Of Allah and small things

This was something I wrote for BFM's digital magazine Bside, which is available as a free download.

It is close to nine PM that he finally steps into the supermarket to buy his groceries.

As he ambles down the aisle, he sees that the tin of milk formula, already fitted with an anti-theft clip, has gone up a couple of cents again.

The recent petrol-hike has already cost him 20% extra, while time spent parked on the road grows ever longer as Kuala Lumpur becomes home to more jobseekers from all over the country.

 His sense of powerlessness grows as he scrolls through the news in the queue at the cashier:  another murder, another robbery. No one cares if your house is burgled because you’re not a datuk. Your relatives don’t ever seem to be off social media, a proper job is hard to find for them, hopefully they will be able to snag some government jobs soon; and look, the minorities are saying more things. They’re so much more confident and vocal now, demanding this and that when they’ve already got so much more than the Malays.

This is the great Bumiputera life. All your life you’ve been told that Malaysia is Tanah Melayu. That the fruits of this land, its harvests are yours, yet everything remains out of reach to you; the comfortable house, the better car, the happier life. Ads and commercials show so many things you want, but you see only the Chinese, those pendatang, driving that foreign car, entering into that gated community with the stately town-houses. You are a spectator to riches no matter how hard you work.

Thank god, Alhamdulillah, you’re a muslim. Allah rewards the believers in the hereafter. Let the kafirs enjoy this brief earthly paradise.

It may seem out of place to begin a piece on the ‘Allah’ issue with this anecdote, but it serves to illustrate the context the dissatisfaction is emerging from. The controversy surrounding the use of the word ‘Allah’ may, upon cursory glance, seem like a question for the theologians (especially those of the comparative/interfaith persuasions) but I have a feeling that, in Malaysia, it is really not about religion, but about a lot of the many small things that happen around us every day.

And let’s not kid ourselves, to really understand the Allah issue, you really have to understand how a large section of the Malays think.

Unfortunately, whether out of inability or just general disinterest, few real attempts have been made to understand why there is, among the Malay community, such an unease over the use of the word by non-muslims.

To be fair (and hedge against a permanent seat in hell) I will have to admit, theologically speaking, that there are merits in the arguments put forth by the supporters and opponents of the ‘Allah’ ban.

That may sound like a cop-out for you ideal-minded latte sippers out there, but Islamic jurisprudence, being what it is , has always had these instances of contradictory opinions on a wide range of issues. That Muslim thought and practices are wide and diverse is not just a cheery slogan on the side of a London bus, but a fact of history. Scholars and thinkers have throughout the history of Islam tried to make sense of the Qur’an and the Hadith (primary sources for the majority of Muslims) to the best of their abilities, crafting fatwas based upon precedents, reason, philosophy, local circumstance, and sometimes superstitions, political expediency, and whim.

These are among the many elements that have melded together to make Islam such a rich tapestry of human thought and civilisation, but it has also been the spark of violent strife and conflict.

Sometimes, Muslims are accepting and open to different ideas and opinions, but there are also times when Muslim communities have found it difficult to agree with people with different beliefs, Muslim or non-Muslim.

This second scenario is something we are familiar with in this modern age of daily bombings, sectarian violence, and state-sponsored witch-hunts that appear in the news every day, in countries as known for their poverty and dysfunction as they are for violence.

Sure we’re not Somalia today, but we have to realise how hard things have become for the average Malaysian: for the clerk in her kaleidoscopic baju kurung down in Finance, for the abang dispatch who’s been slipping in and out of traffic for the past fifteen years, for the polytechnic grad answering phone calls in a call centre at 3 in the morning, figuring out how to make his share of rent for his rumah sardin this month.

As you can probably grasp from the ethnic makeup of our population, many of those struggling today are Malays. They are not simple stereotypes of lackadaisical ineptitude, but are human beings with their own set of complexes that need to be understood if a real solution is something we are interested in.

Religious identity, to name one crucial example, has become such a pillar of what it means to be Malay in the 21^st century.  There is a strong sense of pride that comes from being a Muslim, to be members of a global (and heavenly) community with a rich history and the Quranic ‘best of nations’.

With few other things to be proud of, and a future that grows bleaker with each passing day, it is not a stretch to understand why this pride in being Muslim is jealously guarded. It does not seem like it’s a rational pride, which makes arguments on matters related to it difficult, but it has to be addressed somehow before Malaysia becomes another one of those ‘Muslim nations’, and we start seeing local equivalents of Boko Harams or Al-Shababs.

Because as we have seen, all it takes it a small spark to start a raging fire.