PETALING JAYA - A cartoon by UMNO's right-wing daily Utusan Malaysia suggesting that Islamic law condones rape has been condemned by PAS and Muslim scholars, urging the authorities to act. But it also highlights a common distortion of the Shariah's stand on rape, reinforced several years ago by none other than Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Kelantan PAS Youth said that by publishing the insulting cartoon, the paper was suggesting that Islam was unjust in its requirement for four credible witnesses who saw an act of illicit sex taking place.
Muslim Scholars Association of Malaysia (PUM) meanwhile urged the National Fatwa Council and muftis in the country to state their stand, adding that the matter should not be taken lightly as the paper had clearly insulted Islam.
“This should not be ignored," said PUM president Sheikh Abdul Halim Abd Kadir in a statement.
“They should have consulted the experts in such issues (about Islamic criminal law) before churning out any material.
“We demand that the cartoonist and the paper be charged for insulting Islam," he added.
The cartoon shows two scenes of a complaint by a woman who says she has been raped. In the first scene, a village head wearing a turban turned down her complaint because she cannot produce four human witnesses, and can provide a mobile phone video recording. In the second dialogue, a policeman accepts her video recording as evidence.
While the cartoonist's message remains blur, it is clearly referring to the sex accusation surrounding Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, in which former Melaka chief minister and two others produced a video showing a man resembling Anwar engaging in illicit sex.
Muslim scholars have however insisted that the three could be subjected to qazaf, or the Shariah crime of accusing someone of illicit sex without producing four credible witnesses.
Dealing with rape under Shariah
The Shariah's stand on the crime of rape has been the subject of a common argument due to critics comparing the crime to adultery, basing their claim on the Quranic verse warning accusers to produce four witnesses.
None other than former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is one of them, telling the UMNO general assembly several years ago that the Shariah's strict requirement for four witnesses would only allow a woman being raped.
"If four witnesses were to merely watch a woman being raped and not attempt to help her, would they not be regarded as having sinned (for allowing a woman to be raped) and are not be fit to be witnesses?” he said.
Not long ago, Pakistan had been criticised by Shariah experts for distorting Islamic laws by requiring four witnesses even in cases of rape, sparking calls for a revision of such laws.
The majority of Muslim scholars have however classified rape under the category of hirabah (highway robbery or terrorism), and hence rapists are to be punished according to the hirabah laws, as highlighted in the Qur’an.
- Harakahdaily
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