Lina Joy’s long wait for her conversion to Christianity to be recognised by law is over - the Federal Court ruled today that she remains a Muslim and her religious status will not be removed from her identity card. Delivering the judgment to a packed gallery this morning in Putrajaya, Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim ruled that jurisdiction remains with the Syariah court. The chief justice stated that he concurred with the majority decision - Justice Alauddin Mohd Sheriff who was the last to read his judgment agreed with Ahmad Fairuz's findings.Justice Richard Malanjun gave a dissenting judgment. A large section of the 300-strong crowd waiting outside recited the tahlil or read the Quran while waiting for the decision.When the news reached them, they shouted Allahuakbar - their reaction resounded through the Palace of Justice.
Rentetan peristiwa
Lina, 42, merayu terhadap penolakan Mahkamah Rayuan terhadap permohonannya untuk menggugurkan perkataan “Islam” dari kad pengenalannya. Rayuannya di mahkamah itu ditolak pada 19 Sept, 2005, dalam keputusan majoriti 2-1, untuk mengubah keputusan Mahkamah Tinggi tidak membenarkan permohonannya bagi menggugurkan perkataan “Islam” dari kad pengenalannya atas alasan keputusannya keluar dari Islam tidak disahkan oleh Mahkamah Syariah atau mana-mana pihak berkuasa Islam yang lain. Pada 23 April, 2001, Mahkamah Tinggi memutuskan sebagai seorang Islam, Lina, tidak boleh keluar dari Islam dan bahawa isu itu perlu diputuskan oleh Mahkamah Syariah. Dalam samannya, Lina menamakan Majlis Hal Ehwal Islam Wilayah Persekutuan, Kerajaan Malaysia dan Ketua Pengarah Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) Datuk Wan Ibrahim Wan Ahmad sebagai responden. Pada 2 Feb 1997, Lina memohon kepada JPN untuk menukar namanya atas alasan beliau tidak lagi memeluk Islam dan telah masuk Kristian. Permohonan itu ditolak oleh JPN pada 11 Ogos 1997. Permohonan keduanya kepada JPN untuk menukar namanya kepada Lina Joy diluluskan dan JPN memintanya memohon kad pengenalan baru. Lina mengemukakan permohonan bagi kad pengenalan baru dan pada November 1999, beliau diberikan kad pengenalan baru dengan nama Lina Joy dan perkataan “Islam” dicatatkan. Pada 11 Mac 2000, Lina memohon kepada JPN untuk menggugurkan perkataan “Islam” daripada kad pengenalan barunya tetapi permohonannya ditolak atas alasan beliau perlu mengemukakan sijil atau perintah daripada Mahkamah Syariah atau mana-mana pihak berkuasa agama Islam. Pada 4 Julai tahun lepas, Ketua Hakim Negara Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim yang bersidang bersama-sama Hakim Besar Sabah dan Sarawak Datuk Richard Malanjum dan Hakim Mahkamah Persekutuan Datuk Alauddin Mohd Sheriff telah menangguhkan keputusan selepas mendengar hujah daripada pihak berkenaan dalam rayuan itu.
Sumber:Bloggers, malaysiakini, iluvislam.com
8 comments:
In Indonesia, there are Indonesian Muslims, Hindus, Christians. In West Asia, there are also Arab Muslims, Christians, and even Jews. But in Malaysia, malays must be Muslims to be called malays.
Religion especially Islam, is very effective in controlling the thoughts and minds of a people, and makes it easy to govern them.
However, still most Muslim malays are such a embarrassing and disappointment themselves by practising intense racial sentiment. Very very very few are open minded, and most of these good hearted malays are from educated priviledged and motivated background.
Too sad the leftover Muslim malays are hypocrite rubbish and will always be rubbish.
It is easy to blame malays (for whatever issue) since there are just too many examples out there for the minorities to exploit. Yes that holds some truth to it, so let us forget about the useless racist uneducated malays. Let us examine the 'smart' malays, the new breed malays.
When a smart malay who had the opportunity to get great education (e.g. from Oxford), uses racial sentiment which is a very cheap way to get around pleasuring own's nipples across the political arena, is not that another example of typical malay? Just that in this example it involves a new breed malay, the smart one.
Again, I am rude but these are real.
Every single person born in this Malaysia should have the same equal rights.
If the Muslim community want to respect Islam, they should give the right and protection to the non-Muslims. Not the other way round. For Islam is fair and is beautiful. It is the racist card players who changed the rules and adopted racism as part of their agendas.
It is not true that outside Malaysia the migrants have lesser rights than those living in Malaysia. This is a fallacy and you know it. Migrants (non-malays) are mistreated in Malaysia more than in other countries - go check your facts.
Umno racist sympathizer yet trying to sound reconciling - no constructive comments - all sound as if Umno racist is the one that deserve the chance and have the ability to fix……….all others opposition party are useless!
You expect us non-malays to just accept unfair justice, racism or corruption for 50 years and keep quiet about it? Thank God, he did not create robots. Humans are retaliate, free to belief and choose - ask Umno racist to do its best to block freedom - watch the fall out!
The world is looking at Malaysia - the decision is simple and against human freedom will have to face the world and God too……….one day!
As many have correctly pointed out, Malaysia is the only place in the world where there is institutionalised racism (NEP defined apartheid).
I guess any person who has followed closely developments in Malaysia can already see the brain drain from our country……….so I will not elaborate.
For your information, a large pool of overseas talents and professionals are from Malaysia or were once Malaysians. I even have a fellow PhD colleague pioneering technologies for NASA at MIT, just because they gave him a scholarship. He was rejected straight away by UM of course.
At least in overseas, talents are valued, appreciated, and given a fair go as opposed to the semi-oppressive and exploitative nature of NEP (and its spin offs).
Equal rights for every citizen of Malaysia and that is how it ought to be. The malays seem never enough to be satisfied with they have - such an inferior race with lack of intelligence.
The Malays, Indians and Chinese fought for independence from the British together. Malaysia is born from the strength of Malays, Indians and Chinese. In Indonesia or America, they obtained their independence in a different way. So please don't compare with the rest of the world.
History teach us that the first inhabitant of Malaysia came from China Yunan. The malay originated from the Polynesian. Malay history start from Parameswara who escape from Indonesia and settle in Melaka. During his time, Laksamana Cheng Ho visit Melaka seven times.
Melaka need the protection of the China from the invasion of the Siamese. Without Cheng Ho, there won't be malay history, instead you have Siam history.
Mass influx of Indians and Chinese was during the rule of the British. That was before the creation of Malaysia. Today we have Malaysia, who can claim to be 'tuan'?
God save all of us.
Indeed the real bumis are the Orang Asli, they too are migrated from other places many many hundred years ago!
By the way, if Islam is so tolerable, strong and beautiful, why in Malaysia apostasy is not allowed? If this is a worry, then it only shows how weak Islam is!
I pity Malaysian Muslims, you probably are the least free people in this world! Even Indonesian Muslims are allowed to practice apostasy when they become adults!
USA, UK, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, etc - what make them different from Malaysia?
Why are they successful, well most importantly they practised meritocracy system and secondly they don't have law that discriminate against skin colors or religions or minorities.
If anybody who thinks that corruption and racial discrimination is not wrong then there will be nothing that is wrong.
This is what actually happening in Umno. They love the two evils:
(i) corruption to enrich themselves (ii) racial discrimination to make them feel good and superior to other races (when they do not know that they still need to be spoon fed and the tongkat) and deceive the poor kampung folks that they are heroes to their race who keep on voting for them.
They are actually robbing the country by making everybody poorer, malays and other races alike. Petrol prices are raised with hundred and one excuse, and tolls are raised without any transparency, and everything has gone up making the poor becoming poorer.
I do not see anything that they can be proud of, and nothing superior about them. Even to rob, they are all given assistance and tongkat to do it by having two set of laws, one for them and one for the ordinary citizens.
It is a pity that after half a century of independence, we still frame our socio-economic and political questions and judgments in ethnic terms. There seems to be a competition to determine which is the most underprivileged ethnic group in order to justify government assistance.
Logically, the highly protected community will lose its competitive edge. It is surprising that our leaders do not seem to understand this and continue with their policies that keep adding new fields to extend the protection for the malays.
This suits the political leaders who think of only the next general election. The division of the electoral constituencies with the type of politics and parties in the fray suggest that they are a smart lot! It is just an art of clinging to power and enjoying all the perks that come along.
That the majority becomes weak and feels that they can't compete on equal terms, despite having the best educational institutions and opportunities for themselves, is just a natural result of our flawed policies.
To make it worse, we have a special meaning for 'meritocracy' in education which leads many to really believe that it is indeed through real meritocracy, that they are where they are.
The system that produced them has lowered the bar so much in order to make up the numbers that they cannot be compared to the quality of graduates of the past or to graduates from other countries today. No wonder they cannot get jobs.
They should not have been in universities and colleges in the first place. They would have been better off under vocational or apprenticeship programmes. The malay leadership of this country has failed them.
Yes, there are underprivileged groups but they span across all ethnic and religious lines. We can identify these groups by income and asset testing and they exist in every ethnic group - Malay, Indian, Chinese, etc.
The enemy is not the 'other' ethnic group. It is the glass ceiling that prevents the best and brightest in our communities from contributing to Malaysia in their chosen area of expertise. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, it is not malays competing with Indians or Chinese. It is Malaysia competing against the best and brightest from China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and the tigers of Europe.
Ultimately, what matters is that there are no glass ceilings for any individual who has the talent and ability to excel in the area of his or her choosing.
We need to frame our policies based on merit and need, and not ethnic lines. However, this will never happen until we move our political system away from parties drawn along the old ethnic and religious lines.
That is why malay is the most arrogant, corrupted, racist and terrorist race in the world. To the world population, malay is only a minority. And yet, still keep on talking about Islam, Muslim, Syariah law. Shame on you.
In very recent times, the starting date for the study of Malaysia history in the schools has been conveniently fixed around 1400 CE. It probably coincides with the founding of the Sultanate of Malacca by Parameswara.
Today, Malaysia school children only learn a little bit about the early Proto malays and then are conveniently taken on a historical quantum leap to the founding of Malacca.
Early Indian works speak of a fantastically wealthy place called Savarnadvipa, which meant "land of gold". This mystical place was said to lie far away, and legend holds that this was probably the most valid reason why the first Indians ventured across the Bay of Bengal and arrived in Kedah around 100 BC.
Apart from trade, the early Indians brought a pervasive culture, with Hinduism and Buddhism sweeping through the Indo-Chinese and malay archipelago lands bringing temples and Indian cultural traditions. The local chiefs began to refer to themselves as "rajahs" and also integrated what they considered the best of Indian governmental traditions with the existing structure.
I learnt Malaysia history in the 1950s and taught it in the 1960s and 1970s in secondary schools. All the history textbooks at the time had the early Indian connection specifically mentioned in them. Teachers of that period taught about the early Indianised kingdoms of Langkasuka, Srivijaya and Majapahit that existed from as early as 100 CE.
Anyone can see that Parameswara, the founder of Malacca, has a clearly give away name that points to the Indian/Hindu influence. No one can deny this, and all our children need to know about this. They have the fundamental right to learn about this aspect of our history too.
Why don't our children learn about these early Indian connections today? It needs mention here that this early Indian connection has nothing to do with the much later cheap Indian "coolie" labour influx that the British brought over to man the railways and plantations of Malaysia from the late 19th century onwards.
The malay language as we know it today is already fully impregnated and enriched with many foreign words. This is good. Malay therefore has been a bahasa rojak from early times itself.
Rojak itself (and also cendul) is a Malaysia food developed by an Indian Malayalee Muslim community known as the Malabaris who hailed from Kerala. They were also referred to as kakas. We now wrongly credit the Penang mamaks for this great food.
The very word "Melayu" itself is most probably of Indian origin from the words "Malai Ur", which means land of mountains in Tamil. Singapur, Nagapur and Indrapur are very common Indian names that have similar backgrounds.
The early Indians were probably inspired by the main mountain range that looks like a backbone for the malay peninsula and thus named it Malaiur. The word "Malai" is undoubtedly Indian in origin as is the case with the word Himalayas and we all know where it is situated.
Many malay words, from describing malay royalty (Seri, Raja, Maha, etc) and common everyday terms (suami, kerana, dunia, cuma, bakti), all have Indian connections. The undeniable Indian connection in the word Indonesia is also reflected in the name itself.
The Indian factor that influences even the prevailing malay culture in terms of music, food, dress and certain other everyday practices like betel chewing and bersanding is another thing over which a loud hush prevails. Why?
Such knowledge of the roots of this great country, be they Indian, Chinese, Arab or whatever, can indeed very strongly facilitate the ongoing efforts of the government to make our children think of themselves as Bangsa Malaysia more readily and more easily.
Malaysia being in such a sad state, I can only see decline for decades to come.
May be even for centuries.
May be the rise of China can give the bright sparks of Malaysia some leverage to change society, but I doubt whether the ingrained culture of failure can be reversed.
Not the UK, not the US, not in most parts of the world, the culture of failure always reproduced itself generation after generation.
Change has to come from external influence and not from the inside.
As a brain drainer whom has fled to Australia, here are my reasons for leaving.
(1) Better government. Australia government is way less wasteful than Malaysia government. I am rather tired of seeing my tax money going into white elephants and useless projects while our Malaysia schools are getting neglected. Oh, and my tax returns are guaranteed to be paid back in 10 days. Usually I will get my tax returns in 4 to 5 working days.
(2) Better lifestyle. I cannot own a car and still be able to get around Australia. I am looking forward to do my masters degree in a proper university environment and being supported by the government through PELS scheme and tax deduction.
(3) Better traffic. Besides Sydney, traveling around cities in Australia is quite a relaxing task. You don't have to deal with some corrupt policemen or crazy drivers.
(4) Things are actually affordable here. You might have to pay 10 bucks for a plate of 'char koay teow', but the size of the plate you can share is with 3 people in Malaysia. Oh, and you get the big prawns too.
Like someone said, I go back to Malaysia for the 3Fs - family, friends and food. If I do stay in Malaysia, I do not see a future for myself or my family. My children will be discriminated at school. Education will be extremely expensive. And I will die earlier due to all the pollution in the air.
As many doctors leave Malaysia every year, there are more illegal Indonesian workers coming in and became citizens so easily. The country does not only flush away good brains but also refill with……….(sigh) - this is an insane country.
No no no, this is not insane. We did great things to the world you know, like providing brains to others, and accepting rubbish from others. That is a Malaysia Boleh!
Sorry facts are facts. Sorry in spite of all, you malays still cannot compete. By the way - you are so wrong that we Chinese do not look towards China.
Where there is money to be made, and where we can improve other Chinese well being be it Malaysian Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese etc, we are looking towards it. You bet. The next world is not Malaysia, a tiny little dot in this world.
Where opportunities exist, we look elsewhere just like Singaporeans they are going everywhere.
If you are to do a study among all Muslim countries, the level of development will be directly proportional to the level of Islamisation of the country.
Just do a study - you will know the fact. The reasons are so obvious why this is so. I do not want to elaborate here to hurt the feelings of Muslims but I mention just two:
- they sidelined the women.
- how many Muslim nations are in deep religious based wars?
- and plus many other activities against productivity.
You cannot have it both ways. Live in this world or live in the after world. There is time only for one.
This is why I see very bleak future for Malaysia the way it is heading - the day when we 'Talibanise' Malaysia.
Our constitution does not say we are a secular state. But by the same token, nowhere does it say we are an Islamic state either.
A country can be Islamic but yet remain secular in government. Turkey, Egypt and Algeria are prime examples. As long as the constitution remains the supreme law of the land, we are an Islamic country but a secular state.
All these are really non-issues as long as everybody sticks to the original game plan.
Look at it one way, it seems like they want to keep the NEP because they are taking advantage of perks and curbs, keep the Umno linked filthy rich.
First of all, the NEP has no goodwill towards the non-malays. They think that the non-malays are rich and can afford to run overseas because of the drought of local university places available?
This is another fallacy. Truth is a lot of the non-malay parents have to work their asses off, keeping a small unit family, just to use all their savings to finance education overseas because local opportunities are not forthcoming and not available.
Malaysia lose a lot of talents in such a way, especially when the NEP has indeed made certain non-malays very competitive on the global scale. For these people having been successful overseas and given a fair go at the opportunities, they will think twice to come home to adversity in Malaysia.
And that is a fact. Do you know that we lose almost 80% of our local talents to the US, UK and Australia every year! Go check the emigration records. Do you know that the Malaysian contingent is the largest oversea students in Australia, and almost 100% that succeeds takes up Australia PR and citizenship?
That is exactly the formula used by many progressive countries including the US, UK, Australia, even China.
These countries have policies that stress both the affirmative action to aid the poor and complement it with an emphasis on high standards, including robbing other countries of their human capital by enticements such as international scholarships.
So I can't understand why it is not palatable or applicable to the malays! Why lay back when you have the world as a challenge.
The failure of the various Malaysia communities to integrate is not because there is no common language, but the ill will festered by the outmoded communal politics that Umno Youth seems want to perpetuate, the NEP, and the lack of Malaysia kinship (e.g. one race want to be tuan).
It is only nature that human beings and animals learn more from failure than success. So, be prepared for a soul cleansing in the next 10 - 20 years in Malaysia.
Yes, the one common denominator is that they are all not Muslim countries. Even among Muslim countries, the less that Islamization is the focus of national existence, the better off the society from a social, political and economic standpoint.
That is why Turkey used to be relatively better off in various aspects compared to other Muslim countries but this has been starting to change recently.
Hate to say it but yes, obsession with Islam is anathema to progress, political stability, peace and economic well being.
We agree that it is difficult to manage a multiracial country like Malaysia with its diverse religions and races. It is also obvious from the discussion that the current political and economic model has failed us, particularly with regards to racial integration.
We are heading towards a crisis. We need to have a paradigm shift in our socio-economic model. Otherwise the omens look bad.
Now humans are humans, be it malays, Japanese or Israelis, when one is in absolute power there will be a tendency to sideline the minorities. Arrogance and abuse will crop in. There is no doubt about it.
To be developed, there should be peace, good sense of responsibilities, equality and cooperation. Of course, good leadership and governance is equally important. Every party should not to be made to feel deprived.
I still feel that mixing religion with politics is not wise - for we can see around the world almost everywhere trouble spots are based on religious differences and in countries where religion is part of politics. That is the reason why Malaysia although a Muslim country should remain secular.
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