When religious officials were given free rein to abuse their positions, Malaysia quickly descended into a country with hypocritical Muslims placing more importance on rituals rather than the teachings and spirit of Islam.

In Umno Baru’s version of Islam, officials seize bodies of non-Muslims, raid non-Muslim wedding ceremonies, do nothing when children of non-Muslim mothers are abducted and leaders simply watch when Muslim NGOs threaten violence, at the slightest imagined slight to Muslims.

If one were to ask where it all went wrong, many people would allege that we are witnessing the unintended consequences of former prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s ‘game’ of trying to be more Islamic than PAS. The Malaysian judiciary is alleged to be highly compromised and this mess is made more confusing because Malaysians are ruled by civil and syariah laws.

Body-snatching is not confined to ordinary members of the rakyat, like Teoh Cheng Cheng who died last week. The most prominent person to suffer is former Malaysian chief justice Mohamed Suffian Hashim (right), who was devastated when he could not fulfil his wife’s last wish in 1997.

The son of a qadi, Suffian won a scholarship to read law at Cambridge, where he met his future English wife, Bunny. As a Christian, Bunny wanted to be cremated but before her body could be transported for the funeral service at the Cheras crematorium, religious officials grabbed the body and took it to Kuala Kangsar for burial according to Muslim rites.

Suffian was angry that the officials did not bother about her Christian religion when she was alive, but promptly seized her body after she was dead. It was alleged that Suffian was betrayed by his own brother and three other witnesses, who allegedly all lied and said that Bunny had converted to Islam on her deathbed. It is also alleged that the attorney-general was also complicit in the conspiracy.

Referring to Mahathir as “Papa Doc”, Suffian allegedly accused Mahathir of destroying our once well-regarded judiciary and of taking away its independence. The journalist MGG Pillai wrote that Suffian was disappointed that “what took generations to build could be destroyed in a day and would take years to rebuild”.

Some people may recall the anguish faced by S Kaliammal, the widow of L/Kpl M Moorthy (left), the Malaysian who climbed Mount Everest. Religious officials seized his body in 2005 and she was shunted from civil to syariah courts trying to resolve her predicament.

In 2008, 74-year-old Gan Eng Gor’s body was also seized by religious officials after his eldest son, who was a Muslim convert, claimed that he had converted to Islam the year before. Only Muslims can inherit from another Muslim and it was alleged that the conversion claim was really for monetary gain.

Gan’s wife and seven other children mounted a legal challenge and cited several irregularities in the conversion process, the unsigned conversion document, the oral declaration in Arabic for the Islamic oath despite medical reports that Gan was unable to speak following a severe stroke.

Latest incident

In the latest body-snatching incident, Teoh’s body was seized by religious officials and placed in the Penang mortuary while her religious status was confirmed. 

The state executive councillor for Islamic religious affairs, Abdul Malik Abul Kassim, alleged that the police had put pressure on Penang Islamic Religious Department (JAIPP) officers to seize Teoh’s body.

Abdul Malik has since apologised for the insensitivity of JAIPP officers and said that it would not happen again, but we have heard this many times before.

It takes minimal effort to check someone’s religious status. Millions of ringgit have been spent updating computers and computing systems, yet when something like this occurs, families are left traumatised.

We saw a similar thing happen with passport records in the MH370 investigations. The inspector-general of police (IGP) said that it would take too long to check for stolen passports so he passed the buck to the Immigration Department and Interpol.

We have witnessed rumours being used to defame legitimate businesses like Cadbury’s chocolate, last month. What does it take to repeat an experiment or to double check results for possible contamination?
 
Businesses could be ruined, people’s trust destroyed, just because officials placed too much faith in malicious rumours about the contamination of food products or someone’s religious status. The rakyat doubts if the rumour-mongers will ever face justice.
 
When Hasan Ali complained about solar-powered Bibles and Malays being converted surreptitiously, he failed to produce any evidence. When the dinner at the Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC) in Petaling Jaya was disrupted, no one could identify the converted Muslims.
 
The silent majority of Muslims should care about the aims and actions of Umno Baru’s Islam. These include the conversion of children without their parents’ permission, marrying child rape victims to their rapists, showing lenience to national sportsmen when they rape a minor, and keeping quiet when non-Muslim Penan women are raped.
 
There can be no source of pride in the Umno Baru version of Islam, if the Umno Baru religious officials need to use rumour-mongering, body-snatching, child abduction, wife-questioning, defence of rapists and seizing of Bibles, to protect the rights of Malaysian Muslims.


MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO).