Non-Muslims rattled by increasing Islamisation, says AG in report

PETALING JAYA: Non-Muslims are against Islamic criminal law amendments as they perceive them as another step towards the Islamisation of Malaysia, Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali was quoted as saying by online news portal The Malaysian Insight.
He was quoted as saying that it did not help either that the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 (or better known by its Bahasa Malaysia acronym, RUU 355) Bill was mooted by PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang, the propagator of hudud laws in Kelantan in the 1990s, with Terengganu following suit later.
"When Hadi introduced this bill and tried to incorporate the 100 lashes and other severe punishment, the perception of non-Muslims was that hudud is coming, in the guise of the private member's bill," Apandi was quoted as saying in the news portal's report.
In fact, Apandi said, RUU 355 was simply to amend the existing Syariah Criminal Law Act to enhance punishments.
He said it was also to give Muslims a sense of "feeling good", as the syariah court currently is even lower than the powers of the magistrate's court.
RUU 355 was to have increased the power of the syariah court to the position of a sessions court.
"They (non-Muslims), however, read it as the beginning of an Islamic state government like the ones in Iran, Iraq and Syria, despite being told it was not applicable to non-Muslims. That is why the strong resistance," he was quoted as saying in the report.
Apandi told the news portal he is relieved that the ruling federal coalition had made a U-turn on RUU 355, as that meant he would not have to draft the amendments to Hadi's bill, which he felt would have been opposed anyway.
"When we draft, we have to show that it is a government bill, so in the first place, my office will have to make sure that it is different from Hadi's draft.
"So maybe, just maybe, we may exclude Sabah (and Sarawak), to make it different, and even reduce the sentences.
"On the number of strokes, and even the sentences, I would have probably reduced them.
"As for fines, currently it is RM1,000, they want to increase it to RM100,000. The disparity is so big. People are going to start questioning the logic behind this."
Apandi told the news portal that he felt RUU 355 was more political than legal.
"The purpose and intention of this is to reap political mileage. Have you heard anybody from the public clamouring for increase of powers of the syariah court? No, nobody asking is asking for it, isn't it?
"To my reading, it is mainly political. He (Hadi) has to satisfy the states that have already established hudud laws," he said.