Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Welcome to Malaysia's religious jungle by Commander (Rtd) S THAYAPARAN, formerly of the Royal Malaysian Navy
Sunday, November 18, 2012
COMMENT An old PAS hand who reads my articles in Malaysiakini
ranted, "Of course, PAS sees no wrong in (PKR vice-president) Nurul
(Izzah Anwar)'s speech. These days they see no wrong in anything Pakatan
does when it comes to Islam." This PAS supporter, one of my
oldest and dearest friends, often jokes that he does not belong in the
‘PAS for all' camp but rather in the ‘PAS imposed all' faction. "So,
aren't you going to take your jab, Thaya?"
Well,
as someone who attended the 'Islamic state: Which version? Whose
responsibility?' forum and who has devoted space to the question of the
role of Islam and the political parties which propagate it, I thought I
would look beyond the "manufactured outrage" as author Salman Rushdie
categorises such Islamic grievances. What is more interesting are
the numerous uncomfortable ideas that Nurul's statement raises beyond
the issue of compulsion in the Islamic faith as practiced here in
Malaysia.
Under the rather quizzical title'Nurul not anti-Islam but a true Muslim', Malaysiakini
subscribers have been quick to render qualitative judgements on Nurul's
Islamic stance. PAS has been praised on its nuanced response to the
onslaught of Umno propaganda and there has been all this baloney on how
the ‘quality' of a person's faith supersedes religious dogma. What exactly is a "true" Muslim or "true" Christian for that matter?
Someone who believes that religion should not be politicised? Someone
who believes that you should not mock another's religion? Someone who
believes that religion should not intrude in the private lives of
members in any given society? Someone who believes that there should be a
separation of church/mosque and state?
These are not "true"
religious values but rather true secular values or secular humanist
values, if you like. It is pointless and disingenuous to attempt to
define what a "true" Muslim is considering the fact that said values are
in fact anathema to traditional Islamic thought and especially by
non-Muslims, who project their own agendas as to the qualities that make
a good or true Muslim. In other words, a "true" Muslim as
defined by those who have been on the receiving end of Umno-influenced
Islam all these years, is a Muslim who conforms to the political and
social conventions of the so-called moderate stance espoused by Pakatan
Rakyat. The "true Muslim" oppositional meme is one of the
contradictory aspects of the "one size fits all" ideology of Pakatan
that if left unchecked will prove disastrous in the long run.
Christian hypocrisy
Nurul's
statement should be taken as one more small step in the civilising
process of Islam (to borrow a Christopher Hitchens phrase) that
Christianity has already undergone. This is why we have
Christians who have rejected the bigoted and/or social constraining
values of their religion or at the very least been forced to sublimate
them and achieve some sort of secular equilibrium with the rest of
society. This, of course, is the Western liberalism that former prime
minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad so fears.
The civilising process
that should have taken root in this country considering our colonial
past and the infrastructure in place after independence was halted by
Umno in the following years. The slow process of Arabisation and
the use of Islam as a tool to enthrall the Muslim population and as a
weapon to instill fear in the non-Muslim population meant that the
process, which would have created a "secular equilibrium" in this
multi-religious country, was cut short for long-term political gain. Non-Muslims played their part as well. Since the concept of "rights"
was always defined by religious and communal expectations, there was
always never any solidarity based on the premise that "rights" should be
enjoyed and applicable to all.
Steve Oh's Malaysiakiniletter, (which for some reason warranted a visit
by the state's security apparatus) in support of Nurul, is loaded with
the usual Christian hypocrisy that the calcification of the Malay mind
happened in an Umno vacuum. Race politics is by its nature
reactionary and while Umno used Islam for its own purposes, the same can
be said of PAS, which (in a reactionary nature) retreated deeper into
itself propagating the idea that religious piety was the panacea for
Umno corruption.
Meanwhile, non-Muslim component parties were
more than willing to toe the Umno line in exchange for an unequal slice
of the economic pie, which saw the majority Malay community who were
supposed to be the masters of the land languish in perpetual serfdom. The Chinese community dominated the private sector all the while
engaging in a subtle form of systemic discrimination that the Umno
regime overtly practiced in the public sector. This fueled the Umno
perception that Malay hegemony was under threat by an ungrateful
non-Malay community. The racial fault lines in this country have always
been between the Malays and the Chinese.
The
whole Christian issue is merely the natural consequence of growing
section of the mainly Chinese community falling under the sway of a
worldwide capitalist/Judeo-Christian revivalist movement, which is
leading the way in demanding equal religious rights (which is their
constitutional right) after years of Umno corrupting every institution
that was supposed to safeguard those rights.
Always remember,
the growth of the evangelical Christian movement here in Malaysia
happened under the Umno watch and that the nexus between the corridors
of Umno power and the business community with strong links to the
evangelical movement was engineered during Mahathir's era, not to
mention a culture of corruption and cronyism that benefitted a
Chinese-dominated private sector. Oh, who got involved in amemorable spatwith Josh Hong on the issue of Christianity and homosexuality in Malaysiakini, brings his own Christian assumptions to the mix. Just
as he objected to "counterfeit" Christianity in that exchange, I am
sure there would be many Muslims like my PAS friend who adhere to a
narrow interpretation of their holy text. Muslim and Christian each
thinking that theirs is the more "authentic" interpretation.
Freedom to reject dogma
Moreover, the beauty of secularism is that it enables an open market place of ideas when it comes to religious choice. Now,
Umno may fear this because if people had a choice between a religion
that binds them to the dictates of the state (as it is practiced here in
Malaysia) and a religion that allows them the freedom to reject dogma
without the sanction of the state, which do you think would be the more
appealing choice? Therefore, in a field of competing religions
it would be beneficial for the issue of compulsion to be addressed so
that the business of winning hearts and minds could go on unabated. May
the best religion win, so to speak.
Of course, if the state
played no role in enforcing religion, nobody would feel compelled to
leave it, but that is the tragedy of religion, all of it is the same but
with different labels. The devil is in the details and without the
civilising process, nobody - certainly not an ethnic group defined by
their religion - gets to question which part of dogma to accept or
reject. This is why Pakatan (with its strong PAS backbone) engaging
with the Christian community is vitally important. This nonsense about
not politicising religion is the reason why Islamic appeasers have
helped in the stagnation of the Islamic faith. The only way to resolve
religious differences is by acknowledging them (in good faith) and from
these tensions, secularism is the natural by-product.
The Umno
state has a monopoly on Islam, which at the end of the day, means that
anyone with an agenda of proselytising would get the short end of the
stick. Understand now, that my position is that people should be exposed
to a diverse range of ideas or agendas and make their informed choice
as to what to accept or reject. The big question is, will
Pakatan relinquish this monopoly? Will it disband those religious
institutions that "shackle the Malay Mind? Will affirmative action
policies which are intimately linked with Malay/Muslim identity and
which have contributed to the entitlement culture be dropped? Meritocracy
is a fine idea but how would it be imposed on a political and social
landscape built on the injustices and apathy of a Malaysian public still
playing the race game?
Nurul's
watershed idea is not that Malays/Muslims should be exposed to other
ideas or religions especially since, those ideas/religions in my opinion
are soul cages in their own ways, not to mention the agendas at play,
which would be deleterious to a multicultural/religious Malaysia. Her watershed idea is that she is following in the footsteps of those
reformers who are advancing the internal dialogue within Islam. This
rarely acknowledged tradition, which is nearly always met with
hostility, is the most subversive of movements because it relies on the
reinterpretation of dogma that has always been the zealously guarded
province of those hardliners who garment themselves in piety that is the
new fascism.
Propagandist like The Star journalist
Joceline Tan may label her as a "little kid with big ambitions" but this
"kid" in her nascent political life has advanced the political and
social discourse more than the old uncles who inhabit the corridors of
Umno power. What remains to be seen is that will Pakatan and
politicians like Nurul have the opportunity that federal powers allows
to turn rhetoric into deed.
What would define her as a "true"
reformer she claims to be, is that she does not back down from this
controversy. She does not waffle in the face of religious hypocrisy and
she continues to agitate the Islamic status quo because as long as the
idea of compulsion is propagated, protestations of "quality" are
meaningless. Malaysiakini
