YOURSAY | ‘God forbid the day Malaysians sympathise with the likes of Ridhuan.’

'Why no sympathy for Ridhuan who can't see his kids too?'

Murusamy: Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisation (Mapim) president Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid, it is a case of universal justice and humanity that very young children should be in the custody of the mother who is the superior caregiver.

The father can be given visitation rights and even the right to expose the children his religious philosophy so that when the time comes they can decide which religion to follow.

K Patmanathan @ Mohd Ridhuan Abdullah snatched away a nursing baby from his wife M Indira Gandhi and demanded that she surrender the other two children too.

Indira rightfully refused to hand over the two children, who did not want to have anything to do with Ridhuan.

When children themselves disown a parent, it speaks volumes about the character of the father and the love or lack of it that he has for them. A father who loves his children would never separate them from the mother.

Azmi says that Ridhuan was denied access to his two children, but did Ridhuan ever apply for visitation rights? He never did. Instead, he wanted full custody of the children to which neither the mother nor the two children were agreeable to.

But where is the last girl who was taken away when she was 11 months old? Is she being brought up by Ridhuan or in foster home or in an institution like an orphanage? Nobody seems to know.

Is she well, is she going to school, is she emotionally balanced? Never mind her religion, what will become of this girl?

Also what happened to Indira, we would never wish it upon our own sisters or daughters.

Please seek answers from the depths of our conscience. I know nothing about the law. I don’t blame the honourable judges whom I believe acted on judicial conscience. All I know is judicial conscience is not always in line with human conscience.

Malaccan: Azmi would be dishonest if he ignores the fact that Ridhuan left the family home; causing upheaval in the family environment and disrupting whatever home and family life the children knew.

He uprooted everything. And he did all this without any thought for the children that he claimed to love or for the wife whom he married and effectively abandoned. What is there left to sympathise with him?

For Azmi to suggest taking Ridhuan's side would be akin for him to ask sympathy for a rapist for having had to put up with the victim's struggle.

This representative of Mapim showed an incredible lack of morals and values and reprehensible poor judgement in defending Ridhuan.

With such mindset, one is not surprised to see the proliferation of family abuse and a fertile recruitment ground for IS in Malaysia.

Mojo Jojo: Azmi, when you claim that former law minister Zaid Ibrahim is "irresponsible, highly provocative and dangerous" for claiming that Indira is denied justice because she is a non-Muslim, aren't you also pointing those fingers at yourself for claiming Ridhuan is a "victim" of liberals for being a "man and a Muslim?"

Ask yourself who the true victim is in this case. Is it the mother who had no idea her kids were converted to Islam or the man who underwent this forced conversion?

Azmi, if you think the perpetrator of this whole debacle is the victim of liberals, then you and your lot have truly missed the plot.

But this isn't a new phenomenon. Now, all too often victims here are portrayed as aggressors while the real aggressors are painted with strokes of innocence.

It is this inverted sense of justice that has plunged this nation into the abyss, and nothing short of a miracle of miracles can save this Southeast Asian state from the fate that awaits it.

Aries46: Notwithstanding abusing Islam as a means for secret and unilateral self and minor offspring conversions and obtaining approval in a Muslims-only court, kidnapping his infant nursing child from the mother, absconder Ridhuan's vile conduct also includes breach of his legal commitments under his civil law marriage, failure to fulfil his Hindu marriage vows and unmitigated betrayal to his wife that bore his children.

My question to Mapim and Azmi: are these the considered actions of a father and husband committed to love and cherish his wife and children in good times and bad?

God forbid the day Malaysians sympathise with the likes of Ridhuan, for we would then be a nation without a soul.

Alamak!: Religion aside, Ridhuan should have put the stability and security of his family first.

The 'fight' was uncivilised from beginning to end; from abandoning his wife and the children, to abducting the baby and then hiding behind religion to inflict further pain on the wife and children.

He walked out on them but he could still have paternity rights to see them and shown them a father's love and in time, the beauty of Islam he converted to. Now all have suffered, perhaps him the most.

Feel sorry for him? Please lah , Mapim.

Dr Suresh Kumar: Azmi, Riduan married Indira under the civil law, therefore it's only proper for him to dissolve the marriage under the same law which would grant him visitation rights.

But what this kidnapper did was a highly irresponsible and cowardly act - it's a breach of trust and abdication of his duties as the leader of the family.

The psychological construct of attachment describes how babies become attached to their primary care-giver, usually their mothers. The maternal bond between a human female and her biological child begins during pregnancy.

Have you heard of the umbilical cord? Try tying a 3kg brick on your belly and walk around just for one day. This might knock some sense into your head about how tough it is for a woman to carry a baby for nine months.

Leave religion aside for a moment and start thinking like a human being before spewing gibberish.

Tan Kim Keong: Sympathy is always with the victim and never with the offender or wrongdoer.

Azmi may want to redefine and change the meaning of the word 'sympathy' and make it exclusively Malaysian and the etymology a Malaysian one too.

SSDhaliwal: Ridhuan made his bed the day he embraced Islam and deserves no sympathy at all. He had no right to convert his children without their mother's consent.

However, if he had left it to his children to decide for themselves when they reached 18, that would be another matter. Instead, he used Islam as a tool to keep a child away from her mother.

Headhunter: There is no sympathy for him? I thought he was favoured by the authorities all the way through and that's why the mess the case is in now.

And wasn't he the one who committed a wrong? So Azmi, what are you ranting about?

Anonymous 560221439180274: Indeed, what sympathy does he expect? Kidnapping or forcefully detaining the children is a criminal act.

Converting them without the mother's knowledge and consent or the children's understanding is an act of irresponsibility and deceit.

Today, the family is shattered and irreparably damaged and divided. Can anyone put the family together, especially Ridhuan and those in cahoots with him?

I dread to imagine the pain the children are going through with the pain of being permanently separated from a sibling and the prospect of losing the mother for good.

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