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KUALA LUMPUR: Fatwas must be rooted in study and debate, not only Islamic teachings, but in reality, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said as a Court of Appeal decision that a ban on cross-dressing is unconstitutional continues to stir debate.

He said fatwas by religious scholars are inadequate and ignored by many because of different interpretations of various Islamic injunctions.

“We need to have fatwas on the many challenges facing Muslims. But the fatwas should only be made after a prolonged study and debate by all disciplines, including the realities of life,” he said in his keynote address when opening the Kuala Lumpur Summit 2014 yesterday.

He said Muslims are finding it difficult to challenge the “excessive liberalism” of the West because they do not have the arguments to rebut positions on issues like same-sex marriages other than to say that such things are unIslamic.

“At the moment, we have not debated this, except for religious scholars saying that these are sinful things which Muslims cannot accept. But additionally, we need experts in other fields to provide other inputs and reasons besides just saying that lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transvestites are wrong and sinful.

“We need to have experts in other fields, experts in sciences and in societal behaviour to challenge the liberalism of the West,” Dr Mahathir said.

During the press conference after his speech, he responded to a question about the Court of Appeal’s recent judgment declaring unconstitutional a provision in the Negri Sembilan Syariah Criminal Enactment prohibiting a man from posing as a woman.

Dr Mahathir said transgender people were born “unsure of their gender, they may look like a man but are actually women, and vice versa ... their feelings are different, from the sex they were born with”.

State Islamic laws were formulated against cross-dressing following a fatwa to the same effect in the early 1980s.

Citing the French Revolution as an example, Dr Mahathir said that while the West developed its ideas of democracy, liberalism and human equality through uprisings and turmoil, Muslims continued to rely on their rulers and religious teachers.

“Throughout all these evolutions and revolutions, Muslims did not play a part. We believed that our absolute monarchs and strongman governments would not be affected.

“As such, no thoughts were directed at these new ideas on governance and how Muslims should deal with them,” Dr Mahathir said.

“Muslim thinkers made no concerted effort to understand what was going on as there was a naive belief that Muslims would reject ideas which were contrary to the teachings of Islam.”

Another reason for divisions among Muslims, he said, is different interpretations of the Quran.

“The Quran is perfect, it is not wrong, but the interpretations can be wrong or inaccurate, and over time they can become irrelevant, unable to cope with new ideas and realities. We have a need to do some soul-searching, some revisions of the current teachings of Islam. We must go back to the real source of our religion, to the Quran.” — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on November 12, 2014.

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