In the light of an impending habeas corpus application (appeal?) case of four Malays who claim to have given up Islam and no longer wish to be bound by syariah laws, I feel it may be timely to shed some light on an extremely complex subject, particularly when the hearing of the case is fixed for July 17 in Kota Bharu.

It is a case whose root causes, when closely examined, are intricately intertwined with the racial and religious problems which make national integration such an elusive goal in this beautiful country of ours.

I am of course referring to the issue of murtad or apostasy which the local mainstream media consider taboo, and have either refused to publish or downplay published reports on it. But the recent approval in the PAS-controlled Terengganu state assembly of the hudud law bill  because it has been so much politicised by race and religion. Any attempt at constructive discourse to point out the numerous flaws of race and religion is considered as seditious, even downright blasphemous, by the powers that be — and punishable by all kinds of harsh penalties.

Now we know why there is widespread disillusionment among the people, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, when it comes to assessing the political future of the country. They have absolutely no hope in it, what with Umno and PAS trying to outdo each other to see which is more Islamic.

Coming back to the issue of apostasy in Malaysia, many countries would consider it as merely the act of anyone, including a Muslim, to give up his religion for another, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Freedom of religious worship is regarded anywhere as one of the basic tenets of human rights because religion is a personal matter reflecting the individual's beliefs. What the person does is between him/her and God and no one should intervene. If he/she sins in the eyes of God, it is up to God to punish him/her, so goes the general acceptable argument worldwide.

Even in Malaysia, this freedom is guaranteed in the constitution, but it is only applicable to the non-Muslims who form half of the population.

The Barisan Nasional government, or rather Umno, on the other hand forbids any Malay from giving up the religion he/she was born into, i.e. Islam, considers it a very serious crime, and is discouraging this measure at all costs by a strict enforcement measure through the religious authorities.

But in the eyes of many, Umno is doing this more to preserve and safeguard its political interests rather than the religious well-being of the Malay Malaysians. Though the civil law of the land derived from British laws to which Umno subscribes is not framed in such a way as to punish Muslims who choose to forsake Islam, Umno through the Islamic authorities have cracked down very hard on such people.

Thus the very few Malay Malaysians who ever dared to venture out of their religion have been harassed, intimidated and ostracised to make them repent and return to the fold of the ummah (community). While many of those who 'strayed' have succumbed to the pressure, others have chosen not to, and are paying a heavy price.

One of these is Jamaluddin Othman better known as Yeshua Jamaluddin, a Malay Malaysian born a Muslim, but converted to Christianity. He was among those arrested under the ISA in the 1987 Operation Lallang with more than a hundred politicians, educationists and civil right movement leaders.

While in detention he was severely abused and tortured, forced to reenact the Crucifixion, but he steadfastly stuck to his faith, reading the Bible and singing hymns for inspiration. Jamaluddin filed a habeas corpus writ and the then independent judiciary, looking at the case from a legal point of view, decided that the appellant's freedom to profess any religion did not threaten national security as documented in the directive for his ISA detention.

As such, there were no grounds to detain him and the judges ordered his release from ISA detention in October 1988. The present whereabouts of Jamaluddin are unknown and he is thought to have left the country.

But he has written a book called Circumcision of the heart to document his experience under ISA detention.

I have personally come across many Malay Malaysians who given the choice, would prefer not to be Muslims, for a variety of reasons, especially the restrictions that Islam (relative to other religions) imposes on them. But they dare not speak their minds openly for fear of the severe intimidation through the religious authorities.

They feel that in the age of modernity and globalisation compatible with democracy, they as matured adults, should be allowed to choose their own religion like everyone else — and not have to be told to take a certain path to God by people who claim such a divine right — as in the by-gone dark era of the Middle Ages, replete with bloody religious wars such as the Crusades in the Holy Land, the Ottoman subjugation of Eastern Europe and the Inquisition in Spain.

Others especially Muslim women, feel that they ought to follow the faith of their non-Muslim husbands rather than the other way round, which is what is happening in Malaysia.

Many also feel that Malay Malaysians are just as human as anyone else, subject to human frailties, and as such find difficulty in coping with the restrictions imposed on them by Islam. They point to the fact that the rate of crimes like incest, adultery and drug addiction among Malay Malaysians is the highest in the country despite the harsh punishments Islam metes out against such crimes. It is a reflection of the explosion of their suppressed feelings.

Had it not been for the politicisation of Islam in Malaysia by Umno and PAS, apostasy would not have been a crime among Malay Malaysians. It would merely be regarded as the exercise of one of the basic tenets of human rights, the freedom of the individual to choose his own religion.

But Umno sought to politicise Islam as it saw the opportunity to exploit a primordial force like religion to sustain and reinforce the racial power base it acquired from 1945 when the party successfully manipulated, through the exhortation of "Malays unite", the fears of Malay Malaysians of a Chinese takeover of what they regarded as their country through the Malayan Union proposals.

From then onwards, any legitimate political challenge, from the opposition, especially the non-Malays through the avenue of democratic debates, was beaten back through exploiting the issue of race and religion. This is one of the causes of Singapore's political exit from Malaysia in 1965.

Playing the racial and religious card has all along been Umno's success for the past 50 years, and it is no wonder that the party is not giving it up. On the contrary, Umno is looking at ways and means to reinforce it in the face of Malaysia becoming an open society in the era of globalisation.

We must look back at history for a better understanding of how Umno came to entrench its power by exploiting the issue of religion and intertwining it with race. Malay society had traditionally been feudal from the time of the Melaka empire, with the sultans having absolute control over his subjects.

This was a major factor behind the success of Islam when it spread from Gujerat in India to Melaka just prior to the 15th century, and from Hinduism, Malay society in the Melaka empire became Islamic with the conversion of the sultans followed by their loyal subjects.

Later in the 19th century when the British took over the Malay states, they preserved its structure by recognising the sultans as the heads of Islam in their respective states. At the time of independence in 1957, Umno incorporated the British colonial policy of protecting the Malays into the Federal Constitution, with one of its clauses forbidding others to preach their religions to the Malays (but not the other way round).

In one of his speeches made not too recently at the Umno general assembly, party president and Premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad said had it not been for the British colonial policy of protecting the Malays, including preserving their Islamic identity by preventing others from preaching their faiths to them, Malaysia could well have been another Maluku in Indonesia where Muslims and Christians fight each other.

The bottom line in Mahathir's address was that Malay Malaysians must always be vigilant to and resist any attempt to make them forsake Islam.

Should this happen, Malay Malaysians will be divided along the lines of religion, like in Maluku, and more importantly, this would be the beginning of the end of Umno's power based on race and religion. This is the biggest nightmare of Umno, and it could begin with allowing Malay Malaysians to have the freedom to choose their own religion just like anyone else.

With the judges set to decide on the case of the four Malays who have chosen to leave Islam soon, following the precedent set in the case of Yeshua Jamaluddin would be a great triumph for all those who uphold freedom of religious worship, one of the basic tenets of human rights anywhere in the world. However the consequences would be portentous for all Malaysians in the light of the ongoing struggle between Umno and PAS to see who is more Islamic.