Lame tak bace news. Tadi dapat tahu pasal ni (thanx to this sister who told me this), mebbe ramai dah tahu kot. So macam biase, cut and paste:
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 12 (IPS) - One Saturday night recently, Sarinah Majid, a 23-year-old accountant, was dancing the night away with her Chinese boyfriend at Zouks nightclub -- the most happening night spot in Malaysia's capital city.
Then suddenly the world, as she knew it, collapsed dramatically around her.''The music suddenly stopped, the lights came on and dozens of uniformed and plainclothes Islamic police were crowding the dance floor, shouting, gesticulating and ordering,'' said Sarinah using a pseudonym to avoid legal complications.
''What happened that night in January was humiliating, inhuman and thoroughly disgusting ... I felt ashamed to be a Muslim,'' Sarinah told IPS, relating to the shame and agony she and about 100 other Muslim youths suffered that night.Police from the Federal Territory's Islamic Department separated Muslims from non-Muslims.
While non-Muslims were told to party on, Muslims were herded into trucks and taken to the department's head office where the particulars of the youths were taken. They were held overnight and released the next day. They were then ordered to return for counseling sessions with Islamic clerics to learn the ''true'' Islam. Some will be prosecuted under 'syariah' laws for ''indecent behaviour.''
''They leered, jeered and ogled at us, took photographs of us and thoroughly humiliated us ... one of us even urinated in her pants out of shock and fright,'' Sarinah said.
''That night I became a criminal ... the Islamic police told me I had committed heinous sins forbidden by Islam,'' said Sarinah who studied at top schools here and in Australia.
''I have to appear before a 'syariah' court next month and be charged for indecent behaviour and punished accordingly.''
''I don't know what crime I had committed,'' she said spitting out the words with bitterness.
''I feel helpless and completely violated.''
Many moderate Muslims in the country are showing the same shock and anger felt by Sarinah. The incident has sparked a fiery debate focusing on morality and compulsion in Islam and the clash between a secular constitution that guarantees fundamental rights and freedom of choice and Islamic syariah laws that prescribes what a Muslim can wear and cannot and who he or she keeps company and where.
The raid at Zouks has shaken moderate Muslims and their fear and anger is palpable. Moderate Muslims had felt comfortable and safe with the election of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and the elevation of his Islam 'hadhari' or moderate Islam to official status. They had felt that the fundamentalist wave that had gripped the country with the ascendancy of the opposition Parti Islam se Malaysia of PAS was defeated and over.
''We were naïve to think fundamentalism was done away with when PAS was defeated at the polls last year and Abdullah announced his Islam 'hadhari','' said a prominent Muslim political analyst who declined to be named for fear of persecution by fundamentalist opponents.
Last March, Abdullah in his first election since taking over as prime minister swept through parliament with his coalition winning 198 out of the 219 parliamentary seats. The opposition only secured 20 seats with PAS seeing its number of seats decline from 27 in 1999 to just seven.
''Fundamentalism and intolerance runs very deep in Malay Muslim society,'' he told IPS.''It is everywhere in the schools, academia, media, politics and everyday life.''
''Muslims have few choices...our life is regulated and regimented,'' he said.
The constitution guarantees fundamental freedom for all citizens including Muslims. Nonetheless, Muslims are further governed by 'syariah' laws which each of the country's 13 states have enacted in the last decade. Within the capital, the applicable law is the Syariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act 1997. Section 19(1) prohibits Muslims from imbibing any intoxicating drink and Section 19(2) refers generally to the area of selling alcohol. Section 29 is the catchall killer that states ''any person who, contrary to Islamic Law, acts or behaves in an indecent manner in any public place shall be guilty of an offence.'' Under this vague section, Muslims are regularly arrested for ''indecent'' attire or behaviour like holding hands with someone from the opposite sex that is common among non-Muslims. Muslims charged under Section 29 usually plead guilty and quietly pay a fine usually under 1,000 ringgit (263 U.S. dollars). But this time the raid was on a top nightclub frequented by Muslim youths from influential upper class families with connections to powerful politicians. It is the cream of Malay society that was belittled and humiliated by the Islamic police. This law however does not specify what constitutes ''indecency''.
The question now is, is it an act of indecency to wear tight jeans or tank tops or dance at a nightclub where alcohol is served?
Human rights activist Elizabeth Wong points out that there is nothing in 'syariah' law that says a Muslim can't be in a club, cafe, bar, restaurant or venue that serves alcohol.
''There is nothing that says one can't dance or listen to very loud mind-numbing music,'' said Wong, a lawyer and director of HAKAM, a human rights organisation.
''The mere presence of Muslims in the nightclub does not constitute a criminal offence,'' she told IPS.''What constitutes indecent behaviour is also highly subjective.''
''The problem is not whether the religious authorities did their job in accordance with procedure. It's the existence of such laws that 'govern' moral behavior which violates fundamental liberties,'' she said.''These laws should never exist in the first place.''
Ape pandangan korang?
Hmm...teringat bulan lepas (rasenye laa) pasal Prince Henry pakai baju tentera nazi pegi "costume party". Kalo ikutkan dah name pon costume party, suke ati die laa kan nak pakai ape. Tapi betape yahudi pandang serius kat kes tuh (kalo tengok nampak cam kecik je hal tuh), siap suh minta maaf depan public lagi, xkire pangkat- kaye ke, miskin ke, tue ke, mude ke, tername ke, org kebanyakan ke.... and tak kire sekecik mane pon hal tuh.... Semangat tak diorg memperjuangkan kaum diorg?
Kite yang Islam nih camne? Agak2nye berani ke nak tentang orang berpangkat buat salah? Kawan sendiri pon tak berani nak tegur kadang2 tuh. Tambah lagi, kalo tengok news tadi tuh, terbalik pulak yang dipertahankan.
Moga2 kite dapat fikir dengan sebaik2nya. Wallahualam
1 comment:
hmmhmm... speechless..
Post a Comment