Hudud rears its ugly again

Islam has been said by Muslims to be part of the Abrahamic faith, thus it is not surprising the retributive justice principle — the punishment must match the injury, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth — is indeed derived from both the Jewish Torah (Old Testament in Exodus 21:22-25 and Deuteronomy 19:16-21) and the Christian Gospel (New Testament in Matthew 5:38-42).

Bob Teoh, The Malaysian Insider

The hudud controversy has the habit of raising its ugly head whenever elections are around the corner. This piece of Syariah legislation is a bane to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike and has no place in our statute books as it stands.

It’s timely that Prime Minster Najib Razak has said that although hudud laws are accepted in Islam, the reality is that they cannot be implemented in Malaysia.

PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub said just as much that hudud laws are “imposible” to implement so there is no need to discuss such things.

That being the case, both the ruling coalition and the Opposition must immediately pledge they will refrain from allowing the hudud controversy to be manipulated into an electioneering platform. This much they owe Malaysians.

Sadly, some are quick to offer a quick-fix that hudud laws should be applied to Muslims only while sparing the non-Muslims. This is offensive simply because under our Federal Constitution, all citizens are equal before the law. No one is above the law nor out of it.

In such a dualistic legal system, in a crime like zina (fornication), the Muslim so accused is subject the harshness of hudud while a non-Muslim party who may be equally culpable, escapes such its severe punishment. How can that be fair? It takes two to clap after all.

Even if it is restricted to Muslims, the law is equally obnoxious, particularly to Muslim women. For instance, Hajjah Nik Noriani bte Dato Nik Badli Shah in her paper, “Hudud Laws and its Implications on Women (1994)”, points out that according to the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code (II) Enactment 1993, in the case of zina, pregnancy or delivery of a baby by an unmarried woman shall constitute evidence on which to find her guilty of zina unless she can prove to the contrary.

The gender bias is also heightened by the fact that only men can be witnesses in such trials.

The Terengganu Syariah Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Bill, or the Hudud Bill, was introduced by Pas in 2002 when it was in power there but was never implemented as is in the case of Kelantan.

Let’s be clear. No one is against Muslims wanting to introduce Islamic jurisprudence but unless we can resolve the cruel an-eye-for-an-eye retaliatory nature of qisas with compassion, we will all end up blind.

The Qur’an demands justice to be tempered with compassion. That much is clear. That is why all the 114 Surahs except for Surah Al Tawbah, begins with invoking the Bismillah, a God who is compassionate and merciful. We cannot turn a blind eye to this doxology.

Hudud in Arabic means “limit” or “restriction” and usually refers to certain crimes like theft, fornication, consumption of alcohol, and apostasy. Hudud is one of four categories of punishment in Syariah that includes qisas following the Biblical principle of an-eye- for-an-eye (Surah Al-Ma’idah verse 45).

Islam has been said by Muslims to be part of the Abrahamic faith, thus it is not surprising the retributive justice principle — the punishment must match the injury, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth — is indeed derived from both the Jewish Torah (Old Testament in Exodus 21:22-25 and Deuteronomy 19:16-21) and the Christian Gospel (New Testament in Matthew 5:38-42).

However, the Jewish religious establishment over the ages were able to reinterpret and humanise such strict codes in the Torah by adapting to the changing environment. For instance, a person who has injured the eye of another is instructed to pay compensation instead. It defined and restricted the extent of retribution in the laws of the Torah.

The Gospel of Jesus involves a paradigm shift – from revenge to forgiveness: Matthew 5:38-39 - (Jesus said )”You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.

The severity of the Torah is given a touch of compassion by the teaching of the Christ that empowers the one seeking revenge to become a channel of God’s grace. This is only because the heart of the Gospel is forgiveness.

The issue of qisas gained attention only recently when Ameneh Bahrami, an Iranian woman blinded in an acid attack, demanded that her attacker, Majid Movahedi, be blinded as well. A court had backed her demand. He attacked Ameneh in 2004 after she had refused his offer of marriage, leaving her severely disfigured.

Ameneh made a last minute retraction of this demand, requesting on the day on which the punishment was due to be carried out that her attacker be pardoned.

“I did it for my country, since all other countries were looking to see what we would do,” she was reported as saying.

“I never wanted to have revenge on him. I just wanted the sentence to be issued for retribution. But I would not have carried it out. I had no intention of taking his eyes from him.”

Her mother was quoted as saying: “I am proud of my daughter... Ameneh had the strength to forgive Majid. This forgiveness will calm Ameneh and our family.”

Regardless of whether we are Muslims or non-Muslims, we don’t need another personal tragedy like this to tell us the world we live in is not ready for hudud or qisa.

* Bob Teoh reads The Malaysian Insider.