A MALAYSIAN DUEL OVER ISLAM
By S. Jayasankaran
Issue cover-dated August 22, 2002

http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0208_22/p013region.html

In Malaysia, religious issues have been left to
religious teachers, known as ulema. But Islamic
discourse has also been coloured by politics and the
country's complex ethnic equation, and the ulema are
leaning more and more towards the opposition Islamic
Party of Malaysia, or Pas.

Pas has appropriated Islam as a political asset,
steadily pushing the ruling United Malays National
Organization to the defensive. The result, according
to Lim Kit Siang, the chairman of the opposition
Democratic Action Party, is "unhealthy competition
where both parties try to out-Islam one another."

That's apparent in the debate over hudud, the Islamic
criminal code. Pas cannot enforce the laws because
they are unconstitutional. And Umno won't amend the
constitution to oblige Pas.

But Pas is the ruling party in Terengganu and Kelantan
states, and by passing legislation introducing hudud
at the state level and then highlighting Umno's
reluctance to enforce it, Pas has painted the ruling
party into a corner and set the stage for a vicious
cycle of religious one-upmanship.

On July 14, Terengganu's Pas-led legislative assembly
passed a bill replacing the northeastern state's
secular criminal laws with Islamic strictures. Four
assemblymen from Umno, which had vowed to oppose the
bill, simply abstained from voting. "We didn't want
Pas to capitalize on this," Umno lawmaker Rosol Wahid
sheepishly told reporters later.

As in Indonesia, there is also a more benign face of
sharia in Malaysia, which has always played a part in
the country's justice system. Malaysia's laws are
largely based on secular laws inherited from Britain,
the former colonial power. But the personal lives of
Muslims--from divorce and inheritance to moral
matters--are administered judicially by sharia courts
that uphold Islamic law. These courts can prescribe
punishments for everything--from drinking alcohol and
not attending Friday prayers to being caught in
compromising circumstances with an unrelated member of
the opposite sex. Even so, the punishments are mild--a
fine, usually--and the main deterrent is simply the
embarrassment a case brings.

In the Pas-ruled states of Kelantan and Terengganu,
hudud could change all that. So far, however, Kuala
Lumpur has ordered the police not to cooperate in
enforcing hudud there. And a prominent lawyer and Umno
member has sought a declaration from the Federal Court
to declare the hudud laws unconstitutional.

Whether that is enough remains to be seen. Unlike
Pas-ruled Kelantan, which passed the hudud laws 11
years ago but didn't do anything about enforcing them,
Hadi Awang, Pas's president and Terengganu's fiery
chief minister, seems bent on enforcing it, vowing to
implement the laws "within a year."

It isn't clear what Kuala Lumpur can do if Terengganu
really goes ahead and finds a way to enforces the laws
on its own. "No one wants to think about that," says a
senior Malay lawyer in Kuala Lumpur. "They're hoping
it's just politics."

That doesn't seem to be how Hadi sees it. Telling
reporters that hudud would deter crime significantly,
Hadi described the laws as "amazing" because "people
become terrified."



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