Malaysia and Egypt: Another Case in the Muslim World of Stumbling From One Revolution To Another

PKR leaders decried the arrest of their colleague, Seri Muda seemblyman Shuhaimi Shafie, who has been released on bail but will be charged for sedition on Monday, advising Prime Minister Najib Razak to learn from Egypt's lesson that oppression was never the way to govern and injustice as overt as this would surely be answered by a people's uprising sooner or later.

"The authorities can go on using oppressive laws to silence the opposition but as we have seen in Egypt, charging someone under the Sedition Act is a cowardly way to deal with opposition and dissent. There's always a limit and consequences," PKR director of legal affairs Latheefa Koya told Malaysia Chronicle.

Regaining Selangor through all ways and means

Police had arrested Shuhaimi on Thursday and charged him under section 4(1) C of the Sedition Act 1948. He was later released him on a personal surety.

Last month, Shuhaimi was among those who spoke out against Najib's attempt to foist onto the Pakatan Rakyat administration in Selangor his own choice of a state secretary, Khusrin Munawi. Shuhaimi had posted his arguments against the move on his blog and also questioned the Selangor Sultan for allowing Najib to run roughshod over him.

Najib's Umno party immediately accused the PKR leader of committing treason against the Ruler. The Umno-owned Utusan newspaper also launched a concerted attack against Shuhaimi, and at one time piled so much pressure on him, speculation was rife that the party was trying to 'blackmail' him into defecting from PKR.

PKR or Parti Keadilan Rakyat is headed by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim and Selangor is Malaysia's richest state. To crush the rising influence of the opposition, Najib has vowed to regain Selangor through all means - fair or foul.

Khusrin, an Umno stalwart, is widely regarded as his point-man planted into the Selangor state government to lead a revolt using phantom voters in the next election, and if that fails, to stir up unrest with help of a volunteer paramilitary cadre, RELA.

"This is ridiculous, a clear case of niat jahat or malicious intent. It is obvious the police is working on Umno's orders to harass Selangor and to trigger trouble in the state," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.

We must challenge the Sedition Act

To protest Umno' high-handed action and to show the Malaysian people that they must stand unbowed in the fight to regain their democratic rights, Pakatan leaders in Selangor led by chief minister Khalid Ibrahim tabled a motion in the state legislative assembly. But while they gained 34 votes versus Umno's 20, the motion still failed because state laws require a two-thirds majority from the 56-seat assembly.

Najib's administration has also been compared to the dictatorships that existed in Tunisia and Egypt. Now, as turmoil unfolds in the Muslim world and despots are being fallen by popular uprising, many Malaysians have already spoken up and forecast a similar trend taking place here.

Meanwhile, human rights lawyer N Surendran called the charges against Shuhaimi a "disgrace".

"This is a disgraceful prosecution by the Attorney General. It is politically motivated and oppressive. The AG has once again proven that he is nothing more than an agent of the BN," Surendran, who is also a PKR vice president, told Malaysia Chronicle.

"I have mounted a legal challenge to the legality of the Sedition Act in the P Uthayakumar case which is now pending before the Court of Appeal. The decision that will be made will have an important bearing on Shuhaimi' case."

Through the decades, the Umno-led BN government has used a spread of antiquated and draconian laws such as the Sedition Act, the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Internal Security Act and the Official Secrets Act to control freedom of expression, leash the media and cling to political power.

Is Egypt's rebellion a coincidence, or is there something in Muslim culture that all too often perpetuates a vicious cycle?

As an Arab raised in the Muslim faith, I believe it's the latter. The reason is Sharia law. I was born in Gaza and raised in Cairo during the generation of the 1952 Nasser Egyptian revolution, which promised freedom, democracy, Arab nationalism, socialism, self rule and the end of oppressive colonial rule. My father held a prominent role in the revolution. But the revolution gave Egypt more of the same and even worse: more poverty, illiteracy, tyrannical dictatorships and a police state.

Egypt's rebellion that started last week has been lingering on the horizon for a very long time. The brutal life of the ordinary Egyptian was waiting for the right moment to explode. But instead of understanding what was surely coming, the 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak wasted every opportunity. He could have gone down in history as the first Arab leader to conduct a fair election and transfer power peacefully. Instead, following the many sad examples in the region, he kept re-electing himself for 30 years, grooming his son to take over.

Westerners often describe the current Egyptian government as secular, when in reality it is not. It is true that Mubarak comes from a military background and that he and his wife do not wear Islamic clothes. But no Muslim leader can get away with or even survive in office if he is secular in the true sense of the word. It was during Mubarak's rule in 1991 that Egypt signed the Cairo Declaration for Human Rights stating that Sharia Law supersedes any other law. So even though Sharia is not applied in Egypt 100 percent, it is officially the law of the land.

Mubarak, like all Muslim leaders, must appease the Islamists to avoid their wrath. According to Sharia itself, a Muslim head of state must rule by Islamic law and preserve Islam in its original form or be removed from office. Because of that law Muslim leaders must appear Islamic and anti-West while trying to get along with the rest of the world. It's a game with life and death consequences.

I am therefore not optimistic that the current uprising will bring democracy. Many Egyptians believe they can combine democracy with Sharia Islamic law. That is the first unrealistic expectation. Sixty percent of Egyptians want to live under Sharia law, but do not understand the ramifications. Many chant "Allahu Akbar" and "Islam is the solution." But the truth is, Islam can be the problem.

The most dangerous law in Sharia that stands in the way of democracy is the one that states, "A Muslim head of state can hold office through seizure of power, meaning through force." That law is why Muslim leaders turn into despots in order to survive. When a Muslim leader is removed from office by force, we often see the Islamic media and masses accept it and even cheer for the new leader who has just ousted or killed the former leader, who is often called a traitor to the Islamic cause.

That was what happened to the Egyptian King Farouk in 1952. The assassination of Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, followed many fatwas of death against him for having violated his Islamic obligations to make Israel an eternal enemy. He became an apostate in the eyes of the hard-liners and had to be killed or removed from office. This is the reality of what Sharia has done and is still doing that causes political chaos in the Muslim world.

Many in the Muslim world lack the understanding of what is hindering them, as well as the foundation for forming a stable democratic political system. I fear that my brothers and sisters in Egypt will embrace extremism instead of education. I worry that they will continue to rise and fall, stumbling from one revolution to another and living from one autocrat to another while seeking the ideal Islamic state that never was. The 1,400 year old Islamic history of tyranny will continue unless Sharia law is rejected as the basis of the legal and political systems in Muslim countries.

Nonie Darwish is the author "Now They Call Me Infidel" and "Cruel and Usual Punishment."