Why Muslims, too , are rejecting the hudud

by Azly Rahman

I wrote these sentences on my Facebook status page this week:

“ …  SIMPLY PUT, ON THE HUDUD...

seriously speaking... i have a few questions:
you kidnap innocent girls and sell them, in the name of religion
you shoot girls in the face - those who only wish to go to schools
you rape women and put them on trial for immodest behaviour
you spew hatred towards people of other faiths and race
you ask those who disagree with you to leave the country
you do all these - in the name of protecting religion?
and now you wish to implement the hudud and force us to agree or you wage war against us?
what cult do you actually belong to? – ar

Malaysia is undergoing a rupture out of this growing complex debate on the Sharia law and the hudud. The Muslims are deeply divided on this issue, depending on how each understands the religion, judgments of who is more Muslim than others aside.

All Muslims are not created equal these days; each one is a complex construction of the history, culture, and politics of Islam. Even of the metaphysics of Islam. Most importantly education and socialisation are the twin pillars of this idea of ‘to have or not to have hudud’ or ‘to what extent must the Sharia law govern the lives of Muslims’.

Is a Muslim educated in Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or even Indonesia, or even Kelantan, created as equal as those educated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, Singapore, or even in Johor?

Which Muslim educated in which country and state has the right to impose the ideas of Sharia law and hudud more than those in other places?

Boko Haram Muslims in Malaysia?

Who has the right to say the ‘liberal Islam’ is less Islam than Boko Haram’s type of Islam? Why would Malays of the Islamic faith be kow-towing to the dictates of those other Malay-Muslim who not only are happy to be ignorant of Western foundational ideas but also think that because they are educated in Arab-speaking countries and louder in their chants for an Islamic state they have the right to speak about Islam and become guardians of the “morality of the ummah”?

What makes those calling for the implementation of a comprehensive Sharia, the hudud, en route to an ‘Islamic state’ think that all Muslims must also agree?

What makes them believe that these Malay-Muslims are not already fed-up and even nauseated by the urging for this or that type of ‘Islamic-ness’ which includes waging war on other races and religion in multicultural Malaysia - instead of waging peace and ensuring that Malaysia will not see the rise of Boko Haram’s type of Muslims?

Aren’t peace-loving Muslims in Malaysia more interested in having their children learn about diverse ideas to become world-wise citizens able to live is a complex and globalising world, rather than follow the urgings warning Muslims against ‘liberal ideas’ these Boko-Haram-inspired Muslims think only mean Western ideas that will turn human beings into lesbians, gays, bi-sexuals, and transgenders?

How obsessed with the libidinal and the sexual can these groups be?

Is that how much these Muslims understood what knowledge is about? Should we even care? Should progressive Muslims care when, in order to succeed in many ‘Western and infidel nations of liberal institutions of the advanced nations’ the foundational courses are all about ‘liberal ideas’?

Do you think these progressive Muslims are going to care about those ‘liberal-bashing’ Boko-Haram-inspired Muslims to discourage their children to even explore what ‘liberalism’ means?

And these ‘enemies of liberal ideas’ got their college/university degrees, did they not? Did they not learn about western and liberal ideas and pass their exams and at least learn a bit of good things about it?

This is a similar situation of the hypocrisy we see demonstrated in the case of those who oppose the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English. Many are distinguished professors who wrote their dissertations in English yet they are intoxicated by a strange out-of-whack nationalistic sentimentality, chose to produce hypocritical and damaging statements denying especially the Malay-Muslim children and youth of the importance of exploring liberal ideas and other languages including the English language; the lingua franca many of the Boko-Haram-type of Muslims would call “language of the infidels/kaffirs”.

Who need these kinds of Muslims and their urging for an ‘Islamic state’ when the stench of hypocrisy has filled the Malaysian air - like the poisoning of the sky through the Kuala Lumpur haze?

Think about it? - What actually is this hudud debate about? Who is benefitting from this?

Teach them well

Leave the fruitless debate on hudud and the Islamic state behind. They are not going to happen, most probably. Spend time and energy on good nation-building. Teach our children to make friends from people across cultures, religious beliefs, and the children of the wealthy having empathy over those working hard to get out of poverty.


Focus on getting our university students to create multicultural clubs and have loads of fun playing sports, playing music together, or simply have frequent teh tarik sessions together, and of course studying together and sharing and creating new knowledge together

If I were the education minister, these are the things I would work on and hold on to as top priority and not some ‘ranking’ of this or that or building more one-superior-race schools. I’d work on collaboration, cooperation, co-creation in everything - from the philosophy of education right till college teaching and learning and beyond.

We see time wasted on entertaining groups out to destroy each other in a Malaysia we all care for. We ought to be teaching each other to see life as a gift and to create a ‘state of peace’ in ourselves, our family, communities, and nation - rather than be obsessed in creating this or that ‘religious state’, in the process crafting a ‘we versus them’ enmity.

And some of you politicians have been the biggest culprits in nation-destroying rather than nation-building.

Aren’t we tired of all these?

So - where do we go from here?