"If you do not have the intention to commit an offence, why should you be scared about it [punishment]?" Malaysian Chinese Muslims Association (Macma) vice-president Marlena Wong asked in Chinese Muslims bear different views on hudud .

This question, which is repeatedly used by hudud proponents, is flawed because it assumes there is an agreement on what constitutes an offence and its appropriate punishment, when on both counts, there is not, in our pluralistic society.

A conduct punishable as a criminal offence is where it falls below the minimum benchmark that harms others and prevents them from exercising their normal rights such as theft, robbery, rape, murder, causing physical hurt, cheating, etc.

A criminal conduct is therefore to be distinguished from immoral conduct, just as law is to be distinguished from morality. Morality, especially sexual morality, sets the maximum behaviour to be aspired for, socially approved and emulated when strived for or attained.

It should not be confused with the minimum conduct that is to be observed, which otherwise is condemned and sanctioned by law to be punished as a criminal offence when committed.

If the above distinction between maximum behaviour and a minimum one — between an immoral behaviour and a criminal one — is acknowledged, then it is equally as easy to acknowledge that to punish an immoral behaviour as if it was a criminal one, without distinguishing them, will constitute a violation of human right.

The problem with PAS' hudud is that it makes immorality — for example, illicit sex and adultery — an offence where many others of us, not of the same faith, and even among some of same faith, do not agree it is so.

While we do not, on grounds of morality, approve of illicit sex and adultery, we do however acknowledge that such behaviour is resultant from ordinary human weakness, and if engaged in between consenting adults, is still within the minimum benchmark of not inflicting harm onto others, and as such should not be proscribed as a criminal act in the first place, let alone deserving of severe punishment such as beheading and stoning.

This is especially so when such "morality-turned-criminal laws" adversely affect women most when every breach of sexual morality is attributed to the women being either a temptresses or failing to observe the appropriate dress code or observe appropriate conduct to thwart the men's blandishments or transgressions.

The impulse of the age is to move towards further liberalisation of thought and conduct as long as it is does not breach the minimum standard of harm to others as to degenerate to criminal conduct. If this were not so, why in our case are the opposition parties — DAP, Keadilan and PAS included — clamoring for the government to accord the citizens basic freedoms to dissent, and if necessary the right to assemble and demonstrate their point of view without repercussions of detention under the ISA?

It is the same freedom to dissent — to disagree as to what constitutes moral from immoral behaviour — and to be protected from legal persecution when the larger community views one's conduct immoral when it is not necessarily criminal that is at issue here. It is an issue of human rights.

Adult women and not just men have the equal right to live their lives according to their own moral dictates whether the rest of us think they are at the higher or lower levels from ours without fear of punishment from state laws as long as their conduct do not harm others.

To argue that others will be "harmed" by such immoral conduct — that such immorality will spread if not restrained by criminal (hudud) law — is an argument that sweeps under the carpet and begs the question (given that not all of us have the same opinion) whether it is really "harmful" and can spread as a contagious virus.

In the absence of agreement or shared norms (the prerequisite for criminal law to be formulated) the best and most neutral standard for resolving these questions is empirical based on studies and findings, rational debate and argument and not a priori religious premises.

For a state to say that the Almighty says so is to further beg the question whether the rest of us believe in the same Almighty or interpret His commandments and rules in the same way. To impose a blanket imposition on all because of a few who hold claims to know the Almighty's laws, is to violate the human rights of those who do not share the same beliefs and put beyond proof such claims to divine revelation.

For Keadilan to say that it is democratic for the majority's will in Terengganu and Kelantan to prevail if the majority wish for hudud implementation is to conveniently forget that a democracy guarantees basic rights for minorities over whom majority cannot ride roughshod. And even for the majority in a democracy, its members are allowed freedom of expression and not cowered by sanctions and pressures and negative branding as un-Islamic for expressing otherwise.

Before opposition parties have the moral ground to preach human rights and democracy to the government of the day, they should first show that they understand what human rights and democracy are about. They cannot argue that human rights and democracy are about repeal of the ISA and independent judiciary (hudud and syariah law, theocracy and religious courts excepted) especially in a pluralistic and comparatively modern society like Malaysia.