Critical Thoughts

Begrudgingly I have to accept the fact that yet another person had decided to leave the body of the ummah and while I agree with the conclusions on why the Shariah Court in Penang approved the application of apostasy in the aforementioned case, I lament the fact that we still do not have any proper legislation to deal with apostasy and apostates from Islam in particular. In this particular case, there is evidence that she was never exposed to the proper teachings of Islam (which is where the sole blame lies with MAIPP, PERKIM, MACMA, etc., and no one else) and thus this judgement is correct. But there is, of course, the issue of another “Siti Fatimah” in Malacca who was raised as a Muslim and of course, Lina Joy who was also a born Muslim in the first place.

Let it be clear that there is no way the Muslim ummah should ever accept Muslims committing the heinous sin of apostasy and there is only one punishment for that: Man badala deenahu, faqthuluhu!

This was a letter written to Malaysiakini some four years ago but still remains relevant in the discussion about apostasy: Apostasy: the Prophet has spoken. Of course since then, many things have changed and certainly one may say that I have increased in knowledge, alhamdulillah. There is even a term now (not known in 2004) for those so-called “Muslims” with liberal leanings concocted from the West — we refer to them as Islam Liberal or neo-Mutazillites. An alien thought and innovation that had never existed during the Prophet’s (P) time and a heresy which was rendered extinct some 1000 years ago.

Or so we thought. In any case, the letter is still a pleasant read peppered with the necessary references, perhaps I could expand it to an updated version which takes into account recent events concerning the issue.