Helen Ang
Friday, 28 May 2010 09:45
Today is Wesak.
Last week the country was told about a Chinese Muslim Faizal Wong Abdullah who wanted to return to Buddhism – a religion of depleting numbers in Malaysia.
Faizal Wong had filed an application in March to renounce Islam. It’s not surprising though that Wong had converted as the proselytization drive is intense.
Being a civil servant, Wong was in a predominantly Malay-Muslim working environment. Looking at the organization chart of RTM (below), as one example of a state agency, we can get an idea of the racial composition in the civil service.
Out of the 40 top people in RTM, only one is of Chinese ethnicity and he is Rashid Woon Abdullah.
Here’s another example of the same phenomenon. “On the University of Malaya’s ‘Expert Page’ which details the researchers and thereby essentially the academic staff of the university, of 1,240 persons listed, only 20 Chinese names are included, eight of whom also have Islamic names” – found Dr Geoff Wade in his Asia Research Institute paper ‘The Origins and Evolution of Ethnocracy in Malaysia’.
The substantial number of converts to Islam could be due to peer influence as in Faizal Wong’s case, the many active missionary bodies, the Islamization of our public sphere and space, the Islamic programmes constantly broadcast in Mandarin and Tamil by RTM, or even the shenanigans of our National Registration Department.
Rigorously applying syariah
An academic studying political Islam in Southeast Asia and Malaysia, Prof. Gordon P. Means, observed that “[b]y 1970, nearly all the state governments had revised their Islamic laws to provide for more vigorous enforcement of Syariah law with increased penalties for violations in matters of personal behaviour and public deportment”.1
Nowadays the enforcement of Islamic law has become comparatively stricter still.
Apart from model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno whose caning sentence for drinking beer was commuted after intercession by the Pahang sultan, another Malay was arrested for the same offence last month. The Pahang Syariah Court sentenced cook Mohamad Sabri Zulkepli to a year’s jail and six strokes of the cane for imbibing liquor in a mall.
But should the enforcement of Islamic mores concern Malaysians of other faiths as well?
Under Section 19 (2) of the Syariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act, those found guilty of abetting the sale of alcohol can face a jail term of three years and/or a RM5,000 fine. It is unclear what happens presently if the beer seller or pub owner is a non-Muslim.
It is rumoured that the federal authorities may do something to streamline our civil and Islamic laws that are mired in a seeming overlap of jurisdictions. In the event of which, the lacuna indicated above – where a Muslim is punished and a non-Muslim escapes charge – might possibly be addressed during the procedure.
The late Zaitun Mohamed Kasim, a civil society activist, commented: “In addition to [conversion and child custody cases], notions of proper gender/sexual/moral conduct that are founded on orthodox notions of Islamic understanding’ have increasingly become applied to Malaysia’s significant non-Muslim minorities”.2
Zaitun told a symposium in 2007, “To give but two examples of this: non-Muslim couples have been charged under municipal laws for holding hands in public. In one prominent case, an elderly married American couple, who were holidaying in [Langkawi] Malaysia, were asked in their hotel room to demonstrate to Malaysian Islamic authorities that they were married.”
Fatwas can become law
Another area of concern is how the issuance of fatwa has been turned into a state matter and granted “the exceptional status” as a source of lawmaking.
There is no requirement for religious edicts to be tabled in Parliament or the state legislature for approval. All it needs is for a fatwa to be gazetted, and then for it to become law, is that it is approved by the state Islamic religious council and the sultan.
“This is not a new development as the state authorities had fatwa-making powers under most of the State Administration of Islamic Law Enactments that have been in force for several decades,” noted Prof. Mohammad Kamali Hashim.3
“The issue took a new turn, however, during the 1990s when legislation on fatwa went a step further to declare it an offence for ‘any person who gives, propagates or disseminates any opinion contrary to any fatwa’ in force,” Prof. Kamali further wrote.
Although he cited Section 9 of the Syariah Criminal Offences Enactment of Johor, this legislation has equivalent provisions in most of the other states, c.f. Article 9 on “contempt and defiance of religious authorities” under the Syariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act 1997 .
Do recall that in November 2008, the National Fatwa Council issued a prohibition against yoga if the practice included haram chanting – an element of Hindu worship. A month earlier in October, the council also issued a fatwa against pengkid (tomboys).
[Sidenote: In 2007, a transsexual Ayu was detained by officials from Malacca’s Islamic Religious Affairs Department (JAIM) for committing the offence of “men dressing up as women in public space” under Section 72 of the Malacca Syariah Offences Enactment.]
If the prohibition against yoga is gazetted, then it will become a religious law on the statute book and carrying the corresponding penalties. Some of the states have indicated that they are considering or in the process of gazetting it.
One wonders too if the case for yoga is analogous to that for beer, i.e. if the yoga instructor or proprietor of the health centre/gym is a non-Muslim, would he nonetheless be punished for aiding and abetting the offence?
Apostasy is a serious crime
State Muslim laws in Malaysia allow for deviationism and apostasy to be prosecuted in court with criminal sanctions of a maximum of three years or a fine up to RM5,000 or whipping up to six strokes or a combination of these.
There are also laws in the states under various articles providing for rehabilitation to restore the faith of lapsed Muslims. Or those that the state declares to be Muslim like the young Indian woman M. Revathi who became a cause celebre not too long ago.
An Ayah Pin follower Kamariah Ali was convicted on charges of apostasy under Section 7 of the Syariah Criminal Offence Enactment (Takzir) Terengganu and sentenced to a jail term of two years in March 2008.
Hudud laws passed in Terengganu and Kelantan prescribe death for apostasy, although they have thus far never been implemented. 4
Former International Islamic University law lecturer Salbiah Ahmad asks: “A question may be posed to our High Court in adjudicating freedoms under the constitution: should Article 11 privilege the Sunni school or recognize the reality of diversity of beliefs and practices among Malaysians who still choose to be called Muslims”? 5
Adding another perspective, Syed Husin Ali cites clause (4) of the same Article 11 to point out that “The constitution does not allow others to induce Malays to leave Islam; the consequences are serious when a Malay leaves his religion, even of his own volition”.6
The federal constitution was promulgated in 1957 when Muslims were synonymous with Malays. The situation has since then changed significantly where Muslims are not only Malays but are to be found among Indians, Orang Asli, the natives of Sabah and Sarawak and Chinese too.
So now Faizal Wong is caught in a predicament of his own making; he embraced Islam out of choice as a mature adult.
For an oblique comparison, Buddhists are predominantly if not almost all Chinese in the country, although all Chinese need not necessarily be Buddhist. And even those Chinese here who style themselves Buddhists might be more accurately said to be practicing some mix of Taoism, Confucianism, ancestral worship and polytheism.
There is no such eclecticism for the Malay – at least not in the eyes of the religious authorities – despite what Salbiah may say on actual diversity of beliefs and practices among those who nominally call themselves Muslims.
Only 1Islam in M’sia
The state through a slew of laws strives to make Malays monolithic in faith instead. Article 160 of the Federal Constitution defines ‘Malay’ as a person who professes Islam – a stipulation which technically renders ‘un-Malay’ a person such as Lina Joy.
Malaysia follows the Shafii mazhab of Sunni Islam – a school predominant in Indonesia, Brunei, and in Southeast Asia generally. On the other hand, Shi’ite Islam is prohibited in the country, and its followers have been detained under ISA in the past. 7
State Islamic law enactments adhere to Sunni jurisprudence and the Department of Islamic Development (Jakim) is among the federal agencies responsible for its implementation.
Jakim enforces faith (akidah) conceptualized along the principles of ahli Sunnah wal Jamaah. Other beliefs outside the one officially sanctioned are proscribed, e.g., the Al-Arqam movement is banned. The Ahmadiyah community in Selangor numbering some 2,000 individuals is also on the Jakim blacklist as a deviant organization or teaching.8
In 2002, Jakim published a pamphlet‘Malaysia adalah sebuah Negara Islam’ in response to then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and his deputy Abdullah Ahmad Badawi affirming that Malaysia had attained Islamic state status. In it, Jakim director-general Mohamad Shahir Abdullah listed what he said was a series of proofs that the country is indeed Islamic. 9
According to statistics from the 2000 census, Muslims make up 60.8 percent of the population.10 Our next census – an exercise conducted every 10 years – will be carried out this July-August. It is expected that Muslims as a population ratio will rise further in percentage point.
All Muslims automatically fall under syariah law, which is being accorded a wider reach and coverage over ever more areas, what with the relentless Islamization that is taking place. Hence, even when some quarters are futilely contending whether Malaysia is secular or an Islamic state, the facts on the ground already bespeaks two-thirds of the country’s population.
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Citations
1. Gordon P. Means, ‘Political Islam in Southeast Asia’, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2009.
2. Zaitun Mohamed Kasim, “Religious Fundamentalisms in Muslim Societies” in ‘Selected Papers on Religious Fundamentalisms and their Impact on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights’, Kuala Lumpur: Arrow, 2008.
3. Mohammad Kamali Hashim, ‘An Introduction to Shariah’, Kuala Lumpur: Ilmiah Publishers, 2006.
4. After PAS enacted hudud and qisas in 1993, Zaid Ibrahim petitioned the courts on the basis that Kelantan and Terengganu had contravened the federal constitution because criminal laws cannot be enacted by the state legislative assembly. Only Parliament has the legal capacity to enact criminal laws, and thus Zaid challenged if the actions of the two states were valid. (Zaid Ibrahim, ‘Saya Pun Melayu’, Petaling Jaya: ZI Publications, 2009).
5. Salbiah Ahmad, ‘Critical Thoughts on Islam, Rights and Freedom in Malaysia’, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2007.
6. Syed Husin Ali, ‘The Malays – Their Problems and Future’, Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2008.
7. ‘Malaysia Human Rights Report 2008’, Petaling Jaya: Suaram Komunikasi, 2009.
8. Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (Jakim), Bahagian Penyelidikan
9. ‘Religion under Siege? Lina Joy, the Islamic State and Freedom of Faith’, Kuala Lumpur: Kinibooks, 2008.
10. Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2000, Department of Statistics Malaysia.
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