Saturday, February 7, 2015

Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin if Malaysia is a computer then PAS is its default operating system.

the birth of Prophet Jesus Christ who gave a new meaning to human existence from here to eternity,o been surfeit with earth-shaking eventualities that have been pregnant with seeds of ominous consequences. , Pas’s bargaining chip. You give me hudud and I give you council elections?As a Muslim leader, one would have expected Hadi to show the world, that Islam can be good for all, not to stab a friend and ally in the back. In his old age, he isn’t getting wiser or more tolerant, but descended onto foolish stupidity and racial extremism. His actions has shown his outdated-ness, archaic, outmoded, antiquated, egoistic and a religious fraud who speaks with his foot in the mouth.
 PAS existential dilemma gets more pronounced. The party, founded on the Taliban ideology, has failed to come to terms with the changing political narrative in recent years. Even veteran leaders like  and were not spared when they tried to do what was seen as course correction. PAS' Parit Buntar MP Mujahid Yusof Rawa has expressed reservation about his party's push for hudud in Kelantan and its plans to table the theocratic law in Parliament next month.

  PAS Taliban individuals significantly alter the course of Malaysia  a combination of an insatiable lust for power and religious militants in cahoots  PAS under Hadi is a Taliban party which disregards the reality that people are suffering; Kelantan PAS is still doing little except expect outside help at most, to clean up and rebuild Kelantan. Mujahid and partners need to clean house
Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, former director-general of the Research, Treaties and International Law Department, speaks during a forum to commemorate Malaysia’s first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj in Kuala Lumpur today. She said Kelantan would be overrun by paedophiles if it implemented hudud. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Najjua Zulkefli, February 7, 2015.


Paedophiles will overrun Kelantan if it implements hudud as the Islamic law is open to abuse and rejects using scientific evidence to prove crime, says a spokesperson for the group of eminent Malays, or G25.
Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin said since it would be difficult to prove crimes like adultery, rape of children and adults will abound.
"This is the nature of PAS's hudud," she said.
Farida said Kelantan's hudud rejected the use of scientific methods such as DNA testing and fingerprints, instead requiring the evidence of four witnesses of the alleged crime."They are using evidence used in the 12th century to prove adultery, pushing out scientific methods.
"They are asserting that is the only way to prove the crime of adultery, which does not make sense," she said, adding that PAS leaders travelled in cars and planes but did not want to accept scientific evidence.
She added that Prophet Muhammad had also told his people about the importance of acquiring knowledge.
"The Prophet said that we should go in search of knowledge even up to China.”
Hudud neglects what we know today about economics and social science. We know that robbers don’t all rob because they’re bad, it’s because they’re often poor, sick or desperate. We know that sociopathy and psychopathy are personality disorders and that people are a product of their environment therefore evil acts are not Satanic manifestations in men. In that respect, not all women and men can be judged the same.
We know that just because four men didn’t witness a rape, it doesn’t mean that a woman has committed adultery. A woman is not the proverbial tree fallen in the forest so a rape kit will do just nicely to prevent her from getting stoned. Consider that if accusations of adultery are punishable too then Mahathir should get a huge walloping for what he’s dragged Anwar through.
Another inconsistency with hudud is that in Islam you can’t amputate livestock if you want to consume their flesh because it’s inhumane but then if a man steals you can amputate his hands. I don’t see the justice here. Taking away the hands of a man who steals because he is hungry is a low blow.
We know that people are capable of reform and that humanity is largely good before it is bad. We know that people can change when they are treated with kindness and given an education or opportunities, not stoned by various sizes of rock. People can’t be ‘scared away’ from crime. Dead men don’t learn. Deterrents are what you tell children to make them finish their dinner. The human conscience should be guided by reason, not fear if you want meaningful change hence the importance of education and independent thought.
Another thing about hudud is that it deals with petty misdemeanours excessively. Theft and adultery are the things of tabloids. There are worse crimes out there with extremely lenient sentences like wildlife trafficking and animal abuse. The monstrosity of it all is that child marriage is legal in Malaysia under Islamic law. Politicians and developers get away with building dams and deforestation, crony capitalism and corruption.
How does hudud address these bigger issues? Hudud has no place in a society whose priorities have changed. It’s perfectly medieval. If we thought that ISA abuse was bad, hudud will be far worse because our religious authorities are government-funded. Ultimately the people whose lives will be endangered the most will be Muslims themselves yet – none of us live in a bubble. We all have Muslim family members and friends. Because of certain Islamic laws in place, the number of Muslims in the country is growing artificially.
No one will be unaffected by hudud. Not even non-Muslims. Hudud is not going to frighten people from committing crime. It’s just going to make people afraid of Islam. Religious freedom in Malaysia is on its death bed as it is. Should we be entertaining a debate on something that is only going to make things worse?
Even Mahathir has pointed out that the poor are the most likely to commit crime and that the majority of Malaysians living in poverty themselves are Malays, the very people whom ISMA, PAS and Perkasa are trying to defend in the first place – when they’re not fighting to implement hudud.
So no, this isn’t a discussion that needs to take place between Muslims and non-Muslims but between the proponents and opponents of hudud. For this discussion to go further, Malaysian Muslims and non-Muslims, need to be assured that opposing hudud does not mean opposing Islam.
It also helps for contemporary Muslim scholars who oppose hudud to chime in so there can be fair discussion. I understand why people might suggest that we tone down emotional language by not using words like “barbaric” or “inhumane” in discussions on hudud but I don’t think it helps to dumb a conversation down for the mere sake of diplomacy. Call a fork a fork because most of our politicians won’t and that’s why they’re wasting their breath on hudud and not education, the environment or the economy.
You know, stuff that politicians should really be talking about.Most politicians (save for the dearly departed Karpal Singh) continue to play it safe by avoiding the topic because hardly any of them have the guts to oppose religious authorities outright for fear of seeming anti-Islam, that is, if their Islam stood for violence and vengeance.
Ask the proponents of hudud why they are not as passionate about championing education and compassion first since Islam is a religion of peace and reason, as they say. Ancient Muslims were great philosophers, scientists and thinkers. Why should modern Muslims have to go back to where others left off thousands of years ago instead of evolving themselves? Especially in an age where people are learning faster than ever.
Muslims should submit to Allah, not to self-appointed ‘religious authorities’ who want to play Qada and Qadar by speaking and acting upon others on Allah’s behalf, which is worse than any Dutch cartoon or Aronofsky movie.
People should be entitled to have an unadulterated say on the big decisions to do with religion because it affects our private lives from the birth of our children to our funerals. Especially since we live in a country that refuses to acknowledge the part of our constitution that stipulates that Malaysia is a secular state. We should definitely be included on discussions on whether JAKIM officers should be given guns. I can’t believe I even have to say this out loud.
If Islam stood for good things then it should be a prerogative for Muslims to do the right thing even if that means acting contrarily to what others tell them their religion demands of them. Promote Ijtihad and reasoning. Stop dumbing people down with half-truths because it’s only turning us into really polite hypocrites.
Hudud is messed up. Just say it. Why should we get caught up by people who want to fight to be the Muslimest-Muslim they can possibly be but can’t even wrap their heads around what it means to be a Muslim or even just decent people in the first place? Kindness, compassion, respect for others should be the forefront of every God fearing man. Not suspicion and moral policing. While we are on this earth, people should be entitled to learn from their own mistakes.
Ultimately we all know the answer to this debate. Instil the fear of God in people through religious authority and people won’t be able to tell the difference between the fear of God or the fear of men. At the end of the day, hudud is not a conversation about Allah’s will but the supremacy of a few men trying to play Allah because we refuse to separate religion from state. So what’s unIslamic about opposing hudud then?
The intricacies of the cases continue to be subjected to close and critical scrutiny in the new media. But the larger picture they reveal hasn’t attracted the requisite attention: the growing disconnect between the “hardware” and the “software” of Malaysia democracy. The “hardware” of democracy include legislative and executive institutions Parliament, state assemblies, etc, the judiciary, official statutory and non-statutory bodies, political parties and the media. And the “software” relates to the observance of rules and regulations, conventions and precedents to enable the institutions to function in a transparent, accountable and effective manner. What is the record? Judged according to these standards, our Parliament and state assemblies are little more than a hotbed of interminable intrigue, confrontation, mud-slinging, filibustering and sometimes also outbursts of violence. This numbs the nerves of the executive and paralyses the legislature. The one cannot govern while the other cannot enact laws, adopt policies or, so far as the opposition is concerned, even act as a watch-dog of the government of the day. What stands out, therefore, is a mockery of their constitutional responsibilities.
‘White lies’by PAS are a necessary lubricant to keep the wheels of democracy turning You know only too well Democracy is totally dependent on white lies called ‘election manifestos’, in which political candidates promise you the sun, moon and all the stars of zodiac, in return for your vote. You know, and they know, that after you vote for them, you’re not going to see them, till the next election, and that you’re never going to see all those goodies they promised you. But what the heck. You vote for them anyway. All for the sake of a white lie – a truth untold – called democracy. Which is not only our manifest, but our manifesto destiny.The political parties are no better. Their public spats are less about policies and programmes and more about the acquisition of power and pelf. Many of them are akin to privately-controlled family businesses like DAP. Inner-party democracy is a rumour to them
Our Parliament and state assemblies are little more than a hotbed of interminable intrigue, confrontation, mud-slinging, filibustering and sometimes also outbursts of violence.Judged according to these standards, this numbs the nerves of the executive and paralyses the legislature. The one cannot govern while the other cannot enact laws, adopt policies or, so far as the opposition is concerned, even act as a watch-dog of the government of the day. What stands out, therefore, is a mockery of their constitutional responsibilities.
A few high-profile cases reveal how much democracy’s ‘software’ lags behind its ‘hardware’   intricacies of the cases continue to be subjected to close and critical scrutiny in the media. But the larger picture they reveal hasn’t attracted the requisite attention: the growing disconnect between the “hardware” and the “software” of Malaysian democracy. The “hardware” of democracy include legislative and executive institutions (Parliament, state assemblies, the judiciary, official statutory and non-statutory bodies, political parties and the media. And the “software” relates to the observance of rules and regulations, conventions and precedents to enable the institutions to function in a transparent, accountable and effective manner. What is the record?


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