Frightening state of affairs
I'm feeling so darned tired and it's only 9:25pm. For some reason my lower back has been aching for the past few days and this week I've had several bouts of mild diarrhoea... dunno what's happening.
Went for the public forum on the Federal Constitution this morning. (It was organised by the Bar Council and a group of NGOs called Article 11.) When I asked Bob last week whether he was interested in going, he said, "Eh? I thought you don't care for this sort of thing?"
It's not that I don't care for it, I just have always felt vaguely concerned but not concerned enough to actually get out there and do anything. Also, I always feel that I don't know enough to talk about these sorts of issues (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, etc.) so in my cowardice I've become one of the "silent majority" by default.
Some of the things the speakers said were truly frightening. It seems that, more & more we are moving towards and Islamic state. Dato Dr. Cyrus Das said that, despite Islam being entrenched as the national religion in Article 3(1), we have always been a secular state with secular laws. We can't call ourselves an Islamic state unless we enact an Islamic code of laws and apply it to all citizens.
However, as Malik Imtiaz Sarwar said, more and more Malay Muslims in this country are beginning to think that, as a Muslim, it is desirable to have a wholistic Islamic way of life & this includes governance of the country in an Islamic manner. This could explain judges' decisions in certain cases. They chose to interpret the law in certain ways that, instead of protecting everybody's basic rights, lean more towards 'protecting' Islam.
But when you uphold a certain religion over another, you also subject those who are not adherents of that religion to its tenets. This doesn't quite tally with the Constitution, which states in Article 11(1) that all are to have freedom of religion. Article 3(4) also states that despite Islam being the national religion, this is not to abrogate or override anything else in the constitution -- including the fundamental freedoms enshrined in Articles 5-13.
The whole position is quite tricky, but to me it boils down to the fact that we've always believed we'll at least have a legal remedy if anything goes wrong -- yet in the Moorthy case, his widow was told by the High Court that she had no legal remedy; that their hands were tied, they have no jurisdiction over the Syariah Court. So in a big way, it seems to me that the judges are the ones who have let us down. It's like Prof Shad Faruqi said, "Harapkan pagar, pagar makan padi" (you trust the fence to keep your crops safe, but it is the one that devours them!).
I've long doubted the independence of the judiciary in this country, but even if they are independent, I now feel that they do operate from a somewhat biased viewpoint. We know that you can interpret the law strictly by the letter of the law or in the spirit in which it was enacted. You can take a text -- the Bible, for example -- and easily twist it to your own ends. That's what I feel our judiciary has done; they've twisted the law to conform to their personal beliefs, putting ideology above the rights of the individual petitioner.
And if we cannot go to the courts to get relief, if the judiciary will not protect us & our rights, who will??
[Disclaimer: Everything expressed here is my own opinion based on what I have understood of this morning's forum]