Hudud, royal debauchery and intellectual bankruptcy

If it is any consolation for men who think they will end up with the same women they wake up with every morning in heaven (the place where most men go, enough said), here is something to cheer them up: most wives are going to hell.

Because we all know they have refused their husbands’ base desires on occasions other than the three valid reasons that, according to one of our dozens of salaried defenders of Islam, will be accepted in the eyes of God: menstruation, post-labour and fever.

The response by some of our ulama and their cohorts, in the form of “Islamic NGOs”, to yet another unwanted debate in Malaysia, marital rape, is just one of the stereotypical reactions that Western media would salivate at to feed their thirst for news.

You see, every once in a while, some clowns make world news to feed the Western journalists’ obsession with side news about “the other”, and these include Muslims in faraway lands.

Side news, because the main news is still about terrorism, about resistance, about extremism, all of which can bore readers.

So we are dished out stories of honour killings in Pakistan, beard rules in the Taliban’s Afghanistan and dodgy fatwas from Egypt’s fatwa factory, Al-Azhar.

Of course, the all-time favourite is the fatwa decreed a few years ago which offered a way around free mixing of the sexes in public places.

This fatwa allowed women to breastfeed their male office colleagues, which would then make the man have some form of maternal link with the woman and, therefore, make their constant interactions in the workplace not sinful. God-fearing bosses should, therefore, make sure that besides academic and professional qualification, a female job candidate should also be lactating.

But of late, it is not only Egypt and Pakistan offering tabloid headlines to break the monotony of more serious news related to the Muslim world, such as the events in Palestine, the nuclear standoff in Iran and the tragedy in Syria.

Some time ago, we too shared international news spotlight after our Islamic bureaucrats got agitated over some urchins who touched dogs. And who can forget our chocolate-eating jihadists who wanted to declare holy war on Cadbury for contaminating their blood with porcine DNA?

But last week, it was the turn of our Muslim “intellectuals” in the recently aired Australian current affairs show “60 Minutes”.

In it, we are taken to oil-rich Brunei, the recently declared fully fledged Islamic kingdom of the east, complete with hudud, the new ISO recognition needed before the Islamic priests can declare a Muslim’s faith is complete. You know, like when they tell about woman’s dress in Islam: a woman can pray all day and do all the kindness, but if she doesn’t cover her hair, she is destined for hell.

The “60 Minutes” episode aired on Australian TV last Sunday (see snippets here) gave a glimpse behind the veil of Islamicity which has so characterised this tiny country nestled between Sabah and Sarawak.

It offers some of the best ingredients to fuel the orientalists’ love affair with Islamic romanticism, such as explicit details of the Sultan of Brunei’s harem and royal debauchery.

These claims are nothing new, and not the first time exposed in public. But the fact that this is the same man who is now implementing hudud law, which has almost become the sixth pillar of Islam for our self-declared ulama from PAS and its likes, puts this into a different context altogether.

Whether or not stories of his sexual exploits are true, the fact is he is not alone in such hypocrisy. All over the Muslim world, the most morally corrupt of rulers, such as those littering the Arab world today, are also the most devout in terms of implementing “God’s laws”.

The truth is some of the most shocking tales of royal debauchery have their origins in the bedrooms of those who regard themselves as leaders of the Muslim community, who practise “a strict form of shariah” as the standard phrase is used, including those who use the title “servant of two holy places”.

When by a stroke of royal command, the Sultan of Brunei declared that his people would be subject to hudud punishments, he became an instant hero among our self-styled Islamic priests-cum-politicians back home, a group of them wasting no time to travel to Brunei to get a whiff of divine blessing flowing in the whole of the kingdom.

What caught my attention in the “60 Minutes” documentary is the thought process of our Muslim scholars and academics, and the answers from two people who our blonde host talked to only confirmed what I have always suspected about our local Islamic scholars: their intellectual bankruptcy.

At one point, one Malaysian professor of Islamic law was trying to convince the host about the requirement under the shariah code that only men can be witnesses to a certain crime. As if to dispel any notion of gender discrimination, she argued that these four male witnesses can be replaced with eight female witnesses.

When told that it only implied that a man’s word is worth double that of a female’s, this professor said it was actually a privilege to women!

And when the host further pried into her brain by suggesting that it is a form of discrimination, she gave a metaphor to effectively leave the Mat Salleh host speechless (so much so the show quickly skipped into the next scene back to Brunei):

“Is it not discrimination against men where only women can carry babies?” she asked.

Mind you, this was an answer coming from a mouth of a professor at an institute of higher learning, which officially claims to be a “garden of knowledge and virtue”!

Another Malaysian interviewed in the show was the Kelantan deputy menteri besar. When he was asked if he would cast the first stone on someone convicted of adultery, his confident answer was “Yes, if I have to”.

Of course, the questioner was merely trying to take him to the story of Jesus, who asked those present during a stoning punishment of an adulterer, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”.

But our PAS leader had no clue. Instead, he ended up being filmed smiling, even grinning, as he acted out how to chop off the hand of the thief.

It is one thing to worry about the weak intellectual stamina of our so-called Muslim intelligentsia in Malaysia when challenged about their long-held views and convictions. It is even more worrying to know that these are the same brains who will be there to guide the implementation of a law which prescribes amputation and stoning to death. 

We are long made to believe in the myth that the ulama are the inheritors of the Prophet. By the same logic, they would also be among those promised paradise.

Well, here’s a word of advice: some of you might want to rethink heaven as an option, even if your wives won’t be there.

Perhaps the royal sinners in the Muslim world are right. At least they know the place to be in the hereafter. – May 2, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.