Keluarga Malaysia and "Tuhan Allah"

 “Keluarga Malaysia” and “Tuhan Allah”.

Religion is an integrative force in society because it has the power to shape collective beliefs, provides cohesion in the social order by promoting a sense of belonging and collective consciousness.

Throughout history, religion has continued to be a central part of societies and human experience, shaping how individuals react to the environments in which they live.

Marx saw religion as a tool for class oppression because it supports a hierarchy of people on Earth and the subordination of humankind to divine authority. Being an atheist, he puts God out of the equation.

But for us, who believe in God The All-Mighty, we see God by a punitive God, and not the God of Love, as envisioned by the Sufists or the God of the early missionaries who brought Islam to this region in Southeast Asia and the Malay world.

We tend to use our legalistic thinking that reduces citizens merely to rules and regulation.

To understand religion, it’s a process. How the religion is brought into modern life needs to be debated and discussed but that is not being done because Islam is being politicised in Malaysia and has been assiociated with certain race or etnicity.

Our founding fathers, have laid down a strong foundation to protect the right to freedom of religion as enshrined under Article 11, provides that every person has the right to profess and to practice his or her religion and Article 3, provides that Islam is the religion of the country but other religions may be practised in peace and harmony.

When the newly Deputy Minister in Prime Ministers Department, announced nation-wide that four new shariah laws are being drafted including a bill on control and restrictions on the development of non-Muslim religions, gave rise to an opposition outcry with politicians and civil society groups accusing the federal government of seeking to allow the implementation of “hudud” as part of the Islamic penal code.

The Minister should not announced it at the first place, as the whole nation are fighting to end pandemic of Covid 19, that is the priority now.

The state government of Sabah, under Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, is the first to against any proposal that will restrict the freedom of religion of its people. He said that the state government holds firmly to the principle of religious freedom as declared in the Federal Constitution and the Malaysian Agreement 1963. As Hajiji said, “we respect each other’s culture without problem,” adding that Sabah’s unity in diversity was one of its pillars.

Thumbs-up to our Chief Minister of Sabah. If the Federal government really want to build a truly “keluarga Malaysia”, Sabah dan Sarawak is the best, maybe should bring back the “Pandang Ke Timur” policy, not to look Japan but to Malaysia Timur, on how we really practised “unity in diversity” in our daily life.

Its time for the Ministry of Education to rewrite our history book, should not pre-dates to only Melaka era, but beyond that.

 It’s a pay back time, Malaysia 2.0.

Selamat Hari Malaysia. Sabah Maju Jaya.

Roslan M.