Martin Lings in memory
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

His most widely read book sits very conspicuously on the shelves of many a muslim home – its bright blue jacket against which are the white lettering of its title Muhammad : His life based on the Earliest Sources. When news of his passing circulated in cyberspace recently, I learnt that Martin Lings’ biography of the Prophet of Islam has touched the lives of quite a number of friends, whose frank admissions rode on the eulogy by a muslim from North America grateful that his life has been equally transformed.

The biography by Lings combines light scholarship and factual accuracy with what muslims traditionally expect of a narration of the Prophet’s life – a degree of respect and reverence for his person. He does away with extensive bibliography and footnotes despite what the title suggests (based on his earliest sources), not for want of scholarship, for Martin Lings is more than capable of that, given his mastery of Arabic and for many years he was keeper of Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum and later the British Library. Instead he retells the familiar events of the Prophet’s life in a narrative that is refreshingly simple but in such a beautiful language that the his humanity shone through. Many readers must have had teary-eyed moments when reading some of the passages that recounted the hardship and tribulations of his early Mecca years. Lings has filled a void for those western-educated muslims wishing to have a fresh start at understanding Muhammad, God’s last messenger but who was also a loving husband and father, a loyal companion, a leader of his community, respected adversary and many more. Otherwise one would have to wade through Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Ishaq’s voluminous Life of Muhammad convoluted text and style.

When his biography of Prophet first appeared, I had not expected it to be a straightforward, traditional narration of his life, having read his earlier books A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century – Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy (1961) and the 2 smaller books, What is Sufism (1975) and Ancient beliefs and Modern Superstitions (1965), and also his introduction to Titus Burckhardt’s Letters of a Sufi Master the Shaykh ad-Darqawi (1969). Rather, given Lings’ leaning towards Sufism, I thought it would be in a similar vein to Anne Marie Shimmel’s And Muhammad is His Messenger – the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic piety (1985), weaving mystical symbolisms and interpretations into the biographical narration.

The story of Bahira the Christian Monk who thought that the young Muhammad bore the marks of the coming messenger, when as a 12 year old he (Muhammad) accompanying his uncle Abu Talib on a trade caravan to Syria, they stopped near the monk’s cell, and the story of Isra’ and Mi’raj, the Prophet’s night journey to Jerusalem and his ascension to Heaven – both were narrated devoid of any references to mystical symbolisms.

Martin Lings, Titus Burckharft and Fritjof Schuon are notable figures who had gone beyond academic orientalism to steep themselves in the esoteric Islamic tradition of Sufism (Tasawwuf) – mastering the language, learning the texts and studying from the masters, to write eloquently as exponents of universal religious wisdom (religio perennis, a term coined later by Schuon) to guide the modern man in finding back his balance in this secular milieu of spiritual poverty. All of them lived long productive lives, especially Schuon and Lings. The latter was 95 when he recently died. All 3 of them had association with the Darqawi branch of the Shadzili Tariqa of North Africa and reformulated the metaphysics of the Spanish mystic Ibn Arabi in the modern idiom in their writings for the western educated audience.

Martin Lings and Firtjof Schuon were deeply influenced by René Guénon, the French mathematician and gnostic who was disillusioned with the west’s loss of the spiritual dimension. He moved to Cairo in 1930 to steep himself in the muslim tradition. Guénon took the name of Abdul Wahid Yahya and lived as an orthodox muslim, was initiated into the Shadzili Tariqa and later wrote his influential books on the recovery of tradition as salvation for the modern man.

Lings first read Guénon’s books in the early 30’s and translated one of his earlier ones into English. He recommended his closest friend at Oxford, who was then lecturing at Cairo University to meet the very reclusive Guénon, and later became his assistant. As fate had it, taking a break from his lectureship in Lithuania, Lings went to visit his friend in Cairo in 1939 but unable to return because of the war. A year later his friend died in a riding accident and Lings had no option but to take his place as Guénon’s assistant, and that was the start of his privileged relationship with him (meanwhile he also lectured at Cairo University on Shakespeare).

Guénon died in 1951 and Lings returned to England a year later where he took up a degree in Arabic at London University. Lings had been in special charge of Quran and other oriental manuscripts at the British Museum and British Library. Presumably it is from this background that he wrote A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century – Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy, his other more readily available book. A Sufi Saint is largely adapted from his PhD thesis for the University of London, and therefore unlike his biography of the Prophet, it is written in a distinctly academic style with extensive footnotes and references to classical Islamic texts, prophetic traditions (hadith) and the Quran. It provides readers an interesting insight into one institution of traditional muslim society – the practice and influence of Sufism, its formal structure and hierarchal order of masters and disciples, its teachings and methods of spiritual self-realization. This is a useful book to gain a reasonable depth of understanding of Sufism and its various aspects through the examination of the life and works of a traditional master, who is perhaps among the last. I would like to dwell on this book in some detail as I feel it is more interesting than his other general work on Sufism and spirituality. With the title A Sufi Saint of the twentieth century, perhaps Lings would like to convey that such a tradition, though documented in our time, is something of an anachronism of the modern age, that it would soon be weakened or diluted by the encroaching modernity. Martin Lings gave an account of his subject, Shaikh Al-Alawi (Aliwah) who lived in Mostaganem, Western Algeria in the early part of the twentieth century when much of the muslim world was on the threshold of a rapid change from its encounter with the west through colonialism. This was also the period when the muslim world was supposed to be its darkest depth of ignorance, degeneration and decay. The French colonial power had the policy of separating the settler communities from the native algerians, minimizing contacts between the two and thus largely preserving the traditional muslim society and its institutions. He also provides a back drop of the social situation in the muslim world during that era – the rise of modernist muslims who uncritically wished to imitate the west, the puritanical muslim reformers who attacked Sufism as a corruption of the faith, and the agitation of the young Turks against the Caliphate which the Shaikh witnessed during his visit to Istanbul.

The first half of the book consists of a biographical account of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s life drawn from a number of sources – a french doctor who befriended the Shaikh, his own dictation to his scribe, testimonies of his disciple and the work of a French writer Berque – who wrote about Shaikh Al-Alawi Un mystique Moderniste in the journal Revue Africaine in 1936 (the title is a strange one, Lings notes, Berque’s quotations show that the Shaikh was essentially very conservative. His so-called ‘modernism’ appears to have been nothing other than the great breadth of his spiritual interests). Part 2 of the book deals with general aspects of Sufi metaphysics and mystical symbolisms with references from the Shaikh’s works. It is interesting that Lings dedicated 2 chapters on the Shaikh’s commentary on the ritual purification (wudhu) and the ritual prayer. This was taken from his book Al Minali Al Quddusiyyah, which was a commentary on Ibn Ashir’s guide to the essentials of religious knowledge, a book which all novices had to learn by heart to ensure that they have basic grounding in the outward, obligatory rituals before embarking on the spiritual path. His commentary and explanation of the mystical symbolisms of these 2 basic everyday rituals are astounding, given that the Shaikh did not have a formal education in a religious seminary and that he started life as a cobbler. Even more so are his mystical poems and aphorisms translated by Lings which make up part 3 of the book.

If parts II and III are informative about Sufism’s intellectual dimension and methods, Part I is highly interesting to the curious modern reader for it provides an account of an extraordinary life which perhaps could only have been possible in a traditional muslim environment. This is based first on the account of Dr. Marcel Carett, a French doctor who had an intimate friendship with the Shaikh from 1920 until his death in 1934. Dr. Carrett, unlike his compatriots, was curious to understand and interact with the arabs. He set up a clinic in the arab quarter of Mostaganem and charged minimal fees. Within a few months of his arrival from France he was requested to examine the Shaikh who was having a bout influenza, and thereafter began his friendship with him. At least once a week he would visit the Shaikh and the two would engage a in conversation over a wide range of things usually in the garden of his Zawiya (religious centre where the Sufis gathered). From Dr. Carrett’s notes Lings gives us an account of the Shaikh’s personality, habits, his disciples and the people around him and their rituals of dhikr (exercises in the remembrance of God). Of note is his first impression of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s appearance whereby he was struck by his likeness to the usual representations of Christ, “including the fine lawn head-cloth which framed his face, his whole attitude – everything conspired to reinforce the likeness. It occurred to me that such must have been the appearance of Christ when he received his disciples … that Christ like face, that gentle voice, so full of peace, those courteous manners … his taste for solitude and self-effacement … . I was surprised by his broadmindedness and tolerance, I had always heard that every Moslem is a fanatic and could never have anything but the greatest contempt for non-Moslem foreigners”. Frequently they engaged in frank, probing conversations about faith and salvation as Dr. Carrett was an atheist steeped in the scientific rationalism of his day.

The other source materials that Lings drew to construct a biographical outline of Shaikh Al-Alawi is the account of his life that he had himself dictated to his scribe a few years before his death. This formed the second chapter of the book. His beginnings were humble and ordinary. He never went to school/seminary and his only early education was the evening Quran lessons from his father. As a young man he became a cobbler to support his poor family. His initiation into the Sufi path, his relationship with his teacher Shaikh Al Buzidi and his spiritual development makes for interesting reading for a twentieth century audience. This is straight out of classic Sufi literature, which I feel merits to be reproduced here. He tells us of his inclination towards Sufism from an early age, first initiated into the Isawi Tariqa (Sufi order), from which he quickly distanced himself because of what he perceived as unislamic practices. The only thing he kept was the art of snake charming which brought him into contact with his future teacher, Shaikh Al Buzidi, who had regularly come to visit his business partner in their shop. ‘One day, when he was in our shop, the Shaikh said to me: “I have heard that you can charm snakes and that you are not afraid of being bitten”. I admitted this. Then he said: “Can you bring me one now and charm it here in front of us?”. I said that I could and going outside the town, I searched for half a day, but found only a small one… . This I brought back with me and putting it in front of him, I began to handle it according to my custom… . “Could you charm a bigger snake than this?” he asked. I replied that the size made no difference to me. Then he said, “I will show you one that is bigger than this and for more venomous, and if you can take hold of it you are a real sage”. I asked him to show me where it was, and he said : “I mean your soul which is between the two sides of your body. Its poison is more deadly than a snake’s … . Then he said : “Go and do with that little snake whatever you usually do with them, and never go back to such practices again”, and I went out, wondering about the soul and how its poison could be more deadly than a snake’s’.

Thus began his spiritual journey under the guidance of Shaikh Al Buzidi. He was a very gifted disciple who became the natural heir to his Syaikh when the latter died, and under his leadership the Darqawi Tariqah enjoyed phenomenal growth in Algeria and Morocco as well as other parts of the Islamic world where he travelled during his pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1926 he was invited to preach the first sermon and lead the first prayer of the Paris mosque.

Apart from his mystical poems and the more profound and abstruse works, he also wrote a couple of simple expositions of the elements of Islam, for it was his principle that the first thing to be done with a novice was to teach him his ordinary religious obligations according to his capacity.

Lings quoted a number of examples of how Shaikh Al-Alawi’s reliance on inspiration of the moment, such as the decision to write his ideas down into books – which is one of the characteristics of mystics, but he also gave examples of his practicality and pragmatism, however much they might go against his natural inclinations. He started a religious weekly newspaper, Al Balagh al Jazair in Algiers as a means of disseminating his teaching, seeking to safeguard Islam’s dimension of breadth, and above all to restore what it had lost of its dimension of depth. He stressed the importance of knowledge of classical Arabic and pointed to the dangers of westernization. He also used the medium to defend Sufism as a wholly integral part of the Islamic tradition from attacks by puritanical reformers.

Shaikh Al-Alawi was also conscious of his role as he declares in one of his poems,

Then when the Giver vouchsafed that I might proclaim it, He fitted me – and how I know it – to purify souls, And girded upon me the sword of steadfastness, And truth and piety, and a wine He gave me … … thus came I to pour it, nay, it is I that press it, Doth any other pour it in this age?

Lings concluded the summary account of the Shaikh’s life by a quotation by Fritjof Schuon, taken from his eulogy “RahimahulLah” published in Cahiers du Sud in 1935, “So much the greater good fortune is it to come into contact with a true spiritual representative of one of those forms (worlds which the modern west fails to understand) to come into contact with someone who represents in himself … the idea which for hundreds of years has been the very life-blood of that civilization … To meet such a one is like coming face to face, in mid twentieth century, with a medieval saint or a semitic patriarch, and this was the impression made on me by the Shaikh Al-Hajj Ahmad bin Aliwah, one of the greatest masters of Sufism, who died a few months ago at Mostaganem”.

From his account of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s life and his spiritual legacy, Martin Lings has captured for the twentieth century audience the vestige of that universe of traditional Islam where spirituality, of which Sufism is its formal expression, is the third pillar in that triumvirate of iman (faith), Islam (outward observance) and ihsan (goodness). Martin Lings belonged to that select handful of scholars who had privileged access to that traditional universe and conveyed what he had absorbed of that to the reading public with great insight and eloquence. It cannot be denied that some aspects of Sufi practices and teachings as exhibited by a number of its modern day exponents are questionable, and later developments of Schuon’s own Tariqah as available in the public domain are a sad testimony of this. But, it is also more evident today that western exponents of Sufism are bringing it fully into the fold of orthodox Islam, its natural home. This owes in no small part to the likes of Martin Lings, who undertook a serious study of Sufism – mastering its language, delving into its texts and chronicling its masters, rather than removing it from its Islamic moorings and distorting it into a form of exotic pseudospirituality as was the fashionable thing to do until recently in a secular world which has lost its capacity and awe for the Transcendent. Alfatihah.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Use and abuse of the human rights discourse
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

If a columnist of a mainstream paper can be said to represent the general mood of the malaysian middle class, it is gratifying to note that we have suddenly woken up to the realization that we must defend our civil liberties as enshrined in articles 5 and 10 of our constitutions. It is uplifting to see that we can put aside our usual worries of how to make the most money in the shortest possible time and that life’s greatest dilemma is deciding which shopping mall to go to this Sunday. Is this for real? This has not been seen before in our sycophantic mainstream media with its fawning herd of columnists and commentators. They used to be very sensitive and touchy over the subject of fundamental civil liberties, always amplifying the stance of the authorities to the point of refusal to even look at the human rights discourse objectively, for it is not without deficiencies. I guess our aversion has much to do with the fact that we don’t like what we see in the mirror as far our human rights practices and record are concerned. We had a good argument at that time. We are asians, we are successful beyond our wildest dreams, and we have our “asian values”. With a sneer, we said that the human rights discourse is a western concept and its claims of universality is just a cover for the west’s hegemonic designs. They are just “jealous of our success”.

As a simple primer, the idea that human rights are universal and that human dignity is inviolable crystallized after the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), an ambitious combination of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights adopted by the General Assembly of the nascent United Nations on 10th December 1948. Stretching back into history, such notions had their beginnings in the Habeas Corpus act and Bill of Rights of 17th century England, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

But the cold war politics that followed not long after stifled the human rights discourse and stalled its evolution into an effective international mechanism that protects the dignity of man as both power blocs vied for the support of dictatorship that comprehensively violated them in Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East. Although the twin Covenants on Civil and Political Rights signed during the cold war decades were supposed to have carried contractual weight, this became mere pious declaration with no real intention of abiding by them. Proxies of both blocs understood that their continued human rights abuses were expediently condoned if not encouraged by their respective masters.

With the collapse of communism, as millions of eastern europeans basked in the euphoria of their newfound liberty, there was a genuine determination to make human rights work, give or take the “end-of-history” triumphalism of the US. For a few years in the early 90’s the human rights discourse seemed free of ideological constraints and there was real optimism that the world could be on its way towards that vision of the Universal Declaration at its adoption in 1948. Nobody would dispute that the dignity man, the basic freedoms of thought, conscience and expression, and the right to life and liberty should be enshrined as “universal”. Also, as the euphoria was beginning to fade in the 1990’s and as the spectre of another ethnic cleansing was fast taking shape in europe’s backyard in the aftermath of communism’s demise, the determination to make the concept of universal human rights truly work took on a sense of seriousness and urgency – only for us to throw the spanner of “asian values” into the works. Universal human rights is a concept that the west is imposing on us in their quest for global domination, went our standard line (that is of course not an entirely hollow accusation as western governments are not averse to hypocritically use the human rights discourse as leverage whenever the occasion suits them).

Why not, we were at that time riding high as the tiger economies with near double digit growth for years in succession. I suppose hard work, loyalty and unquestioning obedience, though not exclusively asian traits, they are something that we east asians exhibit more that other third world peoples. But our runaway success was not because of that alone. It was a combination of those traits with hot money, unsavoury corporate practices, and also a political stability bought at the expense of some degree of suppression of civil liberties, thanks to novel new uses of draconian laws bequeathed by our former western colonial masters. We would not allow these embarrassing human rights issues to spoil our party. Our leadership and that of Singapore, China and Indonesia cleverly devised that “Asian values” argument to discredit human rights discourse as the liberal west’s agenda. Before the UN World Conference in Vienna in 1993, asian countries caucused and went to the conference with our declaration that universal human rights must evolve to accommodate the significance of national and regional peculiarities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds. The conference’s final declaration at the insistence of the asian bloc made no reference at all to the Civil Covenant or to individual rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly (Crimes against humanity – the struggle for global justice” by Geoffrey Robertson, Penguin Books 2000). For the good part of the 1990’s and more so after the upheavals of 1998 our media commentators and columnists have been very creative at propagandizing this line – we have do away with some of these fundamental freedoms for the sake of development. We are Asians anyway, we have our own religions and cultural traditions, and those freedoms that we clamour for will only lead us to the path of western moral decadence.

After a posture of disdain and contempt towards the human rights discourse today some of our pundits have, out of the blue, become its staunch defenders – for the simple reason that it is a very useful and effective tool to undermine the place of the Sharia in muslim society. The Sharia enactments trample on our civil liberties, they violate articles 5 and 10 of our Constitution, wrote one columnist recently. But those who have never had any genuine concern for human rights and civil liberties are bound to reveal their ignorance or perhaps dishonesty when they misuse the discourse for a dubious end. Let us be reminded that article 5 is about the rule of law, the unlawfulness of detention without trial and the right to a legal counsel, whereas article 10 protects the freedom of speech, assembly and association. These are the fundamental civil liberties which the Islamic religious authorities actually have no jurisdiction through the Sharia enactments. Malaysia is unique in that it has 2 legal systems with the Sharia having a very limited jurisdiction and applying only to muslims, covering family law and specific areas of public morality. Therefore the accusation that the Sharia infringes on civil liberties guaranteed by articles 5 and 10 is laughable. It is precisely in these 2 areas of human rights that we as a nation have habitually been the target of criticisms which we cleverly deflected with the “asian values” rhetoric.

The strong men of asia, all of whom have now retreated from the seats of power, may have used “asian values” to silence critique and curb civil liberties in the name of development. The concept of universal human rights has evolved sufficiently such that no one today would disagree that freedom of thought and expression, the right to a fair tribunal, the unlawfulness of arbitrary arrests and torture are non-negotiable (except in extenuating circumstances, which even then safeguards against abuse of executive power must be in place). That our leaders could appeal to our values and traditions for a wholly different end and we all bought it was ingenuous. But is there absolutely no place for cultural relativism in this discourse?

There are some of us who treat the human rights discourse as contained in the Universal Declaration as a sacred religious dogma. But we must differentiate between fundamental civil liberties that allow no room for cultural relativism, which at any rate are compatible with the moral teachings of all authentic spiritual traditions, and those parts of the Universal Declaration (UDHR) which constitute no more than ideals or aspirations, and therefore allow for consideration of nuances of customs, traditions and level of economic development. For a traditional agrarian society, article 24 makes no sense, “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”. Homosexuals would take unkindly to section (3) of article 16 which says “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and state”.

For muslims, beyond the scope fundamental civil liberties as per articles 19 and 20 (the basis of our articles 5 and 10), which are in concordance with Islamic principles, are we not entitled to be governed by laws some of which are derived from the religion’s teachings – the Sharia, if we were interpret article 18 correctly, “…freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance?” (the part about the freedom to change his religion may not sit well with some muslims but that is another matter)

It is interesting that the campaign to repeal the Sharia and deny muslims their right of this public aspect of their religion as guaranteed by the constitution in the context of Malaysia’s multi-religious society is initiated and spearheaded by muslims. Perhaps knowing that they are unlikely to get much support from mainstream muslims, they turn to non-muslim NGOs and social activists who may be well-intentioned in the cause of advancing civil liberties and democracy. The use, or more accurately abuse of the human rights rhetoric is very persuasive to the unsuspecting. In this highly mediatized age, the simple minded – no matter how well-meaning, are quick to label people, in this context, muslims, as either “liberal progressive” or “conservative”, “morally uptight” or “enlightened”, “modernist” or “obscurantist”. But in real life things are much more nuanced than that. Wether the Sharia should be repealed or not is actually an internal muslim issue as its jurisdiction is limited to muslims. This should be resolved internally by honest discussion and dialogue between those having opposing views. Of course there will be entanglements between muslim and non-muslim parties at individual level which may complicate the Sharia administration, but this is something that is not impossible to resolve amicably. To drum up support from non muslims using the human rights bait is mischievous.

In truth, we are a people with no genuine commitment to values, and that is how we have excelled at double-speaking. When people accuse us of undermining fundamental civil liberties, we say the human rights discourse has no universality, a purely western agenda that seeks to corrupt our society with decadent western culture. We sought refuge in cultural relativism and appealed to our “asian values”. But we also want to be feted as “progressive and liberal muslims” by our friends and the Sharia which happens to encompass some of those “asian values” is such a sore and embarrassing anachronism that we don’t want to be associated with. That human rights thing has its uses after all.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

The wellspring of law and morality
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

“The long arm of the law” is no longer such a proverbial phrase today. Ask those British and German men whose idea if a holiday in a tropical paradise is paying for sex with young girls and boys in exotic Thailand or Cambodia. They face prosecution at home for a crime committed thousand of miles away and the prospect of spending a good part of their lives in prison. “f*?%* their daughters and pay them in dollars”, says one character in that silly DiCaprio movie The Beach. This has to be the worst form of humiliation and contempt for the “other”. It is no wonder that these westerners who act out their sexual fantasies on innocent young children of the third world are despised even by their own society, that the only other instance where such prosecutorial resolve is applied is to those who commit crimes against humanity. In one respect, perhaps paedophilia when linked to racist contempt is almost as much a crime against humanity.

In today’s highly secularized world as God is banished from the public domain and before long, expunged from modern man’s consciousness, religion, along with morality has come to a stage where it is hopelessly old fashioned, deserving only of scorn and ridicule. Especially so in the case of Islam such that no one who prides him or herself in having acquired the sophistication of modernity wants to have anything to do with it, unless one wants to be feted as the “moderate” and “progressive” sub-species of the genus. This has become evidently clear in recent orchestrated campaigns to roll back religion as the basis of legislation on aspects that concern morality and decency. Why, we have finally completed the trajectory of man’s positivist evolution – no longer do we need the moral crutches that religion used to afford previous generations. Morality, as it relates to sexuality and fulfillment of man’s sexual needs, is an entirely private matter that the state must not interfere.

I suppose from the point of view of lay persons like us, our modern conception of what constitutes a punishable offence is premised on the existence of a victim consequent to an act (or potential victim as in under the influence). We can therefore understand why there is no disagreement that murder, robbery and fraud are criminal offences deserving severe punishments. To secular sensibilities however, adulterous sexual relations is perfectly alright because it is pleasurable and does no harm to anybody. In fact it is often celebrated in fiction as the ultimate expression of genuine love that has conquered all obstacles thrown its way, which quite often is depicted as sclerotic traditions and restrictive conventions linked to religion that society is still unable to shake off. Modern individualism and often a particular conception of liberty always try to reassure us that we should feel at ease with our bodies and desires, and free ourselves from the shackles of tradition, such that “recreational sex” has come into the vocabulary of today’s lifestyle. It is fun and creates no victims, the law should stay out of it (it is not always “victimless” though, as children suffer when marriages break up and it eats into our social welfare budget, not to mention crimes of passion from well known cases that have whet our media appetites).

If adulterous sex is victimless fun, it is blindingly obvious that sex tourists with a penchant for young boys and girls are a scourge. They exploit the most vulnerable of all sexual preys – poorly educated third world children for whom some nice cloths, sweets and a bit of money are a welcome respite from the only thing they know – poverty. Everyone agrees that paedophile sex tourists deserve the shame and long prison sentences upon conviction. In fact, we can proudly claim that this is a triumph of secular ethics. So who needs religion if we can have morality without its intrusiveness? Isn’t it time that we retire this moral crutch now that history has ended?

But between the extremes of harmless adulterous liaisons by consenting adults and paedophile sex-tourism is a veritable moral slippery slope. This is where modern man’s overweening moral self-sufficiency shows some cracks, exposing an underlying confusion. Beneath this façade of self-sufficient secular ethics, we seem unsure whether we should cut ourselves completely off our religious moorings. Take for example the case of director Roman Polanski who had to jump bail and exile himself in Paris after a conviction for statutory rape for having sex with an underaged girl.

Many people are sympathetic to Polanski because he’s such a brilliant director who gave us Rosemary’s baby, Chinatown and the Pianist. As a jewish boy growing up in the Krakow ghetto, his pregnant mother was taken away by the Nazis to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. As if that was not enough share of tragedy, his actress wife and friends were brutally murdered by the Manson gang. What his sympathizers are not saying though is what’s the big deal about having sex with an underaged girl in today’s world when many teenaged girls are already sexually active from the age of 13 – 14. They’re biologically mature, and most of them know exactly what they’re doing and doing it the safe way. Was it not uncommon that 1 or 2 generations ago girls were married at 15 or 16? Is it not absurdly hypocritical that on the one hand we encourage teenage girls to be comfortable with their bodies and sexual urges, and safe-sex is all they need, but on the other people like Mr. Polanski face rape charges for partaking mutual pleasure with them?

More often than not, in cases like Mr. Polanski’s, the “victims” are sexually experienced and mature that to secular logic such a law seems absurdly unjust. This penal code statute that having sexual relations with a girl below 18 is rape and therefore carries a heavy punishment is obviously a baggage that we have carried over from the age of faith, when religion had coloured much of our conception of morality, of what is right and what is wrong.

Yes, okay, we do encourage teenage girls to be comfortable with sex, but surely there is something exploitative about older man having sexual relations with teenage girls. How can she not be a “victim”, never mind how experienced she is – says our irrational inner voice defying our liberal logic. But increasingly we read in the papers of female school teachers going to prison for having sex with their teenage (boys) students. Here the slope becomes even more slippery. If our conception of a crime is that an act must have a victim, there is none in this sort of relationship (corrupting the morals of youth is such an ambiguous charge). Are we being just to these women teachers in search of some solace or adventure? Is this a baggage from the age of faith that we should all jettison today?

That these statutes criminalizing sexual relations between older men and teenage girls or the other way around in the modern era of safe sex and early sexuality still exist in our law looks betrays our moral confusion and hypocrisy. At another level, it is perhaps testimony that beneath that surface of modernity and our scorn towards religion, religious ethics still informs much of our law-making today. Only that we refuse to acknowledge that debt. Why this refusal to break free from the influence of religion? No matter how illogical these statutes are to the secular mind and how unjust they may seem to Mr. Polanski and the school teacher who seduced her students, perhaps deep down we acknowledge that without them human civilization as we know it cannot be sustained for very long.

If secular ethics is confused in this grey moral zone and needs to fall back on sensibilities carried over from the age of faith, it also owes a debt to religion in the more clear-cut matters of the penal code. In today’s language, murder and robbery are major crimes because of what the victims suffer, and “sin” has nothing to do with it. But the way the public reacted to the outcome of the OJ Simpson trial suggested that it is more than just about justice for the victims. Either we have not sufficiently evolved such that we still carry that primitive religious idea of “sin” or such an idea of moral right and wrong is a quintessential part of our constitution, or “human nature”.

It is not only in the area of law-making that provides citizens personal security, recourse to justice and maintain public order that we owe a great debt to religion. Extending the discussion on the conception of ethics and justice, let us look at the modern discourse on human rights which is premised on the idea of the inviolability of the dignity of man. Secular humanism might claim that it had thought out such a concept de novo, but it would be easier to admit that a good deal of it is borrowed or appropriated from religion. The “dignity of man” is a difficult concept to chew if we exclude God from the discussion. As secular humanism is the fruit european enlightenment, the religion here in question is of course Christianity, but it can be safely said that all authentic spiritual traditions share a common clear conception of what constitutes moral rights and wrongs, and enjoin the same praise-worthy values of kindness, compassion, generosity and forgiveness. The west’s (and the rest of the world that has modernized ourselves in its image) conception of virtue is a Christian ghost. Modern man in the manner of Heidegger may choose to exclude Christian (or religious) paradigms but internalize them implicitly to provide meaning and direction for our existence. But Jurgen Habermas, a later proponent of the Frankfurt School is more honest in recognizing modernity’s debt to religion. He attributes to christianity as the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy, and we continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is post modern chatter.

What we mean to say in all this is that despite our modernity and sense of moral self sufficiency, religion in its most generic sense is never far beneath the surface. True, religion as played out in history by men has its dark and shameful episodes, and it may be convenient to shift blame for all that is wrong with humanity onto it, but it remains the inspiration for much of our laws and civic conventions. It is the weak glue that is just barely holding modern civilization together. And beyond law and ethics, religion informs much of what we take for granted in our civilized existence – architecture, philosophy and learning, the university system, the welfare system etc.

In our relentless march to secularity, many of us may not want to recognize that debt we owe to religion but a significant section of humanity actually still does, however strange and unfashionable that may be. The most recalcitrant are, not surprisingly, the muslims whose religion spells out the moral issues, for good or bad, in more clear terms i.e. the shariah. Being the youngest of the Abrahamic monotheisms, it still has its sources fairly intact. Is it too much to ask that the muslims’ desire to recognize this debt and live their lives according to it be respected?

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Senior Minister Contemptuous of Muslim Sensitivity
by Puan Elya Lim Abdullah

The Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF) regrets Datuk Seri Dr. Lim Keng Yaik’s recommendation that religious matters be kept out of national schools if this means abolishing religious instruction to Muslim students.

The assertion that the teaching of Islam in national schools deters non-Muslims from enrolling their children into national schools may have its substance, however we think much of that has to do with ingrained prejudice and problems inherent within the national schools system.

Some degree of religious instruction has always been an element of our educational system, whether they are schools established by Christian missions or national ones. It fulfils the holistic educational needs of our children as we parents perceive them. Children of other faiths receive instruction in moral education when Muslim students have their religious classes. .The recent initiative to introduce the teaching of Mandarin and Tamil in national schools is indicative of the Ministry’s concern for further improving national integration.

While it is true that the family plays an important role in imparting religious values to impressionable children, instruction in the basic fundamentals of Islam, rituals of worship, study of the sacred texts, religious morality and Islamic history has to be done by qualified teachers.

The national schools have admirably fulfilled this need without altering their character into religious schools. Muslim parents accept this compromise and send their children for extra religious lessons outside the normal school hours. It is utterly insensitive to demand that religious instruction for Muslims be scrapped from national schools if that is the intent of Dr. Lim’s recommendations.

By virtue of demography and history, Islam has been very much part of the nation’s social and cultural fabric. Our colourful history bears testimony to the religious tolerance, harmony and mutual respect which has stood the test of time and which Malaysians have continued to guard jealously.

It is somewhat baffling that Islam is suddenly demonized as an obstacle to national integration. The call to keep religion out of the national schools is contemptuous of Muslim sensitvity and flies in the face of our tradition of respect and understanding among the religions.

it is an idea unmistakably borrowed from a particular brand of secularism that has its roots in a conflict between religion and the state which has a very specific historical context. It is by no means the universal experience of all modern states, least of all Malaysia.

Instead of purportedly promoting national integration, such brazen insensitivity is potentially disruptive of our hardwon religious harmony. That such a proposal had come from a senior member of the cabinet is all the more regrettable.

There are probably more valid reasons why non-Malay parents are reluctant to send their children to national schools especially those outside the affluent middle-class areas. And this has more to do with the school’s academic performance, class size, facilities, quality of the teaching faculty, morale of teachers and standards of discipline rather than religious studies.

These are equally the concerns of many Muslim parents, some of whom are willing to pay for private education or send their children to Chinese schools. While we urge that the government take immediate measures to remedy these pressing problems, various aspects of religious instruction for Muslims need to be tailored to mould young Muslims with Islamic spirituality (iman), examplary behaviour (soleh wa musleh) and intellectual strength (ilm) to prepare them as citizens of a modern, pluralistic Malaysia.

Puan Elya Lim Abdullah
Founding Member
Muslim Professionals Forum
Suite 1810, 18th Floor, Plaza Permata (IGB Plaza)
Jalan Kampar, off Jalan Tun Razak
50400 Kuala Lumpur
Tel : 03-40426102
Website : http://mpf.org.my