Tag: morality

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On Religious Men

For most of those in my generation, we grew up amidst a time of great change. Our parents were a guinea pig generation: young men and women who were wrenched out of their villages and kampungs, thrown up into schools and universities far away from their origins, and then told to keep their heads down and rebuild a young nation, still reeling from the ashes of racial unrest.

This social upheaval, this march towards the utopia of development, wreaked a heavy cost on those who had to live through it, and I think it is not unfair to say that for many young Malaysians living through this period, many of them suffered through their own individual crises of faith. For some, the white heat of science and technology was so searing that faith was no longer something to be indulged in. For many others, the frightening pace of change meant that religion was not only a custom to remain loyal to, but a safe harbour for the mind and the soul.

My own version of living through this period of great social change was that I was sent to religious school in the mornings, prior to attending government school in the afternoons. A middle-aged ustaz, white turban ever-present, would be holding his thin sliver of rotan and teaching us to recite the Quran, and while the rotan mostly never did anything more than thwack down onto the Quran that we held in front of us when we missed a step, the threat of it was always heart-stopping. We learnt everything by rote: the letters of the abjad. The short verses of the juz amma. The fundamentals of Sunni theology: the pillars of the Faith, the pillars of Islam, the twenty attributes of God.

Like many of us then, I was taught to give due deference to the ustaz and ustazah. The implicit principle was that religious education was also supposed to purify you, to give you a moral grounding in what it means to be a good Muslim and a good human being.

Now, as I am older, I think this assumption around the morality of religious preachers is fraying. Although the phenomenon of using religion as a means of waging politics is not new, it is telling that the Malay language now has a phrase for it – “penunggang agama“. And we can see the penunggangan taking place across the spectrum of contemporary Malay society: using religion to sell TV entertainment, using religion to sell tudung and telekung, using religion to sell bottled water. Religious preachers being arrested for lewd behaviour, for social abuse, for rape.

When I survey this sordid state of affairs in the religious life of the country that I live in, I am reminded again of that hadith narrated by Imam Malik in his classic work, Al Muwatta’: “I have been sent to perfect good character.” The implication here is that all your ritual, all your praying and almsgiving and Haj-going would be for naught, if at the end of it all, your personality and character remains untouched by His Message.

And it is this principle that has guided my interaction with others, especially with religious men and women. I try my best to read their character, searching through the tone of voice, the timbre and weight of words said, the nod of the head and the flick of the hand. How the words match against what is done.

Of course, for many of us, it is easier to just keep to a more basic heuristic: kalau pakai jubah or serban, mesti lah alim kan? And the next step: kalau alim, mestilah baik kan? But our experience surely must teach us now, that we need to look beyond the superficial. And the ultimate test of goodness, of morality, must surely be that your character reflects the dignity of your soul and the depth of your learning.

Harder to do, yes, but surely necessary in these troubled times!

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On Wokeness and Privilege

There is a lot of talk now, not just about wokeness, but also about a so-called anti-woke movement – a counter-revolution.

For my part, I try as hard as I can to listen – really *listen* – not just to what people are saying, but also to what I am feeling as these things are being said.

For one, I think it is important to understand the motives underlying – and the emotions flowing through – these conversations. In many instances, of course, the recent rise of “wokeness” is a legitimate uprising against injustice and oppression. Indeed, it is part of a long-running moral arc of struggle – for the right of the slave to be free, for the right of the woman to vote, for the right of the poor to live dignified lives.

At the same time, I also recognise that as a straight Muslim Malay male, I am part of the dominant narrative in the land where I live. Many of the institutions and incentives are kindly predisposed (if not outrightly rigged!) – if not in my outright favour, then at the very least in the favour of those who look like me, who sound like me, who have names like mine.

It is too easy, I think, to simply dismiss “wokeness” – and the often-frustrating polemics that have arisen in the wake of its ascendance. Much of it can be grating, ingenuous, or even plain outrageous. But I think “wokeness” is, or should be, something that speaks to the core of what it means to live a moral life: to be just in our dealings with others, to treat others with dignity and respect, to do unto others as we would like others to do unto us.

One of the most gratifying aspects of my faith, for me, is that Islam was born in the deepest reaches of the desert, and that the message resonated most, in its earliest days, with the enslaved, the poor, the marginalised, the downtrodden, the oppressed. Muhammad did not pander to the rich, and indeed he refused riches when it was offered to him by the great and the good of Makkah, if only he would shut up on all that God business.

And Muhammad taught us that everyone had access to Him through His Scripture: there was no need for a Church or a Rabbinate to intercede or to mediate on behalf of the believers. Salvation was offered to anyone and everyone, and we will all be judged on the content of our character and the good works that we do on this Earth.

So whenever I get annoyed at reading something that someone had written or said, I try to remind myself that “wokeness” is, at the heart of it, a plea for justice. Yes, there will be those who try to profit from “wokeness” – either from what they stand to gain from through what is demanded, or merely from the satisfaction of being up on the moral high horse of performativeness. But we still have a duty to enact and perform justice by ourselves, in the acts that we do in our own small circle of existence.

That is all that anyone can truly ask for.