When seeking help, one hinders
Religious tensions haven’t risen in Malaysia. If anything the episode reinforces the view that ordinary Malaysians are aware of the designs of fringe elements with malevolent intent, and are declining to play along. This must be a source of great frustration to some.
By Terence Netto, Free Malaysia Today
The February 19-21 weekend edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal carried an editorial on Malaysia under the heading ‘Faith and Punishment in Malaysia’.
It decried the trend towards syariah punishments after Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s announcement that three women and four men were caned for premarital sex on Feb 9.
This may seem tendentious but two claims made in the column reflect the misperceptions that beset western takes on Islam in this part of the world.
One was that religious tensions in Malaysia have risen because of disputes over Malaysian Christians’ use of the term ‘Allah’ for God, leading to incidents of church burnings and mosque desecrations.
Evidence suggests there has been no decrease in church attendance as a result of the arson against Christian places of worship, following a court decision in late December to allow the Catholic weekly, Herald, to use the term in their Malay language edition. Likewise mosque attendance after the desecrations.
Also, there has been no visible lessening in interaction – albeit there is not very much – that takes place between Muslims and Christians in their daily lives. People unconcernedly went about their lives.
Two months after these potentially inflammatory incidents began, a not always healthy debate on the issue continues in newspaper columns and on the internet, but there is no evidence – of a tendency even – to violence among disputants.
Religious tensions haven’t risen in Malaysia. If anything the episode reinforces the view that ordinary Malaysians are aware of the designs of fringe elements with malevolent intent, and are declining to play along. This must be a source of great frustration to some.
Consider a parallel situation in the not too distant past. In October 1990, in the immediate prelude to the 8th General Election, a surge for the opposition stalled on the strength of the ruling Umno-led coalition’s exploitation of the ‘headgear’ issue.
This concerned the welcoming ceremonial headgear foisted on the putative leader of the opposition coalition by a Sabah power broker whose party had bolted the Barisan Nasional at the 11th hour, leaving the ruling coalition in peril of losing its two-thirds parliamentary majority.
The Umno-controlled mainstream media, in the days when the internet was just a rumour, cynically exploited a cross-seeming symbol on the headgear as proof of the opposition leader’s acquiescence in a Christian plan to dominate Sabah.
Actually, the symbol had more to do with agriculture than with religion.
The ruling coalition retained its two-thirds majority. Needless to say, a repeat of this sort of cynicism in an internet-savvy age is certain not to succeed.
However, there is no guarantee that in an information-sped era, unnuanced perceptions of reality will not flourish.
