TODAY WILL YOU BE CHRISTIAN
MARCH 25 — I get asked what it means to be a Christian in a predominantly Muslim society a lot.
It happens so often that I’ve actually got a standard opening line: “The Islam that I grew up with is a religion of peace and tolerance.”
It’s a response directed at the unasked question, the one about violence and intolerance that is never far below the surface.
I tell them about our neighbours, Pak Zainal and Makcik Maria, devout Muslims who have lived, in active harmony, next to my parents’ evangelical Christianity, for 35 years. I describe the solidarity of breaking fast with Muslim friends during Ramadan, wryly explaining that we are a food-obsessed society.
My Islam is in the yellow crescent that appears on our flag, and in the red crescent of the ambulances that serve all Malaysians. I find its shape in daily encounters with bus-conductors, teachers, academics, and street vendors.
Their gentle utterances of “Inshallah” and “Alhamdulillah” resonate with me the way “God Bless You” might with a Southern Baptist in the US.
It’s in the silk tudung of my friend Nur Hanim, whose mind and spirit is more liberated and open than those who judge her by her headscarf. I struggle to convey how the soft call of the azan every morning is a thing of beauty to my ears, without tearing up.
My sentimentality embarrasses me.
However, in a world where suspicion and misconceptions about Islam abound, I am eager to share my experiences. I put my faith in personal testimony, hoping it will help others distinguish spiritual from political Islam.
Having spent a large part of my youth in a Christian fundamentalist church, I know first-hand that zealotry can worm its way into churches, temples, synagogues and mosques.
Some are intrigued and interested. Others are dismissive. They are not looking for a conversation about Islam. They seek an insider’s confirmation of their pre-existing view that it is an inflexible belief system.
For many, it just requires too much hard work to grasp the nuances of religion, race and politics as they converge in Malaysia for them to stay focused for long. Who can blame them? It would bore me to tears too, were I not so emotionally vested in the country myself.
It surprises foreigners that many non-Muslim Malaysians actively defend Islam. The expectation is that as minorities whose political and social space appears to be constricting, we would have an antipathy towards it.
When Christopher Hitchens claimed there was “vicious rioting” in Malaysia in the wake of the Allah controversy in early 2010, I (amongst many others), questioned the veracity of his description on the slate.com comment’s page.
The idea that a Malaysian Christian would speak out in defence of Muslims at a point when churches were being defaced was so inconceivable that some posters implied that I must in fact be a Muslim pretending to be a Christian defending Muslims who, of course, were viciously attacking Christians.
It was enough make my head spin and spark off an existential crisis. Am I real or am I a sock puppet?
History is filled with accounts of people who step outside their own community to support, defend or protect the vulnerable.
Bram Fisher, a fierce opponent of apartheid and one of Nelson Mandela’s lawyers, was born an Afrikaner, the political elite in South Africa responsible for apartheid.
Some of the strongest opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine comes from within Israelitself, led by Jews who have raised their voices in support of a Palestinian state.
Following the January 1, 2011 attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria, scores of Egyptian Muslims offered themselves as shields to protect Egyptian Christians.
Imams and ordinary Muslims attended Mass after the bombing, because, as one Muslim man explained, “Copts have to know that we will share any pains or threats they go through.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by non-Muslim Americans who last week gathered bearing signs saying, “Today I am Muslim too.” They were protesting the congressional hearings into home grown terrorism in the US that unfairly targeted Muslim-Americans.
These individuals understand that when one segment of society is attacked or suppressed, it is an attack on everyone.
Over the past two weeks, 35,000 Bibles in Malay, have been stuck in limbo. The Ministry of Home Affairs impounded them two years ago, and last week hastily, and illegitimately, stamped the Bibles with a serial number and the phrase “For Christians Only. By order of the Ministry of Home Affairs.”
I picture these imprisoned books, kept in darkness for the crime of being published in the national language. It’s redolent with the self-conscious symbolism you’d expect from a play staged by gauche drama students: Freedom of religion constrained by the State, Holy Scripture scared by political power.
Unfortunately, this is not bad art, easily cut down to size by a biting review.
It is the absurd reality of Malaysian politics, created by a corrupt government whose only path to power comes from manufacturing conflict and keeping us divided.
This is not a Christian fight. This is a Malaysian fight. Will you stand and say that today, you too are a Christian?
