No Pakatan consensus but PAS says will proceed with hudud plan

(The Malay Mail) – A PAS leader has insisted the Islamist party will not back down from pushing for hudud enforcement in Kelantan despite failing to convince its Pakatan Rakyat (PR) allies.

Dr Mohd Zuhdi Marzuki, who is a member of the party’s central working committee, said the party will seek support from wherever it can to realise the implementation of the controversial Islamic penal code — even if it came from political foe, Umno.

“The agenda to implement Allah’s laws including the hudud law is part of PAS’ struggle since a long time ago, and not an agenda of PR.

“Therefore, the motion which will be proposed by PAS in the Parliament will come from PAS, not PR,” said Zuhdi in a statement on his Facebook page.

According to Zuhdi, the party has spent close to 50 years explaining the concept of hudud to rival nationalist party Umno, and around a decade doing the same to its partners in the opposition coalition.

Therefore, he said, PAS will leave those on both sides of the political divide to decide whether they support or reject the motion when it is tabled in the lower house.

“If the motion fails, PAS will continue to preach until it would be accepted one day,” added Zuhdi.

Regardless of the result, however, the PAS member affirmed that the party will continue its tahaluf siyasi — an Arabic term roughly meaning “political consensus” — with its PR partners.

In a separate statement, another PAS central working committee member insisted today that the political consensus does not mean other component parties in PR can stop PAS from carrying out its struggle, especially to implement hudud.

“Tahaluf siyasi is political co-operation. Therefore, it only covers political matters without once involving the policies and principles fought by a party,” Nasruddin Hassan said on the PAS ulama wing’s Facebook page.

“Each party which becomes a component of tahaluf siyasi cannot intervene, coerce or even stop the struggle of the other component parties.”

DAP and PKR leaders had this week issued stern reminders to their political ally that the controversial Islamic penal code was never a part of the consensus among the three parties, either at state or federal level.

This comes as Kelantan prepares to propose two private bills in Parliament in its bid to remove any obstacles to its implementation of hudud by 2015.

In Islamic jurisprudence, hudud covers crimes such as theft, robbery, adultery, rape, sodomy, making unproven accusations of adultery, causing physical hurt, drinking intoxicants, apostasy, and acts contrary to Islamic belief.

The law is generally confined to Muslims, but can extend to non-Muslims if they are involved in aiding or abetting an offence committed by a Muslim.

At its annual congress in November last year, PAS revisited its bid to revise federal law to enable the nationwide enforcement of the strict Islamic penal code, which it had buried previously in the run-up to Election 2013.

The Islamist party introduced hudud in Kelantan and Terengganu, but has not been able to enforce them due to the conflict with the federal constitution.

Political rival Umno has capitalised on PAS’ failure to enforce hudud in a bid to shore up support among the country’s dominant Malay-Muslim voters, claiming the party had strayed from its plan to form an Islamic state.

But both Umno and PAS face strong resistance from their coalition partners over the enforcement of hudud, which argued it will turn Malaysia into an Islamic theocracy and dilute the country’s image as a multi-religious nation.