Seek no justice here

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”

- Montesquieu, ‘The Spirit of the Laws’

COMMENT When the Seremban High Court granted custody of their two children to S Deepa, N Viran @ Izwan Abdullah was reported as saying, "If this is how it will be, do they want me to go back and drink ‘arak haram’ (liquor)?"

Which begs the question, were the judges of the Federal Court worried that any other decision than the one they made earlier this week, would push this kidnapper over the brink and he would find solace in a bottle of whiskey?

Make no mistake about this. A kidnapper was awarded custody of a child and one wonders what kind of moral foundation this poor boy will have and the kind of choices he makes when he is an adult. After all, he had no choice when he was converted to Islam.

And less anyone think that I am being hyperbolic on my judgement that this Muslim convert is indeed a kidnapper, my opinion is shared by none other than former law minister now Tourism and Culture Minister, Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, who said, “This is abduction. It should never have happened. Let’s not lose sight of context.”

The mercurial minster also said, “This isn’t a question of Izwan Abdullah being right under syariah law. It is a civil law marriage, it is the civil court, we must respect the civil court’s ruling. They have the jurisdiction. The High Court judge’s ruling was correct. The police shouldn’t allow him to get away with kidnapping the child.”

All this meant nothing to the inspector-general of police, which one cannot accuse of marching to his own drummer. Indeed when the rest of the Malaysian polity, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs (did I leave out anyone?) watched horrified at the scant disregard for the rule of law, the Twitter Marshal claimed, “As there are two clashing court orders on the matter, we will wait for the courts to decide” - something which he knew was legally and morally untenable.

What did we learn as Malaysians from this? We learnt that as non-Muslim Malaysians, we cannot place our faith in the rule of law as long as Muslims in power place their faith in their religion over all else.

Much has said about the so-called Solomon-like decision of the Federal Court. I am gratified if a little vexed that Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy beat me to the punch in dispelling such a notion in his well-argued piece. However, if we do wish to view this through a Hebrew scriptural perspective "It shall be neither mine nor yours - divide it!”, the actions of Izwan reeks of "It shall be neither mine nor yours - divide it!" - of the lying woman in the Solomon parable.

In ‘Great Expectations’, Charles Dickens wrote, “In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice.”

I wonder what kind of moral compass this child will have? Here is a father who converts to Islam and by his own admission did so to receive certain privileges. Here is a father who converts his children unilaterally to a religion where apostasy is punishable by death. Here is a father who kidnaps his child and allegedly assaults his mother.

Will a child raised by such a father be able to tell right from wrong? What is more damning is that the illegal and immoral actions of this man have been passed unremarked by the Federal Court of this land. In other words, his immorality and illegality has not been sanctioned.

What does this say about Islam as practiced in this country? What does this say about his own faith? After all, the children did not have a choice (unlike their father) in the religion that would shape their lives.

A political and religious hegemon

Moreover, choice is vital. A choice makes either a person the kind of Muslim N Viran has become or a Muslim who rejects those like Izwan Abdullah.

In my piece ‘Welcome to the religious jungle,’ I wrote “Moreover, the beauty of secularism is that it enables an open market place of ideas when it comes to religious choice. Now, Umno may fear this because if people had a choice between a religion that binds them to the dictates of the state (as it is practiced here in Malaysia) and a religion that allows them the freedom to reject dogma without the sanction of the state, which do you think would be the more appealing choice?

“Therefore, in a field of competing religions it would be beneficial for the issue of compulsion to be addressed, so that the business of winning hearts and minds could go one unabated. May the best religion, win, so to speak.

“Of course, if the state played no role in enforcing religion nobody would feel compelled to leave it, but that is the tragedy of religion, all of it is the same but with different labels. The devil is in the details and without the civilising process, nobody certainly not an ethnic group defined by their religion gets to question which part of dogma to accept or reject.”

This is what a country or more accurately a political and religious hegemon looks like when it rejects secularism. It looks like a kidnapper stealing away innocence in the guise of religious morality. Izwan hopes that his former wife the last holdout of her entire family who has yet to surrender to Islam, will do.

I hope that she never does that. I hope that she remains true to her faith and practices her religion that is guaranteed in our constitution. I hope that her children grow up and discover truths for themselves and not the truths that Izwan and his ilk would impose on them. I hope that people finally understand why I have been so critical of Islam as practise in Malaysia and any political party which would use this particular religion to garner populist support.

Izwan said of Deepa, “She has not gotten a ‘hidayah’ (revelation) yet. God willing, she gets one.”

He is wrong. This whole process has been a revelation not only for this poor woman but also for every non-Muslim in this country. What this revelation is, I leave it to readers to decide.

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S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. -Mkini