Nik Raina’s Borders case : What’s wrong with JAWI ?

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Sep 4, 2013

Lawyer Rosli Dahlan and Nik Raina

All that was left to be done was for JAWI to withdraw the charge. That’s not too difficult is it?

Din Merican

This morning, I was supposed to go to the Jalan Duta Shariah Court to lend my support to Nik Rania Nik Abd. Aziz , the Borders bookstore manager who was wrongly charged by the Jabatan Agama Wilayah Persekutuan (JAWI) for Irshad Manji’s book, Allah, Liberty and Love which was not banned at the time Nik Rania was charged.

In March this year, KL High Court Tudung Judge Datuk Zaleha Yusuf held that JAWI’s actions against Borders and the charge against Nik Raina were unconstitutional and bad in law.

ll that was left to be done was for JAWI to withdraw the charge. That’s not too difficult is it? But see what JAWI has done. Instead of ending this controversy by withdrawing the charge against Nik Raina, JAWI is playing tricks. Like a delinquent juvenile, JAWI is giving all sorts of excuses to hit back at this poor Malay girl whose only sin was that JAWI needed someone to charge after having conducted a dramatic raid on the fortress of heresy, which was what JAWI must have considered Borders Bookstore to be. Remember Nik Raina was the only senior Muslim staff on duty at the time. They could not charge her senior, who is a non-Muslim.

So, on August 28, when the charge was to be withdrawn, JAWI said that the Shariah judge was not free and the case was fixed on September 3 which was this morning. Last night, I received a telephone call that the case will not be called this morning because there was a mistake over the court date. How juvenile and irresponsible Jawi can that be!