Malaysian popular daily censors sensitive column

Malaysia's top selling English daily The Star looks like to have succumbed to fears of reprisals from the government in running articles that discuss Islam.

One of its popular columnist Marina Mahathir was to have written her column that attacked the treatment of Muslim women in Malaysia. Her column was in conjuncton with the International Women's Day on March 8. However on that day (Wednesday), the column failed to appear in The Star.

In her article, she compared the situation of Muslim women in Malaysia to that of South African blacks under apartheid.

She wrote:

"In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women."

Marina told AFP she was prompted to write the article amid outrage over legislation passed last year which critics say will help Muslim men to take multiple wives and claim property after divorce.

She also said that The Star will publish her column today instead. It didn't and had made no comments as to when the article will now be published. It merely said that the editor responsible for handling Marina's article was too busy to deal with it at the time.

Malaysiakini quoted her as saying that The Star will now publish her column tomorrow (Friday) and that the editors were concerned over the sensitive nature of her article.

She added:

"The main thing for me is that newspapers seem to be running a bit scared on any
issue relating to religion, especially with all the issues relating to the cartoons."

She was referring to the Danish caricatures controversy.

The Malaysian government had come down hard in recent months against newspapers - including indefinite suspension - that had directly or indirectly published the Danish cartoons that had ridiculed Prophet Muhammad.

The media now fears that their printing permits will be revoked if they continue publishing any sensitive articles on Islam. Following this trend, I think Marina's article is just first of many that will be censored by the media in the days to come.

Welcome to press freedom in Malaysia.

Just in case The Star misses the publication of Marina's article tomorrow, here it is in full:

Marina Mahathir for The Star - Our Own Apartheid

In 1948, one of humankind’s most despicable ideas, apartheid, was made into
law in South Africa where racial discrimination was institutionalized. Race laws
touched every aspect of social life, including a prohibition of marriage between
non-whites and whites, and the sanctioning of “white-only” jobs.

Although there were 19 million blacks and only 4.5 million whites in South Africa, the majority population were forced to be second-class citizens in their homeland, banished to reserves and needing passports to travel outside them, even within their own country. It was only in 1990 that apartheid began to crumble and South Africans of all colours were finally free to live as equals in every way.

With the end of that racist system, people may be forgiven for thinking that apartheid does not exist anymore. While few countries practice any formal
systems of discrimination, nevertheless you can find many forms of discrimination everywhere. In many cases, it is women who are discriminated against.

In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women.

We are unique in that we actively legally discriminate against women who are arguably the majority in this country, Muslim women. Non-Muslim Malaysian
women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the
opposite has happened for Muslim women.

For instance, since the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, polygamy among non-Muslims was banned. Previously men could have as many wives
as they wanted under customary laws. Men’s ability to unilaterally pronounce
divorce on their wives was abolished and in its place, divorce happens by mutual
consent or upon petition by either spouse in an equal process where the grounds
are intolerable adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion of not less than two
years, and living separately for not less than two years. Compare that to the
lot of Muslim women abandoned but not divorced by their husbands.

Other progressive reforms in the civil family law in the late 1990s were amendments to the Guardianship Act and the Distribution Act. The Guardianship of Infants Act 1961 was amended to provide for equal guardianship for both father and mother, rather than the previous provision where only the father was the primary guardian of the children.

In contrast, the Islamic Family Law still provides for the father as the sole primary guardian of his children although the mother is now allowed to sign certain forms for her children under an administrative directive.

The Distribution Act 1958 was also amended to provide for equal inheritance
for widows and widowers, and also granted children the right to inherit from
their mothers as well as from their fathers. Under the newly proposed amendments to the Islamic Family Law, the use of gender neutral language on the issue of matrimonial property is discriminatory on Muslim women when other provisions in the IFL are not gender-neutral. Muslim men may still contract polygamous marriages, may unilaterally divorce their wives for the most trivial of reasons (including by SMS, unique in the Muslim world) and are entitled to double shares of inheritance.

These differences between the lot of Muslim women and non-Muslim women beg
the question: do we have two categories of citizenship in Malaysia, whereby most
female citizens have less rights than others? As non-Muslim women catch up with
women in the rest of the world, Muslim women here are only going backwards. We should also note that only in Malaysia are Muslim women regressing; in every other Muslim country in the world, women have been gaining rights, not losing them.

In this country, our leaders claim to stand for all citizens. Our Prime Minister is the Prime Minister of all Malaysians, our Ministers work for all Malaysians in their respective fields. There are two exceptions to this. The Minister for Islamic Affairs is obviously only for Muslims; even though some of the things he does affect others. While the Minister for Women purports to work for all Malaysian women, even though not all Malaysian women benefit from that work. Perhaps we should consolidate the apartheid of women in this country by having a Ministry for Non-Muslim Women which works to ensure that Non-Muslim women enjoy the benefits of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, a UN document which Malaysia signed and is legally bound to implement, and a Ministry for Muslim Women which works to gag and bind Muslim women more and more each day for the sake of political expediency under the guise of religion.

Today is International Women’s Day. Unfortunately only about 40% of the
women in this country can celebrate. The rest can only look at their Non-Muslim
sisters in despair and envy.

-ends-

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