PETALING JAYA: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has confirmed that British rock band Coldplay supports Palestine.
Malay Mail reported Anwar’s response to Machang MP Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal who earlier asked regarding Muslim conservatives’ call to cancel the concert, “Music of the Spheres World Tour”, which they labelled as inappropriate.
“Coldplay is actually among the bands that support Palestine,”
“So there is a problem here. I’d like to explain here that even past administrations have greenlit [concerts] before,” Anwar said during the Prime Minister’s Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat.
Earlier, Perikatan Nasional and PAS had reportedly called for the cancellation of Coldplay’s concert, scheduled for tomorrow (Nov 22), due to the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, also bringing up wanting the event called off several months ago before the conflict.
Besides that, Federal Territories Mufti Datuk Luqman Abdullah also backed their call to cancel the event on the grounds of the band’s support toward the LGBTQ community, according to his recent Facebook post.
Regarding Luqman’s statement, Anwar said that the matter will be discussed but did not elaborate further on allowing the concern to go on and added that there were other issues the government does not agree with.
“I will discuss with the mufti because there are lobby groups from the Palestinian movement that have approached the foreign minister and my office to ask why we are blocking a music band that supports Palestine from performing.
“But because this has been raised and there are other issues that we do not agree with, I will discuss it again,“ he added.
