my line of reasoning seems to be shared by people more álim than me! please see:
azmi w hamzah.
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Sorry Tan Sri.
In my book, I never trust this 'young punk' from Perlis.
If you listen carefully, the current MB of Kelantan seem to be more coherent in his views. Even so called ulama' are not immuned to selling the ugama for a few ringgit!
I know, you, like myself, have a lot of reservation about royalties, and both of us try to keep away from them for various reasons of out own, but when the Sultan of Brunei, suddenly got up on the 'right side' of his bed one morning, and decided to go 'Islamic', this is not an accident in Time. This has already being 'predecided' in Loth Mahfuz before all of us are born. This my dear Tan Sri and Dato H, is called 'hidayah'. At 68, His Majesty is gifted with 'hidayah'. Does not mind that he has lead a previous less than pristine lifestlye. We all do. And if you have billions at your behest, it is difficult to be clean and pristine. But a 'hidayah' is a'hidayah'. One can be 75 and the ' grave can be calling while the house may already be bidding goodbye' but without 'hidayah' one can still be a total loss!
If Kelantan gets its way, then we have two in the 'crucible'. Despite a lot of reservation from people like Dato H and OMG Dr Farouk and his kuncu2 who should know better, Kelantan and Brunei may do well and be an example to follow.
Hudud is none of their business. Attacking a countyr bacause Hudud is going to be implemented is none of their 'fuc...g business!!! And this we ahve to show these barbarians that in peaceful Malaysia, we can make it a success. We have to start somewhere. This is the right place. Elsewhere in Africa, you will have the ANC forces coming in. In Afghanistan, America will reinvade. It is already 1450 years since Muhammad [pbuh]. How long more do you want to wait.
We have to learn from the Sultan of Brunei, despite our reservation with the behaviour of some of the royalties here back home. In fact, I can foresee this could cascade into a healthy form of democracy, 'Islamic style'. Democracy and Islam is another big issue and I will not touch on that unless Dato H and his friends graduate fully from his 'tafseer class'. Otherwise I will be clobbered.
There are levels levels and and we have not yet finish level one in the 'Tafseer masterclass'. Opting out from my class is of course an option. This is a free country, Tan Sri and dato.
Dr Nik Howk
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Dr Nik ,
I must put on record that I fully concur with your understanding on hudud .
May Allah Swt help us All with our good intentions.
Wassalam.
Sent from my iPhone
Nadimah
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Dear Puan Husna,
Thank you for the article by Salam Madkoar. I am grateful to you for taking the time and effort to email me the article, apropos my conversation with Dr. Nik. I went through it this morning.
Of course the points Salam Modkoar made are factual. They are also familiar. They would be an epiphany to those who are new to the philosophical idea of the "oneness" of the Islamic polity, as many US commentators tend to be, and to their affection for the Jeffersonian requirement of the separation of Church and State.
The strong views in the West on this separation can be easily understood, of course, from their historical experience - from the six venal, oppressive, decadent popes that gradually fed to the broad discontent in Europe, and to Martin Luther's climactic nailing of his protest on the cathedral door, and to the rise of the Protestant movement, and the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. Within the Protestant movement itself, the princes and kings "established" their own churches and confiscated the property of the churches, priories and abbeys that were formerly Roman Catholic. "Papist loot."
The kings then appointed their own archbishops and bishops, leading to a new alliance of King-Chuch oppression. Many ordinary people fled, in fragile ships tossing in a violent ocean, to the New World to escape this oppression. This period was coeval to the Age of Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason in the West. (Islam had its own Age of Enlightenment much earlier, in the centers of learning such as Bagdad, Cairo, Alexandria, and Catalunyan Spain.)
The thirteen colonies in the New World were deeply conscious of the dangers of this oppression - personal, political and intellectual - from any alliance of church and state. Thus the emergence of the "secular" state in the West. But they are not completely secular - many sectarian institutions still enjoy tax benefits from the state. It is still very much a "simmering" issue in the US and Europe. The issue still occupy the dockets of cases in the US supreme court!
Coming back to Salam Madkoar's brief outline of the Sharia, and Haad. It is a good introduction to one who is unfamiliar with the topic. To others, the article is very thin on the data, and the actual implementation of the more brutal forms of punishment. It also glosses over what are crimes against Allah and crimes against society. This nexus has very powerful implications in a modern, industrialized society. For example, theft is Haad and is punished in the well known stipulated manner (of course, with caveats of such evidence as witness accounts or confession). Bribery, however, is a lesser crime against society.
Now, in the modern world, bribery, corruption, kickbacks, cronyism, influence-peddling, plunder of the national treasury, manipulation and abuse of state power, devastation of our natural resources, environmental degradation, climate change....I can go on.... are much more serious in their consequences, much more egregious in their nature, much more at war against our total interest and well-being, than the theft of a loaf of bread or a few coins.
In short, one needs to view the judicial institutions within the context of a modern economy, the GINI ratio, education, gender fairness, kindness and decency as social values, and the the well being of every individual in society.
One can, perhaps, be forgiven for being unimpressed by the oft-repeated argument that the 1.2 billion Muslim population is the harbinger of a future world judicial order. One should, on the contrary, be more worried that the name of Allah may be mis-used in human power play, as we have seen in the past, and are today being played and replayed like sad, cliche videos of human folly.
I can hear the good Dr. Nik Howk bellowing at me, "If not now, WHEN?"
The question, Dr. Nik, is not When? but How?
Having said that, I wish to thank you again for your kindness in forwarding the article to me.
Best wishes.
Hamzah.
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Dato H,
Allow me to interject your lively conversation with Puan Husna of London.
Yes, I would certainly ask that question, " If not now , when ? ".
His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei, irrespective of warts carbuncles and all, irrespective of 'Hollywood crowd' making animal noise in the background not wanting to frequent any more the Brunei owned favourite watering hole in Hollywood, still is going on with his plan for ' hudud '.
And why not Kelantan? And now!!
Forget about people like Dato H, Dr Farouk and Sisters in Islam who probably have too much cheese in their UK days anyway.
The time is NOW!!
Dr Nik Howk
Ps: ...or do we still insist that we must get Chow Kwaey Teow's or Muthusamy's permission before we introduce hudud to the parliament? This question I direct to Husam, Doc Rosli et al to answer...
have we lost our 'balls' ??
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from Ghe Breheng, my neighbour
I just wonder why so many people are against implementation of Hudud?. In comparison, these people are against against the mandatory death sentence on drug trafficking. Why?
Is it the law or implementation or it Islam itself that these people are against but dare not said openly, scared to be labelled as anti-religion?.
It it is not a surprise that God describe human into 3 categories only (not by race,colour or national etc), refer to surah al-Baqarah ie .
Mukminun [1-5),
Kafirun (6-7) and
Munafikun (8-20),
thereafter God says worship Him (21). A reminder to us as Muslims to be careful in which category we are?
Che Heng,
Subang Jaya
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Heng,
The great game nowadays is political correctness.
You see this game being played by people like Farouk, Sisters in Islam etc etc and etc.
They are more acutely fearful of the public gallery and how the public perceive them than how God would see them.
As I say, Abu Jahals, Abu Lahabs and worse still, Abdullah bin Ubays nowadays do not ride camels anymore.
The run the world from Manhattan, London and posh offices in KLCC and Dubai.
The get chauffer driven in their Jaguars and Bentleys.
The lesser Abu Jahals run schools and banks.
Most wins election
Some of them are successful generals.
They have even permeated into the 'ulama' ruling class!
Their discourses are lenghty, their rationales and arguments are very persuasive
But at the end of the day, what do we get? :
No hudud, we are not ready yet!..Islam for the time being need to be at the margin, we will have to wait for another 200 years! What will our friends, Chow Kwaey Teow and Muthusamy say? etc etc and etc.
If you are the CEO and Rabb of this universe, what do you say to these people, Heng?
Just the other day I was reading an article from the US of an associate prof in one of the Islamic theology schools there, defending LGBT!! He himself is a homosexual.
OMG !
" Ya Rabb! Which nook and corner of Hell are you doing to send us who have collectively allowed these degradation and maliase and ghaflah to permeate this society? "
Nik Howk
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from Nadzru Azhari, after a night out, high on Starbuck coffee :
Dear TS WanMing & Nik Howk,
I came back last night and kept thinking of the appropriate word to rehash what I said to both of you at the Starbucks. Let me give it a try now, earlier, as we never know what Nik Hock is up to and pre-empts me with his 'imperialism of the piety of fear'.
Without missing reference to your historical marker point of the Battle of Gallipoli , when a muslim force last won a major battle , I took notice that socio-political thought change hasn't been remarkably much, if any at all, in the muslim milieu. We therefore lack the 'narratives' to articulate those changes and since the 'Islamic' socio-political change requires an ecclesiastical 'arabic language' expression, we lack that even more. The parchness of our milieu in that narrative of change has hit the arabic language worst. So I gave you two examples of where that occured, like the use of the word 'ihtijaj' and 'intifadha' to describe 'demonstration' and ' uprising' using the root words of 'haaj' ,'hujjah' and 'faidh' meaning 'argument ' and ' surplus of space'. It is obvious , the arab socio-political milieu have not seen demonstration nor protest and uprising of that nature for a long time, certainly well before the Battle of Gallipoli. As a non-originator of thought, since the BofG (Battle of Gallipoli) the arabic language has to run to borrow and even create words just to be able to keep up with the world's narrations. When it comes to socio-political structuring it hits that milieu in the parchness of its journals and publications. Hence, if the thinking of the arabic socio-political milieu is going to be our resource base, for Hudud Law, we are going into deep trouble for we are going into the milieu of narrative poverty. If I may repeat, the last respectable journal of criminal law was that of the 'Mejelle' the records of the proceedings in the Ottoman judiciary in Cyprus and that was a lil before the BoG. The articulation and drafting of the Hudud Law will suffer the same pain as the Law for Islamic Banking. If it worked and is working ( past and resent continuous tense!) for the latter, God Willing it will work for the former.
If I may plagiarise from you once again, the 'narrative' requires a rich , 'free and sovereign' political history and here outside the arab milieu in our own Malay peninsula we suffered from the being a 'feeble feudal society', where religiosity is a feeble feudal manifest of the feudal 'bakhila' over the clerical 'khoja' class , running in parallel with a colonial hegemony. Nevertheless, I reiterated to you last night that we in our South East Asian countries have a socio-political history of a spread that is second to none in the world in order to refer to as resources in the reconstruction and formulation of our 'religious' thought and building its institutions, in law and justice, economics and trade, government and diplomacy. Hence I revealed my concern at the lack of our strong acquaintance with our 'regional socio-political milieu' at the expense of our preoccupation with our tunnelled vision at the 'arab and middle eastern milieu', this tunnel being created at and to the exclusion and non-porosity with the cocurrent and parallel socio-political milieux in the world today particularly in our region. We remember the huge humiliation at the demolition of the Egyptian army in the 1967 6-day war but we are not familiar with the victory of the rag tag Vietnamese Army in the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, whence the latter led to the collapse of the French Colonial Empire and led to the 'independence' of Algeria, Senegal, Tunisia. Dien Bien Phu saw the desertion of the Muslims conscripted soldiers in the French Colonial Army under Gen Christian Marie de la Croix Castrides to join the regiment of 19 years old Pvt Hoang Dang Vinh in droves. We identify with the humiliation of the obvious incompetency and 'feeble feudal milieu 'army of the downtrodden, we do not identify with the pride of a decolonising country , whose victory changed the socio-political map of our own 'islamic milieu'.
If I may, the 'Imperialism of the piety of the feeble feudal milieu' is hitting us hard, we are hardly convinced yet with the 'free religious will' to accept the ' persuasive' of Islam and we are now going into the 'imperative' , like you said, more than 50 years of 'independence' and enfranchising with a post-independent constituion and state building , we better be freakingly prepared, that is simple law of thermodynamics of the competitive advantage of milieux ( x is added as plural in french) and nations. The 'persuasive' is when so many retired university lecturers in Islamic Studies go round from surau to house to surau conducting 'tazkirah' and ' majlis ilmu' and the 'imperative' is when you make them stand for elections and become law-makers. Needless to say few of the 'persuasive' class will become the 'imperative' class, as drafting laws and defending its bases is an art that demands a high intellectual calibre and not the 'rote' khojahood of opening a dull kitab and reading it out to redemption seeking retired ex-sinners.
Our imperative religious class in articulating Hudud Law must be a master class that when speaking to the 30% he can make the balance 70% listen to him more intensely than the 30%. Law -Making is an all encompassing exercise, it is a constitutional matter, not of personal piety and a 30% internal persuasion, it has to be a 70% acceptance or at least tolerance. That is not a difficult task, if not an interesting and very challenging one, indeed will go with the maxim of the 'easier getting to be easier'.
I wanted to share the subject of my personal history as project director of the Southern Sudan Oil Development project, not just with the need to seek your 'intervention' in the process of expediting payment of fees to the arbritrators in London but also as a very good case study of what the 'imperialism of the feeble milieu ' can do to a national oil company , if not just to Hudud Law. A small country and economy we already are, but we had the might of China in that Melut Basin Oil project and yet our august ,National Oil Company chose to pull out, hook line and sinker, losing our 'avantage Africain" while Petrochina rode on us and stride on to economically conquer Africa.
Next, you touched on the subject of how we are marrying off our children and how we, yes the three of us, enlightened, much wayfaring, top of our professions kelantanese fellows, related to one another by blood and further enforced by incestuous marriages are STILL continuing that propagation of the DNA of the' feeble feudal milieu'. Insha Allah, I have taken steps to change and change all the three of us shall do, only we need to convince our 'feeble milieu' wives and regiment of overbearing aunts.
Then you spoke about your mountain climbing guide Ashraf Ahmad , whence during your K summit attempt, you saw 'Azad Kashmir' and then Ashraf Saab went on to narrate to you how the ' Shiites and Sunnis' of Hunzar, Gilgit, Kashmir and the plains of Northern India got united and fought the Indian regiments out of North West Kashmir, even the 'heretic' Ismailis ( declared heretics by the Shiites!) were in the battle fray with the Sunno-Shii alliance. Not that you are for Pakistan and against India, but to illustrate your dismay at the later conspiracy to put shit on the sunni-shii alliancing. How on earth it became a 'khutbah topic' drafted by the MAIS and you had to bear with it one friday at Taman Melawati mosque.
With that let us close our discourse on Hudud Law and I am writing this as fast as I can for I cannot let Nik Hock put shit on us, he will certainly do it, for I dont think he went back to sleep last nighrt, instead he went straight to the hospital to write and wait for some poor fellow's artery to repair.
Bon voyage .
Wassalaam
Nadzru Azhari
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Ts Ming and Nadzru ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiEPGPYezTg
Our climbing, riding and diving days are over ts but it is nice to know that this was taken in Perhentian Island just 2 years ago
Dr Nik Howk
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Nikhowk, Ru,
Is this Nikhowk's gentle manner of bringing a (temporary) closure to the hudud debate, or is he merely signalling that since our climbing, riding, diving and wandering days are over due to creeping old age, about the only thing left we can do well is argue and debate? And inspite of our individual protestations to moderation, the truth alas, is we are all inclined towards the Oscar Wilde exhortation to do anything we find worthy to be taken to excess! So i fear there shall be yet more hudud and other arguments ahead between the good friends, with deep differences giving rise to neither the questioning of each others 'akidah nor threatening the friendship.
That is the value of open debate and discourse. It may not change positions and viewpoints, but it will sure make the listener understand where the speaker is coming from. But the feeble feudal malay(sian) masses has little capacity or encouragement to do this - leaving society in that dark corner of close-mindedness and prejudice.
Ru's viewpoint about the dryness of the socio-political-historical narrative leaving the arab language so uninspired and impoverished that it could not cope when called upon to tell the story of major contemporary events, whether that be the palestian intifadha or the arab spring, is very troubling. Not being able to read and understand the arabic language (should that be a statement of personal regret or a condemnation of the ff malay approach to quranic and religious education?), I could and would not have stumbled upon this observation. I thought about it and wondered whether or not this is the inevitable legacy of the impotency and despair that has befallen muslim societies in general, and the arab masses in particular?
When you have stories of glorious victories and great achievements, the narrative becomes easier and free-flowing, allowing the story line to drink deep in the achievements of the victor but also, more importantly in the context of the broader human narrative, in showing magnanimity to the vanquished. When you have no room to crow about yourself, how do you praise your enemy? So the ff cockerel could not flap its wings to welcome the dawning of another glorious day; it does not believe there can be another glorious day to come. The legacy of defeat is pessimism and despair. Instead the ff cockerel sulks in bitterness and takes to spitting venom and blame at others, whether those be penjajah, pendatangs, zionist conspirators or a 'self-hating' brother.
All of this leaves me very depressed. As someone who rather finds fault with himself rather than embrace victimhood as excuse, it leaves me no more optimistic than those fellow ff malays i do not agree with. That is also my excuse to sulk away to the quiet of Anglostan, where I see vital signs of muslim social, economic and intellectual re-awakening. Is that the subliminal message of Muhammad's hijrah?
By the way, I was not attempting to conquer the summit of K2 under the tutelage and guide of Ashraf Aman. I was merely trying to get to base camp!
Salam and warmest regards, Azmi.w.Hamzah
14 / 5 / 2014
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TS Ming & Nadzru ,
Both ts , Both......
Hudud will never be acceptable, I realise, to even majority of us Muslims who, at this juncture of time, choose not to know their Book much closer, let alone their Prophet's seerah and hadeeths.
We need not have the eloquence of a ' Nadzru ' to learn a wee bit of the Qur'an. In fact it could well be dangerous. When we reach the level of a ' Nadzru ', it is a different height....an a dangerous one at that also because one can assume a degree of ' smugness and pride ' that automatically come with the territory only to be found in the rarefied masters of any field. Hallaj's neck got stretched [ or was it 'pancung' ] not because he was an ignorant heretic but because the fuc...g people of his time had not reach his level of understanding on the issue of 'fana'. There is a'playing field' between the Rabb and His abdals, even among the very committed ones. Hallaj was narrowing the field too much, the rest of his colleagues and friends thought he was mad! Even Ibn Arabi, when asked to defend his fellow sufi, commented, " there are drunken sufis and there are drunken sufis...". Hallaj's drunkenness was beyond even his friends. It was only in al-Ghazali's time that the 'playing field was better defined. Al Ghazali understood Hallaj's predicament, and to prevent further umbrage between the common Muslims including the' fuqahas ' ; and the 'elites' who are the sufis, he clearly identified the 'field' and stated in very definitive terms that even though 'elites within 'elites' can play in that ' playing field ' to the point of being in 'fana' , the bridge between the Rabb and His Abdals is not bridgeable and will never ever be.
Now what has this to do with our discussion on Hudud you may ask? We are currently as an ummah at the bottommost pit, far, far away from the 'playing field '. Then why hudud, you may ask?
Because Hudud is the simplest manifestation of our acceptance of His rule and advisories. If we even cannot appreciate Hudud, which is very 'definitive' [ muhkam],we can forget about other things which are 'clouded' and 'muthashabihat' within the Qur'an and those outside the Qur'an, hadeeths included.
From my personal survey, very few are interested even in the 'qur'an tafseer' made easy. I send to 400 intellectuals in and around KL every week , week in and week out, and hardly 20 % listen. Taking a book of tafseer and reading would be a more difficult task and I reckon the % would be lower.
But back to our friend Nadzru, looking for one view that correspond to his, out of 19 other dissenting views, in qur'anic and hadeethic linggo is being on a rather 'slippery slope'.
So I find this short discourse on the fallacy of the salafis by non other than my favourite scholar, TJ Winter, quite relevant to people like Nadzru. More so to people like Farouk, Kassim Ahmad and Sisters in Islam and ' yang sewaktu dengan nya', who may have good intentions but are clearly misguided, to say the least.
I say, Let Tariq Ramadan exhort for moratoriam on hudud in Europe and America and even in his 'Arabia'. That is his 'siasah'. He needs that. But for Kelantan and Brunei, we are ready for it.
The horse-carriage has been there for years waiting for the 'horse'.
There will never be a ' perfect horse ' or a ' perfect horse-carriage ' these days and age but unless we start whipping the 'horse' into motion and discipline, we will never start at all.
Allahualam
Dr Nik Howk
