out of my expectation, in the last Friday prayer sermon the Khatib did mention about the apostate issue with special mention to Constitution's Article 11. and he or the sermon's content did take a swept to all the bad influences that attacking our teens including the black metal cultures which left me with a big grind.
apostate issue has been long existed ever since the 50's if i am not mistaken with the Natrah issue. since then there were many but all have gone into the history with the buzz died off over the time. but this time the Lina Joy case is a bit difference cause it is about to set the landmark ruling on the issue of one's freedom to choose of his/her religion as mention in the Constitution's Article 11.
it is now up to the learned Judges' interpretation of the Article 11's meaning.
as far as my kaput memories goes, as our nations is desribed as the constitutional democratic country, the power and authority is separated into three pillars; (1) a legislative which is the elected representative who will propose, table and approve any laws and even amend the constitution thru 2/3 majority, (2) executive power which is the appointed government servant who will carry and doing the country's administration as well as uphold the laws and lastly (3) the judiciary who will translate and decide on any case of the laws. all three are supposed to be independent from each other.
the constitution is deemed as the highest law of the nation of which any laws that been passed by the legislatures must be within its meaning and definition. the task to translate and passed the ruling is up to the court of law. and the court of law is further divided into a secular/civil and the syariah of which more than ever the secular/civil court is seen as the one that have the upper hand over the latter.
should the articles 11 is defined as a true freedom of one's to choose his/her religion without ever considering the religion itself that forbid and condemn the apostate which will favour the individual rite rather than than the religion itself and it's others followers at large, then the last recourse is to amend the article 11 itself. but can the 2/3 majority vote be secured?
but whether the majority vote can be secured or note it is a pre-mature to be discussed. whether the motion can be put forward in the representative house is the main issue. will it?
i guess the major concern for the moslem is to hold the dignity of the religion itself. as it was clearly stated that any apostate shall not be allowed and must be punished and if war is necessary then war it shud be. some quarters believe this is the task that they should shoulder on.
lets just say that there is one provision in islam which do not goes well with one individual then with a blink of an eye he or she just opt to change his/her religion into another. and so on she or he will keep hop on if he or she find the similar case with other religion. not sure with other religion but islam doesnt condone such act. in the past that is what people do with the mobile phone company. the user defaulted with one company then hop on to others and so on until he/she defaulted to all the companies. it only stopped once all the mobile company sign an agreement to share the list of blacklisted users to curb the problem.
but i guess the main issue is how well a moslem understand his/her own religion. meaning that if he or she don't even have a sufficient knowledge about islam then how can he/she expect others of non-moslem to understand and respect the islam teaching itself. as i was sitting listening to the sermon i can't help but thinking about two matters.
it is a practice that after performing the solat sunat either the tahiyyatul masjid or sunat jumaat one will shove his hand to the jemaah sitting next to him to shake hand. it is a normal thing to do except that when the khatib is reading out his sermon then it became a wrong thing to do. as it shall disturb the others from listening to the sermon. how many of us realize this?
and as for the architect, an highly educated and a professional, i always have the problem with the access door as well as the way they built the wudhu' place. the access door or the stair case normally are not wide enuff to cater for the mass jemaah on friday or festive prayer. as for the wudhu' place the water pipe location was wrongly built as the moslem butt will be pointed towards the kiblat which actually not recommended. with the assumption that the architect that design the mosque is indeed a moslem then how can he/she miss the point?
if the above two matters are used to measure the knowledge of moslem on islam itself, i wonder how many that really understand the apostate issue and let alone understand the article 11. are we barking the rite tree?
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