The price of a human life
In Kelantan’s hudud enactment, the amount of blood money for a person who has been killed is only RM614.
Zaid Ibrahim, The Star
THOSE who advocate implementing Islamic law in Malaysia generally suffer from an acute sense of superiority about their understanding of the religion.
They are prone to chastising people who ask them questions and always want to either exclude those with contrarian views from the discussion table or call them troublemakers.
This peculiar habit is found not just amongst politicians, but also professionals and senior bureaucrats serving in legal departments.
The most glaring example of wanting to win an argument about implementing Islamic law without having to think too much is to say that fundamental liberties in the Federal Constitution do not apply to Islamic laws and rules.
This is the approach being taken by Negri Sembilan’s legal advisers in the transgender case of Mohd Juzaili bin Mohd Khamis & 2 Ors v. Kerajaan Negeri Sembilan & 4 Ors.
I hope that such a far-reaching assertion will not find favour with our judges, because to affirm such a proposition is tantamount to saying that the Quran neither recognises fundamental liberties nor respects human dignity.
Our judges, who are known for their piety and good sense, will appreciate that the Holy Book commands mankind to respect life and the rights of others.
In my hometown of Kota Baru, many PAS leaders are fuming mad that an Opposition politician who is non-Muslim spoke about hudud, or lslamic criminal law.
Well, they are always fuming mad when someone, even a Muslim like me, opposes their plans, but I for one am aghast that their hudud enactment contains so many errors and seems to lack any sense of justice.
In Islamic criminal law, the principle of qisas applies to bodily harm or death. If a life is taken then the deceased’s relatives can demand the killer’s life in return – an eye for an eye.
However, as an alternative, the relatives can also demand compensation in the form of diyat (blood money) from the killer’s relatives. The amount of diyat that’s stated in many Islamic law books ranges from US$80,000 for accidental death to more for premeditated death.
In Brunei, it’s 1,000 dinars or 4,250gm of gold, roughly RM580,000 at current prices.
In Kelantan’s hudud enactment, a person’s life is only worth RM614 because diyat is defined as 4.450gm of gold. Since the current price of gold is around RM138 per gramme, then the life of a Kelantanese is worth RM614.
Kelantan also uses 4.450gm of gold as the value of nisab, the threshold to decide if theft and robbery should warrant amputation for first and second offences. So, a Kelantanese who steals something worth more than RM614 is liable to have a limb amputated. Of course, if he is involved in money laundering and funnels millions out of the country he escapes amputation since the enactment does not consider that crime to be theft.
Kelantan’s leaders must be punished for this terrible mistake. They rushed to pass the law when they were not even sure what they wanted to do with the enactment.
They even misled the people into thinking that they had done them a favour by passing God’s laws, when the truth is they have not taken into account many human factors.
They did not tell the Kelantanese that they do not actually have the power to implement hudud because the maximum punishment the Syariah Court can inflict is a prison sentence of three years, a fine of RM5,000, six strokes of the whip or a combination thereof – nothing more.
There is no consideration for the value of human life in the 21st century, only a blind desire to play politics with people’s lives.
I have said this before and I wish to say it again: God’s laws are perfect, but when men are called to draft the laws and push them through the legislative process, then they become man’s laws.
This means that we as a civilised community must scrutinise and deliberate these man-made laws carefully before allowing them to come into effect.
We owe it to Muslims to craft laws that are just and that can be implemented fairly, and to do that, we cannot exclude the community from providing their views.
In Kelantan today crimes involving armed men are commonplace. The people are worried. Snatch thieves are everywhere in Kota Baru.
Instead of working with the police to stem the rising crime rate, the politicians are just looking for easy answers; forever preaching that if we implement hudud, all problems will be sorted out.
They are wrong. It requires more effort from the community and the police. It requires having a criminal justice system that works!
Our ulamak are politicians and they must not be made to believe they are perfect and beyond reproach. Muslims must not be led to believe that if they give their views, they are going against God.
That’s what politicians want them to believe, but this only serves their selfish purposes and not the welfare of Muslims.
Never again must we be led like sheep by those who use God’s name to hide their own incompetence and ignorance.
Muslims deserve better than this.
