Malaysia’s northeastern Terengganu state will punish women for donning men’s clothing and conceiving out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The state also outlawed ‘witchcraft and sorcery’. The move has drawn the ire of human rights activists in South-East Asia. The laws that were passed by the Terengganu state assembly earlier this month make legislative provisions for punishments by a fine of up to 5,000 ringgit ($1,134), a three-year jail term and six lashes, or any combination of the three.
As many as 14 rights groups, including 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.
The new law in the Malaysian state follows a similar move by neighbouring Indonesia, which outlawed extramarital sex and raised the penalty for abortions. The bill, which became law last week, also adds limitations to how much people can criticise 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 better protect “the well-being of Muslims,” state-run Bernama news agency cited state religious official Satiful Bahari Mamat as saying. He added that the prohibition on women behaving like men was enacted because existing laws only dealt with men acting like women.
“Because in the past, there might not have been much of this issue (women acting like men),” he told the state news agency. “But we see now that ‘pengkid’ (tomboy or lesbian) cases and the like are becoming more widespread, so the state government intends to curb this issue.”
Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, or PAS as it’s known, 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.
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