The controversy over the recent Bar Council forum on religious conversions shows little sign of dying down, with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad insisting that the government should have banned the dialogue. The grand old man of Malaysian politics is entitled to his opinion, as are the 300-odd protesters who showed up that Saturday; I applaud them for exercising their fully deserved freedoms of thought, conscience and expression. I cannot, however, commend their nonchalant rejection of some other fundamental freedoms, such as the right to private property, and the reciprocal right of others to their own thoughts, their own consciences, and their own speech.
The 19th century philosopher Edmund Burke once remarked that "Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none." In other words, whatever you expect me to tolerate from you, you must likewise tolerate from me. If I have to tolerate you calling me a pig and telling me to leave the country, you must tolerate the same treatment from me; if you cannot tolerate a frank discussion of how your religious beliefs impact mine, then I likewise have the right to insist you never discuss my religion.
This reciprocal rule of tolerance may stem from English rather than Islamic jurisprudence and ethics, but I am confident it resonates with any civilised value system in existence. Jesus' golden rule of "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" is at the heart of almost every moral value out there. So why would the fervent fundamentalists deny to others the very rights they themselves freely claim and exercise?
The protesters that Saturday were beautifully exercising their freedom to speak their minds, yet the purpose of their rally was to shut down the free expression going on within the Bar Council building. Inside, Muslims and non-Muslims were discussing the ramifications of religious conversions — a perfectly valid topic, considering that non-Muslims are increasingly being compelled to appear in Muslim Syariah courts, and the scope of Islamic law is expanding to include non-Muslims who previously converted to Islam or whose family members have done so. Yet outside, protesters were insisting that this horrible infringement of their right to practice Islam be stopped, by any means necessary.
Fortunately only a handful of the activists outside appeared to really believe this. The Malaysian Insider and other media outlets quoted protesters who were unhappy with the order to storm the building if the forum could not be stopped, citing the presence of Muslims at the dialogue who were sharing the Muslim point of view. Many of the activists appear to have been there only to voice their own opinion, rather than to silence others' thoughts.
In spite of this, it is insidious that a vocal minority of the protesters were eager to deny those inside the very rights those outside were exercising. If the Bar Council had organised the forum to call Muslims pigs and to ask them to leave the country, then I would understand the protest; such language can easily be violent incitement in our sensitive sociopolitical climate. But the Bar Council organised a peaceful discussion open to all Malaysians to discuss the ramifications of religious conversion for all Malaysians; there was no intent to demean any religion or faith.
Instead, what wound up happening was a handful of protesters calling non-Muslim attendees pigs and asking them to get out of Malaysia. The only people present who threatened any violence against anyone were those calling on the Muslim activists to storm the building. Honestly, which group was more hurtful, more seditious, more likely to inflame vile sentiments in our plural population?
The Police presence should have deterred the protesters from making good on their threats of violence; they instead validated the threats, and advised the Bar to halt the forum. This hardly makes sense; it is completely contrary to the laws governing the fundamental right to private property.
This is not like the BERSIH or HINDRAF rallies, which were held in a public area; the forum was being held on the private premises of the Bar. The Bar has every right to do what they like with their own property — just like you and me. The Police are obligated to arrest anyone who violates this right by trespassing and causing damage to the property within — that's all there is to it.
By analogy, let us say that I have my birthday party at home. I invite a bunch of friends, but I also tell them to invite anyone they like — it's an open house, for the public. At the party, talk turns to politics and religion — nobody says anything seditious, but somebody does mention how an acquaintance had difficulty converting out of Islam after his Muslim wife passed away. Now, a bunch of people turn up and tell us to stop talking or else they will come into my house, trash my property, and attack my friends. We call the Police, and they advise us to heed the warning. But how can we be in the wrong for having a discussion on our own private premises?
Some suggest that there is a relevant distinction between open and closed events, saying that the dialogue should not have been open to the public. I cannot for the life of me see how this matters; is the public going to be inflamed by a few intemperate comments in a little forum? Ultimately the purpose of dialogue is for people to understand each other, and I would much rather have a public dialogue moderated by a bunch of lawyers rather than secretive gossip in the coffee shops moderated by, well, nobody at all.
There are others who find it disappointing that some of the most offensive remarks made came from a Pakatan Rakyat politician. I do not think it is instructive to listen to the views of any individual politician if you are really interested in judging his party. Why not judge Pakatan by the actions of its other elected officials there who tried to calm the protesters? Why not judge Pakatan by the actions of the PAS Unit Amal, which played a key role in preventing things from getting ugly at the rally?
I believe it is heartening that PAS has come out swinging for the right of people to express themselves freely and peacefully; it is heartening that Pakatan is willing to censure politicians who cross the line. Pakatan may insist on drawing a distinction between open and closed discussions, but they are at least open to some sort of dialogue. Whether you are satisfied or not, how Pakatan handled the issue is infinitely more prudent than how Barisan Nasional would have tackled it. Can you see UMNO Youth holding back a crowd bent on violence, or the UMNO Deputy President issuing an immediate statement criticising UMNO politicians who play the racial card?
Ultimately, this still comes down to some fundamental rights: our right to express our thoughts, our right to possess property gained by the sweat of our brow, our right to live in peace. These rights can only last as long as we are willing to respect them when they are exercised by those we vehemently disagree with. The Barisan coalition has persistently and repeatedly failed this test of reciprocal tolerance; that Saturday, Pakatan passed it with flying colours.
Religious freedom is hitting the Malaysian headlines again, this time because of yet another recent forum forced to end after threats of violence. Both sides clearly believe they are fighting for what is right; maybe we could have a forum to clear the air on this? We need to understand why the other side behaves the way they do; like it or not, both sides feel that something very fundamental is under threat, and we have to solve the problem, either by clearing up this misapprehension, or by removing the threat.
From my point of view, there is absolutely nothing at all with holding a forum on the subject of religious conversion, no matter how biased it actually is. Even if it's just a huge party where everyone agrees we should burn the heretics at the stake, or alternatively encourage more heresy — both stances I strongly disagree with, in case it wasn't apparent — I'm not going to tell you what to believe or what to say. If you really think that we should kill the infidels or that blaspheming God is great, I'm not going to threaten to kill you for what you believe in, or what you say.
Media reports suggest that the Bar Council-organised forum was merely relating the experiences of people who have dealt with the problems arising when an individual converts into or converts out of Islam. Of course, since the forum was cut short, it presumably would have moved onto other issues later, but there does not seem to be any indication of incivility on the part of organisers or participants. The main aggressors were the 300-odd protesters outside the Bar Council building, threatening to storm it.
Now, I would say that the protesters are in the wrong. Not for exercising their freedom of speech, of course, but for threatening violence towards the forum participants. Violence is unacceptable — it makes dialogue impossible, because it reduces your options from "talk, fight or give in" to "fight or give in".
But there is more to the issue than that; the fact that some people want to use violence to resolve the issue does not change another fact — there are reasonable people genuinely concerned about open dialogue on religious conversions. The Malaysian Insider quoted some protesters upset that PKR MP Zulkifli Noordin told them to storm the building if they could not get the Bar to shut down the forum. A number accepted that the forum was meant to be a dialogue for them to express their views too; many leaders at the protest tried to calm the crowd, with Zulkifli reportedly the main instigator.
One banner carried at the protest read "Menjunjung keadilan, menyanggah kezaliman" — upholding justice, fighting tyranny. The people concerned about the forum are not imbeciles, mind you — they are reasonable people who must have a reason for doing the things they do. They, for some reason, believe that the forum was meant to promote tyranny and injustice.
And likewise the people at the forum surely did not see themselves as oppressors; they saw themselves as victims too. They must be reasonable people as well; contrary to some aggressive promoters of religious tyranny and religious freedom, normal people do not take to the streets for no damn reason, and neither do they stand up to claim they have been victimised unless they have, in some way, been a victim. So the forum participants saw themselves as standing up for justice and freedom as well.
Clearly someone is wrong — but maybe, just maybe, both sides are in the right. Discount the actions of provocateurs for a moment, and just think. The people at the forum were upset because they felt their right to practice their beliefs is under threat. The people protesting the forum were upset because they felt their right to practice their beliefs is under threat. From a purely ethical standpoint, both groups are right; nobody's right to believe in something should be suppressed, as long as they do not interfere with anyone else's right to their own beliefs.
It follows that the solution is for both sides to get together, and understand what makes each other feel threatened. This is hard to do when you have people threatening people's property and wellbeing, or when you have people yelling at other people to get out of the country ("balik Cina" and "babi" were among the insults heard at the rally). But there are reasonable people on both sides; if we can sit down, if we can talk about the issues, we might get somewhere.
There are of course a couple of obstacles to this, the main one being the pervasive belief that dialogue is harmful. The rally started in the first place, mind you, because the protesters believed that open discussion of Islam is taboo. We have to start by respecting the other side's right to disagree with us, rather than insisting that we must pretend the issue is settled and there is a clear consensus.
Discussion does not challenge anyone; the forum was not held to call anyone a pig (as some protesters did), or to insult anybody's religion. It was held to understand the issues surrounding religious conversion in Malaysia. We must distinguish between actual insults, and constructive dialogue.
The other obstacle is the threat that any discussion will be shut down by those who want to stop it by any means possible. Incitement to violence should be a crime, if it is not already; the police have a responsibility to protect people from violence when going about their lives. It is one thing to advise a public rally to disperse, since that is on public property; it is another thing to tell the people using private premises that they cannot be there because the police do not want to protect them from violence. People have a right to do what they like on their own premises, and the police must enforce that right.
I don't know if we have anti-incitement laws, but we definitely should; there are sporadic reports at the moment that in lieu of arresting Zulkifli Noordin and charging him with incitement, the government had purportedly (according to initial speculation) detained him under the Internal Security Act. I think it's abhorrent to lock people up without charging them for anything, but if the ISA has any use at all, this is one of them. The primary use of the ISA has always been supposed to be protecting public order, so if the government uses it at all (which it shouldn't), it should at least confine its use to cases like this, where a man tries to provoke violence.
It is of course a bit trite and cliched to say that dialogue is the answer, but in this case, I believe it really is. Dialogue is the only way non-Muslims and Muslims will understand why we feel and act the way we do, and it has to be done in an atmosphere of openness, rather than under the veil of secrecy and threat of harm. Most Malaysians are reasonable people who can talk with each other as reasonable fellow human beings; the only threat to harmony is the few who refuse to participate in dialogue, and insist on stopping it. If we want real and lasting peace, the answer is not to make the many stop talking at the behest of a few; it is to make the few understand that their sensitivities cannot stand in the way of understanding and dialogue.
Fewer things are more important in the Malaysian political world than rights. Whenever we talk politics, it boils down to our rights — the rights of the Malays, the rights of the Chinese, the rights of the Indians, the rights of the East Malaysians, the rights of the Muslims; it goes on and on and on. Yet, paradoxically, while we let our politicians roil us into an uproar over the rights of our respective communities, we hardly ever seem to care about our rights as Malaysians. Even though we supposedly rejected communal politics in the most recent election, at the heart of our political discourse lie communal rights, rather than Malaysian rights. If we want lasting political change, this is the most fundamental paradigm change we have to effect.
Let's start by defining "rights". What is a right? Look it up in a dictionary, and you will find a plethora of meanings. I don't think we have ever bothered to standardise the definition of "right" in the Malaysian political context, so any definition I put forth here is probably unacceptable to many, but nonetheless I will try: for our purposes, a right is something guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. We can talk in terms of rights already guaranteed, and rights we would like to see guaranteed, but ultimately, the only rights we really have are those protected by the supreme law of the country.
Now, returning to our original problem, you might wonder what is so wrong about fighting for communal rights. Don't the Malays have their rights to defend? Don't the non-Malays have their rights too? What of the East Malaysians, or the Muslims and non-Muslims? The Federal Constitution guarantees us all certain rights, doesn't it?
The flaw in this reasoning is that, first of all, many rights we supposedly claim as ours under the Constitution are not there. The right to government funding for vernacular schools? Not there. The privileges of the New Economic Policy? The Constitution doesn't even mention the NEP. Ketuanan Melayu? Not even a whisper of it. Most of these rights are nothing more than privileges the government grants under other laws subordinate to the Constitution; they are not unrevokable rights, but privileges which can be as easily repealed as the privilege to stroll down a city street (ask the lawyers who marched for human rights not too long ago) or even the right of a fair trial (ask anyone detained under the Internal Security Act or Emergency Ordinance).
The second flaw is that although the Constitution does indeed separate us out communally, the vast majority of the rights it guarantees are for all Malaysians. Not for Malays and non-Malays, not for Muslims and non-Muslims, but for everyone. The right not to be enslaved? That goes for all of us. The right to a fair trial (now a de facto privilege because of laws gutting the Constitution)? For all Malaysians. The right to worship in peace? All Malaysians have that. The right to equal treatment under the law? Article 8 guarantees it for all Malaysians. When we talk about Malay rights and non-Malay rights, Muslim rights and non-Muslim rights, we implicitly assume there is a meaningful difference between these things. In reality, we all enjoy practically the same rights as Malaysians.
What about the handful of different rights we enjoy? For the Bumiputra (Malays and East Malaysian natives), Article 153 says they have a "special position" which the government must pay heed to. No specific rights are guaranteed, although the Constitution lists out a number of areas such as scholarships and civil service positions where the government may intervene to advance the Bumiputra. In the very same breath, Article 153 explicitly warns that the government must also protect the rights of other communities. In short, it says "Yes, there are some slight distinctions between the Bumiputra and non-Bumiputra for historical reasons, but everyone is a Malaysian now, and just because the Bumiputra need affirmative action doesn't mean you can ride roughshod over the rights of other Malaysians." In reality, we don't even need the clause protecting non-Malay rights, so to speak, because Article 8 guarantees equality under the law, but the Constitution doubly guarantees protection to all Malaysians.
Some might see hints of doublespeak and cognitive dissonance here; how can you protect the rights of one group without disenfranchising the other? Is Article 153 asking us to do the impossible? I don't think so. I think it clearly leads to the conclusion that certain privileges (e.g. those under the NEP) might be necessary to protect the rights of certain Malaysians, and little more than that. It is literally impossible to read any defence of Malay supremacy into that; if anything, Article 153 upholds the notion that there are only Malaysian rights, not Malay and non-Malay rights, because the only real way that you can defend the rights of the Malays and non-Malays concurrently is to defend the rights of all Malaysians.
The way I see it, all this talk about the rights of the Malays and non-Malays, this community and that community serves as little more than a smokescreen, distracting us from how the government continually impinges on the rights of Malaysians of every different race. Why should freedom of religion be a non-Malay or non-Muslim issue when the Constitution guarantees it to every individual citizen? Why should the citizenship of non-Malays be constantly questioned when everyone's rights as Malaysian citizens are enshrined in the Constitution?
While we bicker over this and that, the government has steadily taken away the liberties that don't belong to any one community in particular. Who benefits from freedom of movement, the right to travel wherever one pleases? Every one of us. Who suffers when that right is arbitrarily taken away, as happened to some West Malaysian opposition activists when they tried to set foot in East Malaysia? Every one of us. Who benefits from freedom of speech, the right to express our own thoughts? Every one of us, from the Indian labourer who marches for HINDRAF to the Chinese shopkeeper who marches for BERSIH to the Malay factory worker who marches for Malay economic interests. And who suffers when the government continually enacts laws which reduce and shrink this right? Every one of us, of course.
If we want a country where every Malaysian can live in peace, where every Malaysian has the same rights and opportunities to strive for their own prosperity and to lead their own lives, then we have to stop talking about the rights of this community or that community. The supreme law of our country draws no such distinctions in the rights it grants. It treats us all as Malaysians, and guarantees us all the same rights. When one of us suffers, all of us suffers.
I know it is a lot to ask of suffering people to be bighearted, to realise that the other side suffers too. But the next time your heart breaks over some outrageous travesty, be it a Bumiputra boy starving to death or a non-Bumiputra straight-A scorer who cannot obtain a place in any public university, just remember: when one of us suffers, all of us suffer. We all have the same rights to human dignity, the same rights to make the most of ourselves. We gain nothing by fighting for the rights of one individual or one community. We gain everything by fighting for the rights of the people of Malaysia, regardless of race or religion, colour or creed.
Writer John Lee Min Keong is a young and articulate Malaysian student of Economics at an American university who blogs prolifically at http://www.infernalramblings.com/. This website focuses on current events and socio-political issues.
AUG 1 — We have just entered the month of Merdeka as a nation for the 51st time — the thorny issue of East Malaysia aside. It is really a shame that we have yet to come to terms with unity. Over 50 years on, we are more torn than ever about what kind of unity we want and need, when what we should have been united behind was clearer than ever over half a century ago.
Today we are embroiled in talk of "Malay unity". Umno and Pas, two predominantly Malay parties, even though one permits non-Malay Bumiputeras and the other permits non-Bumiputera Muslims to join, are discussing areas they have in common, for the sake of Malay unity.
Strangely enough, nobody has bothered to define "Malay unity" so the Malaysian public can actually know what is going on. "Islamic state" and "Malay rights", "Malay unity" have become standard catchphrases, something to be supported by Malay Muslims and something to be opposed by anyone else.
What are the Malays supposed to unite behind? An Umno-Pas political coalition? The ideology of ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy), already rejected by de facto Pakatan Rakyat leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim? Islamic laws, namely hudud and qisas? This has to be clear.
The whole premise of the Barisan Nasional coalition in reality is national unity through intraracial unity. When the Malays unite behind Umno, the Chinese behind MCA and the Indians behind MIC — and all the other crazy nuts behind the various mosquito parties — then the whole country will be united, or so the thinking goes.
The obvious problem is that not everyone will agree politically. Some Malays are for ketuanan Melayu, some are against it. Some Malays want hudud law in every state applied to everyone, some want it only in states which choose it and applied to Muslims only, while others insist that as a secular state, Malaysia should never implement hudud.
And on less touchy issues, some Malays are protectionist while others are for free markets. Some Chinese want to keep the Sedition Act while others want to abolish it. Some Indians think we already have free and fair elections while others think our elections are blatantly rigged. It is blatantly obvious to any person with a couple of brain cells that no human being will ever agree on every political issue, whether they are from the same race or not.
So why then should everyone from one race support one political party, and by implication one political stand? The understanding, according to the BN formula, is that party leaders will hash out "sensitive issues" in private — the different ethnic communities elect BN leaders to represent them in sensitive intercommunal negotiations, not to take specific stands. So therefore we do not vote based on the issues, but on the people.
The obvious flaw is that the people we elect as leaders will choose to pursue courses of action we disagree with. So for 50 years we have had to put up with a simple choice: either blindly accept whatever one racial leader tells us, or pick another leader to represent our race.
Obviously this kind of political system is not tenable. You can make the argument that a politically immature and heterogeneous society such as ours was then cannot tolerate full democracy, although I would probably disagree. But modern Malaysia is moving away from this kind of thing.
Issues such as fundamental liberties and economic advancement are more important than race, after all. And our founding fathers anticipated this, as you can easily tell from the formulation of our Proclamation of Independence.
Compare ours with that of Brunei's, which gained independence 27 years after us. The Bruneian Proclamation declares Brunei "a sovereign, democratic and independent Malay Muslim monarchy". Our proclamation, on the other hand, announces that we "shall be forever a sovereign democratic and independent State founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people".
Our founding fathers were not too worried about things as petty as race. They did not establish us as a Malay state or a Muslim state; they did not need to call for Malay unity or Muslim unity. Even if they did believe that in the short term some authoritarianism was necessary to clamp down on ethnic tension, they knew that in the long run all that matters is that the people of Malaysia are happy, that they have liberty and justice.
So what were Umno and Pas talking about when they met over "Malay unity"? Was it about how to improve the lot of the Malays by lording it over other Malaysians with some ideology of ketuanan? Or was it a more forward-looking talk, based on the principles our founding fathers espoused, looking to further the happiness and liberties of all Malaysians?
I wish it was the latter. But if that were so, would it not be better for us to label these talks as dealing with "Malaysian unity" as opposed to "Malay unity"? When will we be able to talk about the importance of being Malaysian in more fundamental terms, as in our Proclamation of Independence, instead of ridiculous non-issues such as the number of people flying the national flag?
Reeling from the humiliating defeat in Permatang Pauh, a desperate UMNO is pulling out all the stops to act against anyone it thinks is a threat to its survival - and it’s beginning to attack Malaysian cyberspace.
They have now instructed the MCMC - Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission - another running dog statutory body - to block all Malaysian internet access to the Malaysia Today website. The original website is no longer accessible from Malaysian ISP’s. The new alternate website is here: http://mt.harapanmalaysia.com/2008
In doing so UMNO is tacitly acknowledging that Malaysia Today - run by Raja Petra Kamarudin - has done enormous damage to UMNO-BN, by publishing incriminating documents, news and insider revelations about the corrupt inner workings of UMNO. With an estimated readership of 1.5 million, Malaysia Today and Malaysiakini are the two foremost independent news portals in Malaysia and wield enormous influence, as witnessed in the build-up to the March 8 political tsunami.
The person most likely behind the current assault on Malaysia Today is Najib Tun Razak, who has gone from PM heir-apparent to a political pariah, hounded by the ghosts of Altantuya, defence kickbacks, his 1987 ‘we-will-bathe-the-country-in-Chinese-blood’ keris-waving stunt, the intimidation of PI Balasubramaniam (in relation to the Altantuya case) and attempted intimidation of Dr. Mohd. Osman (whose refusal to ‘amend’ his leaked medical report is a pain in the arse for the Sodomy 2 conspirators) and many, many other scandals.
Najib is also widely seen as one of the prime movers behind the ‘Sodomy Part 2? conspiracy against Anwar - after all, who was this failed student Saiful Bukhari who could approach the Deputy Prime Minister himself for a ’scholarship interview’? Just as damaging, the ‘imam’ who witnessed the sodomy swearing ceremony chickened out in the face of eternal damnation and confessed that he had been ‘acting on instructions’ - a trail that points back to IGP Musa Hassan, AG Abdul Gani Patail and ultimately Najib.
Najib’s rapid reversal in fortunes is due in no small part to the extraordinarily damaging allegations levelled against him by Malaysia Today - particularly with regard to the Altantuya murder, where a continuing series of articles, published documents and statutory declarations have tightened the noose on Najib.
Of course, this being Malaysia, the ‘law enforcement agencies’ chose to persecute the whistleblowers rather than investigate the allegations. Najib and his police thugs managed to silence Altantuya, Razak Baginda and the hapless PI Bala, but he could not intimidate Raja Petra. The revelations have proven to be so damaging that Najib himself had to swear on the Quran that he had nothing to do with the murder and he did not know Altantuya.
But we all know how effective swearing on the Quran is: a cheap, desperate publicity stunt. Permatang Pauh proved that people can see through the charade. Any dumb shit can swear on the Quran (or other holy book). Money is the greatest religion of all; Saiful Bukhari forsook Allah for the God of Holy Ringgit.
In the aftermath of Permatang Pauh, the dogs are turning on their master, and the same fractious voices (Mahathir, Tengku Razaleigh, Mukhriz, Muhyiddin) are once again openly calling for Badawi to step down. But - as some astute MSK readers pointed out, it was Najib - the Prime-Minister designate - who led the UMNO-BN campaign in Permatang Pauh, a campaign that quickly and predictably descended into the blatant ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ racist rhetoric that UMNO always falls back on in its intellectual bankruptcy.
The victory is especially significant for all Malaysians, as the Malay-majority electorate bluntly rejected the ‘Ketuanan Melayu’ rhetoric in favour of Keadilan’s multi-racial platform.
Without discounting the personal charisma and ‘home-ground advantage’ of Anwar Ibrahim, the overwhelming rejection of UMNO-BN in the primarily Malay constituency of PP was not only a rejection of the UMNO agenda, it was also a personal rejection of Najib Tun Razak as PM-in-waiting. Ground reports indicate that Najib’s ceramahs drew as few as 50 people, mainly UMNO members - a situation previously faced by Samy Vellu in his home constituency of Sg. Siput.
The message is clear: the time of UMNO-BN is over. Najib Tun Razak is persona non grata. We are tired of race politics and this corrupt, fascist government.
We want our country back. And we will take our country back.
