STOP TALKING NONSENSE, ANWAR! – MALAYS ARE ALSO AFFECTED BY THE RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM OF OTHER MALAYS – ‘SO START THE NEW SECULARISM NARRATIVE, INSTEAD OF MAKING MORE EXCUSES’ – OR HIDE BEHIND GRAND-SOUNDING WORDS LIKE ‘LAICITE SECULARISM’

When Malaysians talk about religious extremism in Malaysia, most people imagine that non-Muslims and non-Malays are the only victims. They forget that Malay Muslims are also affected by religious extremism.

Last week, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim claimed that the general masses, especially the Malay Muslims, view secularism as “something that is anti-religion”, and he urged the public to understand the term clearly.

He said, “The majority of Muslims have been told that secularism means complete separation of state and religion based on the influence and experience of the Holy Roman Empire.”

Without meaning to sound patronising, are many Malay Muslims really au fait with the Holy Roman Empire which was destroyed in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars?

So, who told the Muslims about secularism and the political entity known as the Holy Roman Empire? Did they learn this during history lessons in our state schools? Did our Muslim clerics tell them, but wasn’t their focus on the dress code? It can’t have been through ‘general knowledge’ as we know the Malaysian reading public can only manage a pitiful two pages a year.

Perhaps it was the politicians, who mastered the dark arts of the 3R (religion, royalty, race).

We are fed up with decades of brainwashing by the old guard, who tout the oft-repeated moronic line that secularism means being anti-religion. Surely, it is the government’s responsibility to unravel this backward thinking and start a new narrative, about secularism, as part of its educational reform.

Anwar said it was “unacceptable” for Malaysia to completely dissociate the state from religion, and he added that Malaysia is “not a theocratic state where you can impose Islamic laws on everybody, including non-Muslims”.

Try telling that to mothers, Indira Gandhi and Loh Siew Hong. Try explaining this to the many people who were turned away from visiting government departments because their clothes were not syariah compliant.

Ask the Kelantanese business owner who was fined for wearing shorts in her own shop.

Or the workers of a Chinese restaurant located on the top floor of a hotel in Petaling Jaya, who were forbidden from using the ‘halal-only’ lift to deliver produce to the restaurant’s kitchen. They were forced to lug the provisions up several flights of stairs.

Ask the American couple who years ago, faced a humiliating hotel-room encounter with the khalwat squad, when they docked in Langkawi to repair their yacht and had to await the arrival of spare parts from abroad.

The phrase “secularism means being anti-religion” is frequently peddled by the conservatives. Likewise, it is the same foolish line that they have adopted when they claim that sex education lessons in our schools will encourage free sex amongst our children. How daft is that?

Instead of proper education, we continue to ram more religion down the throats of our teenagers. We hope that more doa will stop them from having sex and the unintended consequence of baby dumping. When will the clerics realise that extra-religious scriptures will not stem the fluctuations of raging hormones in teenagers’ bodies?

Religious extremism affects everyone

Anwar, too, is guilty of labelling vocal Muslims as super-liberals, just because they criticise the violence towards, and ill-treatment of, the LGBT community, amongst other things. They’re not super-liberals. They’re just concerned Malaysians, who happen to be Muslim.

Children are kidnapped by their converted fathers, despite the courts awarding custody of the children to the non-Muslim mother. How many unreported cases are there of families being torn apart by kidnapping in the name of religion?

There are allegations of conversion simply because of inheritance. It is alleged that non-Muslims cannot inherit the property or money of a Muslim.

True Muslims disapprove of these vile acts of one-upmanship, or conversion by numbers, but few dare to speak out for fear of being branded anti-Muslim.

Whilst the non-Malays are known victims of religious extremism, the Malay is as much a victim of religious extremism and political Islam. Women are probably the worst affected.

She is a victim of peer pressure, something which probably escapes the non-Malay female employee. In the civil service, the Malay woman who wants her career to progress must conform to a specific dress code. Making a stand may jeopardise her promotion prospects.

The school-going Malay child is also picked-on. Parents risk further punishment for their children, for daring to complain to the headmaster about conservative teachers. Why demand vernacular schools be shut when this commendable act of racial integration is discouraged?

The Malays are subject to the most intense invasion of their privacy. No one condones extramarital affairs, but people are adult enough to know their responsibilities. It is their own business if they want sexual liaisons with others. Malay Muslims bear the full brunt of the khalwat squads, with the moral police humiliating them in public, if they are caught in hotel rooms.

Today, the conservative Muslims with their own interpretation of Islam have become the new colonial masters, who divide and rule, whilst ignoring the valuable lessons of the past.

Religious extremism affects everyone, both Malays and non-Malays, and it is the responsibility of the government to start the new secularism narrative, instead of making more excuses. – WRITER – MARIAM MOKHTAR

MKINI

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