Jacqueline Ann Surin
writes that the Malaysian state is constitutionally secular, and consequently the courts cannot hand down decisions that force individuals to seek redress in religious courts.
Surin writes:
Because the Constitution is the country's supreme law, as stipulated in Article 4(1), all other laws and powers conferred by law must be constitutionally consistent.
Unlike Pakistan's constitution, which states that all laws must be consistent with syariah - as derived from the Quran and the Hadith - our Constitution does not stipulate this.
This is what makes our nation a secular one, no matter the kind of rhetoric our politicians resort to. That may be stating the obvious but, sometimes, the obvious needs repeating, especially in the light of the Court of Appeal's majority decision in the R. Subashini case last Tuesday.
A Hindu woman was told she had to redress in a divorce case to a Muslim husband through the Syariah Appeal Court. That court is a limited one in Malaysia which is for Islamic shariah law. I cannot find much information on the court itself, there is plenty of commentary about it, but very little information on the tasks it performs.
This PDF has some information, but the retard the created the file disabled the ability to copy (cut and paste)information from it, so I cannot reproduce the relevant parts. Essentially the Syariah Courts were present when Malaysia was a British colony and represented, in part, the indigenous legal system.
The Syariah court has jurisdiction in proceedings between parties who are muslims in the areas or marriage, divorce, judicial separation, maintenance, children guardianship and wills. Apparently the court has some criminal jurisdiction as well, to hand out punishments for offences committed against Islam by Muslims against the religion such as alcohol consumption, violation of fasting and promiscuity.
Which is fine, but it should not be elevated to state sanctioned law. The separation of church and state is an important principle, and the breaking of it in this case means there is a state sanctioned law for non-Muslims and one for Muslims. So it becomes a discriminative legal system. If it was me, I would be ticked off if I was a Muslim as I would have to face an extra court and set of laws.
The Syriah Appeal Court probably exists for reasons of history and what was politically achievable when Malaysia formed into a nation-state. Mingling church and state is a bad idea, and the Syriah Appeal Court should not be state sanctioned. Religions can hand out their own rulings, which their followers may follow, but it should not be state law.
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Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
