KUALA LUMPUR: The High Court has upheld the home minister's ban on controversial novelist Faisal Tehrani's four Bahasa Malaysia novels for the alleged spread of Shia teachings.
This was the outcome today when the court dismissed the author's judicial review bid to legalise the distribution of two novels,
‘Sebongkah Batu di Kuala Berang’ and ‘Karbala’; a collection of 13 short stories titled ‘Tiga Kali Seminggu’; and a poetry anthology titled ‘Ingin Jadi Nasrallah’.
Senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan, who appeared for the minister during the open-court matter today, confirmed that Hanipah dismissed the judicial review application by the novelist, whose real name is Mohd Faizal Musa.
Shamsul said Hanipah ruled that the minister had not exceeded his powers under the law when issuing the ban over the four books, on Feb 12 last year.
Shamsul said the judge found that the ban order - which was gazetted on April 1 last year - was reasonable.
Faizal, through his judicial review bid filed on June 29 last year, claimed that the minister went beyond his powers under Section 7 of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984.
Section 7 grants discretion to the minister to issue such bans on grounds of national security.
Shamsul said Hanipah had ordered Faizal - who was represented by lawyer Abdullah Abdul Rahman - to pay RM5,000 cost to the minister.
Faizal, who is an academician at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, claimed the ban was irrational because the four books were already in distribution long before the ban, and that the books had not disrupted public order.
According to court papers, Karbala, Ingin Jadi Nasrallah, Tiga Kali Seminggu and Sebongkah Batu di Kuala Berang went into distribution in 2008, 2010, 2010 and 2011, respectively.
Faizal, 42, had sought to nullify the ban, called the Printing Presses and Publications (Control of Undesirable Publications) (No. 2) Order 2015, which was signed by the minister.
Faizal, who received the National Arts Award in 2006, had sought a court declaration that the ban had violated his rights to equal treatment under the law, as well as freedom of speech and expression.