DOCUMENT FALSIFICATION/FORGERY FROM THE VIEW OF ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE AND MALAYSIAN LAW

Although the scholars of Islamic jurisprudence discussed the importance of document and its strength as a mean of proof, they did not discuss the issue of forgery unless slightly compared with the scholars of law: This is due to its limited extension and uses in the period of times. And with the frequent use of them in our time, the debates have extended towards several circumstances either to attempt for or to deny a forgery. Therefore, this research is conducted to study the document falsification from the perspectives of Islamic Jurisprudence and Malaysian Law. It is also to explain the definition, procedure and methods to identify the crime and its punishment. The study used inductive and content analysis methods on previous scholars' opinions, discussions and explanation from two different legal institutions. This study found the following important results: The are many forms of forgery occur in this era and can be classified either as material or incorporeal fraud. Several implications have been issued against the forgery crime in the Malaysian Penal Code, such as imprisonment, lashes and fines. The Islamic jurisprudence and the Malaysian Evidence Act 1950 has established several methods to verify the validity of documents such as confession, testimony, expert opinion, and oath, but the opinion of the expert is the most important means in verging the authenticity and originality of documents. This study also found that the Malaysian Evidence Law did not discuss the oath as a mean to verify documents. As analysed, the method to verify documents documents discussed in the books of jurisprudence is very different from that of the Malaysian Evidence Act 1950, which specifies the conditions of documents and the number of witnesses, but the lax does not speck the number of witnesses and impose conditions only.