MARCH 27 — PAS, ex-CJ Ahmad Fairuz and all others who believe that God’s law can do what man-made law has failed to do are like ostriches with heads stuck in the sand.
They have not shown any evidence to support their stance. All they do is to keep invoking the name of God to claim they are right. And since it is from God, these self-appointed agents of God do not want anyone to question them, not because God said so but probably for fear of not being able to have an intelligent discussion on the subject.
Further, not allowing discussion, their egos are fed with the feel of power over the rest of the people who are enslaved to them. And this guarantees them the security of their high pedestals.
The claim by PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man that man-made laws have failed to build a harmonious society is false. It is not a fact, but an opinion, a perception. It reflects inability to look beyond one’s nose.
Firstly, if he looks at man-made laws carefully, he will find that they are based on God’s laws.
Secondly, man-made laws as well as God’s laws are implemented or enforced by the same mammal — the human being.
Thirdly, if the salesmen of so-called God’s law(s) are unaware of it, may they be reminded that laws, any laws, do not by their very existence in the statute books make people obedient to them.
Fourthly, if man-made laws, and even God’s laws, have not built a harmonious society, the problem is not the laws but the way the laws are implemented or enforced by the mammal that proudly calls itself a human being, the best of all life on earth.
If that intelligent being has failed to make his laws, and God’s laws, create a harmonious society, he should stop blaming man-made laws and declaring God’s laws as the panacea to society’s ills. Instead he should be using his intelligence, if he really has it, to find the cause(s) of the failures of man-made, or even God’s laws, to create a “harmonious society”.
For example, corruption is neither allowed under man-made laws nor under God’s law. Yet, the recent past has seen so many high ranking civil servants being arrested by the MACC, mostly Muslims. I don’t know how God’s law would deal with it, but under man-made laws it is a crime. So why has corruption become so rampant when these people would also have learnt in their religious lesson that corruption is forbidden by God. So is it not a failure of God’s law also? But Hadi’s RUU 355 says nothing about corruption!
Please look beyond your noses. Please study the causes of the failure of both man-made and Gods’ laws to create a “harmonious society”. You cannot heal the upper part of a dying tree if the roots are being eaten by white ants and you do nothing about that. The healing has to start with the roots.
You don’t have to go far. Just look at the discipline in our schools. If tender age children, yet in their formative years, can exhibit such irreligious, indisciplined behaviour despite all the religious teaching, despite all the moral education, will they grow up to create a “harmonious society”?
If we have failed to create a “harmonious society” it is for one principal reason, and that is that all the wise religious leaders, the learned people, the educationists, the criminologists, the psychologists of today have snubbed the wisdom of our forefathers who had succinctly and very correctly laid down the rule “tatkala lagi rebung tiada dipatah, ketika sudah jadi aur apa gunanya”? [If a bamboo is not bent or shaped when it is still a tender shoot, what is the use of trying to bend it when it has matured?] and the English saying “spare the rod and spoil the child.”
Study why the schools have failed and continue to fail to develop a “harmonious society” in schools which will grow into a “harmonious society” in adulthood. This is the root of the problem. This is the reason why we don’t have a harmonious society of adults today. The harmonious societies of the past were made by the well-disciplined children that grew up to make those societies.
The other reason is because the law-enforcement agencies have been closing eyes to the breaches of man-made laws such as the anti-corruption law. It is only after decades of the Auditor General’s reports having been highlighting rampant “acts of stupidity” in paying exorbitant prices for government procurement that the MACC has got into the act. How many will actually be sent to jail is yet to be seen. Similarly with other enforcement agencies.
It is by having given face to law-breakers that we have not been able to create a harmonious society. This is not the fault of man-made laws which have been around since before Merdeka. Yet at that time we had a very harmonious society.
So the “harmonious society” claims are just a red-herring for some other agenda of the RUU 355. The Mufti of Perlis has said it clearly that if Hudud is implemented it must apply to all as it would be unfair to Muslims if it is applied to them only. But he has also said that it can only be applied in a “harmonious society”.
But PAS and its supporters claim that it must be implemented to create a “harmonious society”!
Man has no business playing God and no man can claim to be doing things for and on behalf of God.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
