Khalwat raids have resurfaced into public attention on news about the death of a policeman and the injury of another who were trying to escape as the religious enforcement officers closed in to arrest them. These cases of accidental deaths and injuries should raise public concern whether such an offence like khalwat (close proximity) should continue to be criminalised considering that its implementation under syariah law has often brought embarrassment to the country’s system

Last month, I attended a talk on pursuing further education in Germany post-Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM). The talk was given by a Malaysian who had gone to university in that country, is now an engineer and working at a German company in Kuala Lumpur. People have misconceptions about German education. It is not really free — one has to enrol for a fee-based foundation programme prior to being admitted to a tuition-free German university. One’s proficiency in German also nee

PETALING JAYA: The Perlis state assembly acted contrary to the Federal Constitution when it amended its enactment to make it allowable for just one parent to convert a child to Islam, said G25, the group of eminent Malays. “The amendments are contrary to the Constitution which provides that words in the singular include the plural and that words referring to the plural include the singular. “The word ‘parent’ in this case includes both mother and father,” said Datuk Noor Fari

TANJUNG MALIM: Perak Ruler Sultan Nazrin Shah (pic) has expressed his concern over the corruption and criminal breach of trust committed openly by highly-educated and high-ranking individuals. He said based on media reports, corrupt practices and criminal breach of trust were not only rampant but even occurring on a very large scale. Sultan Nazrin said history has shown that criminal breach of trust and corrupt practices, and ravenous use of power were factors that had caused

Recently, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the country’s Muslim population should support a plan by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party to adopt hudud, or the Islamic Shariah law system that metes out punishment as set up by the Quran. Azly Rahman writes on this development. I wrote these sentences on my Facebook status page some time ago: “ … SIMPLY PUT, ON THE HUDUD… seriously speaking … i have a few questions: you kidnap innocent girls and sell them, in the name

KANGAR: The amendments passed by the Perlis state assembly go against a fatwa issued by the Perlis Mufti Department which states that a child of a convert need not embrace Islam but may receive teachings on Islam from the Muslim parent. In the April 2015 fatwa, which is still valid, the converted parent is responsible for introducing Islam to the child but custodial right is not decided by religion. “The state fatwa on custody rights of children was decided long ago by the Pe