Undermining the pillars

Last week, in my post Dr Hasan Ali a Kemo Sabe? I made mention of zakat, one of the 5 pillars of Islam.

According to the Quran, this (socialist) social-welfare fund is intended for acts of Islamic piety to support charitable programs for the well-being of less fortunate fellow Muslims. The aim is of course to promote and preserve social harmony between the wealthy and the poor, an equitable redistribution of wealth, and a sense of solidarity amongst members of the Ummah. And I enthused that according to the Quran, the recipients of zakat marvellously need not only be Muslims.

Yesterday I read in Malaysiakini about the Tithe funds (being) used to settle minister's legal fees.

Even as a non-Muslim I am sure the Quran did not have this purpose in mind when it declared the institution of zakat as one of the 5 pillars of Islam.

Yes, the withdrawn sum was repaid, but suddenly/coincidentally (shades of kuestionable kerbau-ish kondos) I recall a case several years ago, of a general manager of a company using company funds to buy shares for his personal ownership, of course with the intention of paying the withdrawn sum back to the company when 'his' shares made the expected profits. Unfortunately for him, a surprise audit discovered his misuse of the company funds for personal purposes, and he had to resign or face charges of CBT.

The Malaysiakini report stated that the … zakat (tithe) fund [was used] to settle advance legal costs incurred by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Jamil Khir Bahrom and two others. The legal costs had been incurred when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim named Jamil, Federal Territory Islamic Department director Che Mat Che Ali and its chief prosecutor Shamsuddin Hussain, as respondents in the politician's qazaf application.

Surely zakat has never been meant for such a purpose. I opine strongly that PM Najib must ask Jamil Khir Bahrom and the two senior public servants to resign for procedurally misusing the zakat, especially Che Mat who approved a withdrawal of RM63,650 from it.

And I do wonder about the Selangor case where the zakat collection and its use are now amazingly beyond the preview of the State legislative body, the Exco of democratically elected people’s representatives.

On a slightly separate issue, I also wonder about media reports of a few Muslims who would accept questionable all-expenses-paid trips to Mecca for them to perform the Haj, which conduct by every Muslim represents another pillar of Islam.

Is it halal (kosher) to accept dodgy money (of questionable provenance) and use it to perform the Haj?

An sms-ing Mufti didn’t realize how unwittingly correct he had been when he pompously declared that (words to the effect) unlike the Arab people of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), Malays are far more special to Islam.

His ‘unwitting’ part is that he has correctly identified some of his Malay cronies as 'special to Islam' because they had, in using such monies to finance their Haj and telling outrageous lies to harm others, knowingly undermined the pillars of Islam a la the JKR-built MRR2.

Some 7,000 cracks were detected in 31 of the the MRR2's 33 pillars. Islam has only 5 pillars.

I wonder whether he will be sms-ing this to his buddy, the solar-powered saviour? Maybe they can blame it on the Christians, Chinese or Charbor (women), or Teresa Kok, Hannah Yeo and Teo Nie Ching wakakaka.