The cost of telling the truth

It takes courage to stand one’s ground, but the greatest reward is the ability to sleep at night, knowing that one’s conscience is clear.

WHEN parents try to teach their young children certain values and behaviours, consistency is the key.

When you tell children that lying is wrong, then they must never catch you telling untruths.

If you say there’s no money to buy some fancy new toy, then you can’t come home with a brand new car without them wondering how come you can afford that.

Children have natural radar for hypocrisy. It is tuned to catch any inconsistencies, white lies or complete untruths that parents spout because these grate against the natural sense of fairness that kids have.

And every time they catch their parents out, a small bit of parental authority erodes.

This anti-hypocrisy radar is only maintained if the child doesn’t then learn that to be hypocritical is more rewarding than to be true to one’s own conscience.

If they find that there is nothing to be gained from telling the truth, and everything to gain from fudging facts, then the children grow up with their moral compass askew.

They learn not to take responsibility for their own misdeeds but to blame others for it.

Thus you get stories, for example, about kids who blame their maids for not putting their homework in their schoolbags on the day they are meant to pass them up.

Unfortunately there are more and more adults behaving in this way these days.

I can only assume that once they did have a conscience, believed in certain things but along the way grew to learn that being true to that conscience is no way to get ahead in life.

As children, they might have had a strong sense of justice, of instinctively knowing when something is unfair.

But when they become adults, that instinct is put aside because it’s not a ticket to advancement. Besides if everyone else is doing it, why be the exception?

To be the exception requires the strength of moral character that is able to withstand the pressures that come from others, whether family, colleagues or bosses.

It also requires the courage to take whatever blowback that might come from standing one’s ground, some of which undoubtedly will have implications to more than one’s self.

But for those with such courage, the greatest reward is the ability to sleep at night, knowing their conscience is clear.

These days I find myself wishing I knew more people of such moral fortitude because they do seem thin on the ground.

I see people who have no qualms about making themselves popular by preaching the oppression of those who have no voice.

I shudder to read of people who blithely believe that the rule of law should only apply to themselves but not to others.

If one were ever to accuse them of any crime, they immediately plead that they are innocent, but they accord no such consideration to those they don’t like.

They say that those of us who open our mouths in protest have no respect for the law, when they themselves barely hesitate to override those very same laws.

The tragic thing is that these types of people think they are leaders, because in the popularity contests they indulge in, they win.

Never mind if their means of winning would hardly fit a child’s description of fairness, what matters most is that they win.

I look at the lineup of the so-called leaders we have and I have to despair.

Not a single one of them would be anyone I would look up to.

None are names that would come immediately to mind as those who could take us confidently into the future, to take our place among the best in the world.

Instead I see people whose minds remain in an ancient age where might is always right, and the majority always wins. And a fat wallet is everything.

Many years ago I was in a country much poorer than ours where I met a young politician who seemed just the type of dynamic leader the country needs.

There were rumours that he would stand for election as the mayor of their capital city.

But when I asked him, he replied that he was not going to.

“It takes a million US dollars to have a running chance of winning that post,” he said.

It wasn’t that he did not have the money because he came from a wealthy family but he did not feel that was the right thing to do.

Today I saw a quote about how much it takes to stand for party elections in our country.

It costs four times more to run for elections in a party of three million members than to stand for mayor of a city of 18 million.

Enough said.

> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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Where's the justice now?

Many Muslims are quick to defend their religion as one of peace, but very often words are not enough because the actions that many Muslims do in the name of Islam are neither peaceful nor just.

WHENEVER Islam is attacked for being violent and oppressive, many Muslims are quick to defend their religion as one of peace.

At each attack, the same words are trotted out as if these alone would be evidence of such truth. In fact, very often the word are not enough because the actions that many Muslims do in the name of Islam are far from being peaceful or just. Worse still, that the injustices and violence are mostly inflicted on other Muslims.

How is it possible to classify the burning of houses of worship of other faiths, or the abuse, and sometimes killing, of people of other faiths or other Muslim denominations as peaceful? How do we classify the rape of Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani woman given to another family because of an alleged wrong done by her brother, as just? Or the shooting of Malala Yousufzai?

Nearer home, how do we proclaim Islam as a just religion when the poor disproportionately are unable to obtain justice in our courts, when women have to spend energy and money they don’t have going in and out of court to get what is rightfully theirs and their children’s from irresponsible husbands?

What sort of justice is it when a woman who, fed-up with the long drawn out process, insists that the court punish her by whipping her is seen as a good Muslim woman, while men who repeatedly ignore court orders are not seen as bad Muslim men?

What sort of justice is it that women are invariably blamed for all of society’s ills but never men?

This week, a gross act of injustice has been done by the Federal Territory syariah court to a young woman who had the misfortune of being female and Muslim when confronted by Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (Jawi) officials looking for someone to arrest.

They could not arrest her non-Muslim boss nor could they charge her employers.

So they picked on her and subjected her to unabating harassment to this day.

Never mind that the civil courts found that they had no right to raid the bookstore before the book they sought was even banned. Never mind that the civil courts lifted the ban on the book.

If the conditions for her arrest no longer exist, it stands to reason that whatever charges against her must be withdrawn.

After all, the courts have said that the book is not banned, therefore, how can she be charged for selling a banned book?

Here is where hubris trumps justice. Instead of gracefully withdrawing the charges against her, Jawi did a duplicitous thing.

In order not to be cited as being in contempt of the civil High Court’s order to lift the ban, they said they respected the court’s orders.

But then they said that the syariah judge had the power to make his own judgement on the case.

And he duly did, by refusing to withdraw the charge.

In what universe is this justice? In what world does this contribute to the image of Islam as a religion of justice and of peace? And what are the implications of this incredible judgment?

Firstly it means that no bookstore, except perhaps those selling Islamic books, may employ any Muslim at all since they will be held responsible for the content of each and every single book in the inventory that may contradict Islamic teachings. Does this mean that all bookstores must now summarily fire all their Muslim employees?

What about other employers that may have in their workplace things that are also considered unIslamic, such as alcohol?

Does this now mean that no Muslim may be employed in hotels, restaurants, even on our national airline? At a time when jobs are already hard to come by, how do we help anyone with this ridiculous judgment?

And it’s ridiculous because it makes no sense.

The court session was only meant to be a formality to withdraw the charges against the woman, since logically speaking, there is no reason to charge her. But the judge decided to prolong the case, make it even more controversial and perhaps even trigger a constitutional crisis. All for what purpose?

Meanwhile a young woman, who has worked hard to get to where she is, has to continue living with this charge over her head. That she has done so with great equanimity is testimony to her fortitude and courage.

Or perhaps, as a Muslim she knows this verse better than the judge: “Behold, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards [one’s] fellow-men; and He forbids all that is shameful and all that runs counter to reason, as well as envy; [and] He exhorts you [repeatedly] so that you might bear [all this] in mind.” (Surah An-Nahl, Verse 90, translation by Muhammad Assad).

> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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A question of security or insecurity

While it is true that security is a constant issue, I wonder if the real reason behind it is that feeling of uncertainty or a lack of confidence and anxiety about ourselves.

SINCE we are all worried about security these days, I decided to look up the meaning of “insecurity”.

Besides the feeling of being constantly in danger or under threat, insecurity also means “a feeling of uncertainty, or a lack of confidence and anxiety about yourself”.

While we worry daily about the many crimes being committed in our neighbourhoods with no real solution in sight, sometimes I wonder if we have a security crisis or an insecurity crisis.

While it is true that security is a constant issue, I wonder if the real reason behind it is that feeling of uncertainty or a lack of confidence and anxiety about ourselves.

These feelings of security and insecurity are of course related.

On the one hand, the very people who should make us feel secure are in fact making us insecure.

How certain do we feel about our future when we see hesitant and sometimes absent leadership at times when we most need it?

How can we not feel anxious when the leadership is silent on the things that matter to the citizenry?

As a citizen, I want a decent life for my family, my fellow citizens and myself. This, anyone would think, is quite basic and common to everyone.

I want to be able to have a roof over my head, education for my kids, the opportunity to earn a decent living and affordable healthcare when I need it.

When a human being is unable to have these basics, then they start to feel that most normal of human instincts, insecurity.

If enough people feel that way, then that’s a recipe for instability and mass insecurity.

It is not possible for any country to be stable if many of its people feel hungry or deprived of the most essential ingredients to lead a normal life.

Countries rise and fall based on these simple facts. Once inequalities start to spread, then it is only normal that insecurity, in the sense of danger, follows.

I was talking to a friend who has been working abroad a lot about a situation that he found very stark since he’s been back.

There are people who seem to be caught in a quagmire of debt that they simply cannot get out of.

The vicious cycle of inability to access what a person needs which leads to overuse of credit, which leads to an inability to pay, which then leads to getting loans at high interest rates from unscrupulous persons, seems never ending.

It leads to insecurity not just for the original borrower but also for all those within his or her family circle.

Recently, two leading religious figures have spoken about this terrible crisis that many face, of easy credit and crushing debt.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned that the ease at which money, in its virtual form, not in exchange for actual goods and services, is available has led to much misery among people.

Most recently, Pope Francis talked about the same thing, how the pursuit of money for its own sake has brought with it “a culture where the weakest in society suffer the most” and often, those on the fringes “fall away”, including the elderly, who he said were victims of a “hidden euthanasia” caused by “neglect of those no longer considered productive”.

I have yet to hear the Muslim equivalent of this, of concern for a global system that is increasing insecurity of people everywhere.

Instead, I hear a different insecurity, of one where there are constant so-called moral attacks, usually by imagined assailants. Where limited interpretations of religion are to be enforced because otherwise the religion will disappear, despite evidence to the contrary.

In some ways, these self-appointed guardians of religion have reason to worry.

Every action of theirs is self-defeating. For every cruelty they inflict on those who are weak, they lose more adherents.

For every injustice they perpetuate, there are people who leave disgusted. For every justification they give to inequality, people baulk and root for equality.

When we look at the most unstable countries in the world, inevitably they are also the ones with masses of poor people.

Economic injustice breeds problems not just within countries, but externally as well.

It leads to mass migration of people to look for work, and sometimes it brings violence.

It thus makes sense to prioritise dealing with such injustice.

Instead, we see our leaders behaving like people anxious about protecting their own comforts rather than anyone else’s.

This they do by distracting us from real issues, by telling us that some small groups of people, even dead ones, are a threat, by refusing to let some people speak or even be seen in our media.

So I have to ask: Who’s the insecure one?

> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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The value of human dignity

The importance of respecting a person’s dignity is also tied to respecting their bodily integrity.

ONE of the things that we try to impart to our children is the value of human dignity, where we try and teach them to respect others, never to shame others in public and to always conduct ourselves with decorum.

Our pity is often cast on those whose lives have fallen apart and who have to bear the indignities that society can wreak on the indigent and the ill.

We know that the importance of respecting a person’s dignity is also tied to respecting their bodily integrity. Hence our concern – some would say, obsession – with the way people, especially women, are dressed.

The ostensible reason is that it protects a person’s physical integrity.

A dignified person is therefore a whole person, respected and respectful.

Imagine therefore my horror and shock at a story of an ustazah in a school who, disbelieving her female students who said they could not pray because they had their period, decided to check their underwear to see if they were telling the truth.

It must be a special kind of sick sadist that thinks that checking another person’s underwear is a viable way of carrying out their duties. It is a blatant abuse of power over those who are unable to refuse the command.

Mothers rarely ask to look at their young daughters’ underwear except with very good reason, such as if they suspect they are ill. Why then does a teacher who otherwise has no business to touch the bodies of our children feel she can do this with impunity?

Imagine the effect it will have on the students. It is bad enough not to be believed but to be violated in this way must surely have an effect on their self-esteem.

Do we not care if we bring up children with low self-esteem or is that the idea, to create a whole generation of subservient girls?

More insultingly, it is done in the name of religion.

It just points to the sheer ludicrousness of public ritual as an indicator of piety.

I don’t know what KPI the ustazah had that she had to ensure that every single girl under her charge prayed every day.

Yet for all the praying, which presumably she does too, she still could not trust her own charges. If they say they cannot pray that day, then really she should just trust them and leave it in the hands of the Almighty.

Apparently this sort of thing is not uncommon in our schools and even in Muslim schools elsewhere. A friend told of how when she was in school, girls had to indicate on a chart when they had their period. If their period lasted more than 15 days, then this was cause for speculation that they were lying and therefore liable to be subject to punishment for not praying.

I have to wonder what punishment is reserved for boys who try to excuse themselves from prayers since there are no similar indicators for them. Should girls be punished merely because of biology?

The reaction of most of my friends who heard this story is that the parents of the girls should sue the teacher and the school.

Schools are after all meant to be spaces that are safe for our children.

Safety does not just mean physical safety but safety from the sort of mental abuse that this sort of physical “inspection” causes.

But the chances are that the parents won’t. Firstly, they are likely to feel embarrassed about the whole thing and secondly, who are they to dispute a teacher, and a religious teacher at that, who has power over their child for most of the day? They are also likely to be shamed for not keeping tabs on their daughters’ prayer schedules themselves.

In other words, such abusive teachers are likely to carry on this behaviour knowing that nothing much will happen to them.

What do we teach our children when we behave like this? We teach them that power over someone weaker is everything, that the powerful can do anything, especially humiliate a powerless person.

We teach our children that their bodies are not theirs, and yet at the same time we scold and punish them if they allow the “wrong” people to touch them. Is an ustazah, even if she is of the same sex, the right person? Some people will say she was only looking and not touching. That’s splitting hairs really.

It is things like these that make parents lose trust in our schools and our teachers. Schools are where our children should be able to grow as human beings, to fulfil their potential to be contributing members of society.

Instead, we are turning them into humiliated people who may well turn into future abusers themselves.

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Focus on positive things we can do

The voiceless and powerless are further discriminated by divisive issues.

SOMETIMES we need to look at our country from a long distance to truly see it as it is.

I have been travelling for the past two weeks and while it is nice to totally switch off news from home, occasionally I can’t help it.

Predictably enough there is hardly ever any news that makes me homesick.

Instead, there is only news that makes me sick at heart.

The whole resort surau (place of worship) issue blew up right after I left and honestly reading about it from afar makes me want to shake my head at the ridiculous lengths our politicians will go to supposedly garner popularity.

I won’t repeat the numerous sensible arguments so many have put forward against taking punitive action against the resort manager for what is at worst a naive mistake.

When people have apologised, magnanimity requires that we accept it. Not accepting apologies reeks of arrogance. After all, even God accepts those who repent.

In fact, the one striking thing about the recent many occurrences of the ease of offendedness was not only the sudden thin-skinnedness of politicians and religio-politicians but also the audience for this.

When it comes to religion, we are always exhorted to do everything for God.

Even given that some people actually think getting offended is a good thing, I have to ask: are we doing this for God or simply for other human beings, especially those whose votes we need in the coming elections?

If it is the latter, then we are already wrong. If it is the former, then why would Almighty God not only choose to speak through the Home Minister but choose the taking away of permanent residency as His chosen form of punishment?

Nor is the destruction of places of worship something that is sanctioned by the God some of us purport to represent.

As many have pointed out, places of worship often go through various incarnations.

The Kaaba itself was once a temple of idolatory until Prophet Muhammad cleansed it of its idols. Today, it is Islam’s holiest site. If the Kaaba can be so easily converted as a holy place from one faith to another, what more a humble resort surau?

Honestly, from afar, our politicians and their band of followers simply look stupid.

There are far more important things to worry about than whether rooms can be used for one faith or another, or who one calls God or whether everyone fits into one uniform faith box or not.

All over the world people are dying from hunger and war. How does the destruction of one surau help them?

In Britain, everywhere I go, I see posters gently requesting people to donate to causes in developing countries, to help people have clean water, simple medical treatment or for children to go to school.

The football association has just started a campaign for tougher penalties against racism, sexism and homophobia.

These are all positive things to do because those who are voiceless and powerless will feel more protected.

In contrast, in our country, every day we only see more calls for the voiceless and the powerless to be even more marginalised and discriminated against.

And the worst thing is, not only do we think this the right and – gallingly – the religious thing to do, but we are actually proud of it.

If we only read our religious books, then we would know that we should actually be ashamed.

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