{"id":1706,"date":"2008-04-05T21:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T13:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2008\/04\/05\/ikim-dismisses-khalwat-proposal\/"},"modified":"2008-04-12T22:16:33","modified_gmt":"2008-04-12T14:16:33","slug":"ikim-dismisses-khalwat-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/borninmalaysia\/2008\/04\/05\/ikim-dismisses-khalwat-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"IKIM dismisses khalwat proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religious scholar dismisses khalwat proposal for non-Muslims<\/strong>
\nApr 5, 08 5:33pm<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.malaysiakini.com\/news\/80940<\/p>\n

One of country’s top religious scholars yesterday lashed out at comments by an Islamic judge that religious laws on close proximity affecting Muslims should be applied to non-Muslims. The issue of syariah or Islamic law is sensitive among non-Muslims here who fear a growing “Islamisation” of the country.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Islamic Court of Appeal judge Mohammad Asri Abdullah told a local paper that a religious seminar was proposing that Islamic law on the issue of khalwat or close proximity should also be applied to non-Muslims through the civil courts. His comments created a major uproar with non-Muslim religious groups in the country criticising the proposal as a violation of their constitutional rights. The proposal would apply to a non-Muslim who was with a Muslim and would not relate to two non-Muslims.<\/p>\n

‘Utterly erroneous’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now the head of the group organising the seminar has also condemned the suggestion. “This is something utterly erroneous,” said Syed Ali Tawfik Al-Attas, the head of the Malaysian Institute of Islamic Understanding.<\/p>\n

“We are not in agreement with (Mohammad Asri) at all and because of this… our close friendship and important association with the non-Muslims… is now in jeopardy because … people are now not going to trust us,” he added.<\/p>\n

“In Islam it says to you yours to us ours in terms of religion. For us to think that we can apply Islamic shariah law to non-Muslims, that is tantamount to (idolatry) because we are assuming we know better than God.”<\/p>\n

Rights group Suaram has also criticised the proposal as a violation of religious freedom. “This is a clear infringement of freedom of religion and the rights of non-Muslims, which is enshrined in Article 11 of the federal constitution,” group coordinator John Liu said.<\/p>\n

Discussions on the issue of race and religion are tightly controlled in Malaysia, which is dominated by Muslim Malays living alongside ethnic Chinese and Indian communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religious scholar dismisses khalwat proposal for non-Muslims Apr 5, 08 5:33pm http:\/\/www.malaysiakini.com\/news\/80940 One of country’s top religious scholars yesterday lashed out at comments by an Islamic judge that religious laws on close proximity affecting Muslims should be applied to non-Muslims. The issue of syariah or Islamic law is sensitive among non-Muslims here who fear a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[112,113,302],"class_list":["post-1706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-borninmalaysia","tag-discrimination","tag-intolerance","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poobalan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}