Petition Seeks To Remove An MRSM Baling Teacher For Promoting Rape Culture

According to the petition, Norazizi shared his views through an IGTV post titled "B.E.B.E.L - Rogol" under an Instagram account @azizidain on Wednesday, 1 July.

Under the bio of the Instagram account, it says that the person behind it is an educator from Johor, with a degree in Master of Arts (M.A.) in Malay Studies from the University of Malaya (UM).

Norazizi has since made his Instagram account, which has close to 2,000 followers, private and removed the video from his accounts including YouTube, where he has just over 100 subscribers.

The petition says that the Bahasa Melayu teacher's views "fundamentally enables rape and more pressingly, endangers female students in MARA colleges and by extension, women in Malaysia".

Created earlier on Friday, 3 July, the petition has gone viral on Twitter and has already received over 18,500 signatures with hundreds of new signees joining in at the time of writing this SAYS story.

Following the petition's subsequent viral reach, the Bahasa Melayu teacher took to his Twitter account to issue a statement, where he emphasised that "I do not directly support rapists under any circumstances".

While his original post no longer exists, a screen recording of Norazizi's video was uploaded on Twitter by a woman named Sarah on her account. We reached out to her for permission to use the tweet for this story.

According to Sarah, Norazizi is currently teaching at her high school and that she shared the video on Twitter given the huge risk he poses to young and impressionable students.

In the video, he repeatedly claims that he is "not a rapist" while using language that justifies rape or at least only partly blames a rapist for the act by way of also laying the blame on the victim.

"Over these past few days, [people on] YouTube and Twitter have been talking about rape crimes," Norazizi, who also goes by Azizi Dain on Twitter, begins in the video that appears over three minutes long.

"Rape isn't something that just happened yesterday, it's been haunting the minds of women in this world for years now. As if there is no solution for it, even though so many NGOs have fought for this cause," he says, adding that he just wants to "talk about a research done by an NGO fighting for women's rights".

The research, Norazizi says, "talks about the cause of rape crimes".

He specifies that while he doesn't know "the specifications of this research", based on his "quantitative knowledge" the pie chart published by the NGO shows that "the cause of rape is 100% the rapist himself".

The MRSM teacher takes objection with this conclusion that a rapist is solely responsible for the act.

He argues that the pie chart — which he included in his video — "doesn't take into account the victim's clothing, the victim's attitude, and [the victim] going out at night as causes for rape".

"Hmm... even though I'm not a rapist, but I think this research is biased," he says smugly.

The pie chart was originally shared on Twitter earlier in May this year by WCC Penang, a local NGO working to help women and children who are abused, raped, or sexually assaulted.

The so-called "pie chart" is basically a meme that seeks to remove victim-blaming language used to justify the act of rape. However, it seems to have escaped Norazizi's "quantitative knowledge" of deduction.

He argues that solely putting the blame on a rapist is not justifiable. Why?

"Rapists wouldn't rape people who wear modest clothing. Yes, there are a few, but only a few," he claims.

How did Norazizi come to this conclusion? His lawyer friend told him so.

He apparently had a chat with his friend, who he says is a lawyer and handles "a lot of rape cases".

"He told me, only two out of 10 of the cases he handles are REAL rape cases."

What about the other eight cases?

Those are, his lawyer friend told him, the "situations where the women are in romantic relationships and have had sex and then they get pregnant, and when they ask for the men to be responsible and they refuse, then only would they tell the police that they have been raped."

The teacher then lectures that if a woman doesn't want that, she should take care of her self-esteem and identity, take care of her dignity, telling her to stop going out at night and dress properly.

Doing so, he assures, will reduce "the potential" of her getting raped.

"You have to remember, the one watching over us is Allah. Doesn't matter how great the rapist is, how big they are, Allah is bigger," Norazizi says in the video, according to an English translation by Arisha Rozaidee.

He then warns that if a woman keeps having fun and doesn't think about her parents, "make friends with people here and there, install apps here and there, those are the factors of you getting raped".

He follows the above warning with an absurd analogy of an ironed hijab on a sofa.

"It's like the analogy where you iron a hijab, you put it on a sofa, then when someone sits at the sofa, you blame them 100% for your hijab being wrinkled. You didn't think about other factors like what time you put it, whether the place was appropriate or not. Come on," he says.

"Yes, I understand that we're trying to find someone to blame. We want a ministry to take action against these people. But don't blame them 100% without looking at ourselves."

According to him, rape is a test and a challenge, however, some don't agree.

"Dear women, if you are mindful of what you wear, don't show your breast, your round bottoms to other people until they get turned on by you, then yes, I agree, that is a test and a challenge for you," he says.

"But if you show those things yourself, that's not a test or a challenge. That's you selling yourself, asking for snacks," he is heard saying towards the end of the video before it cuts abruptly.

However, before the publication of this story, a check showed that his account no longer exists.

It appears that either the handle @AzizDain was deleted by him or taken down by Twitter.

Prior to which, SAYS had sighted his statement, in which he stated that he has filed a report with the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

According to him, the police report was not to "exaggerate the issues" that he raised but to ensure that his family including his wife and children are safe. He did not specify safe from what.