I thought the Talibans were in town
Our religious leaders obviously haven’t much of a clue about the damage they can do to their country because Islam is our State religion according to the constitution, and we are under international scrutiny continually.
By TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ/MySinchew
WHEN I read that Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was fined five thousand ringgit and ordered to receive six strokes of the rotan for drinking beer in a hotel bar, I thought the Talibans were in town.
I am not about to dispute the legitimacy of the sentence that had been imposed by the Syariah Court on Kartika. I will even go along with the argument that “the law is the law”, and Kartika herself, mind you, was the first to admit that she was wrong to drink alcohol as a Muslim.
The point I want to make in this case is that, in all the circumstances, justice should have been tempered with mercy because what is legal is not always moral or ethical. After all, Allah whom we Muslims worship is a compassionate and merciful God, and human beings administering the laws of God must never invoke His name in vain for it is a grievous sin.
From all accounts, Kartika was repentant and showed every sign of being sincerely remorseful. She did not plead for leniency, and offered no excuses for her unislamic behaviour. If anything, she begged the court in all humility, in a gesture that admitted of complete personal responsibility for her actions, that she be caned in public, at the first opportunity. In other words, this principled, gutsy lady accepted her punishment truly like a man. The lady was not for turning, with apologies to Margaret Thatcher. No theatrical farce or histrionics for Kartika, the young mother of two who displayed for all to see a streak of her extraordinary determination to face the music and get on with her life.
What a great loss of opportunity to show the world that Islam as a religion that is practised in Malaysia is moderate, compassionate and just. Instead, the Islamic authorities, by their single minded obsession with what I can only describe as the principle of absolutism that is thought to be capable of being applied to all situations, regardless, have succeeded in denigrating the true achievements, virtues and values of this great religion. They have done an enormous disservice to Islam, Malaysia and themselves.
Caning as a form of punishment is considered, and rightly so, barbaric, and no one has any right to inflict this indignity upon a fellow human. The entire civilised world totally rejects it, and for us to continue to adopt this practice is to be deliberately obtuse because Malaysia as an economic and political entity does not operate in isolation. Our religious leaders obviously haven’t much of a clue about the damage they can do to their country because Islam is our State religion according to the constitution, and we are under international scrutiny continually. Tun Dr. Mahathir felt constrained to comment that it mattered not what the world thought of us in relation to the corporal punishment being meted out to Kartika. It is his view of the world around us, but even he must know that our ability to be internationally competitive depends on how foreigners perceive us. Human rights have come into their own and have become part of the larger negotiating weapon in global trade. Trade and human rights are inter-linked whether we relish the idea or not.
Our proud boast of being a progressive Muslim country practising a moderate form of Islam rings terribly hollow when in practice we are not much different from what some our fellow believers do in Iran or Pakistan. What right have we to be seated at the top table with the civilised nations of the world?
Islam today is under severe threat of marginalisation because Muslims have committed acts of cruelty and inhumanity across the globe in the name of their religion, to serve their own ends. We know what the score is and yet persist in behaviour that is no longer acceptable to the overwhelming majority of enlightened people everywhere.
The news of this affront to human dignity about to be visited on a helpless woman has gripped the imagination of the world, and after watching the BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN, I was not surprised to see the next day the story splashed on the front page of every major newspaper from New York to London. This one single careless act by the Syariah authorities has undone all the good work of Tun Abdullah Badawi on Civilisational Islam that he promoted so assiduously in many international forums while he was prime minister.
Muslim authorities in Malaysia owe it not just to themselves but the larger Malaysian community to consider carefully the possible negative repercussions before embarking on actions that can have more than purely religious implications.
