“You Are Not Qualified To Talk About My Religion”

How to Respond to Attempts to Close the Public Domain – Part 2

 By Farish A. Noor

If I were to tell someone that I don’t like Satay, loathe batik shirts and can’t stand keroncong music, does it follow from that that I hate Malay culture in toto? Now one would have to be deliberately and consciously paralysingly stupid to believe that, by assuming that the rejection of some aspects of normative culture amounts to a total rejection of an entire culture as well. If that is the case with culture, then why cant we see that the same rule applies to talk of religion as well?

I raise this point because it has become ever so trendy in Malaysia these days to assume that any rejection, critical questioning or even debate over some normative aspects of religious epiphenomena amounts to a total rejection of the religion per se. This arises because of the unscrupulous manner in which some religiously-conservative individuals have erroneously equated the normative aspect of religiosity with the dogmatic aspect of religion in general. The two spheres, however, are distinct and should remain so.

This explains in part why groups such as Malaysia’s Sisters in Islam have been in the limelight for so many years, and why this group of Muslim feminists have been attacked again and again, and accused of being anti-Islamic. The fact however is that Sisters in Islam (SIS) has never raised any questions or doubts about Islamic orthodoxy, but rather have questioned the application of Islamic law and the praxis of Muslim norms in the country that go against the spirit of Islamic orthodoxy itself.

 

Now we are faced with several questions that include: Do lay Muslims and non-Muslims have the right to speak, debate and question Muslim religio-cultural praxis? Does the questioning of religio-cultural praxis amount to a criticism of religion in general? And can one even comment on the religio-cultural praxis of other faith communities?

Let me try to address these questions by way of an analogy or two:

Not too long ago during the bad ol’ days of Apartheid we will remember that the practice of racial discrimination in South Africa was justified on both political as well as religious grounds. Conservative Christian fundamentalists sought religious justification for the practice of racial discrimination by selectively quoting Biblical scripture and the old Testament to find sources that would explain, rationalise and justify racial differences. This reminds us of the point argued by the scholar Ebrahim Moosa who once noted that ‘the danger with religious elites is that they can make religious texts say whatever they want because they have read them and know how to manipulate them.’

Likewise in North America there still remain Christian fundamentalist sects that equally fall back on religious scripture to justify their perceptions and understanding of racial difference. For some of these fundamentalists, Africans are not even human beings and classified as sub-human, according to old Testament accounts of the African race.

Now in both these instances we see the practice of discursive manipulation at its most blatant and abusive. The scripture of the Bible is taken out of context, selectively appropriated to justify everything from Apartheid to racial profiling. Is this a Christian virtue? Can we say that this is the kernel of Christian humanism and universalism? Obviously not.

Anyone with even the most shallow understanding of Christian scripture will tell you that such abuse of religious scripture is political in nature, and reveals the truly rotten state of Apartheid and religiously-inspired racist politics. I do not have to be a practicing Christian to see that, and I certainly do not have to be a Christian to point that out. Does a critical rejection of such skewered religiously-inspired racist politics amount to an attack or rejection of Christianity? Certainly not. Nobody is arguing about Christian orthodoxy here, but rather the socio-religious and political praxis of Christians in their daily lives.

Read more at: “You Are Not Qualified To Talk About My Religion”: How to Respond to Attempts to Close the Public Domain- Part 2