KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 4 — Non-Muslims must not comment on the execution of hudud, Islamist group Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) said today, despite the possible effects of the Islamic penal law on the community.
The group claimed that non-Muslims were not entitled to broach the subject, and must recognise the sovereignty of Islam and the Malay race as part of — according to Isma — the price the group paid in return for being given citizenships in this country.
“Non-Muslims do not have the rights to question the rights of Muslims to implement Islam as the perfect system for living in this country,” Isma president Abdullah Zaik Abd Rahman said in the group’s website here.
To back his argument, Abdullah insisted that Islam and the Malay community have held sovereignty over Malaysia for ages.
“Therefore, non-Muslims can be involved in politics to voice out the interests of their own races but there must be limits,” he added.
Abdullah also accused some non-Muslims lawmakers of being “greedy”, by interfering in the alleged exclusive rights and interests of the Malays and Bumiputera, whom he claimed are the original settlers of the land.
This comes as Kelantan prepares to propose two private bills in Parliament in its bid to remove any obstacles to its implementation of hudud by 2015.
DAP’s chairman Karpal Singh had criticised the move, calling the application of the Islamic penal code unconstitutional and ill-advised.
In Islamic jurisprudence, hudud covers crimes such as theft, robbery, adultery, rape, sodomy, making unproven accusations of adultery, causing physical hurt, drinking intoxicants, apostasy, and acts contrary to Islamic belief.
Shariah law is generally confined to Muslims, but can extend to non-Muslims if they are involved in aiding or abetting an offence committed by a Muslim.
At its annual congress in November last year, PAS revisited its bid to revise federal law to enable the nationwide enforcement of the strict Islamic penal code, which it had buried previously in the run-up to Election 2013.
The Islamist party introduced hudud in Kelantan and Terengganu, but has not been able to enforce them due to the conflict with federal constitution.
Political rival Umno has capitalised on PAS’ failure to enforce hudud in a bid to shore up support among the country’s dominant Malay-Muslim voters, claiming the party had strayed from its plan to form an Islamic state.
But both Umno and PAS face strong resistance from their coalition partners over the enforcement of hudud.
The Barisan Nasional’s Chinese component, MCA, and PAS’s allies from DAP and PKR have argued that hudud will turn Malaysia into an Islamic theocracy and dilute the country’s image as a multi-religious nation.
