SEPT 29 — Has PAS decided it is better to continue ruling a state or two than take a shot at running the country and maybe lose a state or two? It certainly looks like it when Nik Aziz Nik Mat reiterates his insistence on turning Kelantan into a medieval caliphate, complete with gibbets, stoning and amputations.
But why is the issue of implementation of hudud, which is after all a part of wider sharia, such an emotive issue that it has the potential to dramatically affect electoral fortunes? Why are the likes of Mahathir Mohamad, Chua Soi Lek, Nik Aziz, Lim Guan Eng and Karpal Singh so invested in this issue to issue rapid fire statements in this regard?
There are significant differences of opinion not only between PR and BN, but internally too between Umno and the MCA, and between the DAP and PAS.
Clearly while the image of Malaysian Islam is at stake, the issue goes beyond being an internal Muslim community debate. At its core it is actually a debate between liberals and conservatives, tradition and modernity, regression and progress, and the state versus the individual.
While the concept and principles of hudud may be relatively benign, it is the eye-catching nature of the punishments that distort perception. Logically, is there a big difference in hanging people or beheading them, or between flogging people behind bars or in public?
The conflict arises because in the Western paradigm of progress, justice must shift broadly from a retributive to a rehabilitative paradigm. Therefore, the increasing anger in the developed world over the execution of convicts.
In a broad sense the liberal worldview sees itself as focused on individual liberty and as such humane, reformist and modern, and conservatives as barbaric, retributive and medieval.
The conservative worldview equally believes in the primacy of social good and that the modern condition of an absence of shared values is leading to a soulless world plagued by rising crime, greed and anarchy, the solution to which is in a return to original guiding principles that fostered social cohesion in an earlier time.
Therefore, the perception of the nature and impact of hudud depends on how well these differing worldviews mirror our own.
Conservatives, whether Muslim or otherwise, feel much more comfortable with the status quo than with change. In an era of rapid technological driven change and rising economic uncertainty, they look for reassurance in that which is perceived as timeless such as traditional occupations, traditional social and familial bonds, and traditional spirituality and religion.
For this group the answers to the problems of modernity are all around in a past based on a set of unchanging values, whether it is caning our children if they break the rules or in chopping off the hands of those who steal.
Liberals on the other hand want to deal with the uncertainties of modernity by advocating even more change. Broadly in Malaysia, this seems to boil down to the advocacy of reform in every sphere.
Reform the police to reduce crime, reform the government to save the people and reform children through love. While we are at it why not just a general slogan of Reformasi?
But for a lot of everyday people the boundaries are not so clear cut. Especially in urban areas, people are forced to juggle the tightrope of both tradition and modernity.
The reaction to the very cosmopolitan demands of urban public life is often a retreat into tradition in our private lives. English at work and the vernacular at home, foreign holidays and balik kampung, respect for other races and faiths in public and looking down on them at home — these contradictions are real and present in what is termed Middle Malaysia.
This is why every politician recognises the power of this issue. Are rural voters who are comfortable with tradition more important the urban voters who have given up on the past in the quest for a brighter future?
Or is it the large mass of people in between who handle these apparently contradictory philosophies quite easily in their daily lives the most important?
So advocating an Islamic state may be a no brainer in Kelantan, as is advocating developed nation status in 2020 in Kenny Hills, but what about ordinary people who want a combination of both?
For Middle Malaysia, the answer may lie in espousing the middle ground. Is there a way to hold on to what is best in Malaysian tradition, culture and faith in a way that does not make Malaysia look out of step with the developed world?
Is there an interpretation and vision of sharia law that does not make moderate Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia feel like they are beginning to resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban? Is there an interpretation of hudud within sharia that allows for a marriage between traditional Islamic jurisprudence with the modernist notion of punishment that emphasises rehabilitation rather than revenge?
Finally, the benchmark to measure the desirability of any kind of change to the justice system should be whether the change narrows the differences between Malaysians of different philosophical and spiritual persuasions instead of raising mistrust.
In this instance the prime minister seems to have gotten it right when he says the spirit of hudud is already present in Malaysian sharia law, without its extremes.
* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.
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