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Moderate Malaysia's image bruised over beer caning
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-27 10:38

 

Moderate Malaysia's image bruised over beer caning

Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno carries her daughter Wann Kaitlynn Sari Dewi, 5, at her father's house in Sungei Siput, about 300km (186 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia's state of Perak August 24, 2009. [Agencies]
Moderate Malaysia's image bruised over beer caning

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: After a series of flip-flops, authorities in Malaysia decided this week that a 32-year old Muslim woman caught drinking beer in violation of Islamic law would not be caned after all.

The controversy may have subsided, pending a legal review, but it has left a bitter aftertaste.

The case of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a former model and nurse, drew the attention of international media and rights groups and presented a harsh view of the kind of Islamic justice dispensed in one of the world's most moderate and stable Muslim-majority countries.

"It is pretty embarrassing," Marina Mahathir, a leading women's activist and the daughter of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Kartika was charged with violating a law prohibiting Muslims from drinking alcohol. Marina said it raised a key question about how Islamic laws are applied in Malaysia. "Are they working to dispense justice or to provide moral lessons for the rest of us?" she said.

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Malaysia follows a dual-track justice system. Shariah laws apply to Muslims, who make up about 60 percent of the 27 million population, in all personal matters. Non-Muslims - Chinese, Indians, Sikhs and other minorities - are covered by civil laws, and are free to drink.

Often the two sets of laws collide and the winner usually is the Islamic system. For example, a Muslim who converts from Islam is guilty of apostasy under Shariah laws - punishable by jail and a fine - even though freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution.

The two legal systems have also conflicted over custody cases in which a father converted to Islam and wanted the children to do the same. In other disputes, Islamic authorities have forcibly taken for burial the bodies of people who secretly converted to Islam before their death.

Kartika's controversy started unnoticed in December 2007 when Islamic morality police - functionaries of the government's Islamic Religious Department - caught her drinking beer at a beach resort in Pahang state. She pleaded guilty to violating the Islamic law banning Muslims from drinking alcohol and was sentenced by a Shariah High Court in Pahang in July to six strokes of the cane and a fine of 5,000 ringgit ($1,400).

She paid the fine and decided not to appeal her sentence. Had she appealed, lawyers say, the caning would have been struck down and the case would have died a natural death.

Kartika's case snowballed into a media circus after it was reported she would be kept in jail for a week for the sentence to be carried out. Lawyers and women's activists were outraged. On Monday, Kartika was taken away by Islamic officials in a van headed for the prison.

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