Former Court of Appeal judge Hishamudin Yunus said it was wrong for the authorities to detain Syiah Muslims as Article 3 of the Federal Constitution does not state which branch of Islam was the official religion.
"I will just approach this issue as a former judge, from a legal perspective. Firstly, Article 3 of the Federal Constitution says Islam shall be the religion of the federation and other faiths may be practiced.
"The word there is 'Islam'. It doesn't say 'Sunni Islam', it doesn't say 'Syiah Islam', it just says 'Islam'.
"The word Islam has yet to be, one day it will have to be, interpreted by the supreme court (to say) what is meant by 'Islam'," he said during a public forum held as part of Human Rights Commission's (Suhakam) 20th-anniversary event in Kuala Lumpur today.
Hishamudin, who is a member of the commission, was responding to a question about the Suhakam's recent criticism of the raids conducted by the Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Jais) in Gombak which saw 23 people being arrested.
Syiah Islam is considered by the religious authorities to be deviant.
Emphasising that this was his personal view, Hishamudin said Islam should not be "confined" to Sunni Islam in the absence of a court interpretation.
He also called for the raids on Syiah Muslims to stop.
"My personal view is that these raids must stop... as long as they practice Syiah Islam in peace, I think there should be peaceful co-existence," he said when met by the media after the forum.
Elaborating, Hishamudin opined that authorities ought to consider the Amman Message's stance on Syiah.
The Amman Message is a statement on the faith by senior Islamic scholars worldwide. Initiated by Jordan's King Abdullah II in 2004, it recognised two strands of Syiah Islam as legitimate.
Malaysia endorsed the document in 2005.
"If the Amman Message can recognise these two sects, why can’t our state authorities recognise them?
"Why do our state authorities have to say all Syiah is haram (forbidden)?" the former judge asked.
Were raids dignified?
Earlier during the forum, Islamic jurisprudence scholar and Suhakam commissioner Nik Salida Suhaila Nik Saleh questioned the basis for the raids and the manner in which they were conducted.
“The practice (of Syiah Islam) is allowed by law to be exercised in a private sphere and no propagation is to be made, as stated in the Federal Constitution.
“In that sense, Suhakam criticised the raid mainly because, in Malaysia, all citizens have freedom of religion,” she said in response to the same question.
Met later, Nik Salida (photo) further asked if the 23 Syiah Muslims arrested had been propagating their belief or simply practicing it.
“And when they (Jais) conducted the raids, were human rights elements observed? How did they respect human needs and dignity at the time?
“Where did they bring them? Was there a detention centre and did you place everyone in one place? All the men, women and children?” she told Malaysiakini.
Thus, she hoped to meet with Jais officers to obtain answers to her questions.
“We have to sit down with Jais to understand it better because Jais might have done something right,” she added when asked by the media.
Aside from the Gombak arrests, state religious authorities have also arrested foreign Syiah Muslims and raided private functions in Subang and Johor.
The arrests coincided with the 1st and 10th of Muharam when Syiahs mark Ashura, the death anniversary of Husin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and a central figure in Syiah Islam. - Mkini
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