HUDUD -AMBIL MASA ATAU TIDAK SEMESTINYA DILAKSANAKAN

Mursyidul Am PAS, Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat berkata hukum hudud yang diperjuangkan PAS sudah tentu mengambil masa untuk dilaksanakan disebabkan ada penentangan daripada pihak tertentu.

Beliau bagaimanapun menyifatkan penentangan tersebut perkara lumrah yang mesti dihadapi PAS apabila hendak melaksanakan undang-undang Islam itu.

"Biasalah perkara baru apabila orang dengar akan ditentang. Seperti juga parti Islam 50 tahun dahulu orang tentang. Ada pihak kata politik suku agama suku, sekarang parti Islam pula yang jadi kerajaan.

"Begitu juga kewangan Islam, dahulu orang kata mana boleh berniaga tanpa riba, zaman sekarang kewangan Islam, bank Islam jadi rebutan, orang Barat pun pakai.

Jadi, hudud ini biarlah kita sebut-sebut dahulu, lama-kelamaan nanti tentu orang menentang akan tertanya-tanya juga tentang kelebihan hudud yang kita cita-citakan ini," katanya ketika menyampaikan kuliah mingguan di Kota Bharu, semalam.

Sementara Timbalan Pesuruhjaya 3 PAS Kelantan, Datuk Mohd. Amar Nik Abdullah mengakui hukum hudud tidak semestinya dilaksanakan sekiranya pakatan pembangkang menang pada Pilihan Raya Umum Ke-13 (PRU-13) dan memerintah negara.

Katanya, PAS dan parti-parti dalam pakatan pembangkang pada peringkat ini telah bersetuju untuk tidak membincangkan soal pelaksanaan hukum hudud yang menjadi agenda perjuangan parti itu selama ini.

Malah, katanya, PAS dan rakan-rakannya dalam pakatan itu juga tidak akan ‘mengusik’ kerangka Perlembagaan Persekutuan walaupun ada pandangan yang mengatakan ia perlu dipinda sekiranya PAS hendak melaksanakan syariat Islam.

“Tidak semestinya kita akan laksanakan, kita melihat kepada persediaan dan persetujuan masyarakat.

“Kita ada persetujuan untuk peringkat ini kita tidak bincangkan soal hudud. Misi kita yang utama ialah untuk menjatuhkan Barisan Nasional pada pilihan raya.

“Bagi kita secara personalnya, perjuangan kita adalah untuk menegakkan syiar (Islam), tetapi kita tidak akan memaksakan hasrat ini kepada masyarakat.

“Bila masyarakat sudah bersedia dengan penjelasan, kefahaman, pada masa itu kita akan laksanakan,” katanya di Kota Bharu, kelmarin.

Beliau diminta mengulas laporan yang pakatan pembangkang tidak pernah merancang untuk melaksanakan undang-undang Islam termasuk hudud jika ditakdirkan berjaya memerintah negara ini.

Ini kerana parti-parti dalam pakatan itu, termasuk PAS terikat kepada perjanjian bersama yang akan terus mempertahankan dan mengamalkan perlembagaan sedia ada.

Ahli Parlimen Kulim-Bandar Baharu, Zulkifli Noordin yang mendedahkan perkara itu menjelaskan, dasar itu dipersetujui dan ditandatangani oleh semua pemimpin pembangkang termasuk PAS.

Baru-baru ini, Penyelaras Pakatan Pembangkang, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim menyatakan bahawa PAS tidak akan dapat melaksanakan hukum hudud berdasarkan realiti politik hari ini dan perjanjian antara parti pakatan pembangkang yang berpegang teguh pada Perlembagaan Negara.

Mengulas lanjut, Mohd. Amar yang juga Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Pendidikan dan Dakwah negeri berkata, cita-cita PAS untuk menegakkan syariat dan sebuah negara Islam tidak pernah berubah tetapi pelaksanaannya bergantung kepada persediaan masyarakat yang juga pengundi.
“Rakyat Malaysia iaitu pengundi, walaupun pilih Pakatan Rakyat tetapi mereka belum bersedia untuk menerima pelaksanaan (hukum hudud) kita tak jadi masalah.

“Selama ini kita bagi tahu nak laksanakan negara Islam pun bukan nak memaksa, tapi dilaksanakan dengan persetujuan pengundi, itu paling penting. Sebab, bila rakyat setuju soal perlembagaan sekular tak berbangkit dah,” katanya.

MALAYSIAN MUSLIMS GO FOT THE GOLD, BUT ITS'S HARD TO MAKE CHANGE

James Hookway / The Wall Street Journal (September 2, 2010)

Umar Vadillo bounds into a hotel room here in northern Malaysia with several stacks of gold and silver coins in his hands and slaps them down on a coffee table. "This," Mr. Vadillo says, "is what it means to be free."

A quarter century ago, this Spanish-born Muslim convert set to work with other European Muslims to find a substitute for the U.S. dollar and other paper currencies.

State minister Nik Abdul Aziz presented certificates to local traders who accept dinar as payment.

Pricing goods in greenbacks, they argued, was unfair. Many countries earn their income from finite resources like oil and other minerals, they said, while the U.S. and other countries can crank up their printing presses to pay for them—especially after Richard Nixon helped break the Western world's historical dependence on gold as a measure of value by taking America off the gold standard in 1971.

Last month, Mr. Vadillo's solution took shape when the local Muslim-led government in Malaysia's Kelantan state joined forces with Mr. Vadillo to introduce Islamic-style gold dinar coins as alternative currency.

Mr. Vadillo and the Kelantan government have persuaded more than a thousand businesses here in the state capital, Kota Bharu, to paste stickers in store windows saying they accept the coins.

Ordinary people can also pay taxes and water bills in gold and silver instead of paper money.

"Our lands are being subjugated," says Mr. Vadillo, a powerfully built 46-year-old with a shiny suit, swept-back hair and a tidy goatee. "Today, in Kelantan, we're fighting back."

Plenty of people have their doubts about the dollar, as well as other currencies that aren't backed by gold or silver.

American libertarians such as Ron Paul frequently call for the reintroduction of a gold-backed currency, arguing that the Federal Reserve's ability to print money causes inflation and destroys savings.

Gold bulls have developed a cult following among investors who worry that precious metals are the only reliable store of value during rocky economic times.

If there's a utopia being formed for the globe's gold bugs, though, it's happening in a few unexpected outposts in the Muslim world like Kelantan.

Mostly that is because some Islamic thinkers teach that using currencies whose value is declared by governments is a form of usury. A piece of paper, they say, is just an IOU.

But with the global economy showing fresh signs of faltering, some believers think there's also a strong financial incentive to switch to gold dinars or the silver coins, known as dirhams.

At the Peter Libly tailor shop in central Kota Bharu, proprietor Ariffin Yusof reckons the new dinars "save people from exploitation."

Husam Musa, Kelantan state's economic policy chief, says he saves half his salary in dinars and believes it to be a good investment. "Its value is stated not by the World Bank, but by Allah," Mr. Husam says.

An initial run of coins worth about $640,000 and ranging from one dirham—containing about $4 worth of silver at current prices—and one dinar—worth $189—to an eight-dinar coin worth $1,518 sold out quickly, prompting Malaysia's political leaders to say the paper-based ringgit, worth around 32 U.S. cents, is still the country's legal currency.

"Gold is money because people make it money. Paper money is money because governments make it money," says Peter Schiff, President of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. in Westport, Conn., and a notable dollar bear. "But what happens if people lose their faith in governments, and the U.S. government in particular?"

This latest quest to wean the world off dollars actually began in Adam Smith's homeland, Scotland, when an aspiring actor named Ian Dallas left his home near Glasgow to seek out the bright lights of London in the 1960s.

Mr. Dallas, now 79 years old, fell into the hippie circuit and played a telepath in the Federico Fellini movie "8½" before ultimately converting to Islam in Morocco.

Mr. Dallas took the name Abdalqadir al-Sufi and set up his own sect, the Murabitun—or "the people of the outposts"—before settling into a wind-blasted mansion named Achnagairn near Inverness in the Scottish highlands.

There, Mr. Dallas and his followers surrounded themselves with banks of computers and began work on creating an Islamic currency to replace the dollar and help speed up the collapse of the West's credit-driven financial system.

When Mr. Vadillo joined the mission, the Murabitun fine-tuned their thinking and began minting gold dinars—the same currency used in the early days of Islam.

The first coin was stamped in 1993 with a Jacobite sword in honor of one of Mr. Dallas's Scottish ancestors who fought against the English army at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. A silver dirham was minted with the Dallas family crest.

"People laughed at us," says Mr. Dallas, who now lives in South Africa and dressed up in an Afghan cap and navy blazer in a video recently released to mark the arrival of the new dinar in Malaysia. "People thought we were going back to the past. Now, the whole atmosphere has changed."

"1,400 years ago, a chicken cost one dirham. Today, it still costs one dirham," Mr. Vadillo says.

Mainstream economists are skeptical about how quickly Malaysians will take up dinars.

Tim Condon, chief Asia economist at ING in Singapore, says he regards gold enthusiasts as "monetary cranks."

He points out that central banks around the world have by and large managed to contain the worst ravages of inflation.

Paper money can also help economies avoid tough periods of deflation, which some economists associate with rigidly backing currencies with gold.

Either way, getting people to use dinars and dirhams regularly isn't easy, and already there are some teething problems in Kota Bharu.

Some people see dinars as a way to save rather than a means of exchange. Others aren't sure what to do with them or worry about how to store them safely.

Snack vendor Ros Abdul Rashid confesses she wouldn't know what to do if somebody tried to buy a bag of peanuts with gold or silver. "I'm not sure how it's supposed to work yet," she says.

One white-robed dinar dealer, 68-year-old Awaludin Mohal, has to offer paper bank notes as change when customers buy his gold and silver coins.

PRU Akan Datang Penentu Kelangsungan Melayu

Anggota Majlis Tertinggi Umno Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed berkata pilihan raya umum akan datang amat penting bagi orang Melayu kerana ia akan menentukan kelangsungan mereka.

Menteri Perdagangan Antarabangsa dan Industri itu berkata ini kerana perkembangan semasa menunjukkan hak orang Melayu sentiasa dicabar sekalipun telah termaktub dalam Perlembagaan Persekutuan.

Pilihan raya itu akan menentukan sama ada orang Melayu akan terus meneraju negara ini atau sebaliknya, kata beliau semasa berucap pada majlis ramah mesra bersama warga pendidik peringkat Pejabat Pelajaran Pasir Puteh, di Pasir Puteh semalam.

"Berasaskan kedudukan itu Umno mesti memenangi lebih banyak kerusi Parlimen dan negeri bagi menguatkan kedudukan selain terus berkuasa mempertahankan Perlembagaan yang sedia ada bagi faedah orang Melayu dan seluruh rakyat Malaysia," katanya.

Mustapa yang juga Pengerusi Badan Perhubungan Umno Kelantan berkata Umno negeri itu kini berusaha mendampingi golongan pendidik di Kelantan bagi memastikan Barisan Nasional (BN) dapat menawan kembali negeri itu pada pilihanraya umum akan datang.

Ini kerana katanya, golongan itu paling rapat dengan rakyat selain mempunyai pengaruh besar ke atas masyarakat.

Diharapkan golongan guru dapat membantu menarik rakyat untuk menyokong BN, katanya.

Pondok Moden Jeli Bakal Dijadikan Pusat Tahfiz

Institusi Pondok Moden Jeli bakal dijadikan pusat tahfiz untuk golongan muda dan pusat mendalami ilmu agama bagi golongan tua dalam tempoh lima tahun akan datang, kata Anggota Parlimen Jeli Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.

Beliau berkata ia bagi memenuhi permintaan yang semakin menggalakkan bukan saja daripada masyarakat setempat tetapi juga dari luar.

Buat masa ini Pondok Moden Jeli ini menerima pelajar daripada pelbagai peringkat termasuk pelajar Institusi Pengajian Tinggi yang mahu mengikuti kursusagama, kata beliau kepada pemberita, di Jeli, malam semalam.

Pondok Moden Jeli yang dibina pada 2008 di atas tapak seluas 1.6 hektar oleh Umno Jeli dengan kos RM500,000 itu, merupakan institusi pertama seumpamanya di negara ini.

Dilengkapi dengan pelbagai kemudahan termasuk asrama untuk lelaki dan perempuan, pusat itu ditubuh berasaskan institusi sekolah pondok yang banyak di Kelantan.

Mengulas lanjut, Mustapa yang juga Menteri Perdagangan Antarabangsa dan Industri berkata pihaknya juga merancang untuk menambah infrastruktur institusi itu pada masa depan.

"Kita secara perlahan-lahan dan berperingkat membangunkan pondok moden inidan yang terbaru kita baru menyiapkan dewan untuk aktiviti perhimpunan yang bernilai RM300,000 dan mampu memuatkan seramai 300 orang.

"InsyaAllah kita akan cuba mendapatkan peruntukan yang lebih besar bagi membangunkan pondok moden ini," katanya.