Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Posted: 01 Oct 2011 04:43 PM PDT

The party, marking its 60th anniversary celebrations yesterday, continues to argue its case for the implementation of hudud.

However, the fact that he stressed was that PAS does not see any political benefit of working with Umno for now, has given rise to the fact that it was opened to the possibility of working with anyone if the outcome of the next general election did not favor either ruling federal coalition of Barisan Nasional (BN) or Pakatan.

Hawkeye, Free Malaysia Today

PAS has echoed its battle cry for the coming general election and it is no longer just about welfare, corruption, the economy or piousness; it is on adopting hudud and qisas law.

To mark its 60th anniversary celebrations as a political entity with arguably the biggest number of dedicated grassroots members in the country, PAS went back to its roots as a fundamentalist Islamist party with influences steeped in traditions of the fellow Iranian and Turkish Islamist parties.

PAS ensured that the syariah punitive laws of hudud and qisas took center stage at the gathering yesterday to mark the auspicious PAS 60th anniversary celebrations, where some 2,000 delegates attended.

Despite much disdain over the issue among the non-Muslim community, particularly led by political representatives of MCA, DAP, MIC and Gerakan, PAS has pushed ahead with its fundamental desire to have hudud enshrined as part of the syariah court system.

Led by its two famous personalities, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang and spiritual adviser Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, the two devoted a length of their speeches towards defending the concept of hudud.

Their cries of "thou are holier than you" when it comes to hudud probably drown out the voices of Erdogan (progressive) although the group's leaders, former secretary-general Kamarudin Jaafar, vice-presidents Husam Musa and Mahfuz Omas as well as veteran PAS intellect Subky Latiff were given platforms to recollect their thoughts about PAS 60th birthday.

The audience was seemed spell-bound as the speakers outlined PAS' history and predicted a future where it is here to stay in the Malaysian political context and with Pakatan Rakyat's help, they could govern the country federally by next year.

Cooperation with Umno?

There were two common themes raised at the one-day event, which was held at Kepala Batas; the party was founded there in 1951 by a group of Islamic clerics led by the late Syeikh Abdullah Fahim, the paternal grandfather of former premier and ex-Umno president Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

The first theme was PAS would continue to champion hudud regardless of the level of opposition including from fellow Pakatan partner, DAP, as well as the indecisive stance of the multi-racial party- PKR.

The second was that PAS' stand that Umno was its arch enemy for now and perhaps in the forseeable future, unless the latter drops its nationalist ideology and embrace Islamist principles as a bedrock of its political struggle.

Nik Aziz, who was a young cleric when PAS was first formed, was asked if PAS would ever make peace with Umno.

The 82-year-old who spoke astutely and reassuringly at the event, said he cannot ever imagine that PAS would reunite with Umno but that, in the future, one may never know.

"I know you (who you are Umno) …," he said in reference to whether PAS may eventually join forces with Umno, especially with the hudud issue playing in the background.

Do not fear hudud

PAS observer Mohd Sayuthi Omar pointed out that Nik Aziz seems to have grown younger, now that he is insisting on the adoption of hudud in the country despite the persisting obtacles.

Kelantan PAS secretary Mohd Zaki Ibrahim said barring unforseen circumtances, Nik Aziz could continue leading them for at least one more term despite that he may touch 90 in the next few years.

READ MORE HERE

No hudud please, we’re Malaysians

Posted: 01 Oct 2011 10:19 AM PDT

By Zainah Anwar, The Star

ARE our politicians plain bad, crazy or stupid? In this divisive, corrosive, cynical political climate of ours, if I were the Opposition, I would jump and present my party as the party of first and obvious choice for the electorate.

I would have not only welcomed the Prime Minister's bold announcements in repealing those repressive laws and states of emergency, I would also up the ante and begin a public debate on how we as citizens should exercise and enjoy our Constitutional guarantees of fundamental liberties.

I would be planning over the next few months on how to build public opinion to hold the Government accountable and ensure that whatever alternative national security or public order laws that might emerge will uphold my fundamental freedoms.

I would want to make it politically very costly for the Government if it falls short or back-pedal on the promises of democratic reform it has made.

Instead, what do we get? An offer of the hudud law and its grim serving of chopped-off Muslim hands and feet, and stoning to death! What kind of future is that?

And we have politicians, who supposedly hold the mantle of leadership, who simply and continually miss the point.

"It's okay to implement the hudud law because it doesn't affect non-Muslims." So it's okay for Muslims to be brutalised?

See what happens when the first Muslim hand gets chopped off for stealing a motorbike.

What if a medical team is on standby to gather the chopped-off hand and the victim and run to Terengganu or fly to KL for the hand to be stitched back?

What if the thief was with a Chinese or Indian accomplice who was sentenced only to a few months' imprisonment under the Penal Code while the Malay thief is now disabled and unable to get a job, and be forever publicly stigmatised?

Or really, could this be a conspiracy to make the Malays permanently physically disabled in order to justify affirmative action in perpetuity? I wonder.

"Non-Muslims should shut up because it doesn't affect them." But they are Malaysian citizens who have every right to speak up on laws that allow for brutal and inhumane punishments against their fellow citizens, the majority population to boot.

Who wants to live in such a society when your neighbour, your friend, or your fellow citizen are subject to a cruel legal system?

How could I live with my conscience if I were a Chinese who has witnessed a rape, but my infidel evidence would not be accepted under the hudud law? No, I cannot keep quiet and accept such a law.

"Muslims who are not experts on Islam should shut up". Then please take religion out of the public sphere and make it private between us and God. But not when I can be flogged 80 lashes for qazaf (slanderous accusation) if I report I have been raped and am unable to produce four pious and just Muslim males who witnessed the rape.

On top of that, my rape report could also be taken as confession of illicit sex and I could be charged for zina. And even if I could produce the four men, I would be torn apart wondering why four supposedly pious and just men watched me being raped.

And God forbid if I was single and became pregnant because of the rape. I would be charged for zina and lashed 100 times because my pregnancy is regarded as evidence of illicit sex.

The burden is on me, not the state, to prove I was indeed raped. The evidential requirements make this impossible. And the accused rapist will be free from any hudud punishment by simply denying the rape.

And we are all supposed to shut up? No wonder some of our political leaders are bent on their so-called "Islamic state" and "Islamic law" project because it is so easy to fly the flag of religion and silence dissenting voices.

Even of their political opponents – many of whom can only summon the courage to claim: "I am not against the Hudud law, but the time and conditions are not right to implement it." There are hundreds of commands, exhortations, values and principles in the Quran that we ignore or violate on a daily basis.

The command for us to be kind and compassionate at all times, the duty of a man to provide and protect his wife and children, the obligation of a leader to be just and fair in his ruling are just a few of these.

And what does an Islamist party prioritise as the hallmark of its piousness? The Hudud law. Instead of having the political courage to say no to the Hudud law, once and for all on so many available grounds – Islamic, constitutional, human rights principles, lived realities – so many of their political opponents dither and hedge.

It is so tiresome that we the rakyat are subject to this again and again.

Sisters in Islam wrote letters to the editor, published a book and submitted a memorandum to the Government, all objecting to the PAS attempts to introduce the Hudud law in Kelantan and Terengganu in 1993 and 2002 respectively.

When PAS recently announced it was shifting from its push for an "Islamic state" to a "welfare state", many thought the leadership finally realised that its future lies with social justice transformation, not with a punitive and joyless Islam of gloom and doom.

On some issues, it was even looking more progressive than Umno.

But its Hudud law pronouncements have jolted us back to reality. So many in the PAS leadership and its rank and file remain stuck in medieval times, unable to imagine what justice should mean to an Islamist party in the 21st century and unable to envision what it means to be Muslim in a modern, democratic, progressive multi-ethnic, multi-religious Malaysia today.

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Ahad, 2 Oktober 2011

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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