PASANGAN yang bercerai “tanpa sebab munasabah” akan dipenjara atau disebat. Begitulah cadangan kerajaan PAS Kelantan. Haruskah kita terkejut apabila cadangan sedemikian datang dari orang-orang yang obses tentang pelaksanaan hukuman hudud? Dari dulu lagi, mereka sudah proaktif membuat draf undang-undang bagi melaksanakan hudud. Namun, apakah mereka telah proaktif dalam membuat kajian dan kertas cadangan misalannya bagaimana […]
Archives for October 2011
“See me as I am”
TAN Sri Rafidah Aziz, 68, has been a towering figure in Malaysian politics for the past three decades. Born in Selama, Perak, in 1943, she became at age 30 Member of Parliament for Kuala Kangsar, and remains the incumbent. In 1987, she was appointed international trade and industry minister. Her political career has not been […]
Hudud and freedom of religion
MUCH has been said about hudud law. I take my hat off to Muslims who have come out openly to oppose its implementation. It must take a lot of courage to stand against conventional wisdom and religious teachings, and these people must be applauded. However, that does not make me anti-hudud. On the contrary, I […]
Maria Chin Abdullah: It’s not about race anymore
IT is perhaps destiny that Maria Chin Abdullah ended up being one of the steering committee members for Bersih 2.0, the civil society movement calling for free and fair elections in Malaysia. One of her earliest memories is of independent Malaya’s first general election in 1959 when she was just three. Maria remembers being with […]
Nasihat tentang filem hantu
SEBAGAI peminat pementasan teater The Woman in Black, berdasarkan novel oleh Susan Hill, saya pun tergedik-gediklah mencari maklumat terkini tentang adaptasi filem yang dibintangi Daniel Radcliffe. Entah bagaimana, terpesong pula dan terus khusyuk membaca nasihat terbaru daripada kolumnis pujaan ramai, Kak Nora. Ikuti pendapatnya tentang fenomena filem hantu. Assalamualaikum Kak Nora, Wassup, kak? I’m not […]
“We were not an ordinary country”
HAD history not intervened, Emeritus Prof Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim might have been a footballer. Of his youth, Khoo said he would have been content getting a simple job as long as he could have gone on playing soccer competitively even though there was no money in the sport back in the 1950s. […]
Development? Really? For whom?
MOST of us living in Peninsular Malaysia take electricity for granted as we have hardly experienced a blackout since the 1990s. But how many of us have stopped for a moment to think where the electricity, that allows us to turn on our TVs and computers, comes from? What are the impacts of the power […]
Uncommon Sense with Wong Chin Huat: De-politicising hudud
HUDUD. One is either for or against its implementation in Malaysia – or so the prevailing political discourse goes. But what are we missing in between? Have proponents of hudud adequately justified their position, and how they would apply the Islamic penal code in today’s society? Can those who oppose it ever imagine a human […]
Watch those high-rise buildings
ONE of my investigations as a Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) councillor has been into the mystery of how the council could allow a 24-storey building to go up when the project only had a planning permission for 22 storeys. I usually begin any investigation by requesting information through official means. Since councillors don’t always […]
Whose hudud?
IF we were to believe everything the politicians are saying about hudud, we would come to three conclusions. One, that implementing the punishments prescribed under hudud is divine law that no Muslim can question, and hence is inevitable. Two, that hudud cannot be implemented in Malaysia because of the Federal Constitution and our multi-cultural composition. […]
