PUTRAJAYA, March 1 — Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail clapped back at Sik MP Ahmad Tarmizi Sulaiman for claiming the country needed to allow states to enact stricter Shariah laws to prevent underage sexual abuse and rape as existing civil laws weren’t enough to prevent them.
He said according to the statistics, Muslim-led states had the highest cases of underage rape with Kelantan leading the way.
“Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah... cases are going up whereas in Penang, it’s going down when you compare 2022 and 2023 stats. He (Ahmad) brought this issue up in Parliament after watching the police CID chief’s interview.
“Well, if he looked at the numbers, they don’t lie... Kelantan has the highest number of cases and 98 per cent of the population is Muslim.
“Sexual offences cover a vast array of categories and most of them committing these crimes are from the B40 group, those in poor economic class. The crimes are being committed against their own family members, friends or relatives... that’s around 45 per cent.
“So instead of pointing fingers claiming we’re not doing the right thing and crimes are being committed due to lax Shariah laws... we should work together, try to conduct more outreach and education programmes,” he said.
Yesterday in the Dewan Rakyat, Ahmad said CID police chief Datuk Seri Mohd Shuhaily Mohd Zain had said that sex crimes had increased by 11.8 or 202 cases from last year until early this year.
He said this was because the civil laws in Malaysia were unable to handle such cases and was the reason for the rise in underage sexual crimes. He said the Shariah laws needed to be enacted in every state to prevent this happening and also said that the Shariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965 — also known by its Malay initials RUU355 — needed to be amended to ensure such crimes can be prevented.
