Tag: Islam

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Liberty Society

[2410] Rights, loudspeakers and call to prayer in Malaysia

Though a libertarian and in many ways individualistic in the sense that I am protective of my individual negative rights, I am highly conscious of the fact I live in a society. Even with these rights intact, there has to be a give and take, some kind of mutual and voluntary compromises.

The realization that we do not live as an island is doubly important in times when rights are unclear. The exercise of these unclear rights does create tension and ultimately bad blood in society. That is not a way to live by. This is especially so in a multicultural society where no certain way of life is necessarily taken for granted.

Yes, this about the call to prayer controversy in Penang. Although it happened it Penang, it has happened elsewhere in the past and it is really a case applicable nationwide, even elsewhere.

In Malaysia where everything done in the name of Islam is accepted by the conservatives as sacrosanct, criticism against the use of loudspeaker by mosques has been considered as an attack by Islam, at least by them. I do not think this can be seen separately from the Malay right narrative, where rightly or wrongly within local context, the idea of Malayness is seen as Islamic.

Noise (I use noise here without prejudice and only in a very general sense that it is a series of loud sound regardless of its human origin) is a complex issue as far as rights are concerned. On the default, I think I am happy to have the right of making noise stands as it own. It does seem to me like a negative liberty.

It is not a primary right I suppose but only a derived right, derived from freedom of expression. One perhaps could derive it from religious freedom but I tend to believe religious freedom itself is a derived right, and as far as the Islamic call to prayer in Malaysia is concerned, I think freedom of expression is more relevant than religious freedom. That does not mean religious freedom is being negated. I am simply stating that freedom of expression is more relevant. Sometimes, reiterating that in useful as an emphasis. I have found that typical readers read only to forget what they read in the previous sentence.

In any case, given the default position, there clearly is a problem with individual or organization like mosques using its right in early morning in a residential area, causing discomfort to others, especially for those who do not appreciate being effectively shouted at with a loudspeaker.

I personally have bad experience with mosques and call to prayer. My childhood home in Malaysia is surrounded by at least three large mosques, never mind the smaller ones dotting the neighborhood. During call to prayer, the three will seemingly engage in a competition with the loudest call will win the day.

This is very, highly annoying. Things are made worse when these mosques use loudspeakers and project their reading of the Koran or the actual prayer outward.

While the default position belongs to the mosques, it is much better for the general harmony of the neighborhood to not, at least, use the loudspeakers at every single chance these mosques have. Even with the right, voluntary compromise goes a long way in creating tolerating neighborhood. One does not what to live a neighborhood which bad blood prevails.

Respect, compromise and harmony may be a something-in-the-cloud or everything-and-nothing kind of approach. It sounds nice, but what exactly does it entail?

Well, I think it means mosques need to use their loudspeakers discriminately. Personally, I think the best is by turning the loudspeaker inward rather than outward. Realistically, use it only for actual call to prayer, and be extra mindful about its morning usage. Lower the volume by some notch, especially when there are oppositions. If there were none, the problem would not have existed in the first place.

Be as that may be, with the default case of right belonging to the mosque, freedom of expression and free speech is a two-way street. If the mosques insist in using its right, then criticism will be mounted. The mount of such criticism is also part of negative individual right. It is part of free speech.

So, if negative rights and liberties are adopted as the way forward by the mosques to justify their use of loudspeaker and projecting it outward to show its Islamic credential, they must face the criticism in the spirit of free society. Do not issue threat. Do not think that that criticism is some kind of unfair demand.

This goes with churches and temples as well.

In fact, I think it goes for all of us. Loud radio, loud TV, loud party, firecrackers, speaking into the phone loudly in the train, etc.

Just be mindful of your neighbors. Do not be obnoxious.

And I think that is reasonable.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — while I am supportive of any move of reducing the use of loudspeakers by mosque, I do not support having a central authority telling local mosques what to do. That however is another issue that I will give it a pass right now.

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Society

[2358] An individualist response to Ioannis Gatsiounis

I watched a documentary once. It was about Muslims in America. There was a young female Muslim in New York with typical American lifestyle. She was not the conservative type and I am on confident of that. She did wear a scarf though and that probably tells you that she identified herself with Islam.

In one segment, she said she did not feel the need to come out in the open to condemn terrorist acts done by some Muslims in the name of Islam. She said she was not responsible for it and she would not apologize for others. They happened to share the same religion as her.

I am in complete agreement with her. I am not because I am trying to defend the religion and Muslims at large. I have grown to be so much a skeptic in the past few years that I am more likely to criticize religion, any religion for that matter, than to defend it.

I am in complete agreement with her because there is a mark of individualism in that statement.

More importantly, the individualism is very much libertarian. We are responsible for our own actions and no one else. Each one of us is responsible for our own actions.

It is for this reason that I do not buy the narrative that moderate Muslims must come out to condemn terrorism or any wrongful act done by fellow Muslims. I disagree with what Ioannis Gatsiounis wrote at The Malaysian Insider today, where he wrote that the Muslim community needs to express “collective expressions of joy and relief of bin Laden’s death” to help combat the suspicion that Muslims are quietly sympathizing Osama Bin Laden and his merry men in Al-Qaeda.[1]

And then, guilt by association is a fallacy, after all.

No doubt, there are Muslims who sympathize with Bin Laden. That however does not negate the individualist argument. Those Muslims are responsible for their own positions. Other Muslims theirs, as with other individuals regardless of beliefs out there in this world.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — Your initial reaction to news of Osama bin Laden’s death is telling. If you were disappointed, you no doubt harbour terrorist sympathies.

Of course, many non-Muslims have come to suspect many Muslims have been doing just that at least since 9/11. That impression may be inaccurate. But with repeated silence among moderate Muslims in the face of countless acts of terror committed in the name of Islam since 9/11, it’s easy to see why the suspicion arises [Hope for Islam’s image with bin Laden’s death. Ioannis Gatsiounis. The Malaysian Insider. May 3 2011]

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Education Society

[2318] Increasing the appeal of national schools by reducing the role of religion

Prejudice against any group depends on generalization for it to take root successfully in one’s mind.

Although I have to admit that sometimes there are voices in my head whispering ethnic prejudice and stereotype, I typically find it hard to harbor such sentiment for long. I have friends of ethnicities different from mine. If I succumbed to such prejudice, I must necessarily think badly of them. I appreciate my friends and thinking badly of them disturbs me.

I take comfort that I know many of them do not fit into prejudicial descriptions that exist out there. I know my friends violate such prejudicial generalization, hence falsifying it. This forms my first barrier against such prejudice.

I am only one person, whose preference and experience are not necessarily shared by others. Yet, I do think the idea that a person’s familiarity with individuals of different ethnicity acting as a contradictory force to prejudicial generalization can be extrapolated to others’ thinking. The idea encourages one to evaluate a person based on his or her action or words instead on others’ who share the person’s ethnicity.

This is why I support any platform encouraging interaction between individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. This is why I support the national school system and frown upon any system contributing to ethnic segregation, despite the shortcomings of the national schools, and despite my appreciation for choices within the Malaysian education system.

While tuning in my blue iPod to the BBC in London recently, I caught David Cameron announcing that multiculturalism has failed. He lamented the policy of passive tolerance that has caused individuals to segregate themselves according to their ethnic background. From far, British society is multicultural but a closer look may justify Cameron’s concern.

Although the situation in Britain is different from that in Malaysia, there are communities in Malaysia that segregate willingly.

The education system in general does not help in breaking this trend. The Malays mostly go to national schools, which are Malay or Muslim-dominated. The trend repeats itself in the vernacular streams.

There are exceptions. Some national schools are diverse, especially those that are well-endowed and located in urban areas. Some vernacular schools are diverse as well. It is worth stressing again that these are exceptions, however. There are simply not enough children from different ethnicities learning in the same classroom when one assesses a majority of these schools individually. This limits the opportunity for interaction.

There are many reasons why that trend prevails in the national schools. I will not go into all of them. I intend to highlight only one of them in hope of bringing focus. Others can highlight other factors if they wish to do so.

Religion, specifically Islam, plays too much of a role in the national schools. That erodes the idea that the national schools are national, hence inclusive. When one religion appears to dominate, the idea of inclusivity bows down to exclusivity. The dominance may cause parents with other religious beliefs — as well as those without belief — distrust in the national schools being able to provide their children with the necessary education without instilling Islamic belief.

Worse, the heavy presence of Islam in the system creates the perception that non-Muslims are second-class citizens. This is best demonstrated when Islamic prayers are said during school assemblies. While students of other beliefs are encouraged to pray in their own way when the Islamic prayers are said, the practice does say a lot about which religion takes the foremost position.

Another example is the segregation that happens during Islamic lessons. Non-Muslims typically are asked to shift to a different class where they are expected to go for moral studies while Muslim students stay in the same class. That happened during my time as a student in a national school.

While the practice more than anything else is a matter of convenience — most students are Muslims — it does create the perception that, again, Islam is the religion of the national school and other religions do not deserve attention. Still, the ultimate reason they were segregated is that one group is labeled by the state as Muslim and the other as, well, others.

The perception is dangerous because children learn something about inequality. The greater danger is that these students may accept the lesson as simply the way things are in Malaysia, when such inequality should be fought instead of condoned.

There are other more sinister examples. One includes an incident several months back when a student was caned because he brought pork for lunch to school. Islam prohibits Muslims from consuming pork and that wrongly guided the action of the responsible school official to cane the non-Muslim student. The wider implication is that the example suggests that non-Muslim students should follow Islamic teachings. This links back to the issue of trust mentioned earlier.

The perception that non-Muslims are second-class citizens is not something non-Muslim parents would want or should let their children accept. Malaysia belongs to all Malaysians. Religion should not matter.

If attendance at the national schools encourages acceptance of inequality by these young students, then non-Muslim parents who believe in equality have a reason — likely another reason out of many — not to enroll their children in the national schools. This ultimately hurts the national schools’ function as an unofficial social integrator within Malaysian society.

One solution is to separate religion from schools. The national schools should be made blind to religion in a way that religion stays only within the necessary lesson. Religion should not be included during school functions and not in science classes, but only in religious classes.

The separation can remove the apprehension non-Muslim parents have about the national schools with respect to religious belief, hence making the system more appealing to non-Muslim parents. Muslim parents meanwhile can continue to be assured that their children will learn about Islam during Islamic lessons, if they wish their children to learn it.

Perhaps as part of larger liberal values, all students should be allowed to choose what they wish to learn, regardless of their religious beliefs in the spirit of free inquiry. This also includes the arts and the sciences. No longer will students be segregated during lessons based on religious beliefs but they will be separated based on their interests and curiosity.

Hopefully, after making national schools neutral of religion, we will be a step closer to becoming an inclusive national system to encourage interaction, where individuals of one ethnicity befriend those of another to acquire the idea that his or her friend contradicts many of the prejudicial generalizations that exist out there.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on February 16 2011.

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Photography Society Travels

[2308] Of pourquoi?

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Society

[2180] Of sneaky Hadi wants to sneak in Allah

Abdul Hadi Awang saw it and he capitalized on it. Given how the Islamic party he is in positions itself in the Allah controversy, he took the next step and suggested that the first principle of the Rukunegara[0] be changed from belief in god to belief in Allah.[1] If Allah is a generic term for god and god is the generic term for Allah, then they are equivalents, right?

Except, that I take the change as more insidious in nature. Not that the Rukunegara is the law of the land — hence its importance is debatable — but execution of that suggestion is problematic for future discourse on the status of Islam in Malaysia.

Equalizing god and Allah is really a double-edged sword. On one hand, it appeals to unity, at least among the Abrahamic religions especially after the divisive Allah controversy. On the other hand, quite sneakily, it offers greater ammunition for Islamists in future debates regarding secularism and the Malaysian state. I can imagine how later down the line some Islamists would support their arguments by citing the Rukunegara while conveniently forgetting that context which that suggestion was made.

I am not impressed by that suggestion. Even if the word god and Allah refer to the same concept, it is far easier to stick with the status quo rather than wade through the controversy that the change might ignite. Besides, not everybody subscribes to the argument that god and Allah refers to the same idea. I have not heard of Hindus, for instance, referring to their gods as Allah, never mind that the concept of monotheism does not appeal to Hinduism.

Consider also the atheists and the agnostics. Where are they in the grand scheme of things, Mr. Hadi? Burnt at the stake?

I feel there are many Islamists out there who subscribe to the exclusivity of the word Allah to the Muslim community in Malaysia. There would not have been a controversy if these Islamists do not exist. If the word god in the Rukunegara is to be changed to Allah, I am sure they will take this in some way as an Islamization of Malaysia. They will see it as a good move. I also will consider it as an act of Islamizing Malaysia. Unlike the Islamists however, I will be compelled to protest loudly.

As a secularist myself, I am not at all enamored by the first principle of the Rukunegara. I plainly dismiss it but I realize that raising objection to it is really a worthless exercise. Really, it is quite petty. But if Mr. Hadi wants to start a public discourse on the matter, let it be known that my default position is the abolition of the first principle.

And I think, I am not alone.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[0] — See Rukunegara at Wikipedia. Assessed March 22 2010.

[1] — KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 (Bernama) — Pas president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang on Monday suggested that the first Rukun Negara be amended as the word Allah was widely used by non-Muslims.

“I call on the government to amend the first Rukun Negara from belief in God to belief in Allah,” he said during the debate on the motion of thanks on the Yang di-Pertuan Agong’s speech, in the Dewan Rakyat.

Abdul Hadi said the Al-Quran did not bar followers of other religions from using the word Allah. [Hadi Awang Suggests That First Rukun Negara Be Amended. Bernama. March 22 2010]