I’ve had the good fortune to stumble across two letters
online, which reminded me of one of the wisest things someone ever said to me
about religion. The person who spoke these words to me was a Malay Muslim
driver who was one of the guys driving us around during the visit of the late
Saudi Crown Prince Sultan back in 2006.
We were talking about Islam and how Muslims managed to get
on in the modern world with its temptations of drinking, smoking, fornication
and so on. The driver talked about how he had to drink in a previous job as he
had to entertain clients from other parts of Asia where it’s simply understood
that you bond over many bottles of hard liquor before you actually strike a
deal. Despite doing that, he didn’t feel any the less true to the faith. The
topic then turned to the topic of the Saudi’s and their reputation for being “Bad
Boys” outside of Saudi Arabia. He mentioned to me that the Arabs unlike the
Malays had the benefit of reading the Quaran in its original but somehow they
had got lost. He then looked at me and said, “Ah….too much emphasis is placed
on the letter of the book and not enough on the spirit.”
I always remember these words because in the last few years,
we’ve had too many people in prominent places getting worked about other people
not following religious text accordingly. The Middle East provides the best
example of this, where you have Muslims, Christians and Jews at each other’s
throats – and that is despite the fact that they all claim to worship the same
God. If that wasn’t bad enough, you get them fighting amongst themselves. In
the Muslim world you have the showdown between Shia Islam and Sunnie Islam. In Christendom
the Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants have been fighting each other as long
as the Sunnies and Shias. Even the 13 million Jews in the world are not immune –
just think of the way the Israelis have to deal with the tensions between the
non-tax and military serving Orthodox Jews and everyone else
.
Talk to anyone obsessed with the “text” for long enough and
you’ll end up asking yourself if that person has lost the plot. My favourite
example comes from the usual debate on homosexuality in Singapore. This topic
will inevitably get the Churches getting organized and mobilized. The Thio
Family get particularly worked up about this and write long and glorious legal
text about why we should stop consenting adults from doing what they want to do
in the bedroom because of what St Paul wrote so many years ago
.
To be fair to the family Thio, they’re not alone in this.
Good Muslims are supposed to abhor homosexuality as much as good Christians.
However, after a while you start to wonder if the Thios are really doing what
God wants them to do.
Why do people like the Professors Thio Li-Ann and Thio Su Mien
feel this sudden urge to “save our souls” by bringing us to the Good Book
whenever the so called LGBT comes out to play but they are conspicuously absent
when it comes to our ever growing inequality problem. Jesus was far more vocal
on the plight of the poor than he was in what consenting adults did in the
bedroom.
Have people lost the plot. There are things in religious
text that aren’t always Godly. The Old Testament, the much revered book of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam happily encourages the Children of Israel to
kill off every man and enslave the women and children of the lands they take.
Religious text like other text need to be treated as other
text – look at them in their context. Look at who wrote them and at the times
they were written in.
But if you focus on the spirit of the books, your reward
becomes so much clearer. Think of the way Jesus urged us to love one and other.
Think of how the Buddha urged us to control our desires in order to free our
mind of the suffering.
God in his infinite wisdom gave us brains and the power to
look at the spirit. It’s such a pity that we often find ourselves ignoring this
gift by hiding behind the text.
