A Political Divide Over Islamic Law Could Undo Malaysia’s Social Fabric
While appealing to its core Malay voters, UMNO also set about splitting the opposition, and hudud was its instrument to court PAS purists. The strategy succeeded.
David Hutt, World Politics Review
During my last visit to Malaysia in February, I met the famed film director Chiu Keng Guan to discuss his fourth and latest movie, “Ola Bola.” It had just come out in local cinemas and was already proving to be such a sensation that one newspaper asked if there was an “Ola Bola overload.” A little misty-eyed perhaps, the film is a fictionalized account of the Malaysian national football team’s qualification for the 1980 Olympic Games, arguably one of the country’s finest sporting milestones, made all the more memorable by the fact that it was achieved by a multiracial, multireligious team.
“Ola Bola is a story about Malaysia,” Chiu told me as we sat on the steps of the decaying Stadium Merdeka, where independence from Britain was announced in 1957. “I wanted to talk about team spirit, how a team of young players went through difficulties, trained together, sweated together, and how they worked as a team.”
Being in Malaysia at the time of the film’s release, it wasn’t difficult to notice that, aside from the nostalgia, people were speaking of it as a piece of social commentary in a country where racial and religious tensions are never far from the surface. One critic surmised, “Ola Bola [has] been able to do for Malaysia what many politicians cannot do—to remind us as a nation and as Malaysians, ‘kita menang sama-sama, kita kalah sama-sama’”: We win together; we lose together. One cannot help but feel the critic’s words were even more pertinent months later when politicians forced the country into yet another existential debate.
In May, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, PAS), an opposition party, successfully tabled a bill to introduce strict Islamic criminal codes, known as “hudud,” in the northern state of Kelantan, which has been a PAS stronghold since 1990. Hudud are criminal punishments established by the Quran and Sunnah, the oral teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, which typically cover what are deemed criminal offenses, such as theft, fornication, intoxication, apostasy and slander. Punishments can include the amputation of limbs for theft, flogging for “improper” sexual acts and stoning to death for adultery, although the latter is not always imposed.
Although now commonly referred to as the “hudud bill” by the local press, the motion specifically attempts to amend the 1965 law regulating Shariah law, known in Malaysia as syariah, in order for the Malaysian state of Kelantan’s syariah courts to impose any punishment, except the death penalty, as they see fit. The PAS contends this isn’t strictly hudud, but that comes down to a debate over definitions. Since independence, Malaysia has had a divided legal system in which federal courts, more often than not, oversee and supersede the state-level syariah courts. But critics say the hudud bill would unconstitutionally undermine federal law and run the risk of sparking religious and racial tensions. The bill is expected to be debated in the Dewan Rakyat, the lower house of Malaysia’s parliament, in October.
Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister and long-time opponent of hudud, was quick to point out what many believe to be the obvious: that the bill would make sense if Malaysia were “100 percent Muslim,” but, because it isn’t, the law would naturally lead to inequality in the justice system. “If a Muslim was caught for stealing he would have his hand chopped off, but a non-Muslim would only be jailed for two months,” he said. “Hudud is supposed to be just to its people, but it can’t be carried out here because Muslims only make up 60 percent of the population.” In his typical waggish manner, he reduced the debate to the PAS simply wanting to “catch women who wear tight clothes.”
Managing Malaysia’s Diversity
According to the last national census, which was conducted in 2010, 67 percent of the population is of Malay heritage, 25 percent Chinese, 7 percent Indian, 0.7 percent other, and just over 8 percent are noncitizens. In terms of religion, 61 percent is Muslim, 20 percent Buddhist, 9 percent Christian, and 6 percent Hindu, with the remainder comprising smaller religious affiliations.
Malaysia’s history has shown that such diversity has been difficult to manage. In the 19th century, British colonial forces brought Chinese workers to Malaysia to become indentured laborers in tin mines and rubber plantations. By the time of independence, a sizeable, and typically urban, Chinese-Malaysian population controlled much of the country’s trade and business sectors, while most Malays remained in rural areas. Decades of debate over post-independence racial policies came to a head in 1969, when race riots between Malay-Malaysians and Chinese-Malaysians in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, led to the deaths of an estimated 200 people—some say as many as 600—and a state of national emergency. It was followed by the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1971, which attempted to foster racial equality but was seen by critics as introducing affirmative action policies for the Malay population, especially in government positions. Speak to many Chinese-origin Malaysians in Kuala Lumpur and they’ll soon descend onto the topic of “ketuanan Melayu,” or Malay supremacy. Indeed, Article 153 of the constitution denotes the “special position of the Malays.”
Critics say the hudud bill would unconstitutionally undermine federal law and run the risk of sparking religious and racial tensions.
This is, of course, a truncated and simplified depiction of Malaysian history. Nevertheless, with this background, one can arrive at the question that many commentators are raising in Malaysia: Why is the hudud bill being debated now? Hudud has been a perennial issue for the PAS since the 1980s, and the party has called for its implementation on many occasions. However, rarely has there seemed to be the real possibility of actually introducing it.
