Malaysian Hudud Law Controversy

As discussed before on this blog (Malaysia's turn to Islamism? and Is Religious Nationalism in Malaysia an end in itself or just a mean to continue the erstwhile Malay Nationalism?), Islam had been part of Malaysian nationalism since independence and its role is increasing. Since the early 1980s, this religious nationalism is fueling Islamization of government in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious country. 

A bill to enhance Islamic punishments in Malaysia is currently dividing the country and the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (BN, Trans. National Front). The private member’s bill presented in the parliament on 27th May sought to amend the Shariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 and to enhance the power of Shariah Courts. This bill was introduced by the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang. The Islamist party, PAS, has been trying to introduce Hudud laws in Malaysia for decades. It had passed Hudud laws in states (Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code Enactment 1999 and the Syariah Criminal Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Enactment, Terengganu, 2002) under its control but as they were in conflict with Federal laws, they were never operational. The PAS is, therefore, trying to get a federal approval/exemption for its laws. It twice tried to present a similar bill in federal parliament last year but failed. This latest bill would have died but for the intervention of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) minister, Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said. With only 14 members in the house of 222, the PAS did not have to power to get its bill pass even the first stage. The UMNO is the largest party in the Barisan Nasional and is led by Prime Minister Najib. The UMNO, with the help of its partners, has ruled Malaysia since independence. All Prime Ministers of Malaysia have been members of the UMNO.

Critics have denounced the Abdul Hadi Awang bill, calling it ‘Hudud law’ to link with Quranic punishments, such amputation and stoning. They contend that the law will be a disaster for Malaysia because of the following reasons:

• It will make Malaysia one step closer to being a theocratic state;
• It will introduce two criminal/judicial system in Malaysia, which is unconstitutional;
• It will be applicable to the whole country and not limited to the PAS-ruled states;
• It will be applicable to non-Muslims and at the very least affect their civil and political rights;
• Its support by the UMNO is illegitimate. Such an action should not have ignored the decision-making process of Barisan Nasional by bypassing the ruling coalition’s supreme council. – 

Proponents of the bill have argued that media and oppositional parties have made this bill controversial without much reason. They have responded to the critics:

• This bill is not unconstitutional and does not introduce a dual criminal/judicial system as it amends a fifty-years-old law and Shariat Courts have been operating in Malaysia for decades;
• Malaysia is ruled by a constitution, not by Shariah. It is not becoming a theocratic state;
• The bill will only enhance some punishments that the Shariah Courts can give. It does not introduce amputation or stoning in Malaysia, the not even in PAS-ruled states;
• It will not be applicable to non-Muslims;
• It is not against Barisan Nasional agreement.

Although some prominent Muslim Malays have criticized the bill, the non-Muslim associations and groups are particularly incensed and have spearheaded the charge against the bill. Even non-Muslim ministers coming from Barisan Nasional component parties have deplored the bill. Four out of eleven parties in the ruling coalition have criticized the bill. The Malaysian Chinese Association and the Malaysian Indian Congress ministers have threatened to resign, if the bill is passed. Mr. Najib has tried to allay the fears of his coalition parties and others by saying that Hudud punishments would not be introduced, only Shariah Courts would be able to give some more strokes of rotan (Malay word for a cane). Currently, Shariah Court can only give 3-5-6 maximum punishments (three years' jail, an RM 5,000 fine or six strokes of the rotan).

Among them were three Malaysian Chinese Association ( MCA ) ministers and four deputy ministers who have vowed to block the bill at all costs, even to the extent of losing their Cabinet posts, while Malaysian Indian Congress ( MIC )'s president S. Subramaniam has also said he would quit as health minister if the bill gets passed.A news report in Jakarta Post informs:

Several major Chinese organizations in the country have also voiced their strong objection to the bill, stressing that the Islamic criminal law is not suitable to be implemented in a multiracial secular state like Malaysia.
MCA president Liow Tiong Lai announced that his party would launch a civic campaign to get more Malaysians to defend the country's constitution and oppose Islamist party PAS' tabling of the amendment bill on hudud in the parliament.
He reiterated that MCA would take further actions to lead the Chinese community and the rest of the country in this critically important civic movement.
He said he had approached several BN component parties over the campaign in hope of securing their cooperation to work together to defend the constitution for the sake of the country's future survival.

PM Najib with PAS leader Hadi Awang

Source: Malay Mail Online

What is the motive of the UMNO for allowing the PAS to table the bill now? Some have argued that PM Najib wanted to divert attention from the corruption scandal but the corruption scandal has been going on for almost a year now. A more plausible explanation is that bill has been supported to win two by-elections in Malay-majority areas. PM Najib want to demonstrate that he remains popular with Malays that make-up a majority of Malaysians. The timing of the bill’s acceptance by the UMNO is crucial. The bill was tabled on the last day of the Parliament session so it will be debated in October. By that time, the June by-elections would have been won by the UMNO and so the bill, its utility expired, can then be rejected. Futhermore, the Hudud bill is divisive not only for the Barisan Nasional but also for the opposition. Opposition needs to be united to defeat the UMNO, which has dominated Malaysian politics for decades, but the Hudud bill makes alliance between the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP) and the PAS close to impossible.

Saudi Arabian Nationalism, MBS, Salafism, and Yemen War

A mix of dynastic and Salafist nationalism is on the rise in Saudi Arabia. Intervention in the Yemeni Civil War (named the 'Decisive Storm') has the intended rally around the flag effect. Simeon Kerr wrote about it in the Financial Times in May 2015:

Lines of green Saudi flags hang proudly along Riyadh’s wide highways while screens around the capital broadcast footage on a loop of warplanes flying into combat and massive explosions.Local companies have taken out giant billboards pledging allegiance to the “decisive and determined” King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, while ordinary Saudis have taken to social media to show their support for the new king and the county’s military campaign in Yemen.An unprecedented jingoism — hidden for decades — has swept through Saudi Arabia since King Salman ascended to the throne in January and the launch in March of the aerial campaign against Shia Houthi rebels.Although the air strikes have raised international concern and heightened tensions with Iran, its rival for regional dominance, they have been cheered in Saudi by an increasingly nationalist and sectarian sentiment.

Saudi cartoon showing Iranian cleric being hit by a missile on which Decisive Storm (عاصفة الحزم) is visible.

Source: Al-Watan, Saudi Arabia, March 27, 2015

The royalists, nationalists, and the servile media also have a young, tall, dark and handsome prince to gush about. In one year, Deputy Crown Prince and Second Deputy Prime Minister Prince Mohammad bin Salman has risen from being one of the dozens of grandsons of King Abdul Aziz al-Saud (the founder of Saudi Arabia) to arguably the most powerful man in the kingdom. Prince Mohammad is currently holding three posts:

• He is the head of the Royal Court, meaning he is not only King Salman's son but also his closest advisor; 
• He is the Defense Minister and as Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir is not a royal, Prince Mohammad is more powerful of the two men leading Saudi foreign engagements;
• He is the key economic decision-maker in Saudi Arabia. He chairs the Council of Economic Affairs and Development, the main decision-making body on economic and financial issues in Saudi Arabia. In his capacity as the lead economic player, Prince Mohammad announced his plans for Saudi economy and for the Aramco (the national energy company that drives the Saudi economy) in January 2016. In March 2016, he announced the Saudi Arabia’s Vision for 2030. 

For a country that has been ruled by septuagenarians and octogenarians for decades, it's unprecedented for a thirty-years old to hold such power. His youth and action-oriented leadership have made him popular but many are wary of such concentration of power.

Source: The National Interest

Is Saudi nationalism moving away from Salafism or is Salafism becoming more entrenched in the Saudi nationalism under King Salman?

There is evidence to support both sides of the argument. Since the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia has promoted a more dynastic and ecumenical religious nationalism and has tried to move away from Salafi nationalism. Official media and educational and cultural institutions have focused more on the exceptionalism of Saudi land and royal family than on the exceptionalism of Salafism. Some of the measures taken are given below:

• A cult of King Abdul Aziz has been cultivated;
• King Abdullah curtailed the power of Salafi clerics and religious police; 
• National Museum was founded in Riyadh;
• A new subject 'national education' was introduced in the schools (Saudi Arabia in Transition 2015, page 4-5);
• The first co-educational university in Saudi Arabia was established in 2009 by King Abdullah. He gave it his own name (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) and quashed criticism of Salafi critics;
• In the early 2000s, Saudi Royals for the first time made some non-Salafi Sunnis and Shias (and women) included in the Shura Council, the highest advisory body. King Abdullah also started a dialogue with the Shiites, who are ten percent of Saudi population and more crucially are a majority in the oil-rich Eastern province;
• Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 announced recently called for 'a tolerant country with Islam as its constitution and moderation as its method.' It declared that the 'values of moderation, tolerance, excellence, discipline, equity, and transparency will be the bedrock of our success.' Emphasis on toleration and moderation show a change of focus and decrease in the power of Salafi religious establishment;
• Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 also had good news for women. It asserted that 'Saudi women are yet another great asset. With over 50 percent of our university graduates being female, we will continue to develop their talents, invest in their productive capabilities and enable them to strengthen their future and contribute to the development of our society and economy.' This was another defeat of Salafi clerics who want women to stay at home;
• The Saudi Arabian leadership has repeatedly said that Yemeni intervention was not  Salafi/Sunni fight with Shi'ism. They have clarified that it was a fight against Iran, which was trying to control the Middle East and carving a new Persian Empire. They have also condemned the sectarian rhetoric of the Daesh (Islamic State), which is mainly Salafi, and called for unity of all Muslims.

Abdullah Hamidaddin, a scholar, has also argued in Al-Arabia that the power of (Salafi) clerics is on the wane in Saudi Arabia:

In recent weeks, the Saudi government has been sending a clear message to its people and the world that economic development and religious extremism cannot coexist. This message is in line with the launch of Saudi Vision 2030, which depends on a social vibrancy that is antithetical to extreme religious values. Of course, people have the right to be religious, but religious institutions - formal and informal - shouldn't be allowed to be above the law to forcefully impose or propagate their views. 

Many analysts consider the recent government announcement to limit the ability of the “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" which is known in many foreign media outlets as "religious police,” to arrest and interrogate a significant move. But a much more important decision was the appointment during last week’s cabinet reshuffle of Sulaiman Aba al-Khayl as president of the University of Imam Mohammad bin Saud. I personally believe this cements the government’s focus to work closely with the religious institution for the greater good. His appointment came as a pleasant surprise to moderates and reformers. The university had been considered by some that it promotes nationally and internationally hardline views.

However, there is also evidence of the rise in Salafi nationalism after the ascendance of King Salman and Yemeni intervention. While Saudi government has tried to avoid stroking anti-Shia hatred, many official clerics and others people linked with the government have publicly portrayed Yemen and Syrian civil wars as a conflict between real Islam (Salafism/Sunnism) and false Islam (Shiism) and resorted to scaremongering after the start of Saudi campaign against Yemeni Houthis. Angus Mcdowall of Reuters gave examples of such instances:

"If they (Shi'ites) manage to win and control the state, they ravage Sunnis: clerics, women, children, the rulers and the ruled. They attack just like the lion attacks his prey," said Farid al-Ghamdi, a cleric at Mecca's Umm al-Qura seminary in a sermon visible on YouTube...."Decisive Storm came to sever any ambition of the Safavids to besiege Muslims in their own homes," wrote cleric Saad al-Breik to his 1.15 million Twitter followers after the air strikes began last month. 

That kind of scare-mongering has been evident in the Saudi press as well. A report in the daily al-Medina newspaper last week cited "military experts" as saying the Houthis wanted to turn Yemen's capital Sanaa into "an entirely Shi'ite city by 2017" and that the air strikes would thwart "this Iranian plan"....

An analysis of over seven million Arabic tweets from February to August 2015 done by Alexandra Siegel, a PhD student at the New York University showed that while both sides are using social media for hate speech, such tweets from Saudi Arabia are much more common (although it might be said that this conclusion would have something to do with only looking at Arabic tweets).

In the years following the escalation of the Syrian civil war, six main derogatory terms have been frequently used to disparage Shia Muslims online: rafidha (rejectionist), Hizb al-Shaytan (party of the devil), Hizb al-Lat (party of Lat), Majus (Magianism or Zoroastrianism), Nusayri (followers of Nusayr), and Safawi (Safavid). Rafidha refers to Twelver Shias, the largest of the Shia sects, and implies that they have rejected “true” Islam as they allegedly do not recognize Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and his successors as having been legitimate rulers after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. For example, Salafi cleric Abdulaziz al-Tarifi tweeted to his approximately 800,000 followers in February, “Jews and Christians did not used to collude with the rafidhaas they do today in this country and every country.”

The killing of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr was considered as another sign of anti-Shiite bias although the Saudi government pointed out that dozens of Sunni terrorists were also executed on the same day as Sheikh Nimr and claimed that executions were against terrorism, not against Shia or Shiaism. Furthermore, the coalition of Muslim countries that was announced in December 2015 to fight terrorism does not have one Shia-ruled Muslim country as its members. Bahrain is the only Shia-majority country that is a member of the coalition but it is ruled by a Sunni monarchy. So, it appears that not only Iran but all Shia-ruled countries (Iraq and Lebanon) were excluded from this alliance.

Frederic Wehrey is not very hopeful of future and considers that Salafism has increased its role in Saudi nationalism under King Salman  (Authoritarianism Goes Global: The Challenge to Democracy, p-111-12)

At its core, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains an authoritarian state with a ruling family wedded to monarchical privilege and backed by a deeply anti-liberal and sectarian religious establishment. If anything, it appears to be becoming more so under King Salman. In contrast to King Abdullah, Salman has been wooing the Kingdom’s religiously conservative base of power to shore up public support for his domestic policies and to demonize Iran in the region. The result has been a rollback of Abdullah’s limited reforms and a new, more virulent Sunni-based nationalism. 

Professor Madawi al-Rasheed, one of the most eminent scholars of Saudi politics, claims that the Yemen war is the latest incarnation of militarized Wahhabi nationalism. Writing in Politico, in a column titled "Wahhabi religious nationalism turns ugly," she traces the history of Wahhabi nationalism:

In the Arab world, religious nationalism was invented early in the 20th century in Saudi Arabia, a kingdom whose goal was to unite dispersed people and purify their religious beliefs and practices under the leadership of the Al-Saud. This unification took place as a result of a fringe Islamic revivalist tradition, commonly known as Wahhabiyya, which morphed into a military religious nationalist movement. With time, the project went beyond simple piety: Sharia law and conformity to Islamic teachings were rigorously applied. Under state patronage, this Wahhabiyya was turned into a quasi-nationalist project. Its ideology has proliferated and now inspires Muslims across the globe, fueled by petrodollars and globalization.

Early in the 20th century, an all-encompassing Wahhabi religious nationalism inflamed the imagination of a substantial section of the population of Arabia. It provided the ideological tool to band together to achieve independence from an ailing Ottoman empire that had little control over this peripheral region of its Empire. With a political leadership eager to expand throughout Arabia and to assert its control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Al-Saud militarized the fragmented tribal population, united them under an Islamic flag and mobilized them to wage war against all those who refused their homogenizing theology and radical Wahhabi message.

From the heart of Arabia they spread across the rest of the Arabian Peninsula. They created a state that has remained hostage to the Wahhabi agenda, bigoted interpretations of religious texts, and violent strategies whose aim is to control the behavior of Muslims and non-Muslims in its jurisdictions.

Yemen war, according to Professor al-Rasheed, is linked with the Wahhabi nationalism's quest to obliterate its rivals, who are all heretics and idolators, and bring the people back to its "pure" version of Islam and she argues there is only one way to end the terrorism and recurrent sectarian wars:

The zeal of religious nationalism turns ugly when it moves from the mosque to the military. And even uglier when it becomes the religion of the state. Whether in Saudi Arabia or in the nascent so-called Islamic State, where religious nationalism holds people together by the power of the sword, it is difficult to imagine an alternative way of being Muslim.

In Saudi Arabia, the airstrikes on Yemen launched in March proved a shrewd move for the government: They sparked the imagination of many Saudis who saw them through the prism of their old Wahhabi tradition as countering the hegemony of a rival Shiite power, namely Iran and its alleged Zaydi Houthi clients. The Saudi leadership could not simply watch a rival power such as the Islamic State take all the credit for eradicating heretics. Both Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State came into being as a result of the same type of ideology. Their interests may clash but they share a common goal.

Unless religious nationalism is replaced by new identities about being citizens in a bounded nation in which people enjoy equality and rights, we will continue to see a repeat of the terrorist atrocities committed in the name of Islam.

Growing Jewish Nationalism in Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the pushback

Scholars have been warning about the rising influence of the religious nationalists in the IDF. Not only the number of religious nationalists (or national-religious or religious Zionists as they are called in Israel) is rising in the IDF but they are also serving in more combat roles and rising in ranks. Conversely, the secular Israelis that had been the backbone of the IDF since the 1940s have been reluctant to serve after their mandatory military service in the IDF. Yagil Levy, in his 2014 article in Armed Forces and Society Journal, wrote about the theocratization of the IDF. He gives four reasons why there has been a significant increase in religious influence in the Israeli military:

At the center of this process stands the national-religious sector, which has significantly upgraded its presence in the ranks since the late 1970s. It is argued that four integrated and cumulative processes gradually generated this shift toward the theocratization of the Israeli military: (1) the crafting of institutional arrangements that enable the service of religious soldiers, thereby (2) creating a critical mass of religious soldiers in many combat units, consequently (3) restricting the military command’s Intra-organizational autonomy visa`- vis the religious sector, and paving the road to (4) restricting the Israel Defense Forces autonomy in deploying forces in politically disputable missions.

A Christian Science Monitor report by Christa Bryant in 2015 highlighted the same issue. 

In the early 1990s,...Orthodox men accounted for 2.5 percent of graduates of infantry officer training courses; since then, it’s grown to more than 25 percent, according to a 2013 book. In some combat units, they make up as much as 50 percent of new officers – roughly quadruple their share of Israel’s population. The upward trend, coupled with a parallel decline in the number of combat soldiers and officers coming from secular families, is dramatically changing the face of the IDF. Many Israelis respect religious Zionists like Fund – Orthodox Jews who see the state as playing a part in the prophesied redemption of Israel ­– for their willingness to defend the nation.

But some worry that their worldview could change the character not only of the army – traditionally a secular “people’s army,” where youngsters of all stripes forged lasting bonds during their mandatory two- to three-year service – but the state of Israel itself. One of the most cited concerns is that if Israel agreed to a peace deal with Palestinians, the outsized influence of religious soldiers could complicate the IDF’s evacuation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

An investigative report by Reuters in April 2016 also points towards the same phenomenon and argues that religious nationalists have now reached the highest echelons of Israel's powerful security sector:

The community, sometimes referred to as the ‘national religious’, has increased its presence in both government and the civil service. This year, for the first time ever, the heads of the national police, the Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet domestic security service are all Religious-Zionists.

Nowhere, though, has the shift been more pronounced than in the military. Most soldiers in the Israeli army are secular or observant Jews, though Druze and Bedouin Arab citizens serve as well. But over the past two decades, academic studies show, the number of Religious-Zionist officers in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has seen a huge increase. The military has also felt the growing influence of rabbis who have introduced matters of faith and politics to the battlefield.

Source: Reuter's Report

The author of the Reuter's report, Maayan Lubell, however, argues that there are signs of pushback from the secular decision-makers that are still a majority in both civilian and security sectors of Israel. Their criticisms are mainly focused on the power of the Military Rabbinate and it's Jewish Awareness Branch that have tried relentlessly, according to many secular Jews, to promote a right-wing, ideological, and religious agenda and to make the IDF an army with a religious mission, instead of a national mission. In 2012, the State Comptroller of Israel criticized the pamphlets circulated among soldiers by the Rabbinate during the 2008-09 Gaza war in which it was written that 'not one millimeter' of land should be ceded to the Palestinians and cruelty to the Palestinians was sometimes necessary. In January 2016, the IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot announced he would remove the Jewish Awareness Branch from the Military Rabbinate. In his letter to the IDF officers, he argued that a military divided over religion and politics could hardly fulfill its mission:

The IDF is the people’s army and includes a wide spectrum of Israeli society...A change is needed with the aim of keeping the IDF a stately army in a democratic country, nurturing that which unites its soldiers.

His decision was severely criticized by the religious nationalists, who are a majority in the current ruling coalition, and they planned to reverse it. More recently, Israel's deputy military chief Major-General Yair Golan’s Holocaust memorial speech touched a nerve when compared behavior of some of the Israelis to the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s:

If there’s something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it’s the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then - 70, 80 and 90 years ago - and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016.

This was in reference to the killing of an incapacitated Palestinian by an Israeli soldier in cold blood in Hebron in March 2016. However, General Yair was castigated for making this comparison and in the end, because of the political power of the religious nationalists, the IDF had to issue a clarification.

Can the secular Israelis stop the growing Judaization/theocratization of the IDF? The jury is still out but this will surely be the last stand of the secular Israelis.