SEPARATE STATE FROM RELIGION (by Ahmad Mustapha Hassan)

Received this in the email.  My comments follow.

SEPARATE STATE FROM RELIGION  

(by  Ahmad Mustapha Hassan)

State should stay out of religion – Ahmad Mustapha Hassan* (press secretary to Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, the second prime minister) Published: 13 February 2016 

"Politics has become a curse to this country. It was no longer a means to achieve good governance and reliable state management. It had been turned into a source of power to inflict evil on the people. 

Power had been misused to enrich those in high positions. 

Independence had been turned into making the country socially and culturally backward. 

Religion has become the source of amassing influence. The Malays were pushed into being servile, leading to a siege mentality. 

They were made to lose their power of rational thinking. They had been made to totally accept what the powers that be had committed. 

During the early days of independence, the country experienced religious tolerance and ethnic understanding. There were lots of merrymaking whenever occasions present themselves. Dances and singing were common happenings. 

Fun fairs would make their rounds in various towns. There would be games for the children and at night there would be dancing to the various melodious Malay tunes. Joget dancing was the order then. 

Hostesses would sit in line on the stage and those interested in doing the joget could purchase tickets and go up to pick the dancing partner of his choice. 

There would be joget and later this would be termed as joget moden because Western tunes had also been incorporated. There would be the old ronggeng, the precursor to joget and in the north, there would be changgong from Perlis and ramvong, joget dancing to Thai music. 

People were able to dispense with all the stress of life during the day through these fun outlets. There were no cases of rape, incest and such other devilish happenings. 

In big cities like Penang and Kuala Lumpur, there were cabarets whereby working people would be able to get rid of the stress of work. 

This was the place where enterprising people would practise their flair for Western dancing. 

They would do the various dances, such as foxtrot, waltz, quickstep, rumba, samba, tango and other new trends. 

Competitions were also held and all were in good fun.   

Religion was never part of public dominance. It was a private matter. 

That was when religion and the state were completely separated. 

The Islamic religious departments were only involved in family matters, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Other aspects were left to the discretion of the people. Religion was never forced into the everyday life of the people. 

Malay-Muslim children from young would attend afternoon Islamic religious classes where the various aspects of the religion were made known to them. The emphasis was that it was the individual that was answerable to Allah and not to anybody else. 

But Umno’s rivalry with PAS for the support of the Malay-Muslims caused both these political parties to accuse one another of being non-Islamic and thus the devil was let loose. 

Once PAS started to accuse Umno of being deviant in its Islamic stand and had also convinced some conservative Malays of the sins practised by Umno, the latter in the 1980s turned into being fanatical in its Islamic agenda. 

The Islamisation of the country started to take shape. 

Tudung suddenly appeared as part of the so-called female Islamic attire. 

Dances were no more encouraged. Life had been made to be austere. 

Islamic religious departments were expanded and new ones created like Jakim. Religion had been made to be part of the state. 

Malay-Muslim life had been regulated. 

Money and power were invested in these religious institutions and with power in hand more regulations were manufactured. Halal certificates became necessary to indicate to the Malay/Muslims as to which places they could patronise. 

This was simply to exhibit the power that these institutions had. 

The Umno government became victim to the whims of PAS and there was no need for PAS to govern the country as Umno was implementing its agenda. 

The Malay culture was termed to be deviant to Islamic values and the Arabic culture started to seep in. There were no more “selamat pagi” or “selamat dating”. All terms must be in Arabic. 

Politicians in starting their speeches would rattle off in Arabic for a few minutes to show off how Islamic they were before coming to what they wanted to deliver. The same would be in ending their speeches. 

The Malay-Muslim in the country became obsessed with rituals and other humanistic aspects of religion were discarded. Thus they became arrogant and aggressive in displaying their Muslim-hood. 

This is nothing but mere hypocrisy.  

Religion should be personal. The state should have no say in regulating Malay-Muslim life. 

What each individual does, drinks, eats and wears is up to each individual to choose as long as there exists no criminal element. 

The state must divorce itself from religion. 

The country must go back to be secular and let religion be the choice of individuals. 

There should be only one legal system and to have two running in the country has caused confusion where even the learned cannot distinguish between consent, conversion and conscience. – February 13, 2016

. * Ahmad Mustapha Hassan was press secretary to Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, the second prime minister. * This is the personal opinion of the writer.

My comments :  I dont want to use Islamisation. I am a Muslim. I believe in Islam. What is being discussed above is not Islam.  

It is an arabisation plus a "kampong"-isation of religion by ostards or priests of religion most of whom were kampong boys with little or no exposure to modernisation, modern thoughts or cosmopolitan life styles. And these boys have now grown up to be in positions of power and influence.  

They grew up in their villages, kampongs and little towns (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, etc)  usually in poverty and in all sorts of socio-economic shortcomings and depravity around them.  And they lived in Muslim majority societies which have become failed. If their countries are not failed states  their communities or societies were failed communities.

They cannot compete or progress like their non Muslim neighbours. Religion plays a huge and outsized role in their daily lives. The bad news is their religious beliefs are mostly fake. Fake religious beliefs do not work. That is how we know they are fake. They do not work.  Their religion also prevents them from competing with the rest of the world (which is usually non Muslim.)

Fake religion also creates almost zero moral values. So their societies become corrupt. And then they say its ok. Surveys (in Malaysia) indicate that there is less resistance to corruption as a religious wrong. Its ok. So when the leaders became corrupt the religious priests and the religious parties did not make much noise. In fact the religious priests also took part of the corruption monies. But the people still supported the corrupt religious priests.  They have no good moral values.

Religion must be taken out of the public sphere. 

Religion must be taken out of the State.

Whoever wants religion, true or fake, must go and find it on their own.

Then keep your religion inside your pants.

And then keep your pants zipped up.

Do not show your religion to others.