Malaysia Forum

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar is a leading Malaysian human rights lawyer and activist and the current president of the National Human Rights Society (HAKAM). Malik argues that race-based politics in Malaysia has contributed to a concentration of power in the hands of an elite — which has led to a variety of other problems, such as corruption, executive dominance, Islamisation (as political capital), and the perversion of the judiciary. He then emphasized the importance of state-ownership among citizens in reforming these systemic weaknesses, and quotes the March 8 2008 elections as an example of this notion.

In a response to a question about the role of Islam in the constitutional framework of Malaysia (Article 3 and Article 11) and its relation to the Lina Joy case, Malik quotes a 1988 Federal (Supreme) Court decision (Che Omar Che Soh), where the court ruled that the laws of the country were secular, including personal law. Malik also explains that the Federal Court awarded habeas corpus to a Malay man who converted to Christianity and who was proselytizing on the grounds that his ISA detainment was an infringement on his right to freedom of religion. Given these legal precedents, he therefore argues that the current legal imbroglio is a result of the political Islamic race between UMNO and PAS in the 90s and also of the 1988 Salleh Abbas affair that emasculated judicial independence, among other factors.

While recognizing the role of Islam in public life, Malik reminds us of the social contract inherent in the Constitution of Malaysia and exhorts us to be wary of the language of supremacism that many political parties make to position themselves. Another interesting question raised was the tendency of framing Malaysian issues in terms of “religious” versus “secular” rather than articulating them in a larger human rights context, or as Malik argues, in terms of “constitutional rights” and “equality.”

Posted by andrewlza / NMF 2008