Muslims Have Human Rights too

The Malaysian Insider
Wednesday January 13 2010

JAN 13 — One thing that has become clear in recent days is how separate the various religious communities in Malaysia have come to live and how we have come to see ourselves. We have witnessed ministers talking of inter-faith dialogue as if it were something daring and revolutionary.

And the fact that Muslim ministers or MPs are visiting churches appears to be something worth remarking on, as if it were unusual that elected representatives should want to meet and seek to represent the interests of all the people for whom they are supposed to be responsible.

Like in Northern Ireland, religions have come to be mutually exclusive categories that define who we are, where we belong and where we don’t belong.

And as in Northern Ireland, just as increasingly among the secular Europeans who have suddenly become “Christian” in distinction to “those Muslims” living in their countries, religion is importantly a way of defining who we are not.

Many non-Muslim parents in Malaysia, it would appear, would rather their child married an alien from outer space than a Muslim.

It is easy in this to blame the government, who have branded us Muslim or non-Muslim as plain as anyone can see on our identity cards.

It is easy to blame the law, which turns second-generation South Asian or Indonesian Muslims into “sons of the soil” who then turn around accuse fourth- and fifth-generation non-Muslims of being interlopers or pendatang.

And it is just as easy to blame the religious fanatics who invade inter-faith meetings and colloquia on freedom of religion, or who seek to divide Selangor into Muslim and non-Muslim zones for the purpose of licensing the sale of alcohol.

What I believe this Allah episode has shown us is that we non-Muslims have also ourselves to blame if we find ourselves in a country where religious liberty has gone down the drain. The Allah episode is a major controversy in Malaysia because it affects the way a non-Muslim, Christian, group conducts its own affairs and communicates with its own members.

In reality, it is only really a big issue among non-Muslims because it has crossed the line between what we see as “our” business and what we see as “their” business.

But can we be surprised if those same governmental authorities who are used to being able imprison Muslims in “re-education centres” for months or years for not believing what they are supposed to believe, who can storm into private homes and hotel rooms demanding that brown-skinned tourists get out of bed and show them their passports and marriage certificates, and who can sentence a woman in a holiday resort to be caned for having an apéritif before dinner, now feel aggrieved that they should give an instruction on something vaguely Islam-related (namely, the word Allah) and not be entitled to immediate and unquestioning obedience?

The truth is that we are all guilty of what Pastor Niemöller spoke of when he said: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist / … then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew / Then they came for me—and there was no-one left to speak out”.

For how many non-Muslims protested when Lina Joy was told she could never leave Islam and marry her fiancé? How many non-Muslim senators and MPs spoke out against the 2005 Islamic Family Law amendment bill, which set back women’s rights in the Federal Territories, when it went through Parliament?

And how many non-Muslims objected when they learnt that the penalty for prostituting your wife in Pahang is less severe than the penalty for drinking alcohol? Every time the latest teapot-worshipping “deviationist sect” is rounded up and imprisoned, their place of worship demolished and their leaders locked up under the ISA, our silence speaks volumes for our lack of commitment to freedom of religion when it does not concern us personally.

As a warning as to the way our country may be heading, let me relate the story of the Ahmadis in Pakistan. The Ahmadis are a Muslim-revivalist community founded in the Punjab in the 19th century by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, whom Ahmadis believe to be a prophet. Although the Ahmadis, who now form 3-4% of the population of modern-day Pakistan, accept most of the tenets of Islam and consider themselves to be Muslims, other Muslims in Pakistan do not.

In 1984, General Zia, the military ruler of Pakistan, passed an ordinance prohibiting them from calling themselves Muslims or “posing as Muslims”. This means that they are not allowed to worship in Muslim mosques, to call their places of worship masjid or to use the azan, to say assalamualaikum, to quote publicly from the Qur’an, to display or proclaim the shahada, or to preach or publish any materials in public.

The courts in Pakistan have even held that the Ahmadis are guilty of “copyright infringement” and blasphemy when they use certain Islamic phrases. Ahmadis who display Quranic verses have been imprisoned, and the authorities have forcibly obliterated the shahada from the walls of Ahmadi mosques. Ahmadis are also prohibited from undertaking the hajj to Mecca. Outside the official sphere, many Ahmadis have been murdered by lynch-mobs simply because of their beliefs.

It all sounds like the Allah ban gone mad. But surely Pakistan is Pakistan and Malaysia is Malaysia? Surely this would never happen in our country?

Well, in December 2008, Selayang Municipal Council, under the control of the Selangor PR government, ordered an Ahmadi central mosque to remove the shahada from their building. There is apparently a 1975 Selangor fatwa, which you can access on the e-fatwa website, that declares Ahmadis to be non-Muslim, and states that ideally they should be killed, but as this is not currently legal (lucky for them), they should be stripped of all privileges belonging to Muslims or Malays.

In April 2009, the Selangor Islamic Religious Council, ordered an Ahmadi mosque to cease performing Friday prayers with immediate effect, threatening them with imprisonment of up to one year and a fine of RM3,000 for non-compliance. The chief culprit behind this appears to be Dr Hassan Ali of PAS. Again, the silence from other members of the Pakatan Rakyat state government is somewhat astonishing.

Certainly, Malaysians should accept that Islam is the official religion of the Federation and of the states (save I think in Sabah and Sarawak, where I believe the 20-point and 18-point agreements had something to say about the matter), but that does not mean that Malaysians should blindly accept everything that the mullahs in charge of the various state Islamic affairs councils have to say on matters of religion.

If Saudi Arabia, the model of religious intolerance, can allow Shia Muslims to practise their religion (albeit not without some discrimination), then why must Malaysia, the poster child for Muslim moderation, lock up Shia Muslims under the ISA for simply following their faith?

There is a desperate need in our country for Muslims and non-Muslims to accept that what they do does affect one another, whether because marriages break down when one spouse converts to another religion, or because widows and children are disinherited when conversions happen without the family’s knowledge, or because of the activities of places of worship affecting neighbouring residents.

For a supposedly multi-religious country, there is surprisingly little education in schools about any religion other than one’s own. Unlike in England or America, students are segregated into religious groups and learn little about what other faiths practise or believe.

Non-Muslims in particular need to learn about Islam and to engage with what over the past few decades has become one of the strongest forces moving our country; for they should understand that it is not Islam that is their enemy, but racists and bigots claiming a monopoly on religion.

“And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury): but say, “We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam)” – Sura Ankabut 46 (tr. Yusuf Ali).

Andrew Yong
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/breaking-views/49417-muslims-have-human-rights-too--andrew-yong