(Petaling Jaya, Monday): DAP is
prepared to discuss with the PAS leadership its model of Islamic state as well
as the Terengganu Hudud Bill to explain the DAP’s criticisms and objections,
just as we are prepared to meet with the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad and the UMNO leadership to explain why the DAP is opposed to their
“929 Declaration” that Malaysia is an Islamic State, made by Mahathir at the
Gerakan national delegates’ conference on September 29 last year.
PAS President Datuk Fadzil Noor had outlined the seven
principles of the PAS model of an Islamic state, which clearly have to be tested
against practical problems and issues for the principles to be fully understood.
However, just on the plane of principles, the advocacy of
“sovereignty of law based on Islamic Syariah law and jurisprudence” would
mean a fundamental change to the 1957 Merdeka Constitution and “social
contract” reached by our forefathers from the major communities and reaffirmed
by the peoples of Sabah and Sarawak on the formation of Malaysia in 1963 that
Malaysia is a democratic, secular, multi-religious, tolerant and progressive
nation with Islam as the official religion but not an Islamic state.
This is because the introduction of the principle of
“sovereignty of law based on Islamic Syariah law and jurisprudence” would
require a fundamental constitutional alteration and tectonic shift in the
nation-building process as it would derogate from the 44-year “social
contract” that the Merdeka Constitution is the supreme law of the land,
automatically rendering non-Muslims
as second-class citizens in the country.
DAP is also prepared to have dialogue with Parti Keadilan
Nasional, whose deputy president Abdul Rahman Othman had said that the PAS model
for an Islamic State as outlined by Fadzil could be incorporated into the
Barisan Alternative’s new manifesto for the next general election.
DAP also wishes to meet the PAS leadership over the Terengganu hudud bill, as it goes against human rights as in discriminating against women in providing, among others, that a woman who reports she has been raped will be charged with qazaf (slanderous accusation) and flogged 80 lashes if she is unable to prove the rape while an unmarried woman who is pregnant is assumed to have committed zina , even if she has been raped.
(3/6/2002)