On hudud and corruption: when it pays to skip morality

 

Politics and religion make strange bedfellows. I don’t mean that literally, just to be clear. As James Madison, America’s fourth president, said: “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

Recently, the state leader of a religious party advised his party members not to give themselves headaches by questioning or challenging decisions made by their leaders – yet another example of our regression into feudalism.

Then there’s the viral video showing the national leader of the same party answering questions about the Islamic hudud laws the party is pushing to implement, and specifically about whether the laws will cover corruption.

The leader took pains to exclude corruption from the hudud laws, citing technicalities that corruption (meaning bribes) amounts to a voluntary exchange of wealth. He didn’t say exchange with what: indulgence? Back scratching? Jewellery and handbags?

He didn’t quite define “voluntary” either, but did say it’s an exchange done the wrong way. What’s the right way one wonders – posting pictures of the new Mercedes-Benz on the porch on social media? Or declaring it in your tax return?

Deviating from the straight and narrow

Corruption, by its very definition, is any deviation from the straight and narrow, where the corrupt stands to gain at the expense of the non-corrupt. Bribes are obviously the most common form of corruption.

Corruption however doesn’t include deviations due to inefficiency, incompetence, uncaring attitude or bureaucracy and other human or organisational weaknesses, or else our entire country would be one massive corrupt pit.

Oh wait…

Here’s the corruption maths:

A person breaks a traffic law that carries a RM500 fine, but gets away by paying a RM100 bribe, and hence profits by RM400 (and a clean court record), while the bribed person profits by RM100; this being a zero-sum game, the rakyat lose RM500.

Since this arrangement seems to work, there’ll be more of it from offenders and enforcers, and hence even less money will go to the rakyat.

But why exclude corruption from hudud laws you may ask?

Reading between the lines

Any ruling on whatever topic is meant to send a message to its intended audience. The message is what the sender means, though not necessarily what the sender says, and often you’d have to read between the lines.

Given how corruption has become the sine qua non of our daily life in Malaysia, any attempt to curb it is therefore a matter of great interest to the many people on both sides of the corruption divide.

In many ways, being endemic means corruption has become easier to justify because “everybody does it”. Throw race into it (“this land belongs to us”) and religion (“repent later” or “go on a pilgrimage”) and it goes down smooth and easy.

So, the message to the many powerful and dangerous forces that would be inconvenienced if religion was to declare war on corruption, is this – don’t worry, this isn’t meant for you. Hudud laws are for the small fries, those prone to headaches and getting caught stealing milk cartons or loose change.

It’s also a tacit admission they’ve no idea how to solve today’s problems, betraying their inability to apply the core tenets of the religion to today’s ever-changing world.

Making a trade of wealth and power

Corruption happens when one side with power and another side with wealth decide exchanging power (or wealth) for wealth (or power) in a mutually beneficial, albeit deviant, deal. After a while, it stops being deviant, and becomes the norm.

For every person with power who traded away our forests for logging, directly or indirectly causing the floods that killed many people recently, there’s another person with wealth who traded it to get those illegal and unfair logging concessions.

It takes two hands to clap. There’ll be no corruption if everybody stopped taking bribes, just as there’ll be none if everybody stopped giving them. I’m realistic enough to accept having corruption as an irritant rather than corruption as the actual air that we breathe as it is now.

There’s the unfortunate correlation that as we have become a more religious nation, we have also become more corrupt. That leaves two possible explanations – that religion causes corruption, or that just being religious, but without having any morality, doesn’t stop corruption.

We know Islam abhors corruption. So that must mean our lack of morality is to blame, whereby we agonise over the small things in religion – halal certificates for everything! – rather than emulating as-sādiq al-amīn, the honest and trustworthy Prophet Muhammad, because it’s hard and dangerous and not profitable.

While the real reason for hudud laws is to control the masses so that they don’t give a headache to themselves and their leaders, there’s also the urgent need to signal to the powerful they’ve nothing to fear. Islam may abhor corruption, but many of the pious have decided not to fight corruption as discretion is the better part of valour.

Who pays for umrah refunds?

While we’re on the topic of religion and politics, there’s another government decision recently to refund those who lost money on cancelled trips for the umrah – the minor hajj – due to the recent travel bans.

It’s strange that taxpayers’ money is going to pay for something that is personal and sunnah, meaning not compelled by Islam, while many of the compulsory duties, such as helping to rebuild the lives that have been upended by any combination of recent calamities, are merely given lip service.

Are there conditions attached to the compensation – is it only for first timers and the poor, or also for repeat umrahs by the wealthy? Is the money also coming from the zakat collections?

The 60% compensation is itself an interesting number. It could have been 0%, or 100%, or based on the principle that the rakyat and the government share equal responsibility, split 50:50. The extra 10% is a nudge and a wink to the people, especially during this election season, that hey, your leaders are looking out for you!

Would the Prophet himself have approved this? I obviously don’t know, and neither do the many who happily support this decision. We can only speculate on what the Prophet, as-sādiq al-amīn, the honest and trustworthy, would have done.

Would those who lost their property to the Great Malaysian Flood of 2021 get 60% compensation? After all, it’s not their fault either. It was a natural event, an act of God – severe rains, exacerbated by man-made climate change, and made deadly by hudud-excluded acts of corruption.

That’s even before we factor in the culpability of the incompetent and uncaring national leaders tasked with handling our welfare, or that some were actually away holidaying or on umrah and couldn’t be bothered to return.

Madison was right. When religion meets politics, both come out looking a little bit shabbier. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.