Malaysiakelak.com.my News (used with permission, copyright not protected)
By Juslo Satire
(KUANTAN, Friday) – The Syariah Court today has today declared that the
late Tan
Sri Lim Goh Tong was a Muslim when he passed away more than 10 years
ago in 2007. The Syariah Court also ruled that since no non-Muslim is
allowed to inherit any part of a Muslim's assets or wealth, the
inheritance of Lim's property by his non-Muslim children are invalid
and unlawful.
"Therefore, the assets should be
immediately returned to Tan Sri Lim's name, and then redistributed to
his Muslim heirs (if any) according to Syariah law. If he has no Muslim
heir, then the assets shall be given to the Islamic authorities and
they can do whatever they wish. The non-Muslim children are
disinherited." The Syariah Court ruled.
Dato'
Zakaria Lim Abdullah, 35, the late Tan Sri Lim's only Muslim child and
the 20th of his 20 offsprings, is now poised to become the Chairman of
Genting Group, 1 of Southeast Asia's richest companies worth RM2
trillion as at press time. (He would have inherited only 1/20 of Tan
Sri Lim's assets if Tan Sri Lim was not declared a Muslim.) However, he
refused to confirm whether he would stop the gambling business of
Genting even though it is haram under Islamic law.
"Are
you saying that our Hadhari government should refuse to collect taxes
from gambling, alcohol, pork and other haram businesses?" Dato' Zakaria
replied, perhaps rhetorically.
Dato'
Zakaria has also said that his shall honor his pledge to donate 1/10 of
his newly inherited fortune to Jabatan Agama Islam Pahang and UMNO in
equal share if he won the case, made 3 days before the Syariah Court
decision.
"Business Reasons"
"My
late father wanted to keep his conversion secret because he was a
gambling tycoon, and he did not want to jeopardize his gambling empire
or make his shareholders lose confidence in Genting," said Dato' Zakaria
during the hearing in Syariah Court. The Syariah Court felt that "this
is most likely true because of the huge business implications. It is
very normal for Chinese to do this. We can accept that."
As
to the testimonies of Tan Sri Lim's 19 other offsprings in the Syariah
Court, who unanimously disputed the alleged conversion, the Syariah
Court said,
"Even though it is 19 to 1,
but because the non-Muslim witnesses refused to swear on the Qur'an
before they testified in court, we could not consider their
testimonies. In any event, even if they did swear on the Qur'an, the
dhimmis… sorry, the non-Muslims would still carry less weight when
compared to the testimony of 2 Muslim men. It is not about the number,
it is about quality of the witnesses."
The
other witness supporting Dato' Zakaria's claim to have witnessed Tan
Sri Lim's conversion is Ustaz Abdul Rahman Ganinah Abdullah, 23 year
old. The Ustaz would have been only 13 year old at that time of the
conversion, but the Syariah Court said that,
"Being
a righteous, God-fearing Muslim, we have no reason to suspect that the
Ustaz told any lie. In any event, he has reached the age of puberty at
the time (of the conversion) so he was qualified to witness the
conversion."
"Answer To God" – It Depends
The Syariah Court has also ruled that the overwhelming evidence of Tan Sri
Lim drinking alcohol, praying to pagan idols, celebrating pagan religious
festivals, eating pork and gambling in his own Genting Casino and
generally behaving like a non-Muslim all his life until his death was
"…irrelevant. Once you have converted, you are a Muslim till you die, no
matter what you did before your death. You will answer to God for all
your sins."
However, on the same kind of "answer to God" argument made by the
non-Muslim children that:
"By
the same logic, the Deceased himself should answer to God for
concealing his alleged 'conversion' from his family and resulting in
him not being buried as a Muslim and his assets distributed among his
non-Muslim children; it's not up to the Islamic Authority to insist on
his assets being inherited under Islamic law if he, KNOWING THAT HIS
ASSETS WOULD BE DISTRIBUTED LIKE AN INFIDEL (AND HE MIGHT BURN IN HELL),
still didn't want to tell his family to bury him as a Muslim and
distribute his assets like a Muslim."
the Syariah Court said "you
cannot say he must answer to God for everything. Sometimes he also has
to answer to us, the Islamic Authority and Syariah Court. If we say he
has to answer to us, then he has to. When it comes to God's law, logic
has nothing to do with it. Why is it so difficult to understand?"
"New Conversion Policy" vs New Economic Policy
The
case to declare one of the richest Chinese in the world (at his death)
as a Muslim was started 2 years ago (8 years after his death), 1 month
after another non-Muslim Malaysian tycoon's Muslim son was able to
exclusively inherit his father's global business empire – worth RM80
billion at that time – by proving in Syariah Court that his father had
"converted in secret," resulting in his mother and all 9 other siblings
losing the right to inherit any part of the tycoon's wealth, leaving
him the sole heir to the huge fortune.
There are
currently at least 200 more cases of the same nature pending before the
Syariah Courts nationwide involving deceased non-Muslims who were
wealthy during their lifetime and left behind a huge personal fortune.
Rough estimate suggests that 50% of them were started by 1 of the
Muslim children of the deceased (99% of them newly converted as
Muslims), and the rest by the Islamic Authorities seeking to disinherit
all non-Muslim children.
If all of the cases
succeed, it is estimated that the ratio of equity held by Muslims in
Malaysia would jump from the meagre 19% as at 1 January 2018 to 76%, a
whopping 3-fold increase.
The Perak Mufti,
who applauded the Syariah Court's ruling, said that this wave of
after-death declarations of conversions is the new approach taken by
the Islamic Authority to speed up the Islamicization of Malaysia, but
is also designed to achieve the government's goal to redistribute
wealth among the races which the government could no longer do (and
failed repeatedly to do) under the now abolished National Economic
Policy.
"By creating real economic
incentives for the dhimmis to become a real citizen of the Islamic
state, we expect more of them to embrace the true path, and this will
mean that we no longer have to rely on the NEP to achieve such noble
socio-economic goals of the government. Besides, this is more effective
because to take money away from living people will create a lot of
noise, but a dead person will not make any noise, right?" He said.
However,
it is not clear whether the non-Muslim children would still be able to
keep their inheritance if they convert to Islam immediately. The Mufti
of Perak, when consulted on this issue, said,
"If
that could bring them to Islam, then it would be good, so the Syariah
Court should allow that. But then it might be unfair to those children
who converted into Islam earlier… perhaps we can still allow them to
inherit only 30% of what an "early bird" Muslim heir would have been
able to get, to provide some "early bird bonus incentives" for them to
convert earlier. When we are dealing with Chinese, such bonus
incentives are very important, if you know what I mean. Anyway, we'll
think about this in the next National Fatwa Council meeting. But rest
assured that we shall continue to our struggle – until the Kingdom
comes (literally)."
Chinese Beginning to Be Concerned
The Chinese community has now taken this matter very seriously and are
brainstorming on the options
to overcome this problem. They have also called for an end to the
practice of declaring a person's status as a Muslim after his or her
death, a radical change from their usual attitude to shy away from
controversial political and religious issues. Analysts believe that
this is because this is threatening their economic interests.
Supporters
of the now semi-defunct Malaysian Chinese Association, Gerakan and
Malaysian Indian Congress, still part of the ruling Barisan Nasional
coalition, have called on the top BN leadership to put forward a plan
to resolve such controversial and provocative religious issues once and
for all and in a manner which is fair to the non-Muslims. An MCA leader
who declined to be named told our reporter:
"We fear a backlash. Most NGO and opposition leaders have called on the
non-Muslims to boycott
BN if no fair solution is put forward before the upcoming general
election. These issues have been around since at least the Moorthy
controversy in 2005 but still remained unresolved. The are now
affecting the basic security and fundamental well-being of the
non-Muslims."
[Juslo's clarification: This is purely a SATIRE. NOTHING in this post is
factually true. DEEP APOLOGIES
to the family of the late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong. Forgive me for using a
real, prominent name in order to try to bring out the real, concrete
implications of the stupidity, madness and suffering which are happening
in Malaysia right now, and hopefully to raise awareness of the people,
Muslims and non-Muslims alike.]
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