One People, One Destiny

One people, one destiny

I was reading the Proclamation of Independence again recently. It struck me how the proclamation starts with not only with the utterance “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” but also, in the next sentence, “Praise be to God, the Lord of the Universe (Rabb Al-‘alamin) and may the blessings and peace of God be upon His Messengers.”

The expression Rabb Al-‘alamin resonates. It is my favourite description of the Creator, saying to me that Allah’s embrace is so all encompassing, like a mother’s, that no one, not a single one of us, will ever be allowed to fall from His cradle. ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali conveys the nuances of this phrase richly in translating it as the “Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds”. “Worlds”, not “world”. Worlds. ‘Abdullah Yusuf Ali says, “There are many worlds, astronomical and physical worlds, worlds of thought, spiritual world and so on. In every one of them, God is all-in-all.” I agree. The world I live in is in many ways different from the world in which my neighbour lives. My family, friends, experiences, history and spirituality are so different from his, as are his from mine.

As I read the opening words to the Proclamation again, I was reminded of how in invoking Rabb Al-‘alamin and His Messengers, our founders had not only proclaimed this nation as one in which Islam was the religion of the Federation, they had also recognized that the Malaysian universe was one made of up of so many different worlds. The Proclamation goes on to declare: “AND WHEREAS by the Federal Constitution aforesaid provision is made to safeguard the rights and prerogatives of Their Highnesses the Rulers and the fundamental rights and liberties of the people and to provide for the peaceful and orderly advancement of the Persekutuan Tanah Melayu as a constitutional monarchy based on Parliamentary democracy.”

We are one people, all of whom have a common destiny. We come from different worlds and we will continue to have our own peculiarities even as we forge a common identity. Islam is embedded in the Constitution and that will not change. Leave aside the practical impossibility of ever denuding the Constitution of Islam, our shared history and our present are so interleaved with the faith that its absence would leave a void for many of us, even non-Muslims. A friend of mine of another faith used to complain about the azan until she spent a long time away and realized how it had given her comfort, signaling the end of night and the start of another day. In the same way, the funds that are used for the advancement of Islam in this country come, in part, from taxes collected from all of us and we do not hear complaint about it.

An appreciation of this, and the equally protected status of the Malays, must necessarily bring with it an equal understanding of our need for mutual respect. This is not just about the guarantee of equality in the Constitution, this is about what common good requires of all of us. I do not profess to be an expert but I recognize at my core that God made us equals even as He made us different so that we could understand acceptance within His full embrace. I understand that our diversity mirrors the worlds that are His domain, as much as I understand that our diversity is a reflection of His Oneness. For this reason, when we cleave any one of us away from the rest of this society, it is a cause of great pain and anguish. There are sensitivities that have to be handled very delicately even where we feel that there are issues that need to be confronted. Perhaps too belatedly, I understand now that so focused on law and constitutional rights have I been that I have at times overlooked the need to be less robust in the way I explained myself; though things needed to be said, and still do, they could have at time been said that much better.

When Dr Rais Yatim opened the conference at which the proposed Interfaith Commission Bill was to be discussed, he said something that has remained with me since, “We must know the sharp edges protruding in a multi-religious and multi-racial society.” Rightly so, for how else are we to understand how to live with each other more harmoniously unless we know the sharp edges. We must confront, understand and resolve. And while sensitivity is necessary, it must not be permitted to keep us away from what we have to do as a community of worlds or to shut us out.

We must also not blind ourselves to the fact that sensitivity is a two-way street. No one person or community has a monopoly over the right to feel pain. We all bleed the deep, red blood of Malaysia. Tanah tumpahnya darahku.

(Malay Mail; 9th Sept 2008)

MIS

A Towering Malaysian

A Towering Malaysian

Though I was initially going to write about the debacle at the Bar Council auditorium on Saturday, I decided against it. What more is there to say that we do not know already. It comes as no surprise that radical and extremist elements exist in our society or that political opportunists will seize every perceived advantage where it benefits them to do so, even when it is completely against reason.

What is crucial to understand is that all things said and done, the extremist is the exception and does not define the norm. One has just to look around to appreciate the truth that all our lives are the sum of a collective of varied experience in which no one person is more significant than the other. From the durian seller on Jalan Alor in Kuala Lumpur to the elderly Indian Muslim junk shop owner off Chulia Street in Penang, and everyone in between, we all add hue and colour to the rich tapestry that Malaysia is. That is something that can never be taken away from us.

This was however not the principal reason I chose to leave aside the events of Saturday. Early this morning, fellow Penangite and friend, Azmi Sharom, informed me that a former teacher of ours, Mr Tan Har Yong, had passed away at the age of fifty-four.

I wish I could present a glowing eulogy of the man, his life and triumphs. The sad truth is that I cannot. I cannot recollect the last time I saw him. I cannot tell you about the paths his life took him on nor the journeys he made. Periodically, friends had relayed our greetings to each other. Through this, I came to know only of his having become a pastor and that he was apparently, and somewhat mysteriously, satisfied with what he had managed to achieve with those of us he had tutored. I cannot tell you whether he was happy or fulfilled, though blogs I checked this morning suggested that he was for the fact of his having given himself over to the bigger cause of shepherding those who were guided to him.

And that he did.

Like many others, I first met Mr Tan when I was twelve. I was in Form 1 and his was the comforting presence that allayed my concerns and anxieties about being in a new school, with new people. It was his smile - ready and quick, mildly bemused – and the deadpan expression, that said it all: we were not to take ourselves too seriously but it was perfectly acceptable, natural even, to feel nervous and uncertain as everything would sort itself out.

I remember that smile principally because there was a photograph, a close up, of it. Some of us in the first and second forms had decided to present a photo-feature spoofing the school at a dinner. Apart from a slide of Azmi Sharom stripped to the waist looking like he had just been severely caned, tomato ketchup smeared across his back to emulate blood, there was this slide of Mr Tan. Under it there was a caption that read: “Why is this man smiling?” The next slide offered a wider angle, revealing three students pushing his car, faces contorted by the strain. The caption on this one read: “He saves petrol.”

Over time, we learnt of his uncompromising adherence to fairness and right over wrong. He was rigid at times but for all the correct reasons. His even temperament, compassionate nature and sometimes strange sense of humour ameliorated what few effects there were of this characteristic. He reinforced what many of us were being taught at home. To him, it did not matter that we were Chinese, Indian, Malay or of any other ethnicity. He made us see that though each of us was unique and different, we were all the same for each of us being deserving of the respect of the others.

And so, when we laughed, we laughed together. And when one of us felt pain, all of us felt it too. He made us see that we were family to each other and that even though some of us did not really get along with some of the others sometimes, there were times that we did, all of us.

I would like to think that this had a profound impact on those of us who came to consider him a friend and mentor. He touched our lives and showed us in his own inimitable way that we could achieve anything that we set our minds and hearts on. It is no coincidence that there are a string of lawyers, activists and professionals, all contributing to the shaping a better Malaysia in which race, religion or creed do not matter, whom Mr Tan nurtured as a teacher.

And as I write this, I find myself wondering whether those who decided to disrupt the proceedings on Saturday would have done things differently if they had had a Tan Har Yong in their lives. Perhaps so.

God speed, Mr Tan. You were a towering Malaysian.

(Malay Mail; 12 August 2008)

MIS