Perak Mufti Harussani Zakaria ( below ) has reminded Malaysians that the prescribed hudud punishment for premarital sex is 100 lashes.

Harussani Zakaria Yet another ustaz, Dr Mohd Ridhuan Tee Abdullah, seeks to impose his rigid sexual morality on Malaysians belonging to other faiths.

In his earlier Utusan article titled 'Isu timbul kerana kejahilan beragama ’, Ridhuan lectured on the 'cardinal sins', asserting that Christianity and Buddhism, like Islam, do not permit adultery. He added too that Hinduism and Sikhism contain the same strictures.

He was replying to my article ‘ Ridhuan Tee’s reverse take on racism’ .

The Utusan article penned by Ridhuan implied that I’m someone 'ignorant of religious teachings' because I did not censure an anak haram (illegitimate child) like he did.

His allegation led to Malay online groups featuring me as their topic of discussion. Their forums were headlined among others, Helen celaka and Helen Cina komunis (to them Ridhuan is the Cina baik ). ‘Communist’ connotes ‘irreligious’ and the labelling smacks of a McCarthyist mob mentality.

NONE In view of the Feb 9 caning of young unwed mothers ( headlined in newspapers, left ), I shall – belatedly – address Ridhuan’s obsession with 'sinners'.

Not satisfied with quoting chapter and verse from several Holy Books, he even roped in cultural injunctions for good measure, cautioning: “If Helen Ang will be mindful of old Chinese customs … she will realize that adulterers are put into swine baskets and thrown into the river”.

He wrote in the same article: “… liquor has now become a part of the Chinese culture/way of life, just like sex outside marriage”. He also said that the non-Malays “can go to Kuala Lumpur, drink arak and visit the nightclubs until they pass out because maybe their religions allow them to do so.”

Ridhuan should not attempt to moralise from the Buddhist platform when he has little understanding of Lord Buddha’s compassion. His shallow comprehension of Chinese culture is one where he figures punishment as looming large, and persuasion and pragmatism are obscured.

Sadly for a monolingual Malay readership, he is only presenting a superficial and distorted picture of what it means to be Chinese.

Chinese doing haram jobs

As if stereotyping a race so negatively is not bad enough, here is a judgmental man given institutional backing by a national paper to spread his prejudices far and wide.

In his article 'Destinasi roket bukan ke bulan' , he wrote “for those who do not believe in God, they choose free sex, and we see condoms scattered everywhere. We should not defend those who flout God’s commandment … They who know no shame will openly and proudly buy condoms and arak”.

It does appear as if Ridhuan feels that Chinese pose a stumbling block to Malaysia boasting ourselves as the Land of 20 Million Virgins.

Then more recently on Valentine’s Day, Ridhuan wrote in his ‘ Iktibar Tahun Harimau’ article (My translation):

“The lifestyle of Muslim single mothers is different from those of non-Muslims. The latter can work in all sectors regardless of halal or haram. But the options for Muslims are limited. They cannot seek a livelihood in subahat (sin complicit) places such as gambling dens, moneylenders, shops selling liquor, nightclubs or deriving their income from occupations forbidden in Islam.”

Implicit in his comparison is an assumption that non-Muslim single moms don’t shy away from jobs in gambling dens or nightclubs.

NONE Now let’s juxtapose these views of Ridhuan with the recent statement by erstwhile Prime Ministerial aide Nasir Safar ( right ), who said Chinese women came to Malaysia ‘to sell their bodies’.

It is interesting to note that Ridhuan fails to detect any upward mobility for Chinese in the intervening years since the immigration wave of purported ‘prostitutes’ alluded to by Nasir.

Since Ridhuan is disdainful of Chinese who work as GROs, he should promote their employment in the GLCs.

If only marginalised Chinese girls are not discriminately blocked their entry to public universities, they will have a higher chance of qualifying for better jobs. So he should be encouraging policies that promote education opportunities for them, instead of urging bumiputera quotas in the private sector.

Law of the land

The Federal Constitution makes the Agong head of Islam. One cannot ever imagine His Majesty being Christian or Hindu.

Sultans are heads of Islam in their respective states. There is no state-sanctioned archbishop, for instance, to correspond with the position of state mufti. The Perak Constitution furthermore stipulates that the menteri besar must be Muslim unless the sultan exercises a waiver.

With Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s amendment to Article 121(1A) of the Federal Constitution, the civil court has no jurisdiction on syariah matters.

Article 3(5) says in part, “Parliament may by law make provisions for regulating Islamic affairs”. And the trend of syariah law enforcement is increasingly strict and severe. The three unwed mothers were triply punished – they were fined, and jailed, and caned.

Although Muslims must obey syariah, Muslim zealots should not be interfering in the affairs of non-Muslims because there is no Christian/Buddhist/Hindu/Sikh etc ecclesiastical law practiced in the country.

Nonetheless, certain self-appointed moral policemen are poking their noses into how the minorities behave when dating. And in the process, they are even willing to quote scriptures from religions they feel are inferior.

“Are those using condoms married or not?” queries Ridhuan, hectoring in his typical fashion. Such religious establishment busybodies should be firmly told to mind their own business as 1Malaysia is tacitly observing a compromise of two laws – you to yours, me to mine.

Shades of a theocracy

At the beginning of last year, the private life of Selangor state exco Elizabeth Wong came under public scrutiny. Fending off her critics, Wong declared in a press conference: “I wish to state that I am not ashamed of my sexuality as a woman and as a single person. I have broken no law.”

NONE But then what happens? Wong ( left ) is later photographed wearing a tudung at a PAS function. Very likely, she had decided to tutup aurat (cover up) of her own volition.

My experience as a reporter on Nik Aziz assignments in Kelantan is that the event organisers never required me to don tudung.

For someone adamant that she has 'broken no law', Wong was sending mixed signals. As we know, wearing tudung indicates a Muslim identity. We also know that tudung wearers have been prosecuted by the Syariah Court for lesser offences such as walking in a shopping complex with a man’s hand around their waist.

Non-Muslims have our own identity. It’s high time the religious orthodoxy is made to realise that insensitively shoving their sanctimonious sermons down our throats, like Ridhuan does, is unpalatable.

Caricaturing Chinese as if we are an altogether amoral community, like Ridhuan, Nasir and their ilk do, is similarly objectionable.

HELEN ANG used to be a journalist. In future, she would like to be a practising cartoonist. But for the present, she is in the NGO circles and settling down to more serious writing and reading of social issues.