Cui Bono

Remember Ustaz Ramlang Porigi?

The junior mufti who claimed he was not political but yet, went on an extensive PKR campaign for Anwar Ibrahim against Saiful Bukhari Azlan, the alleged sodomy victim.

And what was Ramlang’s main point against Saiful?

My answer lies in what I had posted as Ustaz - Saiful's dodgy Arabic renders oath dodgy - wakakaka!

I wrote: During the swearing, Saiful mispronounced one of the Islamic words because he had it written down in Malay instead of Arabic.

Now, I would be hilarious over this point if I can be sure I won’t offend my Muslim friends. But I need to ask: would Allah (swt) have cared one iota if one of his creations had mispronounced an Arabic word in a supposedly serious undertaking, a sumpah laknat (swearing in the face of divine retribution)?

This is precisely the sort of irrelevant hair-splitting arguments which ignored the solemn religious nature of the oath-taking that trivializes the majesty of Islam – and, alas, it’s by a cleric.

I also asked in that post: Ramlang admitted he wasn’t the Imam Besar of the mosque or an ulama, yet he raised an issue of a mispronounced Arabic word, which we note that even the PAS ulamas didn’t raise ..... which has been why I reckon the ustaz has trivialized an oath taking.

But this seemed to be the straw PKR was looking for, given that Anwar Ibrahim had (embarrassingly for PKR) refused to take an oath he didn’t sodomize Saiful as alleged. If I recall correctly, the oath challenge was thrown into the arena by none other than the former Mufti of Perlis.

Do you think he would have done that if oath-taking wasn't allowed in Islam?

I had also wrote in The influence of the 'Oath' in Permatang Pauh:

I did a bit of research on the taking of oath by the Qu’ran, and these are what I have obtained:

(1) Scholars, looking at the fact that the Qur’an is also an attribute of Allah, considered an oath taken by the Qur’an to be valid.

Imam al-Haskafi (Allah have mercy on him), said in his Durr: “Kamal (ibn al-Humam, the great Hanafi Mujtahid) said: “Let it be known that the taking of an oath by the Qur’an is something that has become customary, thus it would be considered a valid oath.”

Allama Ibn Abidin (Allah have mercy on him) explained the above by stating: “This is based on the fact that the Qur’an is the Speech of Allah, thus it will be considered to be one of His attributes.” (Radd al-Muhtar ala al-Durr al-Mukhtar, 3/712)

Of course there are other scholars like Gus Dur who disagreed. And he has a PhD from Iraq.

(2) Swearing in the Quran as taught by Surah An-Nur is to swear 4 times in Allah's names, with the fifth invoking the curse of Allah if they tell a lie.

However, the surah specifically states that this kind of swearing is only when a husband is accusing his wife of adultery but can't find 4 witnesses; the oath is also used by the wife to defend herself.

Does this mean that the oath is a substitute for the 4 required witnesses?

But as I mentioned, even with a win and a seat in parliament, Anwar has to live with this accusation for the rest of his life … unless of course he becomes PM … or

…… now this has nothing at all to do with legality or law, but it’s about perception of morality through the eyes of the religious kampong people in the heartland, and in politics, perceptions are everything

…… he takes the oath to neutralize Saiful’s declaration to Allah (swt).

Malaysiakini was obviously right there when Ustaz Ramlang criticized Saiful and his imperfect Arabic pronunciation. The Ustaz said all these in a PKR press conference news, and Malaysiakini published the news item Ustaz puts BN campaign in tatters at the amazing time chop of 3:33 a.m!

That wasn't unlike private detective Balasubramanian revealing to the press his SD, also at a PKR conference.

… and strangely, unlike Anwar Ibrahim who would have been accompanied by a battery of lawyers when he visited a police station, the day following the SC, Bala went alone, yes, alone to a police station (can you believe this was allowed to happen?) at the request of the police, where he submitted another SD reversing his original SD, and subsequently disappeared!

So, when Bala disappeared, who was blamed? Or, who would be blamed for Bala’s disappearance? Mind you, not just him but his entire family – that’s a whole lot of expenses, man. How can Bala maintain such an expense account without any income?

… and following Bala's mysterious disappearance, the question we must ask is cui bono?

Cui bono?