(Sept 12): G25 Malaysia refers to the statement by PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang on Sept 9, 2026, calling for the abolition of what he describes as “colonial laws” obstructing the implementation of Islam. He named the Shariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965, the Civil Law Act 1956 and the division of powers in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, and he called for Islam to be placed above man-made law.
These laws are not colonial and should not be removed. Act 355 was enacted by Malaysia's own Parliament in 1965, eight years after Merdeka, and its limits of three years' imprisonment, a RM5,000 fine and six strokes were set by an elected Parliament in 1984. The Ninth Schedule is part of the Constitution's own design, agreed by the Rulers, the alliance and the people of this country. The Civil Law Act was carried into independence by our nation’s founding fathers that chose a working legal system. It applies the common law only where Malaysian written law is silent and only so far as local circumstances permit, and Parliament can displace it by ordinary legislation at any time, as it has done previously. To call these laws colonial is an attempt to play politics with the foundation of this country.
The proposal by the PAS president also defeats itself. Item 1 of the State List provides that shariah courts shall not have jurisdiction over offences except as conferred by federal law. Act 355 is that conferment. Abolish it and the shariah courts lose their criminal jurisdiction altogether. What is actually being sought by PAS is a replacement law with no limits on punishment, which is the private member's bill that Parliament never passed.
What removal would do to Malaysia
Repeal of the Civil Law Act would remove the basis on which our courts apply the common law and the rules of equity that underpin tort, trusts, commercial dealings and every area where Parliament has not legislated in full. The legal uncertainty and cost to investor confidence would be unprecedented.
Malaysia's Islamic finance industry, among the largest in the world, is built on federal statutes and enforced in the civil courts, and undermining that framework would harm the very Muslim institutions the PAS president says he wishes to strengthen.
Rewriting the Ninth Schedule would require a constitutional amendment and would reopen the compact with Sabah and Sarawak, whose entry into Malaysia in 1963 was agreed on the basis that there would be no state religion in those states.
It would create two classes of Malaysians, with Muslims subject to an expanded criminal jurisdiction and harsher punishment than their fellow citizens for the same conduct. Those who would suffer first are Malay-Muslims themselves, and among them the poor, women and the young, who have always borne the weight of moral policing.
Supremacy of Federal Constitution
Muslims believe that God's law is perfect. What human authorities apply is fiqh, the interpretation of learned men, which differs between schools of thought and, in Malaysia, between fourteen enactments across thirteen states and the Federal Territories.
To place one interpretation above the Federal Constitution is to place a small group of clerics above the Rulers, above Parliament and above the courts. That is a theocracy, and the founders of this country, Malay and Muslim as they were, rejected it.
The Federal Constitution is a covenant that Malaysians of every faith have honoured for nearly 70 years, and honouring covenants is itself an Islamic obligation. It already gives Islam its place as the official religion of the federation and makes the Rulers heads of the religion in their states. It also protects Muslims.
The Federal Court has recognised, in Semenyih Jaya (2017), Indira Gandhi (2018) and most recently Dhinesh Tanaphll (2022), that the Federal Constitution has a basic structure which no Parliament can remove, even by amendment under Article 159. The separation of powers, the judicial power of the civil courts and their independence are part of it, and the court has located the doctrine in Article 4(1) itself, the clause that makes the Constitution supreme. A proposal to place any body of religious law above the Constitution, or to remove the clauses that stand in its way, is a proposal to dismantle that structure. It lies beyond the reach of any two-thirds majority.
An attempt to rewrite history
The PAS president said a draft describing Malaya as a secular state was dropped after the Rulers objected. Paragraph 169 of the Reid Commission Report recorded something different. The Rulers' counsel advised against inserting any declaration of Islam as the established religion of the federation.
The words "shall not imply that the state is not a secular state" were the alliance's own, in its memorandum to the commission. The Rulers' reservation was about the religious declaration itself, and there was no secular clause for them to strike out. Nor do the later personal views of individual jurists, however eminent, amend the Constitution. Tun Salleh Abas' judgement in Che Omar bin Che Soh remains the binding statement of the law.
Political opportunism behind unconstitutional statements
These recent statements appear when PAS is positioning itself to lead the next government, and days after its president said non-Muslim ministers would be confined to implementing policy while only Muslims should lead policy-making.
The current system is sound and must be preserved. The Federal Constitution gives the states power over Islamic personal and family law, religious institutions, zakat, waqf and offences against the precepts of Islam, administered by shariah courts whose jurisdiction over Muslims is protected by Article 121(1A).
Everything else is governed by federal law applying equally to all. This is a genuine dual system and it has served Malaysia well.
Its problems arise at the boundaries, in cases of unilateral conversion, custody, apostasy and moral policing, and in the tendency of religious authorities to assert powers beyond their jurisdiction.
G25 Malaysia has said since 2014 that the answer is to clarify those boundaries and keep both systems within the Constitution. A special committee established in 2024 under the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs, chaired by the Sultan of Selangor, exists precisely to study the competence of state legislatures to enact Islamic laws. That is the proper channel.
The answer is never to subordinate one system to the other. The Federal Constitution is what makes the dual system possible. Remove its supremacy and the dual system goes with it, leaving only the rule of whoever holds power that day.
Therefore, G25 Malaysia calls on the prime minister, the attorney general and every political party that aspires to govern, including PAS, to affirm plainly that the Federal Constitution is supreme and will remain so.
All Malaysians should take heed of the third principle of the Rukun Negara, which is 'Keluhuran Perlembagaan'. It was not written as a suggestion but a principle that all Malaysians must uphold.
G25 Malaysia is a civil society group of retired Malay civil servants, diplomats, and professionals.