Can there be equal treatment?
Even if we were to accept uncontested the notion of the quantifiability of human life in cash terms, it is clear that there is a strong possibility for equality before the law to be compromised under such a system. The fact that we already bear witness to unaddressed inequalities in Malaysia, borne by adherence to some notion or other of ethno-religious supremacy, reflects badly on the prospect for equal treatment should qisas be implemented.
Above all, we must consider how guilt and innocence are determined in syariah law. The existing literature is not encouraging.
Human Rights Watch issued a report in 1999 detailing a case in Pakistan involving a man who murdered his wife’s lover upon finding them in a “compromising position”. In this instance, it was ruled that, as men were the “guardians of women” (according to Surah An-Nisa, 34), the jealous husband had merely been “protecting his property” when he killed the cuckolding man. It was accordingly adjudged a case of self-defense and no punishment, not even diyya, was levied upon the husband, who was declared innocent. The deceased victim, on the other hand, was deemed guilty by virtue of his complicity in adultery.
That the system of beliefs these moral justifications are based on is not one all Malaysians subscribe to merely compounds the problem. Apologists will, at this point, trot out the well-worn argument that syariah laws only apply to Muslims and not to non-Muslims, and therefore its wholesale implementation should not be of concern to non-Muslims.
That line of reasoning is a poor one. More than one-third of Malaysians are non-Muslims who live cheek by jowl with their Muslim countrymen and women, and sooner or later a non-Muslim will perpetrate a crime against a Muslim or vice-versa.
When this comes to pass, one of two things will happen, both of which are contrary to the purportedly exclusive nature of syariah. Either non-Muslims will be treated differently, in which case we go back to the problem of legal parity, or they will be treated identically, which would necessarily require the imposition of Islamic law on non-Muslims. There is no such thing as compartmentalised law in a multi-cultural society, regardless of what PAS would have us believe.
Hudud is thus only a small symptom of a much larger predicament. What is truly at stake here are the very notions of universal equality and justice. One hopes the majority holds these things dear.
Yow Hong Chieh holds a BA and and would like to see the gates ofitjihadreopened.
