Don’t test our sensitivity – Muhammad Akmal Abdul Ghani

These past few weeks had been an interesting yet bamboozling one. Why do I say so?

It seems to me that our beloved nation, Malaysia was going through some sort of face-lift, one that I am truly not eager about.

Earlier this month, we had witnessed how there are many attempts to make a foreign culture become a part of Malaysia’s own. Yes, I am referring to Oktoberfest, which was successfully held in One Utama shopping centre in Petaling Jaya, despite of numerous objections from the Muslim community in that area and also Muslims in general.

For those who are still in the dark regarding the incident, Oktoberfest is an annually held event originating from Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and it was quoted as an important part of Bavarian culture, being held as far as in the 1800s. The fact that this particular culture does not instill any positive moral values is already mind numbing to me. So, why on earth cultures like these are brought into Malaysia? It doesn’t seem so “Malaysian Malaysia” now, does it?

And there’s the “I Want to Touch a Dog Day” too. I don’t want to delve at all into the fiqh regarding dogs for I am not eligible to comment on it, but I do want to say this; Dogs are not part of the Muslim culture, particularly amongst the Malays in Malaysia. I have nothing against dogs, in fact I find them to be cute and cuddly, but the fact remains; it is not part of the Malay cultures.

So, why must we be concerned at all?

Why not? These are the examples of “procedures” that Malaysia is going through during the face-lift session.

Let’s put aside Malaysia for a moment, and discuss a little bit of homosexuality rights in America in the late 1960s.

Whenever gay rights organisations begin campaigning and chanting against homophobia, all they had ever faced was failures after failures. They tried repealing laws back then, even the teachers created a form of a curriculum trying to counsel teenagers regarding homosexuality, but to no avail.

They even went further as far as trying to convince the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the list of mental diseases.

They didn’t stop there, but they decided to be modest with their goals.

During the early 1970s, the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation decided to concentrate on persuading the Library of Congress to reclassify books from “Abnormal Sexual Relations, Including Sexual Crimes” to another classification, one which is less negative[1] which they succeeded in 1972 after the Library of Congress agreed to make the amendment, reclassifying the books into a newly made category called “Homosexuality, Lesbianism-Gay Liberation Movement, Homophile Movement”.

It was just a simple tweak of the aged institutional habit on how books were classified, but the effect spread across America, and it spread like a wildfire during summer. Citing their success, these organisations begin to start fundraising drives in order to support their cause.

Within a few years after the “minor tweak”, openly gay politicians started to run for political offices in New York, Oregon, California and Massachusetts, referring to Library of Congress as their source of inspiration.

After years of internal debate, the American Psychiatric Association in the year 1973 rewrote the definition of homosexuality, no longer classifying it as a mental disease, which then created pathways for state laws to make it illegal to discriminate someone based on one’s sexuality.

As stated by Karl Weick, a prominent organisational psychologist, “small wins do not combine in a neat, linear serial form, with each step being a demonstrable step closer to some predetermined goal but more common is the circumstance where small wins are scattered, like miniature experiments that test implicit theories about resistance and opportunity and uncover both resources and barriers that were invisible before the situation was stirred up.”

Lets come back to Malaysia.

Don’t you see? These events (Oktoberfest, I Want to Touch a Dog Day etc, more to come I am sure) are intended to be small wins, regardless of how one is irrelevant to the other.

They are trying to test our boundaries, our resistance and our sensitivity regarding these matters. They are trying to uncover to whom they can rely on and seek help from, and to whom they should put their guards up and be very careful with.

One small win will definitely blooms into more small wins, albeit the difference in its nature and methods. This means, the Oktoberfest and I Want to Touch a Dog Day would be the pioneer of list of programs awaiting to emerge in the future, and these programs would be the testing fields in measuring up our sensitivity on matters regarding to Islam and Malay cultures.

If we as Muslims of this nation do not respond and even worse support the act, it would mean another small win for them, and these small wins will lead into bigger wins. Who knows maybe in the future there will be an even bigger version of Oktoberfest, or I Want to Do This and That Day without any regards to Muslims who hold Islam so dear in their hearts?

I am encouraging you out there to state your stand, whenever such acts of face lifting is operated upon the face of Malaysia. Don’t stay still and be a benchwarmer. Get onto your feet; state your disagreement and discontentment. We must not let another event taps our very own sensitivity when it comes to Islam and its sanctity. Don’t let them test their markets at our grounds.

Open up our eyes, and see beyond their “humble” demeanor.

Wake up; it’s time that we do.

Muhammad Akmal Abdul Ghani
Gabungan Peguam-Peguam Muslim (iPeguam)

[1] HQ 71-471 (“Abnormal Sexual Relations, Including Sexual Crimes”) Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse, Constructing Social Problems (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001).