Time Hadi outgrew his hang-ups about colonialism

 

From Terence Netto

PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang sees the world in monochromes: everything is either Islamic or colonialist, either shariah compliant or aberrant.

There are no shades of grey or hybrids in Hadi’s worldview. Things are either black or white.

Predictably, in the wake of the recent Federal Court decision to strike down 16 provisions of a shariah law enacted by the Kelantan legislature in 2019, Hadi let loose a denunciation of colonial mindsets that, he argued, were responsible for the nullification.

Hadi’s denunciation of colonialism is typically narrow and self-serving.

For perspective, let’s take the Hindu revanchists of the BJP of India who have just inaugurated a temple, Ram Mandir, in the northern Indian town, Ayodhya.

The temple is located at the very site where stood a mosque – Babri Masjid.

This mosque was built by Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in the 16th century.

It was torn down by rampaging Hindu mobs in 1992. In the ensuing violence 2,000 people died.

The incendiary mobs claimed Babri Masjid was erected on the ruins of a Hindu temple that was regarded as the birthplace of the deity, Ram.

After a long legal battle, the Supreme Court in India ruled in favour of the Hindus’ right to build a temple to Ram at the very site on which the Babri mosque had stood.

The court also ruled that an alternative site be allocated for the building of a mosque.

A contentious, four-century-old issue was brought to a resolution of sorts, one obviously not satisfactory to the Muslims but they can hardly take their discontent overboard.

Clearly, the matter has ended in a BJP victory.

If that victory is endorsed by Indian voters at the general election in May, the BJP’s next goal will be to introduce a uniform civil code for India, applicable to all citizens irrespective of their confessions.

In the event, if a Muslim wife thinks she is hard done by her husband, she can have recourse to a civil court, if that is what she prefers.

Note that this uniform civil code will essentially take its patrimony from English common law, the ordinance that Hadi spurns as “colonialist”.

Note also that this would be done by a BJP government that aims to rename the country “Bharat”, in preference to “India”, a moniker it disdains as “colonialist”.

Nobody would demur if Hadi stood resolutely on the platform of his Islamic religion, but his eyes ought to survey the world.

He will find that world to be a miscellaneous one where a preference for ideology over reality, essence over existence, abstraction over the whirl and contingency of life is a recipe for disaster. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

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