Malaysians are familiar with the saying ' cakap tak serupa bikin ', particularly with regard to politicians who say one thing and do another. However, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi took the ketupat recently in calling on religious authorities to find out the grouses of those wanting to leave Islam. He may have meant well but in realpolitik terms, closet apostates ' tak boleh cakap dan tak boleh bikin '.

Apostasy is a criminal offence under the various Islamic enactments of the states, therefore undoable ( tak boleh bikin ) unless the person is willing to risk jail or rehabilitation. Furthermore it's not feasible for him to honestly reveal to the religious authorities why he would choose to leave Islam. He is liable to jail for that too as his disenchantment with Islam can very easily be construed as an insult to the religion and thus, blasphemy. In the Federal Territories, for instance, it's possible to be imprisoned up to three years for this crime.

How to avoid self-incrimination and leave the faith without prejudice? If there is a secular mechanism at the federal level, he can. However, any suggestion to unlock the handcuffs shackling Malays to their state-mandated religion and make available the key is viewed to be as sacrilegious as doing away with the NEP, and far more emotive. The reaction to apostasy has been out of all proportion to the actual handful of Malays who publicly want out.

The argument that a person "cannot be permitted to enter and exit a religion at will" is a spurious one. It only reveals Malaysia's all too predictable double standards because we don't hear apostasy applied to the PM's wife for having in the past left Catholicism or to M Revathi's 'counselor' for discarding his earlier Hindu belief. Nor have latter-day Muslims been subjected to the same smear campaign and character assassination as Lina Joy ("capricious", "troublemaker") and Revathi ("knowledge of Hinduism zero", "converted to Husband-nism").

If we split hairs, then it is Christianity which Joy entered not Islam in being Malay who is not Muslim through her own volition. The PM has observed that converts for reason of marriage - these would in practice be minorities who marry Malays or are married to wannabe bumiputeras -are a group vulnerable to apostasy. Which makes the 'check in, cannot check out' business a matter of race relations too. In point of fact, the recent controversies have centred on Indians and their Hindu families.

Abdullah recently described the spate of challenges in court on Muslim status as a 'problem'. The problem is not the legal proceedings, nor is it the litigants. The court cases are not cause but effect. Neither are concerned Malaysians pitting one religion against another, although any projected outcome is pretty much a done deal. The real issues are politics, the 'one way, my way' assertion of dominance; state interference wearing the cloak of religious absolutism; and the frayed fabric of secularism ripped beyond repair.

Floundering in the slipstream

The plight of Revathi, born Siti Fatimah Abdul Karim, is illustrative of the convergence of these issues. The majority consensus holds the most desirable and 'proper' expedient is for V Suresh, Revathi's husband through Hindu rites, to convert to Islam.

It's the manufacture of 'there are no two ways about it' sort of totalitarian doctrine which has increasingly got minorities antsy. Then there is the state butting in, on the one hand to snatch babies (and bodies), and on the other to order Revathi, almost 30, to live with Muslim Mummy.

Given the turns that the country has been taking, minorities see secularism as a last-hope talisman to safeguard whatever rights they have left, so possibly Joy and Revathi are the proxies through which the rights battle is being waged. Non-Muslim interference or agenda aside the overarching principle, in my book anyway, is the right to be protected from state persecution and respect.

The child who has no birth certificate and whose parents have no marriage certificate is foisted the name Nur Atiqah when she has already got a name it's Divayah Tharshini. Her predicament connotes an overall situation more than the sum of its parts. Divayah plus Shamala's children plus Subashini's kids plus Suzie Teoh some years ago plus etc, etc, etc consistently warn minorities not to be disarmed that Islamic law is meant to apply only to Muslims. Its ambit of personal and family matters is wide-ranging indeed.

The religion of the Federation has already got a chokehold on bureaucracy and to add to it there is the strangulation occasioned by sensitivities, so that dissent, both from within and without the order of things or the approved code, is all but buried. Blasphemy laws are fearsome catch-alls. One generally understands the word to mean deriding Quranic verses or Hadith. In Malaysia though, blasphemy is not understood as being contemptuous of idols, which are smashed, or of temples, which are bulldozed, or of derisive, if not systemic, allusions to the beliefs of Others by those in positions of power.

In the Syariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act 1997, for instance, offences relating to the sanctity of Islamic institutions also cover deriding or aping the practices or ceremonies relating to Islam. Under the FT Offences Act, furthermore, contempt or defiance of religious authorities, and degrading or bringing into contempt any state law on Islam are classed criminal offences. Coming under Section 7(b) and 7(c) respectively, these carry a fine up to RM3,000 and/or jail up to two years. Ridiculing Islamic ceremonies comes under Section 7(a) with a similar penalty.

Thou shall not

Going back to the PM's statement on learning the reasons why Islam is incompatible with some individuals, let's say a person tells he cannot remain Muslim because while his spirit is willing, his flesh is weak and succumbs to hunger pangs during fasting month. Sneaking a bite is an offence under Section 15(b) of the FT Offences Act. If he objects to fasting, and proceeds to argue with religious authorities over the stricture and moreover dispute the law on it, he would have committed altogether three offences and could face a stretch in prison if the laws are enforced.

Reluctance to fast is not such an incendiary excuse but the apostate who confesses to more existential reasons for leaving Islam might conceivably be Rushdied. In relation to this, Section 12 of the FT Offences Act is food for thought (cited below):

12 . Any person who gives, propagates or disseminates any opinion concerning Islamic teachings, Islamic Law or any issue, contrary to any fatwa for the time being in force in the Federal Territories shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding RM3,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to both .

The National Fatwa Council members include all state muftis. Ergo, your opinion may not contradict the collective opinion of these learned men, including the Mufti of Perak.

Like 'public indecency' which is subjective, what is immoral to orthodoxy or the enforcers of Islam can be equally idiosyncratic. Muslims have found Ramli Ibrahim dancing the Bharatanatyam objectionable. Malay actor Hani Mohsin (deceased first husband of Tiara Jacquelina) playing a Buddhist monk and Malay actress Sharifah Amani shaving her head are objectionable.

The imposition of adherence, or prohibitions to affect adherence to Islamic mores such as they are interpreted by Malaysian authorities creates a ripple effect. One such decision (I won't go into more contentious ones) is 'The Passion' which was only allowed to be screened in churches. Therefore, if a non-Christian such as me had wanted to catch it, I would need betake myself to a House of the Lord and this effecting my behaviour as a 'third party'.

Muslims are banned from watching. Not because it's a horribly gory movie but because of the Thou Shall Not Commandment and its underlying precept that impressionable Malays, incapable of reasoning on their own, are too easily contaminated by exposure to non-Muslims and to outsider ideas.

Well perhaps Muslims are willing to submit themselves to these laws as promulgated in the FT and other states. But unless Malaysians live in parallel universes that don't intersect, there are going to be spill-over effects. Some non-Muslims who aid and abet criminality or who unwittingly stumble into Fortress Islam's trenches find themselves under the shadow of syariah at one remove. The present public debates are really swirling around how far everyone is expected to be syariah-compliant.

Minorities under political Islam (Part 1)