PAS-controlled Kelantan began its long-promised tabling of a set of legal amendments in order to establish what have been termed Islamic hudud law today, and reactions to the move on Malaysian social media have been divided – as one would no doubt expect.
The state government’s hope of changing an existing state enactment passed in 1993 to include the criminalisation of anal sex (technically, sodomy) between consenting married couples, imposing the death penalty for apostates who leave the Muslim faith, and (curiously enough, since they’re not Islamic at all) decriminalising bestiality, necrophilia, and lesbian sex, has been met with equal parts derision, outrage, and fervent religious celebration from Malaysian netizens.
PAS’s partners in the Pakatan Rakyat coalition (DAP is vehemently against the move, threatening to leave PR altogether, while PKR is for the moment keeping largely mum on the issue) to Barisan Nasional rivals (UMNO is pretty much on board, while everyone else in the ruling coalition: not so much) to ordinary Malaysians of every stripe, creed, and faith have weighed in on the issue today, and we’ve got some of the highlights right here.
DAP’s Tony Pua had some choice words on PAS’s insistence that tabling the hudud amendments were an exercise in democracy:
Sisters in Islam’s Suri Kempe put up a rebuttal of the proposed hudud enactments’ ostensibly “Islamic” nature:
The Malay Mail columnist Erna Mahyuni was just upset and disappointed, it seems:
And many others called out PAS’s sincerity, impartiality, and popular mandate to follow through on hudud law:
Still, not everyone was against the proposed state laws, with many netizens applauding PAS’s chutzpah (is it ironic to describe what they’re doing with a Yiddish word?) and the party’s reaching a consensus with its archenemy UMNO on the issue:
Still others pointed out that the entire hudud debate might be distracting Malaysians from more pressing matters:
Gerakan Youth chief Tan Keng Liang chided the DAP for not being able to stop the Kelantan PAS government from going ahead with its hudud debate, conveniently glossing over the fact that his BN partners in UMNO Kelantan are also throwing their full support behind the religious law:
(You might want to check if there’s any head-burrowing space left for you, sir.)
How will this all pan out? No one knows.But we searched far and wide for the most apt summation of today’s storm of arguments, counter-arguments, and furious RTing, and we have to say, this one came out ahead:
Yeah, pretty much.
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