I refer to the Malaysiakini report Syariah lawyers back action on khalwat against non-Muslims .

Khalwat is not an offence for a non-Muslim to commit under the legal framework governing personal acts of non-Muslims. Non-Muslims are governed by civil laws and the act of khalwat is not an offence under our civil code .

It is therefore a travesty to invoke a charge under religious law not applicable to the person but clothe the punishment in the civil courts. You do not need to be a legally-trained person to understand that the civil courts cannot pass a sentence on a crime not mandated by civil law statutes. Hence how would this asinine proposal be operationalised?

The Syariah Lawyers Association is talking nonsense. Its president Zainal Rijal Abu Bakar asks quite idiotically, ‘If we say that non-Muslims have the right to khalwat and commit adultery, are we saying that they have the right to break Syariah law?’

Of course! How do you break a law you are not subject to in the first place? It is perplexing that these statements are coming from legally trained individuals.

Perhaps the Syariah lawyers would appreciate an illustration in the following context. It is an offence of bigamy in non-Muslim nations for a person to take on another spouse where the legall- married spouse is still alive and they have not been judicially separated.

Notwithstanding this, there are many such nations with a sizeable Muslim minority and Syariah law is applicable to them. India is one such example. A Muslim man living in India could, on the dictates of his religion, take another wife.

Imagine the injustice if such a man is arrested for bigamy, which applies to the majority non- Muslim population, and is 'sentenced' in the Syariah court 'to legitimise the punishment' in accordance with the personal law that applies to him.

If our Syariah lawyers are in support of the illustration above, they then have the moral standing to propose the rubbish that they are proposing for us to consider.