PAS wants Sisters in Islam investigated

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Jun 8, 2009

By Deborah Loh and Shanon Shah (The Nut Graph)

Sisters in Islam (SIS) should be investigated and declared "haram" if it is found to be anti-Islam, the 55th PAS muktamar declared today.

The Islamist political party also said SIS members should undergo religious rehabilitation should the Muslim women's rights organisation be found to go against Islam.

The resolution to ban SIS was among 11 other motions adopted without debate. Muktamar resolutions committee chairperson, Datuk Mahfuz Omar, announced that these motions had been approved by the committee.

Khalid Samad The motion against SIS was tabled by Shah Alam PAS, whose chief is Khalid Samad, seen by some quarters as being one of the more progressive leaders in PAS. The motion said SIS espoused a liberal form of Islam and urged the National Fatwa Council to investigate its leanings.

"If proven that it goes against the principles (syariat) of Islam, it should be banned (mengharamkan) and its members to go for religious rehabilitation," the motion read.

It also stated that SIS's liberal views caused confusion and were a threat to Muslims' faith, "especially to the younger generation and to those who have a secular education."

Khalid: Engage with SIS

Khalid, however, explained to The Nut Graph that the resolution was initially mooted by the Shah Alam Muslimat wing.

"I decided to accept the resolution without debate at the division level, but had asked them to revise it to tone down the punitive aspects and stress engagement with SIS," he said after the muktamar officially closed today.

Khalid said that the Muslimat had agreed to reword it, but they ended up submitting the resolution in its original wording to the main body's muktamar without his knowledge.

"But even in its existing wording, the banning of SIS is only a final resort — what is stressed is engagement with SIS to clarify their positions on Islam," he said.

He said that the Shah Alam Muslimat were worried about several views expressed by SIS, and would only seek to rehabilitate and ban them if the National Fatwa Council found their positions to be against Islam.

He also clarified that the party's central working committee would have more flexibility to address motions that were accepted without debate.

"If a resolution was accepted after debate, the committee would have no choice but to implement it to the final letter," he said, adding that in this case, the party could still use its discretion to act on the SIS resolution.

"We might not need to escalate it to the fatwa council immediately — the party itself could choose to engage with SIS first," he said.

But at the moment, however, Khalid said the working committee would probably forward the resolution to the fatwa council.