On The Sauce That Is The MMDA

By Abdul Halik Azeez –March 29, 2017

Abdul Halik Azeez

Now there’s a word on everyone’s lips. MMDA is the new MD Sauce, competing with those Kist sauce ads of yesteryear. Remember the boy who could eat all those cutlets? Maybe many years from now MMDA will only evoke the social justice equivalents of fish cutlets.

A few Liberal activists have tweeted and messaged me to comment on the issue as a ‘Muslim male’. Conservative people have not even asked my opinion. In fact, I am fairly sure they do not even know I exist. Yet in a little bubble, I am known for my voice, and I am expected to use it. In fact, how could I not? In many circles of my liberal friends, and I say this with love, I perform the political function of being the token Muslim.

Yet I have also stood on the edges of conservative circles, or lurked more like, with an ear to what is going on. I have moved in conservative Muslim society, and I can tell you that at least in the Western Province and the Central province, most everyday Muslims are mute on the issue.

The power-brokering happens at the top. And in a community in which most languish in poverty, most of it happens in the dark. It is in these circles that the real fate of the MMDA will be decided. These circles comprise of many good people, thinking that they are doing what is best for everybody. It also has plenty of bad people; the corrupt politicians, the ambitious ladder climbers, the capitalists what have you.

The good people are all old. They have vested interests, friends and family to take care of. They have no idea that the world has moved on, that things get decided differently, that people talk via different means, that violence has different forms. The old crowd-out the young, the dynamic, the hopeful. The young have options and soon look elsewhere. And the old in their innocence, and captured by interests of power and money, simply end up parroting the bad.

On the ground you have a group of keen community activists pushing harder than ever, smelling blood. You have a tough clergy backed by the blind consensus of the public and fully funded, determined to not back down on the issue. It is an old fight. And has been going on for decades. MMDA is only its latest buzzword.

All the while at the bottom, the abuse has been happening. Against women, against children. But what has really caused the abuse? Is it a bit of legislation? Yeah, possibly. The lack of proper legislation and the lack of infrastructure to hold it up is a serious problem. And there is no use addressing the legislation if you can’t address the infrastructure. Without trained and sensitive personnel, qualified and paid well, proper office infrastructure and staff, how can you expect to run a post office let alone a justice system? Currently there are retired school principals, with no real expertise in the field of jurisprudence other than that they have been a school principal who run quazi courts out of little extensions to their kitchen. I know because I have been to one.

Does the ACJU and the Muslim community have the funds and capacity to run a modern and fully operational justice system? Fine, before I conjure up fears of creeping sharia and the demand for a caliphate in the East coast, let me clarify that it is not a justice system. It is more of an office. And can perhaps be considered an extension of the country’s main system, if I were to speak in general (I certainly cannot speak in legal).

The point is though that Muslims have been running this painfully inept system, even with all the flaws in the law, for decades now and haven’t even bothered to look at all the trouble it is causing. I have cousins who have suffered because of cowardly, corrupt and sexist quazis. I also have cousins who have had good experiences, and perhaps know of other cases in which a quazi could be convinced to be sympathetic. But this illustrates the problem. These issues are not exactly getting decided wholly on the enlightened spirit of the sharia.

Add to this the whole specter of Western intervention. A specter not wholly unreal. If the Rajapaksa’s could conjure up the BBS why can’t this regime conjure up the MMDA? Is this the new acronym that will now haunt the Muslims? The timing is too convenient, the strategic approach in contrast with the brutality of the BBS is too much like the West, the people shouting for it the most are too close to the West and so on and so on. The specter of the West hangs over the MMDA. Right now it stinks of the West, and it is easy for no one to touch it.

And the abuse, still, continues to happen. The NGOs care about the abused. Liberal hearts bleed for the abused, heck even conservative hearts manage to squeeze out a tear or two. Dark imaginations of the East Coast haunt the mind. All those little girls with ugly old men. What happens when they are forced out of their small black burquas we can’t bear to mention. Savages we say, and go back to our lunches. Does anyone in this fight really care about the abused enough to go out and do something about it?

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