By Zairil Khir Johari Published in Malaysia Insider 4 October 2014
Zairil Khir Johari is a chocolate purveyor-turned-politician. He finds both experiences bittersweet.
Secularism and liberalism are not unfamiliar terms in this country, although how Malaysians understand them is a different matter altogether.
In the halcyon post-Merdeka days, our founding fathers would proudly proclaim such ideals to be their philosophical bedrock, so much so that the word liberal actually appears in the preamble to the Rukunegara (national principles). To be secular and liberal was to be constitutional and inclusive.Things have changed much since then. Today, the very same terms are used deleteriously as a mark of shame, such that it has become the proverbial scarlet letter of the Malay-Muslim society. To be secular and liberal is to be ungodly and aberrant.
A dichotomy
To make matters worse, some are beginning to define these terms in contradistinction to Islamic ideals. Take, for example, remarks made at the 60th PAS Muktamar held in Batu Pahat, Johor last weekend. In his closing speech, the president of Malaysia’s second largest Malay-based party after Umno, Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, took an unequivocal stand in differentiating his party’s Islamic struggle from his coalition allies’: “PAS members must understand that there is a difference. PKR is based on pragmatic secularism” while “DAP is based on socialistic secularism”. read more