Playing with fire

Lim Mun Fah, Sin Chew Daily

Many Malaysians had to spend the last ten days living in restlessness, fear and anxiety, as people brought up sensitive issues in the name of defending their religion.

We can’t help but ask what the ultimate objectives, universal values and significance of religious beliefs are.

I thought our religions are supposed to generate noble aspirations in us, giving us that motivating force?

I thought our religions can purge our souls and purify our society?

I thought the universal values of religions prevail over our love for our organizations, nations and races?

I thought we should respect and forgive one another, and learn to accept our differences?

Why have religions given us more negative than positive perceptions of late?

There have to be reasons for it. We have felt this way because we are still unable to accept the reality that a bride in the middle of a wedding ceremony was abruptly taken away and that the body of a deceased woman was unthinkably removed.

We couldn’t understand why a couple had to bring their proselytization matter to the court and why controversies arose from the foster right of a minor whose religion had been unknowingly altered by one of his parents.

We couldn’t even imagine that before the hudud issue in Kelantan has been put to rest, now Umno is proposing the same for Selangor.

What about the tolerance, religious freedom, consultation and mutual respect that our leaders have promised us?

By right religions should be practiced with more rationality, magnanimity, moderation and communication. They shouldn’t be rigid, haughty, unreasonable and non-negotiable.

Religions should by right dissolve all our differences, conflicts and ill-feelings. They should uphold social righteousness and promote greater harmony instead of entrenching our contradictions and creating more division and confrontation in a way that we have begun to lose the foundation for mutual trust.

By right religions should be completely severed from politics, but in our country, they are seemingly getting closer and closer, so much so that we have become confounded whether religions are meant to serve the causes of politics or the other way round.

Plurality used to be our strength, because it could enrich our cultural and religious connotations while molding a truly great nation that is both tolerant and liberal.

But things don’t also work this way. On the contrary, we have seen more and more controversies arising from our differing religious beliefs which are fast consuming our advantageous edge while destroying our social harmony.

It is our earnest plea that those in religion and politics stop playing with fire immediately, halting any act that could potentially tear our society apart, and giving us back our harmonious and tolerant society and brighter hopes for tomorrow.