Don’t want to be liberal? Tear up your constitution, says don

Professor Ebrahim E. I. Moosa says Malaysia’s constitution already puts it as a pluralistic and liberal country. – The Malaysian Insider pic, December 9, 2014.

Malaysia should perhaps tear up its constitution if it wants to escape from liberalism and pluralism, in which the country was based on in the first place, says a South African Muslim scholar.

Professor Ebrahim E. I. Moosa told a forum in Penang today this was because Malaysia was a pluralistic and liberal country.

"The very idea that Malaysia has accepted, constitutionally or otherwise, the plurality of religious and ethnic communities… it is already on the way to liberalism.

"You are already on a certain kind of liberalism. It might not be an optimal one, but it is already there.

"If you want to get away from liberalism, you need to tear up the Malaysian constitution and begin knocking down the foundation of what the society is about," he said at the forum “Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism” organised by think tank Penang Institute.

He was replying to a question from the audience on his thoughts on the Senate being told earlier today that "the teachings of liberalism and pluralism are seen as among the most prevalent forms of insult to Islam".

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom was quoted by Bernama as saying: "This (insulting Islam) is the result of a string of views that perceive Islam in a liberal, plural sense and the teachings which see religion as an individual's right which has no relation to other parties.

"These groups failed to understand and see that the provision of the Constitution agreed upon since independence which puts Islam not only as the official religion, but also as the Federal religion."

Moosa, who is from Notre Dame University's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, said he did not know what Jamil Khir was trying to convey.

"What I understand from friends that people here are condemning liberalism and pluralism.

"It is clear that there is some particular meaning to what is pluralism and liberalism is here, which I believe is very different from the stuff that I am talking about.

"They are talking about something unpalatable to them. I think it requires a very careful examination and a much more enlightened conversation."

More on Jamil Khir’s statement, Moosa said:

"I know the founders of this country were educated in the United Kingdom, in Oxford and Cambridge where they had liberal education. The country inherited a British foundation.

"These are liberal rights we are talking about. So, I don't know what they are talking about.

"The first thing to be done, that many of the spokespersons who are saying these things, need a quick lesson in Malaysian history... Malaysian history 101… to re-familiarise themselves."

Moosa said only then could there be a "grown-up conversation" on the question of pluralism and liberalism.

"Right now, this is not one. So I am looking forward to coming back to having a grown-up conversation." 

- TMI