Ku Li takes swipe at Jakim and Islamic minister

Umno elder warns against religious bureaucracy, calls for Rulers' role to be strengthened.

PETALING JAYA: Umno elder statesman Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has warned against the growth of a religious bureaucracy and questioned the role of Jakim and the federal minister for Islamic affairs.

He criticised the misplaced vigour of local officials and self-styled religious authorities, and the “unbridled mushrooming of unsanctioned fatwas spread out by self-proclaimed ulama”, lamenting that even though most ordinary people were uncomfortable with these fatwas, officially recognised ulama often remained silent.

“Oftentimes they are not above giving contrary views on an issue, confusing matters further,” he said.

Tengku Razaleigh pointed out that provisions for other religions in Malaysia had been ignored and officials had “taken the line of least resistance by putting the position of Islam not quite in the context of what the Constitution perceives it to be,” he said in the opening speech of a public forum organised by the G25 group of retired civil servants here today.

He rebuked Jakim, the federal department for Islamic development, for getting “hot under the collar” with public airing of views that the department “is uncomfortable with”. He lamented that the department was uninterested in the “time-honoured practice of academic, disinterestedly-held discourses and discussions”, describing the department’s attitude as tragic.

“Sadder still is the notion that people feel how there seems to be a self-appointed moral police of sorts marauding around and interfering in the private lives of people,” he said.

Tengku Razaleigh also questioned the existence of a portfolio for Islamic affairs in the federal cabinet, which he said illustrated the break-down of the federal-state division of powers.

It was time that the federal government took another look at how the Malay states had administered Islamic affairs before independence and for some time after 1957.

Referring to the Islamic Religious Council formed before Malayan independence, he said that the council had helped put in place a “somewhat systematic administration of Islam” which eliminated inefficiencies as duplicity in religious announcements and contradictory decisions on specific issues.

He called for a more professional administration of Islamic affairs by strengthening the powers of state Rulers, who he said must be more than nominal heads of the religion in their states. He called for more funds for state religious administration, placed in the hands of religious experts well-trained in management and administration.

However he warned against the trap of creating a religious bureaucracy, which would be against the interests of Islam. “It would be no more than the mere appropriation of power by vested interests through the application of Islamic laws,” he said.