Shackles of slavery and the imprisonment of the mind

Hence, the call by the Regent of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, that religious issues should not be openly debated is a fallacy that was taught in Europe until 200 years ago. This was what the Church and the Crown taught to keep the people in the dark. And by keeping the people in the dark, the Church and the Monarchs could continue to enslave the people under serfdom. However, once the people managed to remove these shackles of slavery and imprisonment of the mind by seeking and questioning, peoples’ power emerged and the rule of the autocratic governments ended.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Raja Nazrin reminds people not to play with racial issues

(New Straits Times) - The Regent of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah has reminded the people not to play with racial issues or risked facing terrible tragedy. In his speech at the opening of the Perak state assembly session here today, Raja Nazrin said it (playing racial issues) should be stopped and be prevented from happening.

"This is my reminder -- the religious flame should not be ignited. The religious fire should not be sparked. If that happens, then the people risked getting themselves burnt and the state destroyed," the regent said.

Raja Nazrin said of late, the religious issues had been openly debated. "This is worrying ... it will possibly be the cause to spark off a terrible tragedy," the regent stressed. Raja Nazrin also reminded all the state assemblymen to portray a good image in respecting one's religion.

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Martin Luther was a German monk and priest who became the icon for Protestant reforms in the 1500s. Luther, who was also a professor of theology, strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be bought with money. Luther challenged the authority of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Leo X, and defied the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, resulting in his excommunication by the Pope and the Emperor condemning him as an outlaw.

Being the controversial figure that he was, Luther rejected the idea of a Holy War or Crusade and instead urged Emperor Charles V and the German people to fight a secular war against the Turks who were knocking on Vienna’s door. He also preached that it was a matter of great urgency that the Jews be expelled from all German territory.

500 hundred years ago, Christendom saw the emergence of a reformer, Martin Luther, who challenged both the Pope as well as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. No doubt, then, Luther was considered a heretic, deviant, loose cannon, etc., and was excommunicated and declared an outlaw. Today, he is called a hero.

Not long after that, along came an Italian, Galileo Galilei, who also defied the Pope, Urban VIII. Galileo was put on trial and was declared a heretic. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest and it was not until about 400 years later, on 31st October 1992, when Galileo was absolved of his ‘crime’ when Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled. The Pope issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo. 

History has now judged Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, and a host of other ‘criminals’ as actually great reformers, thinkers and scientists, hundreds of years after their deaths. Reluctantly, the Church has had to admit that it was wrong and that these people right. But at that time, people who challenged the authority of the Church or the Crown were condemned.

Today, the Regent of Perak says, “The religious flame should not be ignited. The religious fire should not be sparked. If that happens, then the people risked getting themselves burnt and the state destroyed." 

I suppose this would have been what the Pope in Rome and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire said 500 years ago, although maybe not exactly in those same words. And if the Pope and the Emperor 500 years ago were wrong, could this also mean that Raja Dr Nazrin Shah is wrong as well? 

Raja Nazrin said, “Of late, religious issues had been openly debated. This is worrying ... it will possibly be the cause to spark off a terrible tragedy."

Openly debating religious issues is not the tragedy that I am worried about. It is not openly debating them that will be the real tragedy. Religious leaders and monarchs of the old days also saw themselves as trustees of religion and appointees of God. The Pope saw himself as God’s voice on earth and the Monarchs as rulers appointed by God. Hence, no one can question, challenge, defy or oppose the Pope and the Monarch. To do so would be considered a crime and punishable by torture, excommunication and even death. (Today, in Malaysia, they use the Sedition Act).

About 300 years after Martin Luther and Galileo Galilei, along came another man, this time a French man by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. France was facing turmoil during the aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Reign of Terror that followed. They needed a strong military leader to restore law and order so they turned to the general who had proven himself in the battlefield. 

Napoleon, being the accomplished military genius that he was, used the military to restore sanity in Paris. He then used this same military to grab power. Napoleon then got the Pope to appoint him the Emperor of France, reversing the creation of the First Republic.

In those days, monarchs and rulers were hereditary. You needed to be born into that position and it was impossible for a man not of noble blood to ascend the throne. Napoleon, however, proved that this was all bullshit. It was not God who decided if you became the ruler by virtue of your birth. It was how many soldiers with guns behind you that determined it.

Napoleon then decided he would like to export the ideals of the Revolution to the rest of Europe. His army swept across Europe defeating many bigger armies. Within just a decade or so, almost the whole of Europe came under French occupation.

Napoleon then introduced his reforms. One of the more significant reforms was to the education system (there were of course many others such as the metric measurement system, the Napoleonic Code legal system, etc.).

In the past, the church ran the schools and education was only available to the elite and nobility. Napoleon established public schools and education was open to everyone. Furthermore, under this public education system, students were encouraged to seek and question and not just absorb what they were taught like a sponge. 

By 1815, French occupation had ended and Europe reverted to the old order. Under this old order, the Church and the Monarchy shared power. There were no such things as peoples’ power, republicanism, equality, democracy, freedom of speech and opinion, etc. But the people had tasted the ideals of the new order and they rejected what the old order stood for.

This set the stage for the battle between the conservatives of the old order and the liberals of the new order from 1815 to 1848, an entire generation of what we can consider a class struggle. We must also note that under the old order, the church, the crown and the nobility owned practically all the land in Europe while the people were merely serfs who worked the land for pittance (serfdom was a sort of slavery). Hence the people were extremely poor and oppressed.

But the damage had been done and the Pandora’s box, once opened, could never be closed again. As the common folk became educated, they began to think and question. Clubs and associations were formed where people met to debate issues (like they do on the Internet today). Newspapers mushroomed (like the Blogs today). And politics was openly discussed and debated.

Europe, which used to comprise of only two classes of people, the higher class and the lower class, eventually saw the emergence of a middle class. And this middle class grew as the population became more educated and people entered the field of trade and commerce or became professionals such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, etc.

Soon, the middle class became more prosperous than the upper class. In fact, as the middle class acquired wealth, more and more of the nobility became bankrupt (even banks collapsed as the people defaulted on their loans). And the people no longer wanted to work the land as slaves of the church, crown or nobles. They abandoned the land to migrate to the cities in search of jobs and the urban population began to grow with cities bursting from overpopulation.

Europe was sitting on a time bomb waiting to go off. And in 1848 it exploded, triggering revolutions all over the world, more than 50 in all. Invariably, since the revolutionaries did not have an army, all the revolutions were put down by military force. 

But it was only a matter of time. 22 years later, the Monarchies and Empires collapsed resulting in the creation of the Italian and German Republics (the French Second Republic had been created 20 years earlier) and the creation of many nation-states all over Europe. Whatever monarchies they had left were reduced to constitutional monarchies. But the rule of the Republic prevailed with parliaments elected by the people through the ballot box.

Thus ended the rule of the monarchs who held power through the barrel of the gun. A government of the people, by the people and for the people based on free elections would replace a system of hereditary rule thousands of years in existence.

That period which brought this change is called the Period of Enlightenment. And Europe saw this Period of Enlightenment because, after thousands of years being kept in the dark, they finally saw the light. And they saw the light because they received an education, which taught them to seek and question.

Hence, the call by the Regent of Perak, Raja Dr Nazrin Shah, that religious issues should not be openly debated is a fallacy that was taught in Europe until 200 years ago. This was what the Church and the Crown taught to keep the people in the dark. And by keeping the people in the dark, the Church and the Monarchs could continue to enslave the people under serfdom. However, once the people managed to remove these shackles of slavery and imprisonment of the mind by seeking and questioning, peoples’ power emerged and the rule of the autocratic governments ended.

Is this what Raja Nazrin Shah is worried about? Anyway, it is the government and its lackeys who are playing up racial and religious issues so maybe Raja Nazrin Shah can address this matter to Umno instead.