How the War in Gaza has doomed KK Mart

When one falls in status, one of the things that happens is that one will become very sensitive towards even the smallest slight. The smallest scorn can trigger such great grievance in oneself, that one might even persuade oneself to retaliate disproportionately towards the slight.

Nehru Sathiamoorthy

Recently, I read an article in Focus Malaysia titled “ Of Buddha underwear and unshrouding core values that lie at the heart of religions” , which compared the KK Mart Allah socks issue with that of the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan or the printing of “Cool Sacred Heart of Jesus Underwear”, before alluding that the responses of the Buddhist and the Christians were more restrained on the cases of desecration of their religious symbols, likely  because the Christians and the Buddhist are more serious about holding on to their religious tenets, and  thus are more forgiving, kind and compassionate.

This got me thinking.

I think this article makes a common mistake that a lot of people make, in that it is linking the theories and practises of a religion with the negative behaviour of its adherents, when their behaviour is likely more an outcome of their identification with their religion more than it is the theories and practises behind the religion.

You see, a religion, be it Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, is a multivariate entity. It can be seen either as a philosophy, a knowledge system, a historical perspective, a practice, a nation, a community or an identity, depending upon your point of view.

It is perfectly possible, for example, for a person to feel like a Buddhist or a Christian or a Muslim, with next to no idea about its theories and practises, simply because they identify with it as a matter of identity.

As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to say that the vast majority of a person with a religion, only has a very basic idea about their religion’s theories and practises, and chiefly feel tied to their religion on the basis of identity.

Every identity, including religious identity, has identity markers. As long as you recognise and uphold these identity markers, you will be able to link yourself with the religious identity, even if you know next to nothing about it.

When you are tied to your religious group on the basis of identity, what this means is that you have merged your self-identity with the identity of your religious group. When you have done this, you will not become wiser or more adept at understanding and performing your religious ideas and practises. Instead, all that will happen is that you will become able to experience the experiences of your religious group vicariously, in that if they triumph, you will feel like you triumphed, and if they are insulted, you will likely take the insult personally as well.

In many ways, the way people identify with their religion is quite similar to the way that a person identifies with a football club. A football jersey is an example of an identity marker. Just like how a football fan who puts on the football jersey of a football club, will be able to experience the triumph and disappointment of a football club, a person who embraces the identity marker of a religion – be it by wearing such a thing as  cross or a kippa or by upholding certain beliefs, like the sanctity of certain places or holy days  – will also be able to experience the triumph and experience of a religious group .

As a philosophy, religions have certain theories from which they develop their practices. Amongst the Muslims and the Jews for example, the theory of one God is preeminent. Buddhist have their theories about suffering and the way leading out of suffering. Christianity’s central tenet revolves around the idea that Jesus is a saviour. Based on these theories, a religion tends to develop a practice, or a way of life, for their adherents to follow.

The theories and practises of a religion, however, is almost never the underlying reason behind the conflict between any religious groups, whether internally or externally.

The reason why religious groups tend to be in conflict, either with itself or any other religious group, tends to be almost exclusively because of identity issues that it might be experiencing.

Our identity is basically our sense of self. Just like how an individual has a sense of self, a group, be it a religious group or a racial group or a nation, tends to also have a sense of self.

Different groups, just like different individuals, tend to have a different sense of self. There are many factors that influence our sense of self, but one the most important factor is  social status.

Our sense of self tends to change according to the changes in our status. When our social status is low, for example, we might be forgiving, humble, hopeful, self-pitying, meek, ingratiating and timid.

When our status is high, on the other hand, we might be open minded, magnanimous, unforgiving, proud, confident, self-assured, demanding, uncompromising and daring.

When our status rises, as in if  we go from a low status to a high status, we will likely keep many of our positive qualities, while discarding many of our negative qualities, in order to facilitate our rise. In other words, as we rise, we might still be forgiving, humble and hopeful, but we might discard our tendency to pity ourselves, be ingratiating or behave timidly. Instead, we might start to develop qualities of self-assurance and behave more boldly in standing up for our conviction.

Conversely, when our status falls, we might discard many of our positive qualities, while reinforcing many of our negative qualities, to prevent us from falling further. When a person who used to be the boss or at the top, falls in status, for example, they might become more desperate, petty, small minded, vindictive and sensitive, while at the same time become even more daring, demanding or proud, in an effort to retain their existing sense of self.

Just as an individual’s sense of self tends to change with the changes in their status, a group, including a religious group, will also change its sense of self as its status changes.

Christians today, for example, might be ok with an image of “Cool Sacred Heart of Jesus Underwear” which has a picture of Jesus Christ prominently printed on the crotch area of the brief, but they would have murdered anyone who dared to do such a thing during the Middle Ages.

This is because Christianity today has resigned itself to the state of its decline, after declining for centuries. In the Middle Ages however, when it was just entering a period of decline, you can bet your last ringgit that it would not only have not accepted its state of decline, it might be willing to die and kill in order to prevent it from falling further into a state of decline, and rise again to its old position.

After toppling ancient Rome and usurping its powers around the fourth century, the Christian world was expanding rapidly and ruling gloriously for around 700 years, until the schism between Rome and Constantinople broke Christianity into two around the 11th century. To add to their woes, the Muslims, who began to rise around the 7^th century , were also gaining grounds to the point that they were able to take over many of the Christian’s domains, including such domains that the Christians held dear, like Jerusalem and Constantinople.

In reaction to their decline in status, the Christians in the Middle Ages became very disturbed and agitated. They launched repeated crusades against the Muslims, for example, to restore their declining status. During these periods of decline, the Christians were not only acting very aggressively against other identity groups like the Muslims and the Jews, they were also acting very aggressively against their own people.

In Europe, for example, the Christian church had established such agencies as the Inquisition, to suppress heresy and apostasy amongst its members. In many places, the inquisition was infamous for using brutal tactics like torture to achieve its aims.

The loss of status that the Christians suffered during those times also induced them to such horrors like witch burning, where they would burn non-conforming and eccentric women alive , often for nothing more than a trivial case of non-compliance against the instruction of the church.

The Jews also suffered horribly during the Middle Ages. As the Christian’s status fell, they would become so paranoid as to blame the Jews, who were the most prominent minority group amidst, for committing such acts as the blood libel, or the act of killing Christians, especially Christian children, in order to perform religious rituals.

When one falls in status, one of the things that happens is that one will become very sensitive towards even the smallest slight. The smallest scorn can trigger such great grievance in oneself, that one might even persuade oneself to retaliate disproportionately towards the slight. In an effort to explain ones fall, one will likely come up with all sorts of paranoid ideas, like how the Jews are taking the blood of your children to perform religious rituals to bring about your downfall or how eccentric women with brooms and cats are witches sent by the devil to ruin you through witchcraft.

Minorities suffering or being blamed is actually a common phenomenon at a time when a dominant identity group suffers from a decline in status. Cases of its occurrence are rampant in the pages of history. It is not only the Christians that persecuted the Jews when they fell in status, by the way. The Romans were throwing Christians to the lions when they were in a state of decline as well.

Today, we can see the same phenomenon in the US and the western world too, for example. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US and the west became the undisputed leader of the world. During this time, the US and the west were very magnanimous, open minded, generous, forgiving and inclusive towards the rest of the world. They were very sure of their place in their world, and they embraced everybody in the world, even their old foes like China, due to their confidence and assurance in regards to their special and lofty  place in the world.

However, lately, the US’s status as the leader of the world is in decline. In tandem with its decline, it is now blaming everybody from China to Russia to the Muslims to the immigrants, as it grapples to explain the reason behind its decline.

Anyway, my point in this long-winded piece is this – the KK Mart socks fiasco likely has more to do with the declining status of the Islamic world than it has to do with the theories and practises of Islam.

The status of the Islamic world has been undergoing  a period of decline for a few centuries now, but certain events, like the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the war in Gaza today, is likely making the Muslims, not only in Malaysia, but all over the world, more acutely aware of their state of decline.

From around the time that Christian world went into decline up to the point that the western colonial power rose, the Islamic world was the most powerful grouping in the world. Starting in Arabia in the early 7^th century, it rose to rule most of the known world around the 16^th or 17^th century. A series of great Islamic empires and dynasties, be it the Abbasids, Mughals, Ottomans and even the Malacca Sultanate in our region, ruled a big portion of Africa, the Middle east, the Indian Subcontinent, central Asia and the Nusantara portion of Southeast Asia. They dominated global trade and were the most technologically advanced as well as affluent group in the world until around the 16th or 17th century.

While the Muslim world began to decline with the rise of the western colonial powers, it was not until the fall of the Ottoman empire in the early 20^th century followed by the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 that the Muslim world  would realise the seriousness of its  state of decline.

Despite the efforts of some Islamic nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to reverse the trend, the war in Gaza  today might be making the Muslim world become more painfully aware about the serious nature of their state of decline.

One of the earliest signs that the Muslims were given to rise was the conquest of Jerusalem by Caliph Omar in the 7^th century. Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, The Muslims have been having an increasingly difficult time to maintain their control of Jerusalem, but the war in Gaza is opening up the possibility that they might be totally losing control of Jerusalem in the near future.

That they might be losing control of a very important territory, is making the Muslims not only in Malaysia, but worldwide, become very conscious of their loss of status.

If you want to know how an identity group will react when it is faced with a loss of status, all you have to do is study history.

Civilisations have always risen and fallen throughout history. They all will more or less behave in the same way as they rise or fall.

This is perhaps why the historian George Santayana has once remarked that “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”

When the Christian world was declining in the Middle Ages, what it did was punish its own recalcitrant members for heresy and apostasy, launch crusades against those contending for its status and persecute minority groups like Jews and eccentric women in order to stem its decline.

When despite taking such actions, it still lost its status to the Muslim world, it then entered a period of reformation where it changed its identity in order to cope with its new reality.

When the Christian world entered into a period or reformation, what came out of it was secularism and the creation of nation states in Europe, whereby instead of identifying with a centralised religious denomination centred in the Vatican, the Europeans transferred their religious identity to their nation instead.

This transformation of identity not only brought about an era of nation states in Europe, it also brought about a period of competition amongst the nation states that emerged in Europe, which would in turn give rise to the age of western colonisation, that brought about the decline of the Muslims World, which had brought about the decline of the christian world before that.

As they say, the world is round. Everything that goes around, comes around in the end.

So, what does all of this mean for KK Mart?

Well, I think the owners of KK mart just need to resign themselves to the fact that timing plays a part in everything in life. 2024 is  not going to be a good time for them. Forces beyond their ken are likely working against them. Global historical forces, the tides of history and the political demands of our multiracial  country, have all conspired to put them in a very difficult place.

When such is their outlook, it is doubtful as to whether they will be able to come out of their predicament without at least being battered, if they manage to come out of their predicament at all.