{"id":27920,"date":"2020-08-15T08:17:08","date_gmt":"2020-08-15T08:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/new-wp\/?p=27920"},"modified":"2020-08-15T08:17:08","modified_gmt":"2020-08-15T08:17:08","slug":"strengthening-the-faith-to-curb-bribery-and-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/strengthening-the-faith-to-curb-bribery-and-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Strengthening the Faith to Curb Bribery and Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When this article is being written,\nthe news on the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab just\nbroke, nearly a week after a devastating explosion in Beirut that stirred\npublic outrage and spurred a string of ministers to step down. It was quoted in\nmost major newspapers that \u201cDiab announced the resignation of the entire\ncabinet in a televised evening address to the nation, characterizing the\ndetonation of highly explosive material warehoused at the capital’s port for\nthe past seven years as being “the result of endemic corruption<\/em>.”\nThe point here is corruption<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Likewise, in our own\ncountry, for the last few weeks we were bombarded with the news of several prominent\npeople who once were \u201cthe powers that be\u201d being charged with taking bribery and\ncorruption. While they are all innocent until proven guilty, however, bribery\nand corruption has now slowly become a cancer in our society. Most recently, we\nalso heard of illegal gambling activities and smuggled cigarettes in one of the\ndistricts in Selangor operating for years without intervention from enforcement\nagencies or local council in spite of several complaints allegedly made by\nresidents to the relevant authorities. At the time of writing this piece, three\nofficers from the council  concerned were\narrested for suspected taking bribery ranging from RM300-RM3500 per month. This\nis not an isolated case for there have been many similar cases before where\nillegal gambling premises were just a stone away from the police station but no\naction was taken. This has posed a serious question on the integrity of those\npeople in power that were entrusted to uphold the laws of the country, how\ncould they turn their eyes blind to the evils happening before their own eyes, unless\nthey were getting something out of their silence and inaction. The newly\nappointed police Chief of Johore, Dato\u2019 Ayob Khan has quickly received people\u2019s\npraise and has been \u201cthe talk of the country\u201d for his bravery in fighting\ncorruption and for being a no-nonsense type of cop.  We need more enforcement officers like Dato\u2019\nAyob Khan,  or Josh Brolin who plays Sgt\nJohn O\u2019Mara, a good cop in  2013 American\nTV movie called \u201cGangster Squad\u201d who was feared by the criminal Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) and described\nhim and his squad as \u201cthey are hard cases not intrested in money. A cop that\nis not for sale is like a dog with rabies. There’s no medicine for it, you just\ngot to put him down<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, the influx of\nillegal immigrants in the country which was estimated, as of September last\nyear, to be more than four million people was partly due to corrupt practices\nof our authorities especially those patrolling our borders. The Government\nshould put greater emphasis on this matter and perhaps launch serious campaign\nprogrammes, tighten laws and enforcements to curb bribery, corruption and abuse\nof power. White-collar crimes are more disastrous compared to blue-collar or\npetty crimes or bribery for they destroy the entire integrity structure of an\norganisation and not just the individuals concerned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bribery, corruption and\nabuse of power can come in many forms but one of the most common form of\nbribery is taking \u201cbenefit\u201d which is not rightly yours by means of giving \u201csomething\u201d\nto the people in authority connected to the \u201cbenefit\u201d. This benefit can  be in the form of  asking for a favour such as money, contract\nawards, holiday package, golf or club house membership etc. or preventing from action\nbeing taken due to performing activities against the laws such activities including\noperating illegal gambling premises, prostitution, smuggling illegal immigrants\nor the most common bribery of  traffic\noffences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The temptation to offer\nor accept bribery, commit corruption and abuse of power is enormous as the\nsaying goes \u201cevery man has his price.\u201d When you are in a state of a dire need\nand help you tend to give<\/em> bribery, while when you are in position to\nmake decisions then you tend to accept <\/em>bribery and abuse the power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only armour that would\nprevent you from accepting or giving bribery and abuse of power is not laws, or\nknowledge of its prohibition alone but rather the strength of your own\nspiritual inner self and strong belief to God. A conviction that He sees you,\nand eventually all your actions, whether good or evil will be accountable\nbefore Him in the Day of Judgement. In Islamic tradition, this is called the\nquality of your spiritual heart. Some spiritual hearts or are evil, and wicked,\nwhile others are pure and cleansed. Whenever a man commits a sin, then his\nspiritual heart will be darkened and if he repented, then it would be erased.  Laws will not effectively prevent people from\ncommitting bribery or corruption, though it can help minimise the cases, for\nthey will always find loopholes or weaknesses in the laws to evade from being\ncharged of doing something \u201cillegal\u201d. Yet, what they have committed is not\nright though not \u201clegally wrong\u201d strictly speaking from the perspectives of the\nlaws. Hence the phrase \u201clegally right but morally wrong\u201d was born. Similarly,\nknowledge or awareness alone will not completely prevent people from committing\nbribery, though it can help minimise the cases. Most people who committed\nbribery, and corruption were fully aware and had knowledge of the fact that\nwhat they had done was legally wrong and a crime, yet they still did it. The\nworse is when the acts were committed by the so-called \u201creligious\u201d people who\nknew very well of its prohibitions in Islam from the various Qur\u2019anic verses\nand Prophetic traditions.  In fact, Islam\nnot only stipulates the prohibition of taking bribery but even accepting gifts\nfor people in positions could also be prohibited if the gifts were given\nrelated to the positions as in the case of al-Latbiyyah. Then, what is the\nsolution? Apart from inculcating knowledge and strengthening the laws,\nultimately the best solution is to strengthen our own faith (iman<\/em>) and\ncleanse our spiritual hearts by continuously doing good actions and avoiding\nevil deeds, making remembrance to Allah SWT (dhikr<\/em>) and asking for his\nforgiveness (istighfar<\/em>) and reflecting that one day we shall meet God in\nthe Hereafter to be accountable for what we have done in this world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When this article is being written, the news on the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab just broke, nearly a week after a devastating explosion in Beirut that stirred public outrage and spurred a string of ministers to step down. It was quoted in most major newspapers that \u201cDiab announced the resignation of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_wpzoom_pinterest_image_url":"","_wpzoom_pinterest_hidden_image":"0","_wpzoom_pinterest_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-straits-times","category-139","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}