Hudud rears its ugly again
Islam has been said by Muslims to be part of the Abrahamic faith, thus it is not surprising the retributive justice principle — the punishment must match the injury, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth — is indeed derived from both the Jewish Torah (Old Testament in Exodus 21:22-25 and Deuteronomy 19:16-21) and the Christian Gospel (New Testament in Matthew 5:38-42).
Bob Teoh, The Malaysian Insider
The hudud controversy has the habit of raising its ugly head whenever elections are around the corner. This piece of Syariah legislation is a bane to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike and has no place in our statute books as it stands.
It’s timely that Prime Minster Najib Razak has said that although hudud laws are accepted in Islam, the reality is that they cannot be implemented in Malaysia.
PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub said just as much that hudud laws are “imposible” to implement so there is no need to discuss such things.
That being the case, both the ruling coalition and the Opposition must immediately pledge they will refrain from allowing the hudud controversy to be manipulated into an electioneering platform. This much they owe Malaysians.
Sadly, some are quick to offer a quick-fix that hudud laws should be applied to Muslims only while sparing the non-Muslims. This is offensive simply because under our Federal Constitution, all citizens are equal before the law. No one is above the law nor out of it.
In such a dualistic legal system, in a crime like zina (fornication), the Muslim so accused is subject the harshness of hudud while a non-Muslim party who may be equally culpable, escapes such its severe punishment. How can that be fair? It takes two to clap after all.
Even if it is restricted to Muslims, the law is equally obnoxious, particularly to Muslim women. For instance, Hajjah Nik Noriani bte Dato Nik Badli Shah in her paper, “Hudud Laws and its Implications on Women (1994)”, points out that according to the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code (II) Enactment 1993, in the case of zina, pregnancy or delivery of a baby by an unmarried woman shall constitute evidence on which to find her guilty of zina unless she can prove to the contrary.
The gender bias is also heightened by the fact that only men can be witnesses in such trials.
The Terengganu Syariah Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Bill, or the Hudud Bill, was introduced by Pas in 2002 when it was in power there but was never implemented as is in the case of Kelantan.
Let’s be clear. No one is against Muslims wanting to introduce Islamic jurisprudence but unless we can resolve the cruel an-eye-for-an-eye retaliatory nature of qisas with compassion, we will all end up blind.
The Qur’an demands justice to be tempered with compassion. That much is clear. That is why all the 114 Surahs except for Surah Al Tawbah, begins with invoking the Bismillah, a God who is compassionate and merciful. We cannot turn a blind eye to this doxology.
Hudud in Arabic means “limit” or “restriction” and usually refers to certain crimes like theft, fornication, consumption of alcohol, and apostasy. Hudud is one of four categories of punishment in Syariah that includes qisas following the Biblical principle of an-eye- for-an-eye (Surah Al-Ma’idah verse 45).
Islam has been said by Muslims to be part of the Abrahamic faith, thus it is not surprising the retributive justice principle — the punishment must match the injury, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth — is indeed derived from both the Jewish Torah (Old Testament in Exodus 21:22-25 and Deuteronomy 19:16-21) and the Christian Gospel (New Testament in Matthew 5:38-42).
