Can religion and politics mix-and-match? (UPDATED with Chinese Translation)

ARCHIVES 2010

By MT Webmaster On May 18, 2010

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I agree that religion and politics, to a certain degree, should be separated, but only as far as the day-to-day running of the government is concerned. Religion, however, can’t close its eyes, ears or mouth to injustice and corruption. It can and must be a critic to bad governance and injustice. It has to be the conscience to a government that has no conscience.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Religion and politics go together, Church people say

The Church must engage in politics for the benefit of society, say Church people as Malaysia readies itself for a by-election in a Christian-majority constituency.

“Religion and politics are two sides of the same coin. Here in [Eastern society], you cannot separate them,” asserted K.J. John, a Catholic writer.

The former civil servant and now an online media columnist said that, “Jesus was the first politician. Jesus intervened at a particular place and time, and that is already a political intervention.”

“What we need today is public theology, which is a Christian faith that can interact in the public arena, to speak for goodness, righteousness and truth, and to live by these,” said John.

In Malaysia, he continued, people are now recognising the role of civil society movements and the need to be involved in the governing of their community. This includes the Churches where people need to stand up and make their voices heard. Church leaders are now engaging state leaders in dialogue and vice-versa.

John was one of several Church people said recently at an event in Penang that brought together Church leaders and the head of the state government.

Anglican Bishop Ng Moon Hing, president of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, said dialogue among Churches and the government should be an ongoing exercise to understand each other.

“It should not be done merely during elections but all the time,” he said on the sidelines of a recent meeting between 380 leaders and representatives of Churches and Christian bodies in Penang and Lim Guan Eng, the Chief Minister of Penang state.

Pastor Edward Lim of Gateway City Church said common objectives of both Church and state include eradicating poverty and serving marginalized people.

Pastor Lim also suggested the various Churches unite as one body to share the blessings of God and the love of Jesus with people without any strings attached.

Christianity and politics are again coming to the forefront of national consciousness as both the ruling coalition and opposition coalition campaign head of a parliamentary by-election in Sarawak, eastern Malaysia, on May 16.

The use of the word “Allah” for God by Malay-speaking Christians threatened to become an issue during campaigning. However, police have banned all political parties from bringing up the controversy, vowing to take action under the Sedition Act or the Internal Security Act, which permits detention without trial for up to two years.

http://www.heraldmalaysia.com/

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Finally, the Church has openly said what it had been ‘whispering’ these last many years since the 1990s. Yes, we have been hearing about what the priests preach during their Sunday sermons. Thus far, however, it has been a sort of ‘closed-door’ event. Now, the Church has openly declared its stand. And that stand is: religion and politics just can’t be separated.

Muslims always argue that Islam is not a religion but a complete way of life or adeen. I agree and have never disputed that or argued against it. But what does adeen mean? I know it means a complete way of life. But how complete is complete?

Prophet Muhammad did not introduce a religion. In fact, the Prophet declared that he was not introducing a new religion but was bringing us back to the original religion of Abraham, the same foundation for Judaism and Christianity. This makes all three religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — sort of ‘sister religions’.

So what did Prophet Muhammad introduce then? He introduced a system. And this system included local government, national defence, the treasury, internal security, a judiciary, an information network, a diplomatic corps, and many more that you would see in a modern government today.

Many have reduced religion in general and Islam in particular to just a set of rituals. If that is the case then we do not need Holy Books, the Quran included. It takes only a day to teach you all the rituals. But it took Prophet Muhammad an entire generation to teach Islam to the extremely stubborn Arabs. And this is because Islam is not just about rituals — the same for all religions.

The detractors to this would argue that that might have been so 1,500 years ago. But times have changed. No longer does religion need to run the country like days gone by. Today, governments are set up differently and we have a separation of tasks and duties. The legislature does the work of formulating laws. The judiciary does the work of dispensing justice. The treasury does the work of managing the finances. The military does the work of national defence. The police does the work of internal security; and whatnot.

Agreed! Nations, today, are too large compared to those of 1,500 or 2,000 years ago. One ‘unit’ can no longer run the entire nation. We have many units performing various tasks. We can no longer have the synagogue, church, mosque or temple managing everything like in the days when communities comprised of merely a collection of a few wooden huts. But this does not mean that the synagogues, churches, mosques or temples have lost their right to at least comment on political or elected leaders having to uphold and practice justice, fair play and good governance.

The religious leaders do still have a role to play in government. Their role is of course not to run the government. We have an elected government to do that job. But they have to still play the role of being the conscience of the government. They need to remind the political leaders about their duties and responsibilities to the people who elected them into office. And the synagogue, church, mosque or temple cannot shirk this role.

If the Church had dared speak out in Nazi Germany then the Holocaust might not have happened. But the Church chose to remain silent. Agreed, some church people, on their own initiative, did do something and the result of that was some Jews were spared death. But it was a ‘private enterprise’ by some priests who had a conscience and who felt they needed to do something in the name of humanity. The Church, however, did not take an official stand or condemn this crime against humanity.

Did the religious leaders and scholars condemn Saddam Hussein’s ethnic cleansing in Iraq, or the ‘western-influence-cleansing’ in Iran soon after the 1979 ‘Islamic’ Revolution? In fact, in Iran, the religious people played a very prominent role in the ‘western-influence-cleansing’ and those perceived as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ suffered the ‘Inquisition’. So, instead of propagating human rights, religion became an instrument to a violation of human rights.

I repeat, I am not propagating that Malaysia becomes a theological state, whether Islamic State or whatever. I am saying that the ‘members of the cloth’ must speak out against injustice, corruption, abuse of power, racism, discrimination, wastage of public funds and extravagance, fraudulent elections, draconian laws, and much more. All religions are opposed to these transgressions and violations. So all religious people must also oppose them.

That is the role of religion in government. It becomes the conscience of the political leaders when these political leaders lose their conscience. Then, maybe, religious people would no longer be seen as hypocrites like how most people currently see them.

Translated into Chinese at: http://weichet.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post_21.html