I refer to your report, Incest: Govt told to focus on prevention, not punishment in which women's groups (Womens Crisis Centre and Womens Aid Organisation) and PAS politician, Fatimah Ibrahim, commented on the proposed punishments for incest.

Fatimah suggested resorting to the syariah law as her preference (obviously as she is from PAS). I live in the East Coast and these issues are important where I am, as you can well imagine. I have kept newspaper clippings on the syariah criminal laws and the Kelantan hudud law which was passed in the Kelantan State Legislature. There are a lot of books published locally on these things for some years now.

I believe that there is nothing concrete in traditional sources on hudud in Islam, on incest. Islamic sources talk about zina or illicit sexual intercourse where both parties have consensual sexual intercourse while not married to one another. I think women's groups especially argued about the lack of distinction in the traditional views between illicit and consensual sexual intercourse and rape.

In an incest situation, there is no consent obviously or even if consent is given, is nullified because of the nature of the relationship. Is Fatima saying this is zina ? Is the victim to be given 100 lashes as punishment? Under hudud law of zina , unmarried parties (illicit sexual intercourse) get 100 lashes. Parties who commit adultery (also zina ) will be stoned to death.

I do not know what Fatima is thinking when she made her statement. I do not know if she is aware of the controversies herself.

If she is not talking about hudud then any state criminal law and law in the Penal Code makes no distinction and the same penalties can be given, except that state criminal law has a ceiling on the maximum punishment to be given unlike punishments in the civil law under the Penal Code. This is after all her point. She wants increased penalties.

I think politicians have to do their homework before they talk to the people. Then we may begin to wonder why we need bother to vote anybody at all.

Politicians must begin to learn that there is a new and younger generation who are more educated and more interested in managing the political future of the country.