How and when to play the religious card in politics

How and when to play the religious card in politics



We have yet another controversy regarding what some religious experts think Muslims should or shouldn’t do.

This time it’s about a seemingly obscure Japanese festival called Bon Odori that’s been celebrated in Japan for centuries, and for at least three decades in Malaysia.

How obscure is it? I have two daughters who graduated from Japanese universities after living there for six years, and I haven’t heard them ever mention anything about it.


Of course, it may have just been me, often clueless about what’s going on with young people, but still.

The Sisters in Islam (SIS) group, among others, has chimed in on what they see as yet another overreach by the religious authorities. As always, they bring strong, clear logic and erudite arguments to support their view, which must be very infuriating to their opponents.

SIS used the well-worn “overreach” argument template, which they dusted off the shelves, changed a few words here and there, and published it as another ringing condemnation of their brothers in Islam.

Mind you, there was support for the brothers, too. I heard of a particular defence about how the non-Muslims are disrespecting Islam by questioning the federal minister who first brought up the matter.

Ah, the “disrespect” gambit – we’ve heard it before, many times too. The brothers, too, have a “disrespect” argument template that they pick off the shelves and use whenever the need arises, which apparently is quite often.

This “disrespect” defence says disagreeing with an Islamic religious leader (especially a duly appointed Cabinet minister) is the same as disrespecting Islam.

This obviously presumes a Cabinet appointment automatically elevates said appointee into an official “Islam” representative.

Funny thing, in Indonesia the religious affairs minister is in charge of the affairs of all religions in the country, not just Islam. That is what administrators in Islamic countries are supposed to do, based on old stories of previous Islamic civilisations, but perhaps that memo never reached Malaysia.

Presumably Islam here refers to the entirety of Islam on God’s earth, and not just the Malaysian part of it and presumably, all Muslims, from Islamabad to Istanbul, from Turkey to Tunisia, and any points in between, are equally offended.

Let’s just say we accept that questioning a federal minister about Islam amounts to disrespecting Islam. This brings up a conundrum: the Sultan of Selangor, the official head of Islam in that state, has an opposing view! He’s actually suggesting people attend the celebrations, including the said minister himself.

So here we are, back to where we often find ourselves, amid two versions of Islam, both expounded by powerful and influential leaders of the religion, but each in opposition to the other.

I will stay out of this debate. I’m just a humble scribe uncertain whether I’m a federalist and a republican (the federal minister is right!) or a statist and royalist (the Sultan is right!).

Of a more interesting point is this ongoing issue of how the Malay-Muslims of Malaysia are apparently being continually “disrespected” – which is nothing more than the usual insecurities many Malay-Muslims suffer from. Their faith is so fragile even the smallest of things – from saying Merry Christmas to now celebrating Bon Odori – is a scarily easy way to break it.

But who can blame them, after continually being told they’re weak and easily confused? The irony is that being told this must be the vilest form of disrespect of the Malay-Muslim community ever, and yet it is being perpetrated by the religious ruling class themselves, and goes unpunished.

This is what’s called projection, where someone’s own fears and insecurity is projected on another, and then make a big noise about how they’ve discovered conspiracies and deceit by powerful hidden enemies.

In reality, it is the leaders themselves who are incredibly confused and have fragile, frail faith, but project it on others instead. They’re the ones who should be ashamed for disrespecting Islam by calling Muslims confused.

In Malaysia nowadays, the name of the game is to keep the Malay-Muslim population always confused by reminding them of it, and always delirious with a siege mentality that says there’s yet another attempt by yet another unnamed dark force out to get them.

The fact that in most Muslims countries many such issues are literally non-issues (who can use the word Allah? Not an issue in Indonesia, or the Middle East) shows how scared our people have become. We hear that Islam in Malaysia follows the Wahabi traditions, when in reality we’ve created our very own Malay-Muslim Islamic traditions.

On a separate note, another of our religious leaders chimed in to say the money earned by a now-retired senior civil servant implicated in a court case, who earned it by doing nothing, is not halal, and should be returned to the people, from whose pockets it came.

I certainly applaud that. It’s a refreshing change from the usual halal-haram debates, which mostly are about certificates and traces of DNA in products, or occasionally massive corruption that cheated the ummah into consuming non-halal food, and of course which goes unpunished.



While the concepts of halal and haram are really important in Islam, they are often used in Malaysia as just a cover for Malay vs non-Malay racism. Nobody ever questions whether the “ang pows” from corrupt politicians are halal or haram, which is funny, given that we know where most of the money comes from.

The retired civil servant, having admitted in court to being paid for doing nothing, is now morally obligated to redress the issue. Would he do it? Doubt it. He’d probably adopt the “Apa Malu Bossku” defence, hang tight, do a pilgrimage and repent, and wait for this scandal to blow over.

But while I salute this religious leader, I must also ask, why now? Why not much earlier when the number of cases of such non-halal instances was mountainous, and proven, including through court cases and convictions?

If religious leaders had raised hell about these cases too (pun intended), think of the billions that would have been returned to the public coffers. And we would be spared from watching corrupt and convicted politicians parading around shamelessly.

Perhaps because the people involved were, and many still are, powerful people, nobody dared to make any noise. Given that these people are also the same “defenders” of Islam even while they stole money to last for their seven generations, perhaps that’s why they get a free pass.

Such are the heroes of Islam nowadays, often scared out of their wits by shadows, and often highly calculative about when and where to stick their neck out, but certainly not slow to project their fears and insecurities to others.

Anyway, this matter is now so common that I’m certain another similar controversy will erupt within weeks. Then the brothers in Islam will bring out their old familiar template (“Disrespectful”), whilst the Sisters in Islam would bring out theirs (“Overreach”).

I, too, will dust off my own templates about “insecurities” and keep the population “delirious” as a means to control them.

And a fun time would be had by all.