Give me the Nay – Kahlil Gibran
Art Harun
I have always observed that to most of us, being religious is more important than embracing the spiritual aspect of our faith. Being religious after all only entails ritualistic observance of whatever is decreed by our faith.
And so, the Muslims fast and we pray and we pay zakat. And the Christians would go to the church on Sundays and wear a necklace with a cross pendant. The Hindus would swim in Ganges river and break coconuts in the morning before going to work. And so on and so forth.
What our faith brings us is the least of our concern. What our ritualistic observance turns us into does not matter. As long as we perform the rituals religiously, we are after all, religious. And God asks us to be religious.
Or does He?
I have always related this story to my friends. And I am going to tell it here. And let me preface it with a statement. I am not telling this story to insult or to belittle Christianity or Christians.
I used to live near one of the most active churches – if not THE most active and wealthy – in Kuala Lumpur. I have no qualm with that. That church was very active. They organised speeches and sermons almost every other night. The church goers were known to donate up to 15% of their monthly income to that church. And every time they did that, the place would be full of cars, parked everywhere.
Many drivers of the cars would try and make a 3 point turn in front of my house. That was okay by me. But out of 10, 1 or 2 would invariably knock on my gate. Of course it was unintentional. My gate lock would be bent. I had to repair that lock many times. And then the next week it would happen again.
In all the 6 years I was there, this happened many many times. However, there wasn’t a single person who had stopped to ring my bell to say sorry. Nor anyone who left a note to say so. It was a small matter to me. And it was not a big deal to me.
But the thing that bothered me was this. It would appear that all the nightly sermons and speeches and all the monthly donations had done nothing to improve common courtesy among all those who had knocked my gate. And sometimes I pondered have we all ever thought what all this religiosity had done to us? Has it made us any better?
And now, at the current moment in this country, we have people who shout and scream about jihad this and jihad that. About caning a woman. About shutting up people who dare to question. About throwing the Sedition Act against some parties who are just raising awareness. What has happened to all of us? To our faith? Is our faith just about ritualistic observance of some rules and regulations?
