In Malaysia, Pressure Builds Over Enforcement of Islamic Laws
International Herald Tribune
August 18, 1997
Michael Richardson 

When Noni Mohamad entered the Miss Malaysia Petite beauty contest, she did not expect to become the focus of a bitter struggle between moderate and conservative Muslims in a country that suddenly seems to be veering away from religious toleration toward extremism.

Like many other young Malaysians, Miss Noni, a 19-year old freelance model, says she was unaware of a law banning Muslim women from taking part in beauty pageants.

The law was enacted just over a year ago by the state of Selangor, an urban and industrial center adjacent to Kuala Lumpur.

But the arrest of Miss Noni and two other Malay Muslim women at the end of the contest, followed by their conviction last month for indecent dressing, for taking part in the pageant wearing leotard swimsuits, was the first time Selangor religious authorities had enforced the law.

The Sharia High Court in Shah Alam fined the three women 400 ringgit ($145) each and said they would be jailed for two months if they did not pay the fine.

Under the law, they could have been fined 1,000 ringgit or imprisoned for six months, or both, for the offense.

Now, Malaysian religious, youth and women's groups and the media are embroiled in a public debate about the rights and wrongs of the affair — and the wider issue of how Muslims should be expected to behave in a multiethnic society that has large numbers of non-Muslims not subject to Islamic laws. The debate also reflects concern among moderate Muslims and non-Muslims alike at what they see as a trend toward compulsory Islamization in Malaysia.

Almost all Malays, who comprise about 55 percent of the population of 20 million, are Muslims and subject to both Islamic and Western-style secular laws. The Islamic law deals with marriage, divorce and many aspects of morals.

Minority groups, chiefly non-Muslim Chinese and Indians, are subject only to the secular laws.

The trend appears to be supported by some influential figures in the federal government as well as some of the states, which have the power to legislate on religious matters under the country's constitution.

For example, a committee chaired by the deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, recently decided that all higher education students of whatever ethnic or religious background will have to take a course in Islamic civilization.

At about the same time as the Miss Malaysia Petite row erupted, the chief minister of Selangor state, Abu Hassan Omar, said that a new law would be implemented in 1997 to force Muslims to pay their annual zakat, a religious tax, or face fines or jail for up to three years.

Several other states have indicated that they may follow Selangor. Until now payment of zakat has been voluntary. It is supposed to represent 2.5 percent of personal income from all sources, and be paid into a special fund for distribution to the needy.

Some advocacy groups support the imposition of a conservative dress code for Muslim women, including a ban on their participation in beauty contests, on the grounds that "indecent" dressing exploits and demeans women.

But where, critics ask, would that leave female athletes, swimmers and gymnasts training to compete in the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Malaysia?

Feminists criticized some religious officials for applying different standards to men and women.

Marina Mahathir, a newspaper columnist and daughter of Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, wrote that some officials were uneducated "charlatans" who wanted women to be "at home having babies endlessly and covered head to toe."

"Compared with incest, child abuse, wife-battering, drug abuse and corruption," she said, "whether you're dressed right or wrong according to someone's arbitrary values should rank pretty low in the scale of the concerns of our times."

The federal government — concerned that the spread of Muslim extremism will deter investment just when it is most needed to revive confidence in an economy hit by recent currency speculation — said this month that it had successfully persuaded the states temporarily to suspend the enforcement of religious rulings on the behavior of Muslims.

Meantime, a committee under the prime minister's department will make recommendations to the Malay rulers, who have authority over religious matters in their states, on a set of uniform Islamic Sharia laws for the whole country.

But analysts said that it was far from certain a uniform code would be accepted by the states because some, including Kelantan in northeastern corner of the Malaysian Peninsula, are much stricter in implementing Muslim religious laws than others.

The prime minister said that the arrest of the three women for taking part in the beauty contest was extreme. In a recent interview with a local newspaper, he said Islam was a tolerant religion that should be practiced the same way by all its followers.

"The Koran never said that Islam must be different in each state," he said. "But there are people who want to show their power. This is the problem."

As a result of a resurgence of Islamic values in recent years in Malaysia, many Malay women, especially those working in government offices, wear full-length dresses and head scarves.

But if Selangor's law on Islamic dress were to be generally adopted, action could be taken against Muslim women who wore body-hugging dresses, bikinis, leotards, low-cut blouses or skirts that exposed the leg.

Muslim men also could be prosecuted if they appeared in public showing the area of the body between the knees and the navel.

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