FLASHBACK: Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Islamic Affairs) Datuk Daud Abdul Rahman (second right) launches thesundaypost Interfaith Harmony Column.
THIS is territory that I fear to tread on. It is so unfamiliar a terrain that if I stumble, I hope no holy war may follow. But I’m assured of forgiveness if I ask for it. That’s the beauty of being a layman; you can make mistakes in theology nowadays and yet not be burnt at the stakes as were the heretics in the Middle Ages.
In theology or engineering, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing to possess but as long as one is not a hypocrite in either vocation, one is at liberty to touch on any subject of great interest to many readers.
I’m referring to the Inter-faith Harmony Column in this paper, which I have been reading with so much interest since it was introduced in early February. My minuscule understanding of so vast a subject as religion has been so enriched by the texts of wisdom of the various faiths in existence in Malaysia presented in such a concise manner for busy readers.
I wish to congratulate those who conceived the idea of putting together those quotations.
Suggestion
If I may suggest for the benefit of laymen that for one of the quotations in each week, an example is also given to illustrate its application to daily life – a real incident or a perceived situation relevant to the topic of the day. A good example is the relevancy of the message enshrined in the Hindu Holy Writings Rig Veda: “One should be cautious not to speak anything that hurts others. Such kind of speech never helps but always brings destruction.”
This is a piece of advice of universal application in human relationship, if I understand it correctly. Although it is relevant in today’s setting, yet many mortals have blatantly ignored it, indeed freely violated it, every second day. Just open your morning paper and you will read reports about somebody suing somebody else or some newspaper publisher for allegedly damaging somebody’s reputation and casting aspersions on his integrity, demanding the judge to tell the accuser to pay him compensation or propitiation money in terms of millions of ringgit.
Reputation is a very valuable commodity and may be tainted by the tongue or by the pen.
On the one hand, the accuser may go bankrupt if the lies that he has spouted are proven. On the other, the aggrieved party may become rich overnight if his innocence is to be believed. So be careful with the tongue or the pen or both.
In this context, the Holy Bible says, “Man is able to tame and has tamed all other creatures – wild animals and birds, reptiles and fish. But no one has ever been able to tame the tongue. It is evil and uncontrollable, full of deadly poison” (James 3:7-8).
However, the Holy Bible also proposes a course of action to take before things get worse: “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast in prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing” (Matthew 5:25-26).
In simple parlance, it means that before you resort to the courts of law, settle the problem amicably, out of court. Say sorry and forget and forgive and make it a point not do it again – incidentally, one of the basic tenets of the Iban custom of Pati Nywa is for the maintenance of equilibrium in nature. In the first place, be cautious in what you are going to say (antu baroh dagu) – similar to the advice one gets from the Hindu Holy Writings, quoted above.
Similar also is this rule: “Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his soul from troubles” (Proverbs 21:23).
This is reinforced by the Sikh Holy Writings which state that “I love him deeply who becoming indifferent to the backbiting of others detaches himself.”
Other great faiths speak in a similar vein. From the Holy Quran, we learn that it is wrong to speak ill of another human: “O you who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible) for suspicion in some cases is a sin: And spy not on each other nor speak ill of each other behind their backs” (Al Hujurat:12).
From Buddhism’s Pearls of Wisdom, the core beliefs, comes the injunction “Abstain from lies and deceptions, backbiting, idle babble and abusive speech … Let your words reflect your desire to help, not harm others.”
And the Baha’i Faith adds: “Breathe not the sins of others so long thou art thy self a sinner.”
These are examples of practical application of religious beliefs to everyday life in human society. However, humans being human, their frailties and iniquities abundant, all these are easier said than done. But time being infinite gives the chance to humankind to learn and find out the truth sooner or later.
The beauty about these words is their permanent validity for all time – divined thoughts so difficult or impossible to prove them wrong.
If the Inter Faith Harmony Column gives the readers a chance to ponder for a minute over those quotations, it will have served its purpose. Even those who do not believe that these are divine sayings cannot help thinking that they make good common sense in
today’s world. If it achieves its goal of enhancing religious harmony among Malaysians of various creeds, it will have played a major role in statesmanship.
From the start, the column has become for busy people a concise comparative study of major beliefs or world religions that have sustained lives of millions of their respective adherents all over the world.
It is often said that religion is a personal matter between the human and his maker. Granted. However, with a little help from the reading of those quotations one can enrich one’s understanding of the various religions and their relationship to each other in a nutshell – like a lone foreign tourist who with the basic local lingo gets around town without a guide. Nobody expects you to be a religious man or woman after the little you know of the teachings from the newspaper. However, it may possibly create an awareness that there is such a thing as a powerful force in society other than politics wrongly managed; in the wrong hands, religions either bind people together or destroy their nation.
One way of going about reaching for a harmonious plural society like Malaysia is for us to stress on religious or cultural similarities rather than the differences. Act on those similarities and the differences will be considerably less important. If I may add, act also on religious tolerance.
Lest this sounds like a sermon, which it is not, I hereby hold my tongue. Thank you for your indulgence.