Tag: religion

Categories
Liberty Politics & government

[1639] Of an odd path to secularism

Activist monarchy runs contrary to organic politics and for that I am not too comfortable of having monarchs meddling in business of the state. Despite that, some actions by monarch may coincide with favorable consequences like giving new breath to federalism but the involvement of monarchs in politics remains an inorganic decision. The latest case of activist monarch revolves around the royal house of Perak over-ruling the decision of the Menteri Besar to remove the state religion department director.[1] While the down side of this episode is about having the monarchy institution in the picture, the bright side of the equation provides an opportunity for secularism.

Secularism, if its definition has to be clarified, aims to separate the state from religious beliefs and vice versa. A secular state is a state neutral of religious values. As further argument for secularism goes, religious belief is a personal matter and the best way to maintain it that way and protect religious freedom is to have a secular state.

The situation in Perak at the moment basically separates religion, or at least some part of it, from the purview of the executive branch of the government. If the Sultan has the ultimate say in religious matters, that would basically make the religious department answerable only to the Sultan while the executive is left with little influence in the matter. In the state of Perak where the monarchy takes a progressive political stance while the head of the executive is a member of an Islamist political party, I cannot help but maintain a slight inclination to stand with the monarch, even when I distrust him. In my opinion, from a certain point of view, this path may lead to secularism. In my opinion, this helps in preventing PAS from enlarging the role of religion in our society through coercion.

This perspective however assumes that the monarchy institution itself is not part of the state and that only the executive, judiciary and the legislative branches of government are considered as part of the state. The truth is, the monarchy together with the three branches are the institutions of the state.

In the purest sense of the word, we are still far away from secularism. Yet, this tussle between the Sultan and the Menteri Besar, especially when the executive is backing down,[2] creates an opportunity to advance secularism in the Malaysian society. It is an odd path but it is a path nonetheless.

But of course, there is no guarantee that the monarch himself has liberty in his mind. For all we know, the Sultan may only be interested in advancing the influence of the monarchy which has long waned.

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

[1] — IPOH, May 2 (Bernama) — The Sultan of Perak, Sultan Azlan Shah, today ordered Perak Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin to immediately retract the 24-hour tranfer order issued to Perak Islamic Religious Department director Datuk Jamry Sury on Tuesday. [Sultan Azlan Shah Orders Transfer Order On JAIP Director Retracted. Bernama. May 2 2008]

[2] — IPOH: The Mentri Besar will apologise to the Sultan of Perak over the hasty transfer of Perak Religious Department (JAIP) director Datuk Jamry Sury without first consulting the Ruler, who is the head of Islam in the state.

[…]

Meanwhile, Jamry has yet to receive a letter reinstating him as JAIP director, although he said he has been asked to meet state secretary Datuk Dr Abdul Rahman Hashim tomorrow.[Perak MB to apologise to Sultan of Perak. The Star. May 4 2008]

Categories
Society

[1505] Of in the name of religion, in the name of atheism, or not

Not too long ago, just after I finished Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I spotted a review of the book by Mr. Asohan in The Star. While I do think some of the points are valid — truly, atheism has no monopoly over goodness just as religion has no claim over goodness — I simply have problem letting the following pass without a comment:

They’ll just refuse to look at how religion can be a force for good. They will also ignore the acts of famous atheists like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, and the atrocities committed throughout the years by revolutionaries and rebels fighting against religious and other types of institutions. [The dogmatic atheist. A. Asohan. The Star. December 30 2007]

Dear sir, you are committing an awful mistake.

They were atheists but they did not commit the atrocities in the name atheism. As an example, if a Christian murdered somebody, he may not necessarily kill in the name of Christianity; he may murdered somebody in the name of nationalism and thus, has nothing to do with Christianity. Or, another example, a man may kill a woman but that does not mean he killed the woman in the name of male chauvinism; it may do so in the name of religion. That are the cases for Stalin and Mao. It is communism, not atheism. This is unlike religious people and institutions — be them dogmatic Christian churches in the past, modern Islamist terrorists, Hindutva, or any other religious extremists — that killed others explicitly in the name of religion.

The difference cannot be overemphasized and the causal relationship has to be clearly identified. The cause has to be explicit and not made up because it is convenient to do so. What you have done sir is merely appealing to guilt by association.

Categories
Books & printed materials Personal Society

[1497] Of faith, superstition and addiction

‘Superstition.’ What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called ‘faith.’ But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was called superstition! Who had the right to call other people’s belief superstition? [Sophie’s World. Jostein Gaarder. Page 42]

Wow. Gaarder’s Sophie’s World and two previous books that I read, Beinhocker’s Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics and Dawkins’ The God Delusion, have common themes to relate to each other. Beinhocker’s and Dawkins’ share the idea of evolution while Dawkins’ and Gaarder’s touch on religion. Granted, the shared themes are not the main themes of each book but there are no doubt overlaps.

I tried to connect Beinhocker’s the previous book in my list, Rehman Rashid’s A Malaysian Journey but I would have to resort to a very broad topic to find a common theme — for instance, the language is English — which would not be too astounding to deserve a mention.

I wonder how I could relate Gaarder’s with the next book I plan to read. Maybe, I am getting ahead of myself. Still, though I have just started with Sophie’s World, I have a feeling that it will not take me long to reach the ending, especially when I have finally settled with favorite time of the day to read book while cutting down on the time I spend on the internet.

This is quite embarrassing but I think I am addicted to the internet again. It is not as severe as it once had been during the glorious day of Utopia and World of Warcraft but it is slowly getting there. To my defense however, I spend most of the time on Wikipedia reading up on history, philosophy and other curiosities that pop up out of nowhere. And of course, blogging.

This is unhealthy. Thank heavens for the Nature Society. Now, I can go do healthy stuff while surfing the internet on my Blackberry in the wild!

Err… right.

Argh. Blackberry is a bane.

Categories
Books & printed materials Science & technology Society

[1490] Of The God Delusion

I am finally done with the Dawkins’ The God Delusion which I bought last year. Yes, I finished it just over a year after I picked it off the shelf at some bookstore.

It is filled with too much polemics and I was caught off guard on how fierce Dawkins argues against religion in The God Delusion despite being familiar with his well-publicized opinion. I should have braced myself when I read this paragraph:

A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts — the non-religious included — is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other. [The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. Page 20]

The first chapters are dedicated to discrediting religion. Ignoring the polemics — sometimes, it is hard; I couldn’t help but smile at one point or another; simply too amusing and entertaining — reading for me was easy and I breezed through it. The one point which I stopped and pondered for awhile amid the polemics concerned the Pascal’s wager. I really think I should thank Dawkins for solving the puzzle for me.

The rhythm goes a pace higher at midpoint where he explains, to a certain extent, how evolution affected religion and — more interestingly — moral. I have read earlier on how moral might be dictated by genetics but I am convinced of it only until I read Dawkins’.

From the same idea, he insists that moral and religion are independent of each other. I have reached the same conclusion before and I could only nod in agreement with him. Dawkins goes further by stating that moral precedes religions. To strengthen that, he shows how there are commonalities of morality across most religions despite the fact that many of these religions developed separately. To answer the puzzle of commonalities, he returns to genetics and evolution, his forte.

For those unfamiliar with Dawkins, he is a biologist at Oxford. Wikipedia, as usual, has a great article on him.

What surprises me, given the Malaysian authority’s tendency to ban the most innocent of all books such as Anthony Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy and Karen Amstrong’s A History of God, is that The God Delusion escapes censorship. The escape, of course, is absolutely fine by me.

Categories
Liberty Society

[1479] Of establishment of non-Muslim affairs department is unhelpful

A Chinese law that came into force in September[1] states that the Chinese government has “exclusive rights to the selection of all future reincarnations of Tibetan lamas and have ordained that the Dalai Lama must be a citizen of China.”[2] Eager to cement its control over Tibet, the Chinese government ventures into the business of religion. If it were not for its underlying motive, the law would be too silly to imagine; satirists would have a field day at the Chinese government. Government interference in religion however is not hard to imagine in many parts of the world throughout various times and the idea is not foreign at all in Malaysia. We have an Islamic authority at various levels to regulate the Islam and its willing and unwilling adherents. As some liberals fights to contain expansion or even existence of the religious authority, a horror strikes in the most horrid manner: there are non-governmental organizations in response to issues surrounding Hindraf that seek the formation of a non-Muslim affairs department. If it is ever formed, it would enlarge the state’s influence over religion, further providing it with opportunity to make individual liberty irrelevant.

Already the state has considerable apparatus to disrespect religious freedom. The fact that the Sharia court will prevail over the civil court on any overlap — by virtue that the civil court refuses to rule in case of overlaps — is enough to direly demonstrate on much influence religion has over us. Needless to say, the Sharia court places religious laws above individual liberty. While non-Muslims complain how Islamic laws play a role in their lives, there are many Muslims themselves that are uncomfortable with the influence of religious authority over public and private spheres. Muslims do not enjoy religious freedom unlike other Malaysians, on top of other liberty equally deprived from all Malaysians by the state.

Apart from the Sharia court, restrictions over religious freedom and liberty in general through, for instance, moral policing, are made possible through various agencies that make Islam their business. By claiming authority over Islam in Malaysia through official sanction of the state, these agencies regulate Islam; they define Islam as they see fit. For proof, seek no further than the creation of Islam Hadhari. They even have the power to declare who is a Muslim and who is not, regardless of the opinion or decision of the individual. Almost by fiat, to some extent, it rules the Muslim community, as if the community itself is monolithic in nature.

The definition used to describe the Malays in the Constitution of Malaysia further enlarges the power of these religious authorities over Malays in Malaysia.

In short, in one way or another, the BN-led, UMNO-dominated government secures it power over Malaysia by cowing the Malays into relative obedience. The BN-led government through abuse of state devices censors those that disagree with them while promoting its own opinion unfairly through unfree widely distributed mainstream media. Criticisms by outsiders are deemed as threats to national harmony, strengthening siege mentality. Hindraf through sheer stupidity played into BN’s tactics. This further solidifies the BN-led government control over the Malays.

With a non-Muslim department, the state and really the BN-government would have an avenue to control the others as it is controlling the Malays. Suddenly, instead of just Islamic jurists working to subdue individual liberty of the Malays, now we would have clergymen from various religions, issuing religious laws. Instead of a set of secular civil laws, we would have countless religious contradicting laws governing the society. I could not imagine what would the ramification be when conflicts of authority occur between these laws.

There is no reason to believe these non-Muslim affairs would respect liberty. Already we know that there are Christians that moan when their liberty suffered transgression but are undisturbed by their own action to disrespect others’ liberty.

For those that seek to create a more egalitarian society, the formation of non-Muslim affair department only could only strengthen the polarization of Malaysian society. Through this polarization, it would hard to see each other as Malaysians.

To be fair, it is unclear what this non-Muslim affairs department would specifically do, if it would ever to be established. From a libertarian point of view, assuming the department would hold the same authority as its Islamic counterpart, its establishment would be an ominous development to liberty. It would only give the state a monopoly to religion, like what the Chinese government seeks over Tibetan Buddhism. Or, closer to home, how the state has the power to define Islam.

This however is not to ignore the grouse brought forward by the non-Muslims. Their complaints must be fairly looked into but the answer is not the establishment of a non-Muslim affairs department. The better solution is secularism, coupled with liberalism, where religious freedom for all, where liberty for all, is upheld without fear or favor. Let religion be your personal affair.

When the Prime Minister dismisses the idea of setting up such department[3], I gave out a sigh of relief. His reasoning maybe different to mine — he has no respect for liberty[4] — but that is okay for now.

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

[1] — THE Chinese government’s web portal has an odd-looking entry on its page listing laws that came into force in September. Buried among new regulations on issues ranging from registering sailors to monitoring pollution is one on how to manage the reincarnations of living Buddhas. Violators are threatened with prosecution. China’s Communist Party—though avowedly atheist—does not hesitate to pontificate on religious matters that it sees as having a political dimension. Living Buddhas make up the senior clergy of Tibet’s religion. They are traditionally selected from among boys considered to be reincarnations of deceased office-holders. Controlling the selection process, in the party’s view, is crucial to controlling Tibet. [Heresy! The Economist. November 29 2007]

[2] — It explains why over the past few months, the two sides have fought a public row over the selection of the next Dalai Lama. In August, the Chinese claimed exclusive rights to the selection of all future reincarnations of Tibetan lamas and have ordained that the Dalai Lama must be a citizen of China. [Reincarnation Rift. Phillip Delves Broughton. Wall Street Journal. December 4 2007]

[3] — SEPANG, Dec 18 (Bernama) — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said today it was not necessary to set up a Non-Muslim Affairs Department now because an existing special committee was playing an effective role in the matter. [Not Necessary For Non-Muslim Affairs Dept Now, Says PM. Bernama. December 18 2007]

[4] — PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia: Malaysia’s leader said Monday he is willing to sacrifice public freedoms for the sake of national stability, a day after police arrested 21 opposition members and lawyers who took part in street protests. [Malaysia’s leader says public freedoms can be sacrificed for stability’s sake. AP via IHT. December 10 2007]