Postcard from Kuala Lumpur
Thinking of moving to Malaysia?
Malaysia runs parallel sharia and civil legal systems, with sharia courts dealing only with Muslims and mainly in family disputes or in matters such as khalwat or apostasy. It employs religious police to ensure Muslim compliance with Koranic laws. They sometimes patrol parks looking for young unwed couples holding hands, raid nightclubs to catch Muslims drinking alcohol and ensure Muslims observe the fasting month of Ramadan.
Ah does it. But…how do the religious police know who is Muslim? When they go into a park to try to find some evil couples holding hands, how do they know which couples contain Muslims and which don’t? Does everybody in Malaysia wear a large sign or label or a star coloured variously yellow, green, pink, and blue for Other? Do the Muslims have big arrows suspended in the air picking them out for the religious police? Does Allah go with the religious police and tell them who is which? Do all Muslims wear their hair a certain way? Do the religious police just find someone in a hijab and go on from there? Who knows. But at any rate it is interesting to contemplate life in a place where the police can tell you to stop holding hands with someone in a public park, and raid nightclubs to tell you to stop drinking alcohol, and ensure that you follow Ramadan. What do they do, wander around all day and when they find a Muslim (how do they know?) eating a falafel sandwich, snatch it away and fling it into the mud?
Some Muslims feel it is not fair to be punished for moral crimes that non-Muslims can freely commit. But non-Muslims, who make up around 40 percent of Malaysia’s population of 26 million, strongly resist attempts to impose standards of Muslim morality on them, even if these attempts are sometimes mistaken.
In other words some Muslims don’t want to be subject to sharia. No I should think they wouldn’t. But apparently the implication is not that sharia sucks, but that non-Muslims should be subject to the same stupid tyrannical intrusive none of your fucking business laws. Nice thought. We have idiotic clerical laws that make our lives miserable, therefore everyone should have laws like that. (And then there’s that absurd last clause – as if mistaken attempts to impose standards of Muslim morality on non-Muslims are no problem if they’re ‘mistaken.’ Of course they’re mistaken, they’re all mistaken, and that’s why people resist them! Der.)
It also tells you something about the legal expertise and intellect of the two muslim bodies when they propose a law which directly contradicts a key article of the constitution and this after an election which cost the ruling party – for the first time in its history- to lose its two-thirds majority and hence, ability to amend the constitution.It brings to mind the sharia court monkeys of saudi arabia who make it up as they go along.If they cannot be arsed to even codify their own legal precepts, no wonder they have difficulty understanding even the fundamental principles of secular legal systems.
Oh the point about how do you who’s a muslim. well generally by race and dress but yes, of course there are grey areas. The cretins from JAWI -that’s the ‘morality’ police – act first and regret it later when there are infamous fiascos like the elderly white american tourist couple who had a room invasion at 2 or 3 am. That incident right at the start of Visit Malaysia Year, ensured the success of the venture. But the perverts have their targets – bars/ clubs/ musicians/youth/ entertainment celebrities. A muslim politician could rape and murder his greatgrandmother in broad daylight in the middle of KLCC and suffer no consequences other than the heavy flow of obsequious visitors bearing condolences.
“A muslim politician could rape and murder his greatgrandmother in broad daylight in the middle of KLCC and suffer no consequences other than the heavy flow of obsequious visitors bearing condolences.”
Mirax,
You make some good points, but the hyperbole doesn’t really do much.
I thought Mirax,s posts were very imformative DFG where is the hyperbole? is truth hyperbole now?
Wiki:
“All ethnic Malays are Muslim as defined in the Malaysian constitution. Additionally, all non-Muslims who marry a Muslim must renounce their religion and convert to Islam.”
The usual Islamic double whammy: “you must repect our religious belief but we do not have to repect yours”.
By complete coincidence, David Thompson’s site (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/) links to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040204185.html:
“Experts in sharia law, which currently applies only to Malaysia’s majority Muslims, proposed at a seminar that there should be a civil law to deal with non-Muslims found committing the Islamic crime of khalwat, or close proximity, with a Muslim. “
See http://malikimtiaz.blogspot.com/ for a comment by a Malaysian Muslim firmly against the proposal to introduce shariah law for non-Muslims.
(To declare an interest: I lived in Malaysia for 5 years, and my wife is a – very non-observant – Malaysian Muslim.)
Yes, I think Blair has set something of a precedent for returning the bits of the Parthenon currently in the British Museum to Greece…
I assert B&W is in immediate peril of becoming a single issue website. A gathering place for ratbags but little else.
Get a life. There’s more to the universe than the banging on ad nauseum about loony psychopaths who claim divine authority.
DFG, yeah that was rather over the top but maybe you should google the names Altantuya, Najib Razak and Baginda and read about the murder trial currently underway. One of these persons is a mongolian model and single mum, another a current deputy prime minister and the last, the most famous and influential political advisor in the country. One of these persons was blown up with C4 dynamite from govt armouries by police and military personnel serving one of the 3 persons mentioned. Guess who’s not standing trial?
Thanks for the background, mirax – it’s great having a correspondent in the region. Of course I thought of you when I read the article.
Mirax,
I spend half my time in Malaysia, (Well, maybe less, a fifth in S’pore..)and am well aware of the Shariibuu case, though I believe the obfuscation is more to do with Baginda’s proximity to Razak rather than religion.
Hey Richard,
The hyperbole is in the quote of Mirax’s I attached.
Tapdog there were plenty of people in the 1930s who said the same thing about the rise of facism! islamic facism is growing and spreading as every day passes so why would this site not devote a large amount of time to the subject? also because major news outlets like the B.B.C and the guardian all but refuse to cover the isue it is even more important that sites like this deal with it. dfg That seems like fair comment to me rather than hyperbole.
Tingey and Richard
Two separate issues here-oops should have thought through more carefully.
First-if you were to take radical Islam and crimes against women out of B&W the remainder would be a small minority of what is currently published. Not to say here the issues are unimportant-simply that I miss the wider ranging B&W of 2 or 3 years ago
Secondly, whilst the inexorable march of political Islam makes me fearful for the world my children will inhabit, B&W (no disrespect) is not the Guardian or the BBC and chatting here is like what would twenty years ago have taken place in the back room of the local pub. No one outside the room hears or perhaps more correctly wants to hear.
Challenge don’t you think is to get lots of people to engage with the problem?
Hi Ophelia! It appears that you may have more than one ‘correspondent’ in this neck of the woods…
Richard, I admitted to exaggerating but I think that DFG may also have misunderstood the wider point i was trying to make about the sheer hypocrisy of the morality police and the msian political elite who bear responsibility for the sharia creep, especially the UMNO(ruling party since independence) princelings. To reiterate my point : the Umnoputras are effectively untouchable.
“Challenge don’t you think is to get lots of people to engage with the problem?”
Louis the French highwayman band terrorized the Paris area until his capture.
He was broken on the wheel. Cartouche’s daring exploits have been celebrated in stories, dramas, ballads, and popular prints.
If you can’t beat them join ’em!
Tapdog,
Well, keep in mind that Jeremy and I are writing a book about religion and women right now – so it is inevitable (given that I am only one person with only so much time) that some of what I find in researching the book will appear on B&W. I agree with you about the virtue of ranging widely and I try to keep doing that – but some themes loom at particular times.
B&W is of course not the Guardian or the BBC, but it reaches a little farther than the back room of the pub. Or rather, to be quite honest, considerably farther. It is read by journalists, academics, NGO workers, people at the UN, including people outside Europe and North America. I don’t kid myself that B&W is a Guardian-equivalent, but it’s not nothing, either.
‘A gathering place for ratbags…’
Who, specifically, are you calling a ratbag?
Feel free to leave a list of topics we ratbags should discuss. I’m sure OB will take it into consideration.
Oh, and,
‘if you were to take radical Islam and crimes against women out of B&W the remainder would be a small minority of what is currently published.’
Really? Can you be bothered to give us the breakdown on, say, last month’s articles? And tell us which of them do not make your priority list.
Tapdog I didnt mean that B.W was comparable to the beeb or the guardian I was making the point that sites like this are the only dogs left in this fight, so it is hardly supprising that this subject is given the time it is. I would take isue with the back room of the pub analogy as well because the web has a pebble in the pond effect that the pub never could have. I would also say that I visit this site almost every day (along with others)and over the course of a month the topic range is probably more diverse than any of the other sites I visit,you may have looked in at a particular time when this subject was being covered?
Tapdog is only interested in oatbags and winners. Not ratbags and losers.
Mirax,
Definitely got your point re: the UMNOputras and their teflon coating!
Let’s see what the reduced majority and the inability to use the constitution as a plaything does to them.
What do they do, wander around all day and when they find a Muslim (how do they know?) eating a falafel sandwich, snatch it away and fling it into the mud?
Falafel, in KL? Naah, maybe some Roti Chanai?