Criminalising (and Control of) Muslim (Moral) Behaviour
Since the late 1990s, Malaysian states have adopted, beside the separate Islamic Family law enactment and procedural enactments, separate Islamic criminal offences enactments.53 Previously few offenses were formally designated as a Syariah offense by statute and, “such matters accounted for a negligible percentage of the cases on the docket”^4 Constitutionally, the power of the state to enforce Islamic criminal law is limited and it can only apply to persons professing Islam.55 According to the 1965 Federal Act the punishment is limited, often referred to as the 3/5/6 formula (3 years jail, a fine of 5000 RM and 6 strikes with the rotan stick).[820] [821] [822] [823] Those new Islamic criminal law enactments contain many provisions which exert ample control on the public moral behaviour of Muslims. For example, state law requires Muslims to go to Friday prayers, to fast during Ramadan, to comply with alimentary regulations; furthermore drinking, gambling, adultery, interfaith marriages, lesbianism, sodomy, premarital sex, khalwat (‘close proximity’), pimps, incest and prostitution face penalties, and some states also have apostasy laws.57 Several authors note the increase since about 2000 of state-sanctioned religious policing with regard to the enforcement of these Islamic penal provisions^8 Moreover, as already mentioned, fatwas of official, state appointed officials are binding. In addition, next to these criminal offences enactments, the states of Kelantan and Terengganu have adopted hudud laws.59 They are at this stage not yet implemented and have been judicially challenged as unconstitutional. Yet the passing of these bills on hudud created unrest around the country and has been at the forefront of many harsh debates.[824] It is clear that such religious penal provisions cause much discussion and polemics in Malaysia among Muslims with regard to their religious freedom, to their freedom of opinion and of expression, and to the appropriate relationship between state and religion. The constitutional and even Islamic validity of such ‘paternalistic’ and ‘authoritarian’ legislation is strongly criticised, not only by non-Muslims, but also by Muslim intellectuals, academics, and action groups such as SIS (Sisters in Islam). Moreover, the drip-feeding of such authoritarian elements into penal statutes is not limited to Islamic provisions, but equally characterises the realm of secular law in Malaysia (e.g. the sodomy prohibition, the Internal Security Act (isa), etc.). Consequently, we are not talking about the reintroduction of Islamic medieval practices and rules but about very modern (authoritarian) developments, caused by a variety of reasons. The reasons have to do with neoliberal globalisation, growing piety, the growth of ultra-conservative Islamism and the growing power of religious departments and courts[825] Shari'a legislation should, in this view, be seen as a thoroughly modern, post-colonial concept. It can only function if it finds itself being part of the centralisation of power in the nation-state, without which it does not exist. 5
More on the topic Criminalising (and Control of) Muslim (Moral) Behaviour:
- Collective moral responsibility is a species of moral responsibility and contrasts, in particular, with individual moral responsibility.
- Moral Autonomy and Moral Personhood
- Democratizing Muslim Legal Pluralism? Parity and Muslim Dispute Resolution
- THE LESSON OF THE LAST CHAPTER has been that if there is moral pluralism in our world, it is there because the concepts with which different groups make moral judgments are different from one another - perhaps radically so, perhaps in more mundane ways.
- Muslim Legal Practice in the United Kingdom: the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal
- III Moral complications and moral psycholog
- This edited collection draws upon original empirical and policy research to examine debates on religious practice and the experience of Muslim family law within British Muslim communities.
- By the term “collective responsibility,” I will understand a collective consisting of two or more human moral agents that bears moral responsibility for an outcome that consists of a state of affairs.
- ORIGIN OF THE TRADERS COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR STYLIZED FACTS
- Safety behaviour of manufacturing companies in Indonesia
- Correlation Behaviour with Regard to Trading Activity
- Despite militants' frequent attempts to claim that mainstream institutions and scholars are irrelevant, mainstream narratives undoubtedly offer an influential role in Muslim and non-Muslim understandings of the Islamic regulation of armed conflict.
- Sample Position Description—Critical Care Transport Medical Control Physician (also known as Medical Control or Command Officer)
- Sample Position Description—Critical Care Transport Medical Control Physician (also known as Medical Control or Command Officer)
- Stylized facts are the observed statistical properties of the traders’ trading behaviour in the financial markets.
- STYLIZED FACTS OF TRADERS' BEHAVIOUR