Those who seek to incriminate Anwar based on his accuser’s swearing on Quran and Anwar’s not having done so are now in a bind facing a very knotty and intractable problem when the charge against Anwar under section 377B is that of consensual sodomy.

From perspectives of Religion : Sodomy is a capital offence in Islam. If the official charge against Anwar is that of consensual sodomy, it implies that the accuser/complainant is a willing participant in the unnatural act contrary to Islamic tenets. This further logically infers that the act of swearing on the Quran by an accuser/complainant – already in breach of Islamic tenets – cannot be relied upon by faithfuls as testimony of the truth of what occurred. Take the example of a robber or thief whose act of robbery and theft is un-Islamic. Can a robber and thief be given credence if he were to swear his innocence on the holy book that he was forced to rob or steal?

From perspectives of Secular Penal Code : If the accuser/complainant made the first police report based on non-consensual sodomy which is buttressed further by his taking an oath to testify to the act had been forced upon him, a charge based otherwise on “consensual” sodomy must fail by reason of it not corresponding with and contradictory to what the accuser/complainant himself alleges.

Reason : if the claims of the accuser of anal rape were not reflected in the criminal charge – the criminal charge having focused on consensual anal sex – it implies (1) that prosecution does not have evidence supporting the claims of the accuser/complainant of anal rape; (2) in ordinary instances this would be enough to stop prosecution but if prosecution were nevertheless persisted based on a different set of events introduced (ie consensual anal sex) entirely different from that claimed by the accuser (ie non consensual anal sex), such a prosecution will, in third parties’ minds, immediately smack of unjust persecution and incrimination (3) all other claims of prosecuting being justified on grounds of doing justice to the accuser would look hollow and farce because one cannot possibly do justice to someone alleging that he was involuntarily sodomised by a charge that implicates the acuser/complainant as a wiling consensual participant!

Based on the above, it is clear that whether one proceeds on the religious angle or angle of prosecution under secular law, both approaches do not seem to lend much credibility to efforts to incriminate the accused.

Going forward, if an attempt here is further made to inciminate the accused based on the “double insurance” of either the religious aproach or the secular legal approach, whichever the more successful (though both aproaches have already been shown inadequate above), then this persistence to incriminate at all costs will reflect bias and ill will on the part of the authorities, which will, as an unintended consequence, serve the greater political interest of the one accused instead, perceived by public as a victim of political persecution in the Permatang Puah by election, especially against the back drop of BN’s leaders’ public defence of the accuser/complainant in the media…..