Question For The Lawyers: Letter Of The Law or Spirit Of The Law ?

Article 3 of Federal Malaysian Constitution

1. Islam is the religion of the Federation; but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony in any part of the Federation.

2. In every State other than States not having a Ruler the position of the Ruler as the Head of the religion of Islam in his State in the manner and to the extent acknowledged and declared by the Constitution, all rights, privileges, prerogatives and powers enjoyed by him as Head of that religion, are unaffected and unimpaired; but in any acts, observance or ceremonies with respect to which the Conference of Rulers has agreed that they should extend to the Federation as a whole each of the other Rulers shall in his capacity of Head of the religion of Islam authorize the Yang di-pertuan Agong to represent him.

3. The Constitution of the States of Malacca, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak shall each make provision for conferring on the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall be Head of the religion of Islam in that State.

4. Nothing in this Article derogates from any other provision of this Constitution.

5. Notwithstanding anything in this Constitution the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall be the Head of the religion of Islam in the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Labuan; and for this purpose Parliament may by law make provisions for regulating Islamic religious affairs and for constituting a Council to advise the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in matters relating to the religion of Islam.

Hantu Laut

The United Kingdom has no codified constitution.Much of the British constitution is embodied in the written form, within statutes, court judgments and treaties and in other unwritten sources such as, constitutional convention and royal prerogatives.

Unlike Malaysia and most other countries of the world the U.K has no written constitution. She ran by convention. In layman's term it means " a way in which something is usually done".

Can we say the U.K has no constitution whatsoever?

Here, a lawyer, a so called constitutional expert and a member of the Bar Council and who has probably wasted a couple of years at law school says Malaysia has no official religion because the word "official" is missing from Article 3 of the Malaysian constitution in which Islam was prescribed as the state's religion.

Article 3 of the Malaysian constitution, should it be "letter of the law or spirit of the law"? A question for the legal fraternity.

Are lawyers trained to differentiate between the two or were just taught to parrot everything they learned from the law book.

On the other hand, we have dummies who says the prime minister of Malaysia must be a Muslim and a Malay.These dummies probably do not have a copy or have never seen a copy of the Malaysian constitution, let alone read it, but got enough balls to go to the press and say their piece.

Malaysia has a written constitution.We are not governed by convention.Just because historically we had only Malay/Muslim prime ministers it does not mean that is the law of the land.Person of any faith can become prime minister if he enjoyed majority support in Parliament.

Of course, there are smart lawyers and and not so smart lawyers.

They say, smart lawyers go into private practice and make lots of money and the not so smart lawyers joined politics and make even more money than the smart lawyers.The worst of the lot are bad lawyers, those pretty useless ones in private practice, wanting to keep up with the Joneses but can ill afford it, next thing you know they were doing shady deals and some would run away with their client's money.

So, not all lawyers are smart.

Abraham Lincoln, a self-educated man, who became a lawyer and went on to become the 16thPresident of the United States said in one of his famous speeches "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt"t