Monday 16 July 2012

Hastened Post



Such haste…

The on-going – can I say saga? – of JAWI versus Border’s on their charging of their staff Nik Raina Nik Aziz exposes further the kind of murky confluence that could occur in a two divergent legal system.

Blogger Din Merican has written extensively on the chronology of the whole drama from the raids on Border’s Mid Valley and Bangsar Village to the charging, the filing of a judicial review on the legality of the raid and consequent charging, the stay application, the request for a swifter hearing of the charging, the courts’ separate acquiescence to two completely conflicting sets of applications…

The three latest dates being bandied as thus as follows: hearing of an application for stay of the Syariah proceedings at the High court on July 30, new mention date for Nik Raina at the Syariah High Court on Aug 7 while the judicial review at the KL High Court on Sept 5.

Note that the original mention date for Nik Raina’s was Sept 19.

It could well be much ado about nothing as usually nothing of consequence occurs in mentions anyway which are often case-administration breathers.

Note also the original catalyst for the whole rigmarole - Irshad Manji's controversial book Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta – is now pretty much yesterday’s news in especially the MSM.
It may well be down to PRINCIPLES.

That an offence has been committed and so the offender has to pay.

Yep. I really, really, really believe this to be it especially in the light of the many other similar instances where the application of the above PRINCIPLE is on display.

Typed straight faced. Honest.

The matter about principles also came up yesterday during the Q & A session post Professor Tariq Ramadan’s talk at ISTAC in Jalan Duta.

In fact, the start was quite a cringeworthy, but fortunately only a passing, moment: a participant stood and stated that he was asking a question from a “VVIP” who couldn’t make it to the talk / lecture who wanted to know if the Arab Spring was Islamic and if the same could occur in Malaysia.

I couldn’t quite recite Professor Ramadan’s answer in its entirety but the gist of his answer was that the majority of the protestors were in fact muslims, young and old, men and women.

And the principles are work are those which are Islamic in essence – good governance and justice, for example.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, as the good Professor - who is banned in a whole list of countries for speaking his mind out loud – provided a far more comprehensive view than I could ever articulate, ever.

As to whether something similar could occur here, his answer was simply: “I do not know. It is for you to tell me.”

VVIP, huh? Usual suspects, I presumed.

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