Malaysia’s northeastern Terengganu state will punish women for wearing men’s clothing, and conceiving out-of-marriage pregnancies. The state also banned “witchery”. The move has drawn the ire of human rights activists in South-East Asia.
Not acting upon this law has more than 1000 dollars fee, a 3 year jail-term plus 6 lashes, or any combination of these three.
The All Women’s Action Society, said the legislative changes violate the right to freedom of expression, equality and non-discrimination.
Terengganu is governed by Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, focused on Islamic fundamentalism.
In Indonesia also, extramarital sex and abortions have legal penalty. Furthermore this bill, which became law last week, also adds limitations to how much people can criticize Indonesia’s public institutions.
Fundamentalism in Malaysia hitting country’s economic standing?
While Malaysia appeared to pick up economic momentum by investing diplomatic capital and financial apparatus into landmark G20 summit last month as well as multiple investors’ summits this year, so far global funds have pulled up over $1.2 billion from the domestic bond market in 2022 amid concerns related to fundamentalism driven by political instability in the Southeast Asian country, Bloomberg reported.
New laws for ‘well-being’ of Muslims
The new laws would protect “Well-being of Muslims”, state-run Bernama news agency cited state religious official Satiful Bahari Mamat.
“Because in the past, there might not have been much of this issue. But we see now that tomboy or lesbian cases that are becoming more widespread, so the state government intends to do something.”
Who is asking for these legislations?
Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, won the most seats of any single party in last month’s general election. It has been a proponent of transforming Malaysia into an Islamic state, and has pushed the parliament to allow it to implement strict Islamic laws in the states it controls.
Source: Wion News