What’s a ‘sumpah laknat’, and why do politicians do it when they’re in trouble?

Another day, another drama, and with the Johor by-elections coming up, we can expect more heartbreaks and back-stabbings in the following days.

In fact, Muhyiddin Yassin, the former Prime Minister, had been spilling some hot tea recently. Supposedly after Muhyiddin came into office, Zahid Hamidi had showed up with a bunch of files and asked for help with his corruption cases. Muhyiddin claimed that he had refused to help with such shady shenanigans, and his refusal supposedly led to attempts to destabilize his government back then.

Zahid had since denied the allegation, and to prove it he had challenged Muhyiddin to perform something called the ‘sumpah laknat’ with him to see who’s lying.

“I urge him to show proof. I am prepared to take a ‘sumpah laknat’ to deny Muhyiddin’s allegations against me. I want to ask if he is prepared to do the same and take the same oath to back his allegations,” – Zahid Hamidi, as quoted by The Star.

But what is this ominous-sounding sumpah laknat thing? Is it an Islamic or a Malay thing? How do I do it? And what good could it possibly do? In this short article, we’ll attempt to answer these questions, starting with how the practice came about…

A sumpah laknat is basically praying for God to punish the lying party

‘Sumpah‘ in this context means swearing (like an oath), and ‘laknat‘ can be translated to cursing (as opposed to blessing), so that’s the general feel of the term. In Arabic, the practice is known as ‘mubahala‘ (invocation of the God’s curse), and the use of it today may have been inspired from how the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was said to have used back in his time, in a famous event that made it into the Quran (3:16):

To cut a long story short, the Prophet once had a disagreement with some Christian delegates over the status of Isa/Jesus. Since there’s no way to conclusively decide who’s right or wrong, the Prophet then suggested that God be the judge, through a mubahala with both parties: both sides will swear upon God that they’re speaking the truth, and the side that lies will have God’s curse befall them.

The delegates returned home, and their leader decided to back down only if the Prophet brought his family along for the mubahala, since they reasoned nobody would be confident enough in a lie to risk God’s curse on their own family. On the day, Muhammad showed up with his family instead of his followers, and the delegates backed down and opted for peace by offering him a tribute in return for his protection.

So based on that story…

How does one perform the sumpah laknat then?

There doesn’t seem to be a proper guide for it, but from the sources we’ve found, you can only use this as a last resort to prove your innocence. Like, say someone accused you of fornication, but there’s no proof for or against it, and the only thing you have is your word. Both the accuser then the accused might then enter into a mubahala, and they’re supposed to bring along their family members as well as some witnesses to the event.

The accuser and the accused will then swear by God (and only by God, not anything else) that they’re innocent, and then pray for a curse to be placed on the other side if they’re lying. For example:

“By Allah, the accusations against me are untrue, and if the accuser bore false witness, let Your curse befall him.” – for the accused.

“By Allah, the accused have fornicated, and if he truly had done so and lied to avoid the accusation, let Your curse fall on him and his family.” – for the accuser.

However, sumpah laknat events we’ve seen in Malaysia so far had not necessarily followed this format. Some included a Quran to swear on, while in other cases only one party showed up. Some cared about the location as well: mubahalas in a mosque or Mecca are seen as more potent. It can be argued that many of these aren’t quite mubahalas, but they had been publicized as such.

Anyways, after the event was done, the next thing is for the witnesses keep their eyes on both parties to see who lied and received God’s curse in the following days, we guess.

Um… so does the sumpah laknat do anything else, or …?

While various people have used the sumpah laknat card in the past, reports on the resulting God’s curse had been scarce. The only one we can found was when Najib claimed that the Pakatan government fell after he swore that he’s not involved in Altantuya’s murder, but he himself said that it’s not a strong conclusion. So it’s pretty hard to prove someone’s innocence from mubahalas alone.

“Someone made the calculation. According to him, 66 days after I declared the sumpah laknat, PH fell. (But) I can’t make that conclusion,” – Najib Razak, translated from FMT.

As for its legal bearing, mubahalas carry no weight in civil courts, but it may be of some use in sharia law. However, that’s only for cases involving li’an – that’s when your husband accuses you of adultery but fails to produce four valid witnesses to back his claim. Other than that, there’s no legal use for it, according to former Wilayah Mufti Dr Zulkifli Mohamad.

So with no legal weight or noticeable curses surfacing, perhaps it’s safe to say that the use of sumpah laknats today is just to convince the public that you’re innocent with nothing but your own confidence to back it. Perhaps many can agree that it’ll only be convincing if your slate was clean to begin with, but at the end of the day, that’s between them and God, we suppose.