A FEW weeks back, I came across two disturbing – yet inspiring – articles on a web-based news portal, one by a concerned Malaysian and the other by an Australian concerned about Malaysia.
The former, surveying contemporary events and developments in the country – at least in the peninsula – expressed his unease “that when it comes to religion in this country, we are unable to say no, to argue reasonably and rationally, or to even use common sense. What is even more alarming is the use of religion to intimidate, repress and stifle discourse.”
He went on to assert, quite convincingly I must add, that: “The loudest voices (and those who often get their way) are those belonging to the people who are less tolerant and accepting of others, who feel the need to dominate others in the name of religion and ethnicity, and who claim to be champions of the faith.”
He concluded, quite depressingly, that these are all signs of an emerging religious fascism that is no longer considered fringe or extreme but has, indeed, become a big part of mainstream thinking.
The second piece, written by the distinguished Australian academic, Clive Kessler, and published some days later on the same web portal, was a response and a follow-up to the first article. For Kessler, such a movement towards extreme intolerance needs to be resisted.
Pointing to the collapse of Yugoslavia and also the Weimar republic, Kessler points out that, “A democracy without democrats, a democratic constitutional order without committed and effective democratic constitutionalists, is a worrying thing.”
Indeed, he goes on to argue that “in a maimed, crippled democracy most people no longer care to defend democratic principles. So ground is ceded daily to the ‘blood and soil’ nationalists” who operate “based upon ideas, or doctrines, of blood and soil. Upon the key belief that the nation is a community created, bound together, and thereafter bounded in its limits by connections of blood and soil.”
These are the people who fantasise that even in today’s globalised world they can retreat and seek comfort in their ‘pure’ community, ‘unaffected’, ‘undiluted’, ‘uncontaminated’ and, of course, ‘unmastered’ by others, the ‘interlopers’, the ‘pendatang’.
This situation, for Kessler, can be fatal. Indeed, he points out, “under extreme conditions its logical ‘end-point’ is ethnic cleansing.”
For me, all these fearful ideas and scenarios somehow began to crystallise quite some time ago, certainly from the time of the disgusting ‘cow head’ incident a couple of years ago in Shah Alam and the irresponsible stance taken by one senior minister, supporting the racist demonstrators just to score political points.
And it’s not abated since. Notwithstanding the raid on the dinner held in a church a few months back, we have had yoga and poco-poco dancing deemed un-Islamic, and religious authorities suddenly becoming literary critics and declaring books haram.
On top of this, we have had accusations – often unsubstantiated – being hurled at other communities that they are plotting to proselytise members of ‘our’ community through all means – and gadgets – available on God’s earth.
From solar-powered, talking Bibles to the actual donning of ‘white robes’ and joining ‘our’ community for prayers just so that ‘they’ can infiltrate our ‘clan’ and, of course, carry out ‘their’ dastardly deed, the tales are becoming quite endless and, frankly, rather insulting to our intelligence if not to our respective faiths.
Self-serving individuals, dismissed by their organisations, are now promoting themselves as ethnic and religious champions and, sadly, are given the time of day by many in the media who, in the words of Kessler, evidently cede ground daily to these individuals, taken in by the fire and brimstone rhetoric.
And ground is indeed in danger of being ceded further. Just a couple of days back, evidently in response to the criticism hurled at the PM for attending the Thaipusam festival at Batu Caves, the Malaysian Ulama Association (PUM) released a statement urging the government to “regulate interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims.”
On a personal level, I am not about to cede any more ground, to allow reactionary, fascistic groups and organisations that I don’t know and do not wish to know, to tell me who I should and should not interact with.
I don’t think you should either.
Indeed, as Kessler puts it, urging us to learn from history – and this is where I at least found his piece inspiring – “the public defence, at the political level, of democratic principles is essential. The cost of the failure to defend them is exorbitant. The choice is fatal.”