IN the Semenanjung, the relationship between religious faiths is fully controlled by Muslims, who are mostly Malays. The method of managing the relationship seems to me to be authoritarian and the concept of ‘make-sure-Islam-comes-up-on-top’ methodology. I may have described this approach in a crude manner, but the ICERD rally and the Red Shirt rallies are my undisputed data to this statement.
Why do I say so? Simple. The Friday sermons never mentioned these two rallies as detrimental to the fragile but important relationship between our peoples. The Bible-burning issue by a Malay group further enhanced my position on this matter. That too was never a subject of any official Friday sermon. I am forced to imagine that either the sermon writers do not read the news or they were also in secret collusion by way of spirit with the proponents of these three destructive acts of aggression.
We must never let the nations of Sabah and Sarawak become the failed nation of Semenanjung in religious relationships. Today, I wish to outline my ideas on how Sabahans and Sarawakians can enhance religious spirituality as a uniting force. The key word here is ‘spirituality’ and not ‘identity’. Identity destroys civilisations and people for it separates, segregates, and judges between peoples, while spirituality blurs the differences in outward form into formless values and feelings of compassion, humility, and love of human brotherhood. Does it mean that we abandon, rituals, dress codes and forms of our faiths? No, of course not, but we must never let form override the substance of our spirituality as it and only it has the power to unite.
For my first policy, I would recommend that the nations of Sabah and Sarawak consider seriously making it a requirement that all religious management committees have 20 per cent of their members as adjunct members, who are from two or more different faiths. These adjunct members must attend 30 per cent of the total number of meetings of the religious committees of mosques, temples, churches, gurdwaras, and departments of religious affairs. As adjunct members, these people of different faiths can sit in and listen to as well as participate in the discussions and deliberations but must refrain from taking any votes on decisions that are not unanimously agreed upon.
In my column for a news portal, I had mooted this suggestion that Jakim should do so first. Many Malays and Muslims rejected my suggestions on the grounds that this is something never before attempted, much less suggested, and that it is against the spirit of Islam. To these detractors, I must remind that the Quran and the Sunnah are silent on the aspect of management of Islam. Unless the Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, Sikh, Hindus, and others are enemies of Islam, then I see no reason why we cannot try this new method of management.
My premise in suggesting was simple; none of the committee members who had studied Islam have much knowledge and experience living with and among the minority groups and so how can they understand the subtle but sensitive nuances of other parties? Furthermore, these adjunct members cannot vote their preferences. I think that if the nations of Sabah and Sarawak can initiate this relationship, it would break the deadlock of religious communication at its very foundation of identity construct. As I specified, if we followed the identity construct of religion, we will never be able to see beyond the cultural and political forms that we ourselves have created. We will be in the prison of our own constructs of identity. Only upon refocusing on spirituality can we break out of this prison.
Are not all religions the same in values of compassion, tolerance, kindness, and humility? Or does each religion claim they are the only ones who know what God looks like and also know the fate of all people before their time of death? If all religions agree that they are humble humans who know next to absolutely nothing about God and even their own kind in cultures, values, concerns, and deeds, then it would be easy for all of us of different faiths to work together.
Following that policy, I would then urge the nations of Sabah and Sarawak to seriously encourage all mosques, temples, churches, gurdwaras, and others to celebrate all the important religious and important cultural events at each and every house of worship. Are we enemies of each other’s faiths? Are we better than others just because we pray to a God? If we are not, then what harm is there in celebrating together as brethren of a nation-construct rather than a race or a religious one? Susah sangat kah?
Of course in the Semenanjung, such acts of a Church providing food for breaking fast for Muslims is hailed by mainstream officials and extremists as proselytization attempts. Such fears, arrogance, and bigotry should find no place in the nations of Sabah and Sarawak. Do not learn from Semenanjung in this matter for they have nothing to teach but hatred, suspicion, and discord.
My third policy is to make a planning requirement for architects that future mosque, temple, church, and gurdwara designs must come with 30 per cent space for the public who are not of the same faith as the congregants of the building designed. This 30 per cent of space can be used as a cafeteria, gallery, shop for books, memorabilia of faith, and music of culture and religion. The 30 per cent allocation should also cover places for homeless men and women to sleep in a modest manner. Soup kitchens and food provision to the poor can be part of an extended kitchen not inclusive of the 30 per cent public space requirement.
The architect must of course understand the specific spaces that require special control of access related to rituals and deeds of worship as apart from the public and welfare spaces of the religious building. The heads of the nations of Sabah and Sarawak can provide partial funding to existing houses of worship that wish to embrace this new policy and renovate their fences and compounds as well as building. Perhaps with the ratification of the MA63, and when the oil and balak money comes in, it would be most beneficial that it finds its way to this programme rather than the pockets of politicians and their families or the casinos in faraway lands.
In this way, our houses of worship are centres of communal gatherings, bustling social places, and welfare centres that would guide our physical careers into a complementary state of spirituality.
Finally, I wish to say that I have written much of these ideas for 20 years in Semenanjung. However, the mainstream ‘educated Malays’ and the religious officials have so far rejected or ignored these ideas of nation building in relation to religious relationship as ‘threatening the superiority of Islam’. In my many readings of Islam, I find this view of ‘empire-building’ incongruous with the message of Islam that it is part and parcel of the continuity of other faiths in the past and that its outlook and framework of theology embraces a generous understanding of concepts of tolerance, acceptance, and magnanimity.
The problem of Semenanjung is that it has let a group of narrow-minded and uncritically educated group of clerics to helm the power of religious authority, which then influences the unthinking and lazy minds of most of the educated and uneducated Muslims.
Our forefathers set out to create a harmonious and fulfilling existence of people from diverse cultures, faiths and economic backgrounds to toil under the same sun, working the same earth and breathing the same air to forge a future for all our children together in a single vessel called Malaysia, but the mutiny of one group of people has jeopardised our destiny. These are those who think that because they are of one faith, they are better than the rest. There is no place for this kind of people in Sabah and Sarawak. In these two nations, religions are our spiritual masters of destiny with acceptance and sharing of experience as windward sails guiding a certain path in the choppy and unforgiving waters of the future.
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