There are two George Washington University (GWU) professors who study ‘applied Islamic values’ and use a framework they developed to classify and rate ‘how Muslim are the communities they study’. Apparently, New Zealand is number one on that list. My consequential question is, are they not using good ‘theory’, or is it that they are ‘doing bad science of research?’
My related and implicit question is, why is Saudi Arabia not number one on that list, or why are none of the ‘so-called ‘official Islamic states’ who have adopted the religion as the supreme law of their land not doing as well either in their listing? Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa addressed this point recently.
Consequently, I have an even more serious question to all Malaysians: Why not we hudud corruption first, and when we have proven that we can do it, we can then talk about hudud in other areas and arenas of science through measurement. After all, all such research is based on social science theories of human behaviour, right? And these behavioural patterns are measureable, right?
Behaviour versus action
I had a professor of public administration at GWU who wrote his first book called Action Theory . His second was called Organizational Theories for Public Administration . What I learned from him is the real difference between ‘behavioural theories based on scientific research with dogs and rats versus the assumptions we make about human nature and whether we can ‘use animal theories of negative and positive reinforcement to apply to human behaviour!’
His Action Theory argument is that we cannot do it because human intentionality is different from animal instinctive behaviour. Human intentionality has at its root the idea of a hierarchy of purposes, which is what makes for humans as beings. Purpose or ‘telos’ or the teleology, as the study of purposes, allows and assigns humans with both purpose and the concept of human choice versus instinctive animal behaviour. Animals have no choice.
Both this hierarchy of purposes and the fact that humans can make choices about their next courses of action make all the difference between Action Theory and all other human behaviour theories linked to instinctive animal behaviour; including behavioural conditioning.
Is corruption instinctive or elective behaviour?
What is corruption at its most basic level? Is it not appropriating to self what is not ours, but doing it without awareness of third party others? Or simply put, is it not stealing from the public good or the public purse?
We need three parties to frame bribery and corruption as theft from third party goods. The third party is the objective other or a standard, regardless of the origin of such values, but which is violated by the other two parties; when they collude to steal.
You help me, I help you is also such corruption or theft from the public good. This has been established in Thailand with their government policy; the Constitutional Court found ‘the purchase of rice at higher than market prices’ deemed as ‘corruption’. That too was you help me, I help you.
Bribery is an individual act of corruption or theft from the public purse without proper authorization. Therefore, corruption is a systemic level of incidence of the same crime when aggregated at an organisational level.
Corruption is a national sickness of theft from the public purse in Malaysia. None other than Dr Mahathir Mohamad had publicly stated so and defined such. After all, he was the PM who explicitly articulated and made BCA or Bersih, Cekap, Amanah national programme.
Unfortunately, after his political battles fight with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah within Umno, corruption became a legal way of subverting public funds for sectarian or non-governmental purposes, when the courts made Umno illegal. Today, it appears such corruption is fully institutionalised at the level of all organisations and systems, and there are many different levels of individuals involved in such public theft.
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is now catching more of them.
ABC; a citizen’s hudud against corruption
It is time for all Malaysians of the Bangsa Malaysia mindset (those who are anak Bangsa Malaysia, i.e. born after 1963, or others who choose to state they are ‘Malaysians First’ and foremost, before even their ethnic heritage consideration). Some like our deputy prime minister have publicly stated they are not Malaysians first. I call such ‘Melayusians; they are Melayus first!’
Malaysians, as citizens of this country which we love and call home must make the issue of public theft through bribery and corruption our first and foremost hudud. What do I mean? As even Dr Mahathir agrees; we are not ready as a multi-cultural country and community of peoples to ‘enforce interpretation of hudud in the criminal personal form’ instead, why not we start a serious programme called ABC and make that our hudud agenda?
We can call it ABC4Malaysians or Against Bribery and Corruption for all Malaysians as our first and foremost hudud agenda. This can be our commitment for hudud at a systemic and national level and therefore our system of hudud for corporate empowerment for all peoples of Malaysia.
Then, even the issue of ‘enforcement’ does not arise. No one has to force it down anybody else’s throat! It is simply a voluntary programme for all willing Malaysians to elect to say ‘No’ to all public theft through bribery and corruption, wherever it is found.
OHMSI and the ABC4Malaysians agenda
In mid 2005, during our first ever NCOI or the 1st National Congress on Integrity, we the 1Bangsa of Malaysians, first began a campaign to sign on voluntarily to say no to bribery and corruption. In fact, the late Dr Irene Fernandez was one of the first public figures to sign on to that pledge , among others. For more photos, go here .
Therefore my suggestions to our friends in PAS is, why choose to make criminalising personal ‘hudud’ concerns your priority, when we can start at a much easier point, where we can quite easily get the good and willing Malaysians on board our voluntary hudud programme, but which does not even require new legislation. It is a voluntary public choice to reject public thefts in all forms.
Can we, the rakyat of Malaysia, make this our citizen’s first bill of right instead or seeking out of date ways of expressing particular interpretive theology. With our new sciences about knowing, surely we can express our lived theology of life in more coherent and valid ways than to resort to ways that have never worked in the first place.
May God bless Malaysians with wisdom which only comes from Him, and ‘em-courage PAS’ instead to make corruption their first and foremost hudud agenda.
