If the Malaysian government has demonstrated any characteristics other than corruption and stupidity, it must be cowardice. Badawi and his fellow nincompoops must try and pay attention to this, if they can, or if they dare: Is Malaysia an Islamic state or not? Of course, it isn’t. But one has to constantly remind oneself this is a nincompoop government. Maybe it isn’t fair to label them cowards. It takes a certain level of intelligence for cowardice to kick in. One has to understand the issues at stake. Taking a stand requires understanding of what that stand entails, or the basis of that position. Maybe it is asking too much of these imbeciles. Or maybe they are smarter than their actions or statements suggest. A lot smarter, as it may turn out. They may have seen the need to take a stand, really are cowards and therefore would not take that stand, so pretend to be stupid. If that is the case, they have also excelled in misleading the people into thinking their problem is stupidity, not cowardice. Personally, I think it is both but in this instance cowardice is a darker shade ahead. They are too stupid to realise the difference (between an Islamic state and a secular state with Islam as the official religion) but in this instance, they are even more afraid to look in case they have todo anything at all.
Malaysia is not an Islamic state. The suggestion that it is was due to some mala fide of its previous prime minister. Mahathir had played this card to shore up its Islamic credentials at a time when he was embattled by the chest thumping Anwaristas. It bodes well for my point that we have to shout out loud every time we see a wrong. That wrong can come back to bite us and in this instance, post Lina Joy, the bite has become truly obvious. Kit Siang has repeatedly said this but no one in government has either the intelligence or the guts to pick this up in any way.
Malaysia is not an Islamic state. The

Sharia Court

is not a superior court.
Malaysia is a secular state and its supreme law is the Federal Constitution. Islam is only an official religion and the

Sharia Court

takes care of certain aspects of practitioners of that religion. It is therefore, a kuci-rat court of no significance whatsoever to non-Muslims. The imbeciles and cowards however, have so messed up the country that this otherwise insignificant institution has been turned into a monster with a roar it does not understand it should not have. It does not have the country’s best legal minds sitting on it so it is ill-equipped to administer the country’s laws. It certainly is not meant to rule on constitutional matters. Actually as an aside – the civil courts too, has for a long time now, sacrificed the best legal minds in order to have Malays sitting on the Bench. This however is an entry for another day. The government may be cowardly but the problem may be that its people too, would prefer to smoke the peace pipe than to sound the truth bugle. Maybe that’s the problem. Just as nary a whimper rose to counter Mahathir’s naughty claim, a sickly silence is likely to follow an initial thump from people like the Bar Council president and the NECF. Maybe the people do deserve the government they wouldn’t should at.

I still cant wrap my mind around this one.
Malaysia is a rich country. Much of the resources have been deployed to better the lot of the so-called indigenous people. A big portion of this in turn, went to religion. Money is spent on mosques which show up everywhere. Money is spent on Quran reading events which are held frequently, in all parts of the country. Money is spent on developing Islamic university and other religious (sorry should have said Islamic) education institution, Islamic culture and anything Islamic you can think of. Political leaders climb over each other to parlay their religious (again, I meant Islamic) credentials. Every government department you go to makes you feel like you’re in a deeply religious country, albeit the religion, is again and exclusively, Islam. For when was the last time you went into a government agency and saw either a portrait of Christ or a cross, or the Ganesh (the Hindu elephant god) or Shiva or Buddha hanging on a wall or sitting on a desk? Islam pervades and permeates the country in all aspects of life. Yet, for the embarrassingly rich amount of resources poured into Islam, why haven’t the knowledge of the average Muslim grown sufficiently strong for them to stand on their own two feet? Why does the Islamic leadership still see the need to protect and cushion its congregation against apostasy? Have they failed so miserably in their religious program? You’d think with all those years of unbridled support and endless funding, Islamic scholarship would be so strong amongst its common flock that anyone of them could be robust enough to defend his or her own faith. Yet, the government still needs to protect them. The government must still ring-fence them against the under-funded, trodden and bullied churches (or any other non-Islamic faith). Chinese and Indian tax dollars far outweigh those of the Malay, especially given their minority status. Where spending on religion is concerned, these largely Chinese and Indian tax dollars have gone almost entirely into mosques and development of the Islamic faith. Yet the churches and temples these non-Muslim taxpayers go to, are under threat by the government. They are under threat because if any one of their members turn to Islam, it is a one-way ticket to you know where. On the other hand, if one of theirs decide on their own accord (and against the gigantic tides of massive government funding) to turn away from Islam to Christianity or Hinduism say,  God help the church, because they have to contend with the executive, the administrative and the judiciary branches of the state. Injustice? As Kiddo would say: like duh…

“By insisting that a person who no longer professes the religion of Islam but has embraced another religion to seek an order of the Syariah Court is equivalent to insisting that a muallaf … is obliged to seek the clearance of the religious leaders or authority of his former religion. Mutual respect and tolerance surely cannot be fostered without due regard to the principle of reciprocity.” 

I was very heartened to read a statement from the NECF, which was issued last Friday in response to this landmark case on religious freedom in
Malaysia. The paragraph above is an extract of that statement. I was heartened not because it was a statement I would have made myself (though I agree with it entirely) but because it was made at all. It is great to see a body like the NECF carefully articulate its position and publicly air it.It isn’t a statement I would have made myself because I haven’t yet thought through the issues of individual rights versus the collective good and of truth in religion and the exclusive nature of its result. The former always has a place for the notion of balance but the latter is a lot trickier. If a religion is true, how does it not also be exclusive (and therefore divisive) unless it is a religion which suggests an “all road leads to
Rome” approach, which in my mind, is always suspect?  

Jesus said He is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one was to go to the Father except by Him. He acknowledged the divisive nature of this claim, saying he came as a sword, dividing families and communities. If truth divides, should it be sacrificed for the sake of unity? Can truth be upheld without necessarily causing division? Of course it can.  

The answer lies with agreeing to disagree. I don’t become your enemy just because I disagree with you, and there shouldn’t be a barrier to 2 persons remaining friends and having a reasonably healthy and harmonious relationship, just because they have different opinions and beliefs. This is such a no-brainer I can’t believe I just wrote it. Yet, this simple and fundamental fact is one which seems to escape practitioners of a certain brand of Islam in
Malaysia, especially. To them, we cannot be their friends or part of a mutual community, unless we agree with them or we never express our opinions and beliefs. Christianity has always been an exclusive belief. With Jesus making those claims set out above, how can it not be? Christianity is basically saying unless you are one (a Christian), you’re going where the sun shines just a tad too hot. Yet, for all the divisive potential, Christianity has never killed for its own sakes. Those who have killed in its name did so for other reasons. Christianity was only a cover to make the killings less culpable, indeed, more noble. Is this the real cause for the division caused by or attributed to Islam today? Is it all for money and politics? In
Malaysia maybe but what of elsewhere? There is so much to know and so little time to.  

I wonder too, about the issue of the relationship between individualism and the collective good. The law has long trekked and developed the idea of where the balance should be. What about religion? What does Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other religion say about where this spot of balance should be? The church I know would go a long way to sit down with someone who is having problems with his faith. He’d be advised, counselled and prayed for. He’d have visits to his home. All these however, seldom (if ever) carry any suggestions of threats of physical harm or ostracism. There is no law in any Christian country I know, which seeks to legislate against leaving the faith. The reason is simple – how do you legislate against personal beliefs? If someone chooses to stop believing in something, how does legislation make him believe it anyway? He’d just, at best, retain the form of that belief. If I were a pastor of a church, I’d rather a member of my congregation who no longer believes, stay out of the church, than for that person to be forced to keep showing up and perform the rituals because the law says he must. His relationship with God would have been non-existent. How could he sincerely worship God when he’s in my church? 

Should I keep him in my church despite his (hopefully temporarily) dead faith, for the sake of keeping a lid on matters? No, of course not. Again, compulsion in matters of faith is a no-no. There is so much to think about, and articulate. It would have been such a luxury to be able to sit down with a clear mind to have all this set out.