Differing views on PAS' hudud laws and Keadilan's yes-no-maybe stand on the issue proves that it would be difficult for truly multi-racial political parties to operate effectively under Malaysia's political

environment.

Keadilan, DAP and PRM are far from being the multicultural parties that they claim to be, and their response to issues like PAS' implementation of hudud in Terengganu shows that they still have a long

way to go.

The blame cannot be laid entirely on the party's shoulders, as the nature of the Islamic religion and the demands it places on adherents preclude the possibility of rejecting anything in the Quran there

may be widely differing interpretations of the more abstract verses, and even on the straightforward ones, but a Muslim can never reject outright any of them, and hope to remain one.

Since Malay Muslim voters make up a huge block in the electorate, a political party that claims to represent all ethic groups in the country would find it impossible to take up non-Muslim concerns towards any Islam-related issues, especially those that strike at the heart of what it means to be a Muslim.

These issues can range from the seemingly trivial to the decidedly serious, and just one simple example would be enough to show how hard it can get.

Non-Muslims living in a residential area that has a mosque or a surau would have had the experience of being stirred from sleep by the early morning, or subuh , the call to prayers or the azan .

No need to be diplomatic about it it is loud and jarring, and seems even more so on Saturday and Sunday mornings. To top it all off, it is supposed to be that way, as the function of the subuh azan is not just to call the faithfuls to prayer, but also to rouse them from slumber one unique line, twice recited, in the subuh azan that differentiates it from call-to-prayers at other prayer times throughout the day is: Prayer is better than Sleep.

Suppose the azan in a certain area is particularly loud, and some non-Muslims living there get irritated at being roused from deep sleep early in the morning every morning and they complain.

Would any local politician worth his or her salt be willing to take the matter up with the surau committee? And if he or she were willing, what would he or she say to them? "Turn it down because it's waking people up?" Hey, the muezzin (the person who recites the call-to-prayer) is just doing his job.

Now we can begin to appreciate the difficulties that arise with more serious issues like hudud.

When Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said that "no Muslim can reject syariah laws as they are an obligation under Islam", what she meant was that no Muslim can reject the truthfulness or the appropriateness of applying injunctions that are clearly stated in the Quran, as such is the belief in the Quran as the Word of God that to reject one verse is to reject them all.

What can be debated and disputed by Muslims, however, is how these injunctions should be applied. Hence, Umno's characterisation of the hudud laws enacted by Terengganu as hudud PAS, which, in Umno's view, is neither an appropriate interpretation nor a just application of the Quranic verses dealing with hudud.

Malay DAP leaders have also adopted an Umno-like stance on hudud, with party deputy secretary-general Zulkifli Mohd Noor saying that "the Terengganu hudud law is not God-made, it is man-made. It has been amended by PAS."

Note how no Muslim leader opposition or establishment rejects hudud i.e. the verses laying out punishments for certain specific transgressions. Even PRM has not rejected it explicitly, and has merely indicated its opposition to the establishment of a theocratic state, which PRM president Dr Syed Husin Ali argued was not contained in the Quran (What if it clearly were? Would he have been against it?).

For parties that claim to be multiracial, the hudud "test" has been one that they have failed miserably, and their attempts at coming up with a stand on the issue that would be acceptable to everyone have withered away their credibility, as has happened to Wan Azizah.

While Karpal Singh's "over my dead body" remarks were the furthest that anyone was willing to go in opposing hudud laws, those remarks were also insensitive to Malaysian Muslims (whatever their views on hudud), and provide an example of the reasons behind the inability of such parties to reach out to a broad cross section of Malaysian society.

In contrast, the handling of the issue by the largely ethnic-based parties in the Barisan Nasional has gone a long way in strengthening the argument that the communalist approach towards local politics has been the best.

No non-Muslim can accuse the Barisan Nasional of not taking PAS to task for introducing hudud laws in Terengganu, as Umno and, to a lesser extent, MCA have been at the forefront of these efforts. Yet no PAS leader has dared to publicly accuse Umno leaders of becoming kafir (infidel)

for opposing the introduction of the laws, as people like Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad have clearly said that Umno was against PAS' version of hudud, not hudud itself.

Compare this with positions taken by the supposedly multiracial parties: Keadilan's here-there-everywhere 'mix', PRM's high-browed arguments against the concept of a theocratic state, and DAP's 'extremist' views on the matter, and you get a sense of the liberal opposition supporter's frustration at the fact that the only people who seem capable of giving it a proper go whether for or against are PAS, a Malay dominated religion-based party, and Barisan Nasional, a coalition of ethnic-based parties.

There might still come a day when a truly 'Malaysian' party can capture the imagination, and votes, of a large number of people in this country, but the hudud issue is an example of the huge obstacles that

must be overcome before such a party can emerge.