In Malaysia, hudud a political gimmick, not religious issue
Sheridan Mahavera, The Malaysian Insider
The Islamists want to implement the Islamic criminal law, saying Malaysia is a Muslim nation but politicians and analysts agree that hudud is just political football to win votes in the next general election.
The politicians and analysts believe hudud is also to score points against political foes within the two coalitions – the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) and the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) which runs three states.
“It is ultimately about politics and not about Islam,” said Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who heads the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS).
The debate over hudud, or the Shariah Criminal Law, grabbed national attention when Umno offered to back political rivals PAS if it wanted to enforce the law in Kelantan.
When PAS announced it would table a private member’s bill in Dewan Rakyat in June to do this, it created a national debate over whether such a move would change the highest law of the land, the Federal Constitution.
The move also opened up a rift between PAS and its allies in PR, DAP and PKR. Umno was also criticised by its partners MCA and Gerakan for wanting to help PAS.
Some observers believe that Umno’s offer to support PAS’s bill was a ploy to drive a wedge between the Islamist party and its PR partners.
Wan Saiful said the way the controversy is being manipulated also revealed how each coalition was more interested in brinkmanship, rather than a truthful look at the issue.
“The target of the criticism is also calculated. You see MCA attacking DAP and vice versa,” he said when met on the sidelines of the forum titled “Emerging perspectives on hudud” by the Asian Leadership Institute (Asli).
Wan Saiful cited the speech made by one of the panellists at the forum, Kluang MP Liew Chin Tong of the DAP, to justify his point that the whole episode was about political manoeuvring.
Liew had claimed that the plan to table the private member’s bill was spearheaded by a faction in Kelantan PAS which wanted to garner support from inside the party in order to move up its ranks.
The move by this faction was also to cement its hold on the party’s Kelantan structure and fend off internal attacks from a rival faction, said Liew, who is DAP’s political education director.
The private member’s bill plan only came about during a March Dewan Rakyat sitting when Umno minister Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom challenged PAS to do it. Jamil Khir, who is in charge of religious affairs, also said Umno would back the bill if PAS did it.
If MCA and DAP were really sincere in their opposition to the bill and hudud, it should be criticising their coalition’s respective partners, which are Umno and PAS, respectively, instead of each other, Wan Saiful said.
“So I think everyone is trapped by their political interests,” he added.
