Religion & Faith

I read in NST today Thursday 5th Jan, on the front page: US rights groups rapped over sodomy call (click here). Human Rights Watch have asked Malaysia to repeal law on homosexuality and drop charges against Anwar Ibrahim. For being a Muslim and having a background in (civil and syari’ah) law, and more importantly as an advocate of intellectual discourse on issues, I suppose what I’m feeling is an obligation to make sense of what’s happening, and that includes the reaction by the public.

*Disclaimer: I am not a student of Islamic jurisprudence, let alone an expert or authority of any form on the subject. The same applies to the issue of human rights as well as law. My stand on all issues in life is my prerogative, none of which I am making here. What I’d like to achieve from what you’re about to read, to make sense of things. Some of it. I hope.

Not an issue of sovereignty

HRW is not meddling with the prosecution of Anwar Ibrahim, in the sense that they are asking/telling Malaysia to go for X case, or drop Y case. The dropping Anwar’s case, is in the first place related to their premise of repealing laws on homosexuality. If such laws don’t exist, repealed as per their request, then the case won’t exist to begin with. Hence why the call went hand in hand. But there’s a need to stress out here, from HRW’s point of view, it is the law on homosexuality that is the issue, not Anwar.

Why now?

In terms of advocacy and achieving change, it’s the context of striking when the iron is hot. Generally the call to repeal laws on homosexuality by HRW is timeless beyond now, and borderless beyond Malaysia. But they are issuing the statement now to Malaysia because it’s timely to push for this cause now during a high profile case. Point to stress: HRW is not a tool of a political leader or party, it merely makes sense to push for this now, in Malaysia.

The Islamic context

Homosexuality was addressed the Qur’an, the highest source of authority for Muslims and the source that no sect of Muslims have disputed as Divine word. Lawyers are better at interpreting the law because that’s their area. Ulama’s are better at interpreting the Qur’an because that’s their area. There are many angles to which we can discuss issues like homosexuality, banking or even ethics in war, on the Islamic premise, and I won’t go into that due to lack of knowledge and it’ll be lengthy. But generally speaking, at the source (Qur’an), it is on the negative for homosexuality, to put it mildly.

Now while there are some laws in Islam that something illegal can become legal (subject to certain qualifications (as often seen in banking today)), it still recognizes the root of the law. Like it or not this reality matters. And if you’re going to tackle, advocate and persuade people on issues that are sticky to them, these realities (not just on homosexuality) must be addressed, because that will be your (not their) stumbling block. I recently wrote about this issue of dichotomy, please read to better understand what I mean by this point, click here.

Beyond this issue, you must also realize that somethings that are right, are right. That are wrong, are wrong. It is neither an issue of interpretation or era of society. The Prophet did say, that there will come a time, when even wrong things, will be (sincerely) seen as right. Again I’m not tying this exclusively to homosexuality but all issues of right and wrong today. Something that you could be doing, that is of no issue to you, that the idea that it might, just might, be a wrongful act to you, is non existent or questionable.

The human rights issue

What is unfortunate about the Malaysian and non-Western world discourse is that this further reiterates the misconception that human rights is a Western issue, despite efforts such as the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, not to mention human rights values as raised in the Qur’an, the Prophet and various Ulama’s after him. But at the same time, the misconception is somewhat understandable, if at all times the issue of human rights is raised by Western peers, advocated by Western peers, formulated by Western peers or Western educated/leaning peers.

Also unfortunate, the coincidence that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formulated at a time when Western players led the power index in the global playing field. My point is, if it was done at a different era, the connotations, the associations that the world, especially the Eastern and/or Islamic world would have towards the clear conceptualization of human rights, may be different.