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On one hand, you have the ’Towering Malay’, the ‘Cemerlang, Gemilang Terbilang Malay’, the ‘Glokal Malay’ and the thousand other brands of Malay. On the other, you have the type of Malay who’s afraid to read the bible in case he loses faith in Islam. Contradiction? I think so
Reading the Christian Federation of Malaysia’s (CFM) call to rescind the ban on bibles in Bahasa Melayu, we find a good opportunity for the Prime Minister to finally show some resolve. He has after all, stated his wish to see the racial and religious tensions in our country cooled down. A good way to do this would be to make not only the Bible, but other religious texts like the Gita and Sutras available in Malay as well. Not that it matters much because these texts are also in English which all Malays would know to a degree anyway, but it would be a gesture of goodwill at least.
Sadly, in our country, we need to protect the Malays from the world. We Malays are treated as if our Islamic faith is so fragile that the second we read about any other religion, we would all abandon it and embrace that religion. We should be deeply insulted by this assumption and say so to the government. Moreover, we should also be aware of the offense this would cause to our fellow Malaysians not of the Islamic faith. After all, this ban is implicitly saying that what they consider holy is simply corrupting. While Muslims chose to be Muslims (if they did at all) rather than be any other religion, this does not entail that we derogate any other faith.
Furthermore, what does Quran say about all this? Quran does not seem to shy away from discussion at all. Rather, it talks about the study of all the philosophies available and selecting the best one (39/18). How is one to do this if one does not have access to any other philosophies? Quran itself becomes more distinct and deep when its reader continuously seeks information (41/3). Therefore if our information is curtailed, our very study of Quran is hamstrung. Lastly, we are told to call people to the path with wisdom and to debate them with most beautiful arguments (16/125). How on earth are we to do this if we’re not allowed to know what the Bible says?
Quran does not propagate this faith in fear which our government and the Islamic clergy propagate. Rather, Muslims should be brave enough to intellectually engage with all other religions and philosophies. This engagement isn’t about finding superiority. Indeed, Quran never claims to be the sole source of truth but rather a guardian over truth (5/48).
On the other hand, we have the Malaysian government which seeks to stop Muslims from engaging with anything. We are to become Muslims who live with the fear that our faith in Islam will simply shatter by reading any other text. Is our faith worth anything then, if this is the case?
Lets hope that Badawi who’s a scholar of Islam (when he’s awake) would for once in his career follow through with his resolution and really tries to cool down the racial and religious tensions in our country. As the CFM suggests, having the bible translated into Malay would help this. By reading the bible, Malays would be able to understand the primary source of Christianity which is one of the world’s great religions and civilisations. Inevitable disagreement that will follow is fine, as long as it is in peace. Farouk A. Peru
www.farouk.name
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