It’s embarrassing how we shamelessly exploit religion

 

If you have seen a Malay woman, or a few of them, carelessly crossing a street (as Malaysians often do) and suddenly realising their peril, you would notice a lot of nervous giggles, the women more concerned about being noticed in that embarrassing situation than about being in any danger.

That’s a shame, to fixate on ensuring that “dignity” is maintained under all circumstances. To such people, to scamper across the road to save your life would be undignified, and hence a no no.

Some people would rather die than be undignified.

There’s a saying in Malay about a cockerel crowing loudly and proudly, while dragging his tail in the muck – showing there is no lack of self-awareness in Malay culture on the matter of shame.

You often hear politicians blasting their opponents for doing something that shames us in the eyes of the world, usually over something against our moral code, perhaps some LGBT stuff or other things that apparently make the world laugh at us.

Truly shameful

Well, in almost all these instances, the world doesn’t really care. But we easily gloss over and ignore what should really shame us, such as some Guinness Record-level corruption by our political and business leaders.

Do we Malays feel shame about the larceny in Malaysia? I’m sure we do, but we displace that shame by focusing, or perhaps feigning, outrage on other issues, often anything to do with race and religion.

Anything but having to face up to the brutal truth and harsh reality.

I doubt being colonised was the cause of our shame culture. It goes back longer than that. But certainly, being bossed around by multiple bunches of foreigners didn’t do our inner psyche much good.

Looking within

I think it comes from our highly stratified feudal society that insists on everybody knowing their proper place in life. It’s a rigid class system with Islam force-fitted around it. Shame happens when we lose our dignity, and hence our appointed place in society, making us, and hence society, and hence Islam, look bad.

Popular democracy still doesn’t seem natural to most Malays. The idea that one person has as much right as another is not a given to many of us, and this uneasiness is easily exploited through democracy, under the cloak of class, wealth, power and especially race and religion.

That religion can be used as a political weapon is nothing new. Look at the pharaohs of Egypt, the Holy Roman Empire, and even communism, which conveniently invented a modern-day religion to supplant the old ones, replacing one opium with a stronger, harsher opium. This is a well-trodden path indeed.

That religion may help shape people’s opinions and views is certainly not a problem, because everybody has a belief system of some sort, and using this as a guide to their life is only natural and can even be healthy.

God’s own creatures

It’s when people use religion to insist on special powers in earthly affairs that things become messy. God himself doesn’t ask for, nor did He enfranchise, any particular party to champion Him. He can’t be pleased to have a bunch of people fighting for Him as if He’s just another player in this game of earthly politics.

But it’s convenient for the many who claim to be acting on behalf of God. It gives them the best deal in life: power without accountability – or rather, without earthly accountability as demanded by pesky democracy.

They claim to be answerable only in the hereafter – a very convenient concept indeed.

By playing on the insecurity of Malays (see my earlier pieces here and here), which often manifests itself in this culture of shame, and by co-opting religion – a “sensitive” and “don’t touch” topic – many Malay political leaders have adopted two powerful but dangerous tools: a crutch, and a cudgel.

A crutch because race and religion make it easy to ignore the true causes of our issues, especially lack of economic self-sufficiency which in turn means an overwhelming need for political power to control and redistribute the nation’s wealth.

A cudgel because through race and especially religion you can treat any dissenting voices as an affront to you, and especially to God, and you’d feel justified to invoke and exercise huge emotions and powers against them.

Out of time

While all this is playing out, we are running out of time to face and fix our problems. We didn’t face it in 1990 when the first New Economic Policy was supposed to expire. Instead, we gave ourselves bigger crutches and more powerful cudgels to deal with inconvenient dissenting voices.

We didn’t face it post-1990 either, when we had plenty of opportunities to accept that we needed a serious makeover if we were to become a truly proud and respected people, one for whom our faith and fidelity to God are more important than what the constitution says about our race.

And now the chicken has come home to roost. We’re even more scared, and more ashamed of so many things around us that we become easy meat to the first loudmouth coming along who spouts race and religion to blame others for our problems.

A loudmouth who keeps us easily cowed by claiming a direct relationship with God, who claims to actually be God’s political proxy in the earthly political game, and who is only accountable – not to us fellow citizens – but apparently only to God.

It is such a shame that we still fall for this in this day and age. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.