Bookstore wants Jawi to respect court ruling

Borders bookstore wants Jawi to drop criminal charges against its staff in the Syariah court and respect the written High Court judgment released last Friday.

PETALING JAYA: Borders bookstore is looking forward to the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) dropping criminal charges against its staff for distributing a book and respect the written judgment by the High Court.

The High Court in its written judgment released last Friday declared that Jawi’s action against Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz illegal.

Kuala Lumpur High Court Justice Zaleha Yusof said the applicants (Borders) had shown existence of illegality, abuse of discretionary powers, irrationality, unreasonable exercise of power, unconstitutionally and that there existed procedural impropriety on the part of the respondents (Jawi).

She said looking at the whole scenario of the case, it was hard not to agree with the applicants that there were elements of mala fide in the handling and carrying out of the actions of the respondents.

Nik Raina is scheduled to appear at the Syariah Court on the Aug 28.

The religious department raided Borders in The Gardens, Mid Valley City, on May 23 last year and seized copies of Irshad Manji’s controversial book, Allah, Liberty and Love.

Nik Raina was charged at the Syariah court for selling the book at the bookstore.

The Home Ministry had banned the book three weeks after the raid on June 14.

In March, Justice Zaleha ruled that the charge against Nik Raina for distribution of the book was an infringement of Article 7 of the Federal Constitution, which protected against making offences retrospective.

The judge also granted a judicial review application by Berjaya Books against Jawi, the Home Minister and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Islamic Affairs).