I came across an article titled "The Lina Joy Case -- An 'Easy' Version" and thought that the author, "Tulang Besi", did a great job in articulating his take on the infamous Lina Joy case. For the sake of being objective, I shall withhold my personal views on the case of Lina Joy, lest I want to get dragged into another 'debate' on religious sensitivities and righteousness which in any case is abundant all over the internet, if you so feel like letting off abit of steam after a long hard day.

For those readers that are just not bothered to read Tulang Besi's entire article, let me try to summarize it for you. The gist of his article is that Lina Joy's case could be catastrophic to the entire Islamic faith if the courts in Malaysia were to rule in favour of her. Lina Joy was seeking through the Malaysian civil courts to recognize her status as a non-muslim because the National Registration Department refused to remove the word 'Islam' from her identity card but instead directed her to go to the Islamic courts to seek an approval for her to denounce Islam first. To support his claim that the outcome of this case is pivotal to the survival of Islam (or atleast in Malaysia), the author presented 5 points for his readers to consider:

* 1) The nullification of a vast array of laws - Abdul Hamid CAJ (as he then was) in Kamariah bte Ali v Kerajaan Negeri Kelantan, Malaysia opined that in allowing Article 11 to be construed so liberally would entail making invalid entire bodies of Islamic law; e.g. Zakat laws, marriage laws, et cetera. (In short, all Islamic laws would be rendered null and void.)

* 2) The coming to existence of a constitutional paradox - Article 160 of the Constitution states that a Malay must be a Muslim; thus, if a Malay person declares himself a non-Muslim, what race would he (legally) belong to then? As he cannot satisfy the constitutional criteria of a Malay, he would lose not only his Malay status but his Bumiputra privileges as well.

* 3) The diminution of the powers of the Syariah court - Not only would our Islamic court would be deprived of its right to adjudicate on matters of apostasy involving Muslims, said right would then be conferred to the civil court, whose judicial members are comprised of Muslims and non-Muslims trained in the intricacies of civil laws but not Islamic laws.

* 4) Of inheritance rights - Seeing as to the fact that Muslims and non-Muslims are governed by different inheritance laws, and the fact that non-Muslims cannot inherit from Muslims, one can easily imagine then the gory court battles that would emerge from disputes on inheritance.

* 5) The impossibility of religious enforcement - Consider perhaps, a man eating eating in public in the fasting month of Ramadhan who, when arrested by religious officers, professes to having left the Islamic faith. The religious officers would be unable to perform their duties if so.

(For those who actually did take the time to read the article, you would have noticed that the 5 arguments above is a direct cut & paste job )

Ok fair enough, Tulang Besi is of course entitled to his opinions but as I kept on reading especially the comments posted for this article I noticed the same pattern of arguments always pops up across all forums and blogs whenever there is something written about Islam. Some readers would argue from a secular point of view and some would be from the religious corner. Usually these comments can span across hundreds of pages but still go nowhere because both sides are experiencing what I think is a paradigm paralysis.

Islamists, Islamic apologetics and fundamentalist would argue their case under the assumption that everyone else believes in what they believe in where else the non-muslims and secularists would argue in the otherwise where the influence of "God" is kept only within the wall of our human souls. The crux of their arguments are as such, secularists would say that religion is a very personal thing and thus religious decisions are to be left at an individual level whereas Islamists would argue that a Muslim's religious status must be decided by Islamic authorities because you are a Muslim before you are anything else. In my humble opinion, I believe that the void that seperates these two sides can be bridged if my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters are able to adopt the political and legal doctrine of "Separation of church and State".

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." - Thomas Jefferson 1802

The term separation of church and states simply means that government and religious institutions are to be kept seperate and independent of each other. From the 5 points raised by Tulang Besi in support of his notion that Islam will fall if Lina Joy were to be allowed to convert out of Islam shows that Islam does not seperate our religious life from our civil lives. As far as I know, the personal domain in Islam is far less encompassing than the public domain where the lives and conducts of Muslims are always somebody's business.

If we do actually manage to seperate our religious obligations from our civil duties, I honestly believe that humanity as a whole and Malaysians especially would be able to eliminate all (if not most) religious and racial conflicts once and for all.