‘Dewan Ulama wants Pakatan alliance reviewed’, in which we learnt of PAS’ intent to assess whether there has been genuine progress in the tahaluf siyasi or political consensus in Pakatan, which incidentally left me wondering whether there is a Bahasa word for the Arabic term tahaluf siyasi?

Just last year, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed 1,663 people, followed in numbers of execution by other Islamic states like Saudi Arabia with 423 people, Iraq with 256, Pakistan 171, and Yemen 152. Their respective executions all exceeded even that of the draconian dictatorship of North Korea, whose state executions numbered 105. Obviously hudud in those Islamic nations hasn’t done much at all to quell crimes, or if it has, then those executed were not criminals.

Today there is not one Islamic nation that has shown itself to be a shining example to the world in terms of exemplary justice. For example, last year in syariah-hudud governed Pakistan a man and his wife poured acid on their daughter’s face and body, yes their own daughter, because she had talked with a boy. The local doctor who examined her corpse said, “There were third-degree burns on her scalp, face, eyes, nostrils, both arms, chest foot and lower part of legs. Even her scalp bone was exposed.”

And the cowardly parents didn’t even have the ‘honour’ to admit to their ‘honour killing’, lying through their teeth that their daughter had committed an un-Islamic suicide. Then there was the most infamous case of the so-called revenge rape in 2005 where Mukhtaran Mai (or Bibi) was gang raped by another clan on fabricated accusations that her 12-year old brother had sex with a 30-year old woman from that clan. In fact the sub-teenage brother was already sodomized by men from there.

The Pakistani authorities initially took no action until international pressure forced them to. The rapists were arrested with six sentenced to death, but subsequently, in that syariah-ruled land, were all released by the Pakistani High Courts due to ‘lack of evidence’. And to add insult to injury, the Pakistani government banned Mukhtaran Mai from leaving Pakistan to attend an Amnesty International forum in the USA.