MARCH 26 — This is a democracy. Missed the memo?

I will discuss what I like, when I like.

I will do so calmly and with a great willingness to listen to you, the other view — even if you choose not to reciprocate. Your ideas are as relevant as mine, but they do not overwhelm mine simply by the virtue of majoritarian chauvinism. My dumb ideas need to be heard just as much as your apparent tautology.

If they are really that dumb, then from a sprint my mislaid intellectual enthusiasm will slip to a walk and finally crawl into a catacomb. The masses will turn to your ideas willingly, and worship your name. 

Flyers, buttons, T-shirts and websites emblazoned with your face will emerge overnight. All hail the messiah!

But I have to ask, if they are dumb — all those ideas opposed to yours — why do you fear them?

Don’t worry, irrespective of the reception to my ideas and your inevitable victory I will not resort to violence. It is democracy that gives me the right to speech, and I have no intention of biting the hand which feeds me. 

This is why I yield to democratic decisions.

Except if the decision is to usurp our gift of democracy itself. Then I will stand up to your vehemence to the one system — with all its flaws — which has given the common man access to power.   

That is the modus operandi of a democrat, long before working out whether he is right or left wing, pro-environment or the friend of big business and even if he’s keen on a larger military or welfare state.

Voice means debate and ensuing liberty, silence means totalitarianism.

If you don’t get that, I have a reading list for you. But please, don’t turn around, go primal with a shrieking voice and tell me that I have limits based on your beliefs.

Rational speech has no limits in a democracy.

And for the baby geniuses who claim that too much debate will lead to discord and disharmony, I ask, how wonderful a utopia you envision where artificial peace and unity is the product of quieting dissent and coercing participation.

Pivotally, can it last?

Powered by god

Some of my countrymen are convinced that only by having a legal system predicated on their personal beliefs will there be real justice. More importantly, the act of enabling the system fulfils their religious obligations.

Fortunately, they are however confronted by the inconvenience of being in a democracy. It does not want to step aside for them.

Therefore, they seek a democratic solution to a theological agenda, even if cynics decipher that if democracy gives in to theological vigour there will be active attempts to waylay democracy from the initial mandate. 

Ditto Iran.

As I said, fortune remains with us, in that in a democracy when a proposal is brought to Dewan Rakyat (Parliament), it is a matter for the people (rakyat) to decide, all the rakyat not just the ones the proponents address to.

Only Muslims are affected?

I am born and raised in Malaysia. The national policy is of integration, even if it is not assimilation — as in how Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines proceeded with national identity. Integration is a result of chipping away at socio-economic and political divides, perhaps not as aggressively as assimilation but it does take several great whacks at the chasm.

The result being, the people are integrated — involved with each other’s lives with minimum barriers.

Cross-cultural business partnerships, social enterprises, neighbourhoods, friendships and marriages colour our lives, despite all of us fully cognisant of separate cultural and religious practices.

Therefore saying the introduction or not of hudud (Islamic criminal code) is only a Muslim matter is difficult to digest even if they assert — not prove, and really the truth will be seen in the implementation — only Muslims are subject to it. 

It appears disingenuous.

There are 20-year-old Muslims with Buddhist grandparents. Add to the list, Episcopalian brothers who have Muslim sisters with delightful looking nieces and nephews. Business partners who went to school together, but only one of them is at Friday prayers.

With globalisation, those social lines blur further by the day. Therefore how can all individuals invariably with vested interests resist expressing an opinion over it and thereafter invite a discussion about it, in their personal or even public space?

After all, our integration has rendered us affected by one another’s situations.

We can’t help but speak about it.

Meanwhile, at the opposite end, advocates decry encroachment by non-believers into their religious beliefs. They can’t help but be offended when those they deem unqualified are speaking about it.

This creates a seemingly unbreakable impasse.

I cannot fathom a way out other than through discussion. Go 15 rounds in the ring, jabs, hooks, swings and uppercuts, but we will be stuck without talking about it.

Options in

Both my MP and legislative assembly representative are from PAS. I voted both of them in. They are traditionalists and by my estimate hold fixed views about the here and the hereafter, so their hudud take is diametrically opposed to mine.

And surely they must be worried about their seats. They are aware there are reasons why no PAS candidate has won in those seats until 2008. 

And those reasons are seriously hesitant to vote for any PAS candidate in the next polls. So I am not the only one losing faith with them.

And those like me will continue to campaign on ideas in relation to hudud. As much as hudud-activists ask the rest to read more so they fear less, we’d tell them equally on that token, read more about democratic principles and its institutions side by side with the evolution of representative power. Their fears might recede too.

To each his own then.

They can talk to the Muslims they like, and I will talk to the Malaysians I want to, whether they are Muslims or not.

Let the chips fall where they may. But don’t insult our collective intelligence and experience by demanding we voluntarily abdicate our right to discourse because only you can set the terms of engagement.

We are democrats.

The minority war

Let’s be honest, and recognise one more element about the kerfuffle — most Malaysians, Muslim or not, are indifferent to the debate.

You can gain their passive support by smashing the guilt down their throats, but they are not interested in substantially grasping the dynamics of the proposal. To be fair, they have not been interested in substantially grasping the dynamics of the present system.

Whether that is an organic tragedy or a dystopic reality borne out of relentless social engineering is moot, most Malaysians in the present are not part of any democratic discourse in deciding how their drains are kept running so their TVs don’t get totalled in a flood or the viability of colonial laws in contemporary Malaysia.

Especially the young.  

The odd 19-year-old flying out to Turkey to trek into a war-torn zone as a caliphate combatant, is vastly offset by the hundreds who empathise with his idealism but rather catch Astro Ria or walk up and down a mall.

So it riles me a fair bit when the defenders of the faith jump out of their foxholes ever so often and lament about the millions they represent whose inalienable rights are being trampled.

I say to them, stay calm and drink juice.

Because all these discussions are not about the majority anymore, they are carried by the minority on both sides.

Which is why I will continue to discuss what I like, when I like.

Want some progress? Make an argument. That’s how we measure progress in a democracy.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.