First things first: this is not an attempt to reconcile the Qur’an, Prophetic tradition, or classical Islamic thought with the cause of LGBTQ rights. Others more qualified than myself are doing that work. In fact, my argument depends somewhat on such a project being impossible. Let’s take for granted that Islam has no room for the accommodation of homosexuality - ignoring not only the efforts of reformist scholars, but also the numerous queer Muslims who are at peace with their bodies, hearts, and Creator. For a moment, let’s pretend that these intersections do not exist.
Labelling lawyer Ambiga Sreenevasan “dajal” (antichrist), Malay right-wing group Perkasa has demanded action against her for ‘promoting deviant teachings in encouraging homosexuality’.
If the question of Islamic doctrine has already been answered, then our next question is how the Muslim community should treat a community with which it shares nothing. Prop 8’s overturning interrupted the latest anti-Islamic hysteria, the proposals to ban niqab in Europe and uproar over New York’s so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” I oppose niqab bans and support the Cordoba House, because I believe in the rights of Muslims to live among non-Muslims and be recognized as full citizens. I believe that Muslims should support same-sex marriage because this respect is not only something we take; we must also give. American Muslims do not have an argument against same-sex marriage that is morally superior to objections against the Cordoba House. It’s the same issue: America is debating itself as to whether minority communities can live openly and proudly by their own values.
No Hudud please, We’re Malaysians
By Zainah Anwar (10-02-11)ARE our politicians plain bad, crazy or stupid? In this divisive, corrosive, cynical political climate of ours, if I were the Opposition, I would jump and present my party as the party of first and obvious choice for the electorate. I would have not only welcomed the Prime Minister’s bold announcements in repealing those repressive laws and states of emergency, I would also up the ante and begin a public debate on how we as citizens should exercise and enjoy our Constitutional guarantees of fundamental liberties.
I would be planning over the next few months on how to build public opinion to hold the Government accountable and ensure that whatever alternative national security or public order laws that might emerge will uphold my fundamental freedoms.
I would want to make it politically very costly for the Government if it falls short or back-pedal on the promises of democratic reform it has made.
Instead, what do we get? An offer of the hudud law and its grim serving of chopped-off Muslim
hands and feet, and stoning to death! What kind of future is that?
And we have politicians, who supposedly hold the mantle of leadership, who simply and continually miss the point.
“It’s okay to implement the hudud law because it doesn’t affect non-Muslims.” So it’s okay for Muslims to be brutalised?
See what happens when the first Muslim hand gets chopped off for stealing a motorbike. What if a medical team is on standby to gather the chopped-off hand and the victim and run to Terengganu or fly to KL for the hand to be stitched back?
What if the thief was with a Chinese or Indian accomplice who was sentenced only to a few months’ imprisonment under the Penal Code while the Malay thief is now disabled and unable to get a job, and be forever publicly stigmatised?
Or really, could this be a conspiracy to make the Malays permanently physically disabled in order to justify affirmative action in perpetuity? I wonder.
“Non-Muslims should shut up because it doesn’t affect them.” But they are Malaysian citizens who have every right to speak up on laws that allow for brutal and inhumane punishments against their fellow citizens, the majority population to boot.
Who wants to live in such a society when your neighbour, your friend, or your fellow citizen are subject to a cruel legal system?
How could I live with my conscience if I were a Chinese who has witnessed a rape, but my infidel evidence would not be accepted under the hudud law? No, I cannot keep quiet and accept such a law.
“Muslims who are not experts on Islam should shut up”. Then please take religion out of the public sphere and make it private between us and God. But not when I can be flogged 80 lashes for qazaf (slanderous accusation) if I report I have been raped and am unable to produce four pious and just Muslim males who witnessed the rape.
On top of that, my rape report could also be taken as confession of illicit sex and I could be charged for zina. And even if I could produce the four men, I would be torn apart wondering why four supposedly pious and just men watched me being raped.
And God forbid if I was single and became pregnant because of the rape. I would be charged for zina and lashed 100 times because my pregnancy is regarded as evidence of illicit sex.
The burden is on me, not the state, to prove I was indeed raped. The evidential requirements make this impossible. And the accused rapist will be free from any hudud punishment by simply denying the rape.
And we are all supposed to shut up? No wonder some of our political leaders are bent on their so-called “Islamic state” and “Islamic law” project because it is so easy to fly the flag of religion and silence dissenting voices.
Even of their political opponents – many of whom can only summon the courage to claim: “I am not against the Hudud law, but the time and conditions are not right to implement it.” There are hundreds of commands, exhortations, values and principles in the Quran that we ignore or violate on a daily basis.
The command for us to be kind and compassionate at all times, the duty of a man to provide and protect his wife and children, the obligation of a leader to be just and fair in his ruling are just a few of these.
And what does an Islamist party prioritise as the hallmark of its piousness? The Hudud law. Instead of having the political courage to say no to the Hudud law, once and for all on so many available grounds – Islamic, constitutional, human rights principles, lived realities – so many of their political opponents dither and hedge.
It is so tiresome that we the rakyat are subject to this again and again. Sisters in Islam wrote letters to the editor, published a book and submitted a memorandum to the Government, all objecting to the PAS attempts to introduce the Hudud law in Kelantan and Terengganu in 1993 and 2002 respectively.
When PAS recently announced it was shifting from its push for an “Islamic state” to a “welfare state”, many thought the leadership finally realised that its future lies with social justice transformation, not with a punitive and joyless Islam of gloom and doom.
On some issues, it was even looking more progressive than UMNO. But its Hudud law pronouncements have jolted us back to reality. So many in the PAS leadership and its rank and file remain stuck in medieval times, unable to imagine what justice should mean to an Islamist party in the 21st century and unable to envision what it means to be Muslim in a modern, democratic, progressive multi-ethnic, multi-religious Malaysia today.
I would want to make it politically very costly for the Government if it falls short or back-pedal on the promises of democratic reform it has made.
Instead, what do we get? An offer of the hudud law and its grim serving of chopped-off Muslim
hands and feet, and stoning to death! What kind of future is that?And we have politicians, who supposedly hold the mantle of leadership, who simply and continually miss the point.
“It’s okay to implement the hudud law because it doesn’t affect non-Muslims.” So it’s okay for Muslims to be brutalised?
See what happens when the first Muslim hand gets chopped off for stealing a motorbike. What if a medical team is on standby to gather the chopped-off hand and the victim and run to Terengganu or fly to KL for the hand to be stitched back?
What if the thief was with a Chinese or Indian accomplice who was sentenced only to a few months’ imprisonment under the Penal Code while the Malay thief is now disabled and unable to get a job, and be forever publicly stigmatised?
Or really, could this be a conspiracy to make the Malays permanently physically disabled in order to justify affirmative action in perpetuity? I wonder.
“Non-Muslims should shut up because it doesn’t affect them.” But they are Malaysian citizens who have every right to speak up on laws that allow for brutal and inhumane punishments against their fellow citizens, the majority population to boot.
Who wants to live in such a society when your neighbour, your friend, or your fellow citizen are subject to a cruel legal system?
How could I live with my conscience if I were a Chinese who has witnessed a rape, but my infidel evidence would not be accepted under the hudud law? No, I cannot keep quiet and accept such a law.
“Muslims who are not experts on Islam should shut up”. Then please take religion out of the public sphere and make it private between us and God. But not when I can be flogged 80 lashes for qazaf (slanderous accusation) if I report I have been raped and am unable to produce four pious and just Muslim males who witnessed the rape.
On top of that, my rape report could also be taken as confession of illicit sex and I could be charged for zina. And even if I could produce the four men, I would be torn apart wondering why four supposedly pious and just men watched me being raped.
And God forbid if I was single and became pregnant because of the rape. I would be charged for zina and lashed 100 times because my pregnancy is regarded as evidence of illicit sex.
The burden is on me, not the state, to prove I was indeed raped. The evidential requirements make this impossible. And the accused rapist will be free from any hudud punishment by simply denying the rape.
And we are all supposed to shut up? No wonder some of our political leaders are bent on their so-called “Islamic state” and “Islamic law” project because it is so easy to fly the flag of religion and silence dissenting voices.
Even of their political opponents – many of whom can only summon the courage to claim: “I am not against the Hudud law, but the time and conditions are not right to implement it.” There are hundreds of commands, exhortations, values and principles in the Quran that we ignore or violate on a daily basis.
The command for us to be kind and compassionate at all times, the duty of a man to provide and protect his wife and children, the obligation of a leader to be just and fair in his ruling are just a few of these.And what does an Islamist party prioritise as the hallmark of its piousness? The Hudud law. Instead of having the political courage to say no to the Hudud law, once and for all on so many available grounds – Islamic, constitutional, human rights principles, lived realities – so many of their political opponents dither and hedge.
It is so tiresome that we the rakyat are subject to this again and again. Sisters in Islam wrote letters to the editor, published a book and submitted a memorandum to the Government, all objecting to the PAS attempts to introduce the Hudud law in Kelantan and Terengganu in 1993 and 2002 respectively.
When PAS recently announced it was shifting from its push for an “Islamic state” to a “welfare state”, many thought the leadership finally realised that its future lies with social justice transformation, not with a punitive and joyless Islam of gloom and doom.
On some issues, it was even looking more progressive than UMNO. But its Hudud law pronouncements have jolted us back to reality. So many in the PAS leadership and its rank and file remain stuck in medieval times, unable to imagine what justice should mean to an Islamist party in the 21st century and unable to envision what it means to be Muslim in a modern, democratic, progressive multi-ethnic, multi-religious Malaysia today.
Footnote: I just noticed this article in the Columnist section of The Star (www.thestar.com.my). It is written by a Malaysian public intellectual, Zainah Anwar of the Sisters in Islam, for whom I have the highest regard.
A prolific writer and author, Zainah has the unique quality about her: she is articulate and has lots of conviction and guts to take issues on like Hudud and the status of Malaysian women. She writes in a very highly readable style and conveys her message to her readers with such gusto and elegance.
Thank you, Zainah. And shame on PAS, Dr. Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, and others who are promoting hudud failing to recognise that Malaysia is a plural society and we are all Malaysians.–Din Merican
Ibrahim Ali’s pipe dream of fighting for the Malay is as fantastic as thinking we can resurrect the Dodo by cross breeding pigeon with ostriches. The assertion that only Malays are superior, and yet lagging behind at the same time, actually insults the very idea of what it means to be Malay.
"'Modern Malays' are an admixture of races," said Professor Zilfalil Alwi, whose paper "Asal Usul Melayu Berdasarkan Fakta Genetik" (Tracing the Origins of the Malays by Analysing Genetic Data) discusses a three-year study involving around 50,000 volunteers. "Nowadays you can't tell the difference whether someone is Chinese or Malay by appearance alone," he added.
Truly Asia
Science has proven, that the Malays are probably really “Truly Asia” in the literal sense. The research discovered that the Malays in these sub-ethnic groups (the Malay Bugis, Malay Jawa, Malay Minang, Malay Kedah and Malay Kelantan) were genetically composed of some Proto-Malay (orang asli Melayu), Semang and Indian DNA, with at least 20 per cent Malay and and 52 per cent Chinese DNA.
Thus, the pivotal question now is how Malay is Malay enough? Because genetically, there is no mention of pure-blood Malays - so what would next best constitute a real Malay? The answer is not as Ibrahim Ali or his patron Mahathir Mohamad would want us to believe, perhaps because the truth would straightaway spell doom for Perkasa, the so-called and self-proclaimed protector of all things Malay in Malaysia.
Ibrahim Ali and Mahathir, the former premier, already shame all Malays by perpetuating the false thinking that there is such a thing as pure-blood Malays, born with the right to lord over all the other ethnic groups residing in Malaysia. The fact is that a pure-blood Malay is a myth and the term Malay in Malaysia is an act of law and not a blood or genetic type.
Defined by the Constitution and rooted in the Social Contract
The meaning of Malay is actually constituted by the Federal Constitution through Article 160 (2) : “Malay” means a person who professes the religion of Islam, habitually speaks the Malay language, conforms to Malay custom and—(a) was before Merdeka Day born in the Federation or in Singapore or born of parents one of whom was born in the Federation or in Singapore, or is on that day domiciled in the Federation or in Singapore; or (b) is the issue of such a person".
Thus, any Muslim who speaks the Malay language is already on the verge of being identified by law as a Malay. The delusion of Ibrahim Ali and Perkasa, when they scream of championing 'Malay' rights and supremacy by attacking and demonizing non-Malays, is thus fundamentally wrong.
By trying their best to kick every other ethnic group out of the country, Ibrahim Ali, Perkasa and UMNO are also demeaning their own ancestry. The fact is most of the leaders in the government are themselves a mix-mash of ethnic groups and nowhere near being pure-blood Malays. Safe to say, the Orang Asli, the natives of Sabah and Sarawak, have greater claim to ethnic purity than the Malays yet they do not use their genetic makeup to lord over the others as viciously as Ibrahim Ali, Perkasa or UMNO do.
The Malays form the government because the other ethnic groups allow them to be so. The Malays also form the government because peppered throughout the Federal Constitution are safe-guards that protect and shield the Malay community. Perkasa and Ibrahim Ali are actually irrelevant to the cause of protecting the Malays. There is no need for them to do this because the Constitution already does it.
Outnumbered by the non-Malays
So, how Malay can a Malay be? A better proposition is to look at the Malays as stewards responsible for the safety and well-being of all other ethnic groups living in Malaysia.
The claim by many Malay leaders that the Malays are also the majority stakeholders in Malaysia is false because they are actually outnumbered by the non-Malays. The fact is, collectively, the non-Malay (including the bumiputera) form the majority of the population and can lay claim to being the real king-makers and not Perkasa as Ibrahim Ali likes to brag.
To be a true Malay would also necessitate being a protector of those who are non-Malay since this is the responsibility granted by the non-Malays to the Malays as implied in the social contract drawn up during the Merdeka days.
The bottom-line is, Ibrahim Ali, Perkasa and some of the notorious UMNO leaders are totally irrelevant when they discuss what it means to be Malay because in truth, there is no such thing as a real pure-blood Malay.
There is a strong temptation—I myself had felt it at one time—for Muslims to seek acceptance by insisting that in America’s culture war, we hold much in common with the Christian Right. Some Muslims would contend that Islam is not anti-American at all, precisely because their values align with the Latter-Day Saints who organized and funded for Prop 8. On some level, this seems natural, and it’s not totally off the mark. However, it also imitates an ugly precedent in American history: European immigrants who, when treated with scorn and suspicion by Anglo-Saxons, sought acceptance as fully “white” by joining in the lynching of black people.
Muslims who think that a shared Abrahamic morality makes them more American are missing something big: the defining “culture war” of this moment is not Queer vs. Straight, Islam vs. the West, or Christians vs. Non-Christians: it is Tolerance vs. Intolerance, Equality vs. Inequality. In this war, as Intolerance pulls out its hair with panic and issues the same irrational screams about Muslims and Queers (They’re imposing their ways on us! They’re taking over! They’re destroying America!), the overturning of Prop 8 and the apparent triumph of the Cordoba House are victories for the same side.
For Muslims who oppose same-sex marriage on religious and moral grounds: stay true to yourselves. Teach your values to your children. Pour your opinions into books and hand them out on street corners. Establish mosques in which homosexuality is denounced every Friday afternoon; but do so with the knowledge that in our real culture war, there are all kinds of people who will defend your place in American life. This includes not only a wide spectrum of Muslims, but also non-Muslims: Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals.
Yes, the American Muslim community has gay friends. There are homosexuals who will stand with Muslims and support a religion that, at least in popular interpretations, condemns them to the point of capital punishment and otherworldly hellfire. In the name of upholding one aspect of Islamic tradition, however, some of us will refuse to return the favor. We will ask to be treated as equals by those who are different from us, but turn our backs when they ask the same.
That’s a bad way to do business, and I can’t believe that it would be a Sunna.
It was really my hope to avoid getting into religion, because I’ve said that this is not a religious issue; but I’m stuck on the narratives of our first hijra, our flight from persecution at the hands of the Meccans. Unable to achieve safety and dignity for the Muslims in Mecca, the Prophet sent them to Ethiopia, to live under the protection of a kind Christian king. As Islam opposes the idea that God could beget a son, the Meccans used this theological divide to argue that the king should not grant asylum to Muslims; but intolerance lost out, and the Muslims lived in peaceful cooperation with their new Christian friends.
From what I understand, the sin of regarding a man as God is a far worse offense against classical Islam than butt sex; but the Prophet placed his community in the care of a man who worshiped Jesus Christ. For me, the lesson is that Muslims can in fact be good neighbors. While we’re talking Sunna, let’s remember this hadith: “Not one of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” If all Americans are our brothers and sisters, let us care for them and accept care from them.
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