Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Caning Case Stirs Controversy in Malaysia

By John Gee

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarnor (r) talks to a Malaysian religious authority (c) as her father, Shukarnor Abdul Muttalib, looks on, following her release from the family’s home in Karai, north of Kuala Lumpur, on Aug. 24. AFP photo/Kamarul Akhir

As Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarnor sipped her glass of beer, she could not have anticipated the storm it would unleash.

A hospital worker in Singapore, married to a Singaporean, Kartika is a Malaysian national. In 2007, she went on holiday with friends to Cherating, a beach resort in the Malaysian state of Pahang, and it was there, in a hotel, that she imbibed the fateful drink. She was caught by the religious police, whose job is to enforce observance of syariah (shariah) law by Muslims. Having pleaded guilty to the offense, she was sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,420) and to be caned.

The fine was paid quietly, but the news that a personable and otherwise law-abiding mother of two was to receive six strokes of a cane caused much more controversy. The federal government passed the Syariah Court Act in 1984. It regulated the different punishments that syariah courts throughout Malaysia could impose, but only the states of Pahang, Perlis and Kelantan—socially conservative and with large Malay majorities—endorse caning of women under syariah law. Despite this provision, no women have been caned throughout the 25 years since the Syariah Court Act was passed, and so moves to have Kartika caned drew national and international attention.

Non-Muslim Malaysians generally saw the caning as another unsettling sign of the increasing influence of a more fundamentalist religious current in the majority Malay community, coming on top of actions such as the imposition of a ban on the use of “Allah” to translate the word “God” in non-Muslim texts in Malay. (It was claimed that Muslims might be confused by seeing the supreme deity of another religion described by the same word as their own.)

Nearly all of the public debate over the rights and wrongs of caning people and over the specific details of Kartika’s case went on among Muslims. For some, the issue was plain: Kartika had broken Islamic law and must pay the price. They argued that, in any case, the severity of the sentence was mitigated by safeguards against excessive punishment. The caned person could only be struck on the buttocks, the cane must have a smooth surface and not be more than 1.25 cm. thick, and the responsible officer must not raise the cane above shoulder height before striking.

“Not many Malaysian Muslims know what syariah caning is like, that is why they are shocked over the punishment,” said Abdullah Mohd Zain, a religious advisor to Prime Minister Najib Razak, quoted in the Straits Times of July 25, 2009.

Others argued that women are exempted from caning under Malaysia’s penal code, and that a penalty that exceeds in severity what is allowed under civil law should not be permitted. Less publicly, there has been speculation about why Kartika was arrested in the first place, when everyone knows that she is far from being the only Muslim woman in Malaysia to have consumed alcohol in the past 25 years. Those with longer memories recalled a police raid on Kuala Lumpur’s liveliest night spot a few years ago in which a group of young Malay women were rounded up, only to be released after some of them turned out to be the daughters of prominent personalities and government ministers; fortunately for them, they had not been accused of drinking alcohol at the time, and it was decided that the police had overstepped their role.

Some worried about the impact that the caning of a woman might have on Malaysia’s international standing. The country has striven to build an image of being modern, tolerant and pluralistic, and a punishment that would be perceived elsewhere as backward and brutal would reflect badly on the country.

Ways were sought of making the problem go away. When Kartika was all set to go to be caned at the end of August, it was decided not to proceed during Ramadan; on Aug. 25, the Pahang Syariah Court suspended the caning indefinitely, after deciding that the punishment imposed was too harsh. Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Kartika should not simply accept the sentence, but should appeal against it.

The Kartika case once again highlighted differences within the opposition political alliance. The Democratic Action Party, chiefly based on Chinese support, was uncomfortable with the support that its Islamist ally, Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), gave to the original Syariah Court verdict.

Among Muslims, the case highlighted deeper issues difficult to discuss openly. Questioning of whether the state should enforce Syariah Court decisions is only one expression of dissent; among more prosperous middle class people, there is a dislike of what are regarded as petty restrictions on how they live their lives. They feel that how people dress and what they eat and drink should be left to the consciences of individual Muslims and not be subject to compulsion and punishment. They often have a low opinion of the religious police; some voice the opinion that the officers hired are probably unemployable in any other capacity. Certainly, they resent the intrusiveness of a force that devotes considerable effort to checking on the behavior of young Muslim couples who meet each other in public spaces such as parks, to investigating whether Muslims who are not married to each other are committing the offense of “close proximity” in sharing a hotel room, and to checking on who is out clubbing or bar hopping, which they regard as a personal matter. They hesitate to raise the issue in public out of fear of being accused of being apostates, or at least being criticized as going against Islam.

Alarm at such attitudes has been one of the elements driving religious conservatives in their determination to defend existing religious authority and extend its role. They see their society as under threat from a secularizing tendency and they want to keep a lid on it. Between these two outlooks are the majority which both PAS and the government know they must court: traditional, fairly conservative, but with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude toward lapses and indiscretions that don’t cause material losses to others.

Japan’s New Government—Impact Of Iraq War Still Felt

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered a decisive defeat in the country’s Aug. 30 general election. The Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) won more than two-thirds of the seats in Japan’s Lower House.

The main issue in the elections was the state of the economy, which has, at best, sustained a low rate of growth since the 1990s.

A secondary issue was Japan’s relationship with the U.S. The DPJ opposed Japanese participation in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and, shortly before the election, party leader Yukio Hatoyama wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he said that “as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end.” Instead, he said, the world was moving toward an “era of multi-polarity.”

Such views are being voiced elsewhere in the world, but it is probably in East Asia, where China looms large as a powerful neighbor, that they have the most immediate practical impact. From Japan to Indonesia, a subtle reshuffling of diplomatic and strategic priorities is taking place, in which China—and, to a lesser extent, India—are given more weight and the U.S. less. The international political environment is being reshaped in ways that will have many consequences, including in the Middle East, where the Obama administration has been making efforts to promote a Palestine-Israel peace settlement. Washington may not be better placed than it is now to do that.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.