by Zeffri Yusof
The Malaysian Insider
Aug 25, 2011
AUG 25 — Every time religious issues come up in public discourse for a sustained period of time, I can’t help but feel it’s all just misdirection.
No, not in any conspiracy theory-sense; more of an escapist break from the hard truths that have to be dealt with in the here and now. Not in an afterlife.
Truths like our quite severe brain-drain situation. Truths like how our lower- and middle-income families are dealing with unprecedented inflation. Truths like the US and EU economies’ impact on ours.
Too bad for us Malaysians, race and religion still hold sway and continue to polarise the majority of us. More sinisterly, it makes us take our eyes off the ball.
We are mostly guilty, myself included. It’s all too easy to be dragged into emotional reactive states when those two hot issues come up. I’m willing myself not to, but boy, it can be hard.
I may be extrapolating, but the recent Bersih 2.0 show of racial solidarity probably means it would be a few more months before that favourite bogeyman is wheeled out again by the usual suspects.
Ironically, I’m hoping it returns soon because it seems less of a powder keg than the situation we appear to be in now.
This Ramadan has been extra filled with highly-charged, religious-tinged issues. One after another, like some badly-written script: Halal, Murtad, Christian proselytisation on Muslims, the “outing” of Muslim anti-theists, even the appropriateness of inter-religious charity (I have to say that last one was the absurdist clincher for me).
How I wish that instead of paying it undeserved attention, we all collectively not rise to the bait.
Call me a jaded observer but I think we can mostly agree there are much more pressing matters to attend to than whose God or even whose interpretation is right.
I say this with trepidation because I am painfully aware of people beyond reason where this could not be further from the truth, so mired in absolutes they are.
Yet in the end, sorting that out won’t be any of us, no matter how scholarly and theologically adept any self-styled “defender of faith” might be.
Theology, it’s been said, produces nothing of functional value and that is ringing very true right now. To be constructive, we actually have to go around it. And that, in a nutshell, is my pitch.
Lest we fall deeper into the quagmire of religious intolerance (by the way; that really is all we can realistically hope for — tolerance), our cyclical, and almost predictable Islam-Christian “clashes” appear oblivious to these core observations:
One, that everything that needs to be said or could be said has in fact already been said; and most of it documented as well.
Indeed, we’ve had over 1,400 years of friendly and not-so-friendly debates and discourse and it hasn’t blunted the extreme schools of thought from either side. Ask the scholars from both divides; there is literally nothing that can be introduced now that would be new or novel, much less profoundly game-changing … short of direct and major divine intervention. It’s time we all quit thinking that examples A or B of “getting along” is going to be the ooh-aah moment for the hard-headed.
Two, that arguments rarely change minds when it comes to positions of religion, faith or belief. Why? Because it’s the wrong mental instrument to employ — pointed, factual arguments that are meant to shift opinion can only work if all parties agree on the same basis of facts (shared truths, for one).
Clearly, this can never be the case here. Different sets of truths are being upheld; and only the overlaps semi-legitimise the arguments. This is the thing — Islam or Christianity set against Buddhism or Hinduism doesn’t quite have the same “ring” now, does it?
Three, is perhaps the most crucial and also the deal breaker. The religion meme as we know it is tightly bound and wound up with emotion. But as we all also know, in any disagreement, an amicable solution cannot be found when emotions run high.
To a disinterested observer, the solution in the case of the two Abrahamic religions, whatever form it may take, has to come from outside of Islam and Christianity. But since the default position has always been to disregard “non-expert” non-denominational opinion, we are pretty much at a dead end again.
Please don’t misconstrue my position. It really isn’t predicated on anything else other than pointing out that all inter-religious engagement can unfortunately lead to only one end. The arguments are circular and non-empirical. But thankfully, tolerance does not require engagement, only distance and opportunity. We should all realise that so we can move on to the real shaping discourse — you know, the elephant in the room.