THE MANY “IFS” OF SYARI’AH LAW
BY: Kassim Ahmad
17 Jun, 2016
PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s Private Member’s Bill to enhance
the statuts of syaria’h courts is bound to raise many problems. God’s law, i.e.
the syari’ah, is of course just, tending towards mercy, for He decrees upon
Himself mercy. The trouble comes when it gets translated into the human brain.
Let us do some syllogism here. Call the human brain subjectivity,
and God’s law objectivity. Almost always subjectivity distorts objectivity to
become something else: unjust and lacking in the quality of mercy. We will give
three examples.
Take the case of Prophet Moses’s scripture, the Torah. It was
monotheism of his time taught to the Israelites. Once it was born into the
world of men, it became polytheistic Judaism! Take the case of Prophet Jesus’s
scripture, the Injeel or the New Testament. It was monotheism
taught to the Israelites of Jesus’s time. Once it was born into the world of
men, it became polytheistic Christianity! Do not stop there. Go on to Prophet
Muhammad. He taught monotheism in his scripture, the Quran, to the whole world.
After about three hundred years, his monotheism too became polytheistic
Sunnism!
Fortunately here, we have the protected Quran to refer to.
See how humans beings revert to his old comfortable zone of mud!
He likes to wallow in mud, instead of climbing the ladder of success, becaue
climbing the ladder of success is hard. The explains the many prophets that God
has to send to them, to reawaken them from their sleep!
This is a slippery slope. One can ask: Is God so incapable that he
cannot send one prophet to do the job? In fact, one of my clever readers in
Dato’ Din Merican’s blog asked precisely this question. Well, let us say that
God cannot fail. If he fails he is not god. God wants man to be the ruler of
the Universe that he is. To make man free. To rule the Universe and re-make it.
That is man’s God-given mission. So he must keep ascending the ladder always.
But man, being weak of flesh, cannot. Therefore he must keep trying until he completely
succeeds.
And he will. Look at where he is now. In spite of shedding blood
in two bloody World Wars, he is poised to colonize outer space and live there
in two or three decade, at most four. It will definitely be in my
grandchildren’s time!
So the ifs of Syari’ah Law must be removed once and for all by its
return to its original home: Divine justice and mercy. Will village preacher
Hadi understand this? If he cannot, and he cannot, I ask him to give up tabling
that private member’s Bill.
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KASSIM AHMAD is a
Malaysia author. His website is
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