The awful disease of a different religion – OMG!

Imagine a people who leads a tranquil, cocooned existence. They live on a fertile land, of mountains, hills, valleys and a long, beautiful coastline with many pleasant beaches.

They have been blessed with many advantages as well as non-renewable natural resources which will run out in several decades, perhaps after only 30 to 40 years from lavish and extravagant usage. The people rise and bless their common faith, believing it is the bedrock of their prosperity. Some have amassed unbelievable wealth and count the leaders among their best friends.

There are many “other” people among them, of different faiths, whose amazing industry, intelligence and entrepreneurial skills have brought huge benefits both to themselves and to the land. Some have also lived there for centuries; many came a hundred years ago and all are citizens by birthright.

But the cunning leaders often gather their people, warning them they must stay true to their faith.

“Never forget your roots,” they thunder. “Else you’ll lose everything we have painfully gained!” The leaders do not point out that they, the leaders, have gained much, much more than all the followers. The leaders are not short of willing, learned scribes to pass edicts banning the use of some common words that the “others” also use in their daily prayers.

“Now it is the Law” they shout, “you ‘others’ must never speak or write those words ever again!”

The “others”, leading ever more circumscribed lives, love this land and do not wish to leave. Many doors are shut upon them and their children often work overseas where they are sought for their expertise and good character. Foreign lands do not scorn or treat them as intruders and they become elected ministers, professors and other esteemed positions based on merit.

The local leaders fear any different faith, painting them as dreadful diseases that will afflict their people. The leaders’ real fear is that the freedom to follow another faith will open the minds of their people, rendering them less likely to be good followers, who will keep the leaders in power and the people in servitude forever.

They want the people beholden to them while they live luxurious lives like the Pharoahs led in Ancient Egypt. Like Rameses II, they too have built vast structures, towering hundreds of feet into the sky, as if crying:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

But they are wrong. Nothing shall remain, given enough time, of these gigantic towers.

And one day the people shall awake and sweep aside the false, self-serving strictures that have kept them imprisoned for so long. They shall cast aside, perhaps even jail the false scribes and undo their unwise edicts.

Then the people shall be free, to believe what they will, to read and think for themselves, like billions do all over the world.

And they shall put an end to the Otherness that plagues the land. And all the people shall live as One from that bright moment.

Quotation in parentheses from “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).

* OMG! reads The Malaysian Insider.