Malaysia | February 29, 2024
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The Malay Mail reported on 25 May 2023 that the government plans to have the controversial Sharia harmonization law draft voted on in Parliament, once the Cabinet has approved.
World Watch Research (WWR) analyst Thomas Muller comments: “The draft, originally proposed by the Islamic PAS party and better known by its number, RUU 355, is an attempt at putting Sharia law on a par with civil law (see WWR’s Full Country Dossier Malaysia, January 2023, p.31), mostly at the expense of the latter. This would be detrimental to the rights of minorities, especially for those who are struggling with their religious identities due to illegitimate, improper and forceful conversions to Islam. Only a few days later, it transpired that the state’s Islamic authority, JAKIM, will be granted the ultimate authority to decide which brands of Islam are to be categorized as “deviant” and therefore to be censored (Murray Hunter Blog, 2 June 2023). Considering that the religion of the majority is being controlled in such a strict way, the pressure on minorities will doubtless be even greater. A different question is whether these initiatives are being driven more by pure ideology or are rather to be seen as an effort to woo Muslim-Malay voters in the six state elections to be held in 2023. Neither possibility is encouraging for a country wishing to present itself as ‘tolerant’.”
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