enrich their culture and knowledge of calligraphy.
In August 2019, an interfaith group challenged the Ministry of Education’s initiative to have Malay-Arabic calligraphy or khat as part of Malaysia’s identity, saying there was no historical backing for this claim.
The Malay Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) also said that the national identity was forged by the Malay language, not the Jawi script. He said that Jawi hadn’t been in the mainstream, even for Malaysians, for the last 50 years at least.
“Khat is Arabic calligraphy and has never been part of the Malaysian identity. It is an Islamic identity, ”he added.
