Browsing by Author "Afridah Abas, Ph.D"

Salafi doctrine has become a phenomenal event nowadays. Its slogan of returning to Qur’an and Sunnah has tempted Muslims from various backgrounds and walks of life to follow this particular doctrine. Despite its benevolent intention, this call of Salafi doctrine seems to have issues with local madhab as well as religious authorities in Malaysia. This study focuses on the methodology of ijtihad of Salafi doctrine in khilafiyyah issues. The objective of the study is to examine the methodology of ijtihad of Salafi doctrine; comparing the methodology of ijtihad of Salafi doctrine with methodology of ijtihad of the Four madhabs; to scrutinize laws and fatwas related to Salafi doctrine; and to propose a suitable legal provision that is capable of governing as well as regulating this doctrine in order to maintain the harmony and unity of Muslim community in Malaysia. In doing so, interviews and questionnaires have been conducted by the researcher to test the hypothesis of the study. This study adopts a qualitative method that is most important for socio-legal research. Specifically, the qualitative research method collects data from various legal writings, writing of classical jurists of the Four madhabs, national laws, fatwa, etc. This study also uses in-depth semi-structured interviews as well as structured questionnaires to obtain data from the respondents. The findings of this study demonstrate that the methodology of ijtihad of Salafi doctrine is quite different from the methodology of ijtihad of Four madhabs where it employs literal approach in understanding and interpreting various Islamic sources. It also discovers that the fatwā related to Salafī doctrine does serve its purpose in educating the public and controlling the doctrine from confusing the public at large. Finally, this study reveals that the difference of methodology of ijtihād between the Salafi doctrine and the Four madhabs must be handled with utmost respect and care in order to avoid further complications in the future. The study, therefore, concludes by suggesting that there is a need to give legal effect to the existing fatwa and there is a need to propose a specific legal provision to govern and regulate the Salafi doctrine.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify issues related to the use of imprisonment as a general form of punishment in the Penal Code of Maldives and to propose areas of reforms to the punishment of imprisonment to Maldives. In this study two main areas for reform were identified; firstly, since Maldives is a 100% Islamic country, the philosophies, aims, purposes of punishment and punishment of imprisonment were identified from Islamic Shari’ah. Since confirmation to the tenets of Islam is a requirement for all laws in Maldives by its constitution a Shari’ah punishment benchmark was derived under Article 10 of the Constitution of Maldives 2008. It was established that Shari’ah punishments were of 3 main types in Islamic criminal law, these are hudud (fixed), qisas (retaliatory) and ta’zir (discretionary) punishments. To suggest Shari’ah reforms to the Maldivian Penal Code, Islamic penal systems from Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia were analyzed. Secondly, for the reduction of meting imprisonment as a general form of punishment, different types of alternative punishment forms and application of penal laws were identified from the Nordic region where the penal systems in the Nordic region seldom used imprisonment unless for major crimes; and even in the instances of imprisonment, the punishment is focused on reforming the offender. The Nordic penal punishment model was found to be more compliant with the punishment philosophy of Shari’ah. This research identified that Maldivian Penal Code 9/2014 had imprisonment as a primary punishment form for all types of offences and an unrestricted discretion on punishment was given to judges. It was also found in this study that Maldivian prisons were not suitable to keep prisoners as they are not operated in accordance with laws of Maldives, Shari’ah punishment objectives and international human rights conventions and treaties. To identify areas of punishment reform all the 160 offenses mentioned in the Penal Code of Maldives 9/2014 were analyzed under the Shari’ah benchmark, it was found that offences that are applicable under hudud or qisas categories were allocated imprisonment sentences. In order for the penal laws of Maldives to comply with the Shari’ah benchmark whilst reducing imprisonment as a general form of punishment and introducing alternative punishment forms, it was recognised in this research that Maldives would have to follow a mixed model of a codified Islamisation model in terms of hudud and qisas punishments and a harmonization reformation model in terms of reforms on alternative forms of punishments under ta’zir. The findings of this study will help stakeholders in reforming Maldivian Penal Code with reference to the punishment of imprisonment to be compliant with the Shari’ah, Constitution of Maldives and international best practice.

In recent years, the interest in Muslim friendly hospitality services (MFHS) seems to be a research topic among researchers. In mass communication, research on Islam as a subject of promotion has been widely done in prior research focused on how Islam been portrayed in tourism promotion in majority Muslim countries. Study on how media been used to promote MFHS in Malaysia is vital to understand how tourism organisation employed media to promote MFHS in Malaysia. With the advancement in communication technology, traditional media as a research subject has been left out in mass communication research with new research direction has been turned to the internet and its component such as social media platform. However, little research has been done to understand how social media platforms had been employed to promote MFHS in Malaysia and explore tourism organisation’s performance in promoting MFHS in Malaysia. As a travel stakeholder, the tourism organisation should anticipate and improve their performance while using media as a promotion tool. Previous literature suggests that media use among tourism organisations was limited with focused information on Islam in tourism hovering around related Islamic services and products, Islamic art and architecture and Islam as a religion for the Malay community. Hence, this study explored strategies use by tourism organisation in social media; in this study, Facebook has been selected as a social media under study since it is the most popular social media platform among Malaysian. Content analysis method has been applied to examine tourism organisations Facebook post. A total of 416 posts from four MFHS tourism organisation have been analysed according to content analysis procedure that later identified three main themes in examining the content of the Facebook post; post frequency, design and content strategies, and online engagement. Aside from that, this study applied the extrapolation method to explore differences/similarities between tourism organisation. Content analysis resulted in; overall tourism organisation uses of Facebook were still moderate, especially by government tourism organisation. Facebook has been used mainly to provide information on Islamic products and services with little effort to interact and engage with users. Consequently, it left a post with little engagement by a user that later reflects the total number of page followers. This study also discovered that traveller had been involved in providing content in the tourism organisation Facebook page. They have been hired as a freelance contributor, or their story has been picked and shared in tourism organisation official Facebook. This trend was growing among private tourism organisation but has been left out by government tourism organisation. On the other hand, this thesis also studied media content’s impact on people’s awareness and attitude. A total of 207 respondents that use media as a source to gain information on MFHS has been selected after data screening. Three dimensions have been identified during Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) has been applied to predicts the relationship between content on people awareness and attitude. Overall, respondents agreed that credibility, relevancy, and legitimacy significantly influence awareness and attitude, while timeliness and engagement do not significantly influence user awareness and attitude.