It's Just Between Yourself and God

The religion issue is a topic and subject that I often refused to talk as it made me feel uncomfortable. However, the recent apostasy matter that was brought up following Nurul Izzah's comments has got me wanted to say this for the last time, and hopefully I would not want to talk about it down the road again ever.

Until today, my observation is that many of those who scream apostasy never even bothered to answer the two main questions:

1. What really make people decide to leave their faiths behind? 

2. What is the desired punishment that these people want if a person is found to leaving their faith?

Ibrahim, Zul, Hasan and even the clerics in the UMNO organization has never even bothered to answer Question 2 but simply waving threats all around. 

As for Question 1, there answers are mostly found through self-discovery and emotional perception. It cannot be answered by others except themselves. It is somewhat a cliche to by some people to accuse Western influence as the reason behind it. That, I do not think so.

There are some people who may realized or witnessed how a religion is being misused for the purposes of a select few that many repeated deny that it is a lie whereas there are tons of evidence to support that. There are some who have felt that the limitation of tenets imposed (though irrelevant at the modern age) has given the restriction for them to think and act, but want to do things while still remain in the boundaries of what is defined as good conduct and behavior that each religion would demand of. There are also some people who claimed to say that they have experienced a calling and epiphany to move from one faith to another for a better good.

There have been fictional material that illustrates a man's transition as the result of experience and epiphany. As an example, one of literature's famous swords and sorcery fictional characters, Drizzt Do'urden's decision to leave a faith and religion was the result of the emotional trauma experienced first hand and self-realization that the religion that he was in his formative years was more or less of committing atrocities for lust and chaos. As the result, he pursued - the Melikki - and in the centuries after the events, he admitted that he has felt the unusual peace and enlightenment that has never felt otherwise - without compulsion, but with curiosity and the desire to get out of the evil that could consume him.

The European history of how religion has been successfully been separated out of secular law is the reason why I would write to answer this problem in Malaysia. You've got to acknowledge that when England's Act of Supremacy was introduced in 1534, England has already successfully kept the religion factor out whenever laws are implemented. Europe will only wake up in another 265-270 years later during the Napoleonic Wars. In short, socially speaking we are 200 years behind Europe in society progress that even Pak Lah admitted before, first world facilities third world mentality.

I often held high regard to people like Henry II and Kemal Ataturk simply because they are in believe that religious interference into the administration of law of their respective countries would make the national progress (economical and social aspect) mundane just because mixing that odd aspect into it. The U.S law doesn't contain any religious aspects included in its laws. Some viewed that Ataturk, branded an apostate by many narrow-minded Muslims, eventually succeeded to the point that those who screamed suddenly went quiet over it. Ultimately, who's in the wrong anyway?

Say if I am asked to become the interim Prime Minister of Malaysia due to some unusual circumstance, I would definitely would put a stop on religious interference once and for all with a stroke of the pen. Of course, there are people including those right-wingers would definitely say, "Ini orang cina ini tak hormat Islam...bla bla bla.." I mean come on, you are impeding people's potential to progress, you are walking one step backwards, you don't want people to be smart, but then despite religious interference, there's still plenty of untackled social problems. Hey...the constitution is silent on who can be PM, right? Perlembagaan tak ada kata siapa mesti jadi PM kan - only who commands the confidence of the majority of the MPs, betul? Everyday we see those who scream all this murtad thing riding on a big limo like a rich man - isn't this contrasting to your own statement indicating that the person is holier than thou? If that is the case, may I suggest that you migrate to those countries like Saudi Arabia if you think you are great? Didn't someone said before that Western countries though they are not Muslim majority but yet do things that are Islamic? If a man steals bread to feed his daughter and both of them are poor shouldn't we be helping them?

In this topic, my main argument is from the perspective of secular view and being a person who doesn't put stock into religion like other people do. Who knows, I might do better than Najib or Pak Lah combined supposed if I am PM. The gist of what I am saying is, too much inteference tends to make things very very messy and as a person who thinks that religious freedom is for all, a person's self-identity and his / her believes is between themselves and God with nobody having the right to force or interfere, Hotel California style.