Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today that
proponents of hudud had pushed for it to be adopted during his time but that he
had kept them under control.
Now that he was no longer in power, he said, they had begun
to push for hudud or Islamic criminal laws in the country, he told TIME
magazine in an interview.
Asked to comment on the hudud bill moved by PAS President
Hadi Awang and fast-tracked by Umno in Parliament, although Malaysia had a
reputation for being a moderate Muslim nation, Mahathir said the laws that PAS
wanted to pass were against the teachings of Islam.
“Justice is the most important thing. In a plural society
like Malaysia, you cannot have two laws — one law for the Muslim, one law for
the non-Muslim. If a Muslim and a non-Muslim thief steal, you cut off the
Muslim’s hand, and the non-Muslim gets two months’ jail. Is that justice?
Obviously it is not justice. If it is not justice, it is not Islamic.
“They were not able to make any progress with their hudud
laws during my time. I didn’t tell them that this Islam is out-of-date or
anything like that.
“I said Islam stresses justice, and what you are doing is to
create injustice, therefore it is wrong.
“But when I stepped down, they brought it up again. Hudud is
man-made; it’s political, it is just meant to show that you are very Islamic …
Today, Muslims are in a lot of turmoil, and it’s not because of Islam. It is
because they reject Islam.”
On the fact that during his time he had consolidated
executive power but now Prime Minister Najib Razak was being accused of making
himself all powerful, Mahathir said:
“All leaders must have some power. Without power, you can’t
be a leader. And the power given to the prime minister is adequate if he wants
to do something that is needed, something that is good. What we are seeing is
that the same power that I had when I was able to make decisions that were
beneficial for the country, that power is being abused.”
Asked what had happened to the high expectations that people
had when Najib took office, especially in terms of greater liberalism and
democratic space, Mahathir said:
“He (believes that) he can sustain his popularity and remain
prime minister with money. Because of that, he has to find some source of
money. Our belief is that he created this so-called sovereign fund (1Malaysia
Development Bhd) so he can somehow make use of that money in order to ensure
that he gets support from party members and from other people.”
Source –FMT-
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