What disclaimer?
This is usually where I say ‘This is not an attack on religion’ or ‘I hope you aren’t offended by this, it isn’t a criticism on religion’ (and it isn’t), but I also realise that I do not have to lick the boots of anyone who’s close-minded enough to be offended by this article. All it takes is an Internet search to find something to get properly angry at. If you can’t even see this article for what it is (a piece lamenting the failure to separate religion and state, as well as a few reasons behind it) then you are likely the crazies I will refer to.
I have no need to apologise, thank you. (I thoroughly welcome feedback, though, so feel free to comment)
Some background
With the recent rise of far-right religious conservatism amongst the crop of US presidential nominees (Rick Santorum’s ‘makes me want to throw up’ comment sticks out) and our own fair share of religious ludicrousness back home, is it too late to point out that we’ve had too much religion in politics?
Consider the supposed threat of Christian proselytisation in Malaysia. Are there Christians trying to convert others to their own faith? Probably, yes. Are there Christians stupid enough to try and convert Muslims to their faith, in Malaysia? Unfortunately, yes. Does it mean that there is a whole conspiracy to build a Christian army in Malaysia? Any fool you could tell you there’s no such thing. But the fact that there are people who endlessly hound this theory of theirs is an indication of two things – there are people who sincerely believe it, and there are people exploiting it for political expedience.
Both are enough to show you why dragging matters of faith into politics is a bad idea. This isn’t a new idea. Even the US was founded on secular principles back in 1776. ‘In God We Trust’ notwithstanding (it was added later), the US remains a secular nation, though unfortunately one that is now forced to kowtow to religion as well. And Malaysia most certainly wasn’t created as an Islamic state, even if Islam is the religion of the country – having a dual-track legal system would seem pointless otherwise. But despite the fact that even people back then had the foresight to see what a problem it would be, the issue is worse today. Why is that?
What baffles me is that there are people who appear to value their faith yet insist on sullying it with dirty politics. My only conclusion is that they are so invested in their beliefs, and so convinced of the need to spread them (lest mankind, you know, burns forever) that they feel the need to take their message to the political stage.
Why you want that separation (between church and state)
But if I were a very devout person, I sure as hell wouldn’t want office-seekers dragging my faith through the mud. Even if the Pope or Dalai Lama himself decided to run for office, I would absolutely vote against them if they campaigned on religious premises.
Keeping religion out of politics also means keeping things fair. When the state does not favour a religion, it also does not discriminate against it. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a society where people decide what concerts to go to, or what kinds of functions to attend? But when the national dialogue if hijacked by the wrong people, restrictions on even these simple things crop up everywhere.
Our country is such a great example. What happens when you have vocal religious extremists? You get Ibrahim Ali, Zulkifli Nordin and Hasan Ali, all seeing conspiracies where there are none and projecting their paranoia onto the electorate. Collectively they make Muslims look overly sensitive, narrow-minded and unreasonable. You know that whatever their convictions these people are also motivated by political issues - aren’t their actions only detrimental to the cause they’re trying to champion?
It’s perfectly fine for politicians to have deeply-rooted beliefs and faiths. They just have to keep it out of their duties. Let me illustrate. If you were a US President who happens to be Catholic, and a popularly-voted pro-abortion bill came onto your desk to sign, you had better sign the bill into law. If you vetoed it on the basis of your religious beliefs, then you are not fit to be president – better go pack. The exception occurs if you were elected president because of your Catholicism. Even then, to veto a popular, bipartisan bill seems pretty wrong.
Similarly, if you were a Malay-Muslim chief minister of any state, you have no right to ban alcohol. Restrict Muslim access to alcohol, by all means, but you cannot criminalise drinking. And hey, look at Selangor – Malay chief minister, but alcohol freely available. And this is the same in just about every other state in Malaysia. So it isn’t a totally far-fetched dream, to want politicians to keep personal convictions out of their daily running of the state.
These are all ideals, though. Wiser people from centuries ago already envisioned a more secular world where religious organisations rightly kept to themselves and maintained their integrity. Despite the fact that people may think we are more advanced a civilisation today, one only has to contrast the relative secularism popular amongst the influential figures of the past, with the politicians who helplessly must work around strong religious lobbying today, to see that we may not have moved forward much at all.
Why it still sticks
Religion is a powerful motivator. There’s nothing like faith to keep yourself popular and elected. Rather than having to convince people consistently with facts, figures and a concrete track record, faith is a matter of looking beyond the tangible. It’s no wonder that politicians find faith such a useful tool for rallying loyal supporters – consider how many more people are willing to lay down their time, effort and money for a person they might believe has the support of one god or another.
It’s also long been used to claim the moral high ground. The argument for the religious candidate is, if not one espousing his/her holiness or godliness, one of assured moral standing. There probably comes a more inherent trust for someone who professes a certain religion – compared to someone who has no religion at all. Relatively, all the religious politician has to do is claim the moral high ground by contrasting and comparing their faiths or lack thereof. It’s a tired method and I hope many people see through it now, but it’s unquestionably a popular tactic.
People feel the need to advance their religious agenda. This is the flip side to the issue. Rather than politicians testing the waters of religion to shore up support, it’s the religious factions within a country who want to advance themselves. And what better way than getting the people in government (i.e. the people with money and means) to endorse your message? These are also the people ultimately responsible for the existence of candidates like Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann; people who feel that the country is headed to hell and somehow insist they have discerned a ‘saviour’ politician who will bring the nation back into the light. It is another tired trope but it never seems to die, somehow. These are the people who still think Obama is a Muslim and the US needs to be ‘taken back’; these are the nutters who probably also think the US was founded as a Christian nation; heck, I’ll even go ahead and say they probably thought Jesus was a white male. Maybe he was also American, I don’t know.
At least Ibrahim Ali doesn’t think the Prophet Muhammad came from Malaya.
In all honesty, this is not an issue that will go away. So long as the religious right exists in all its extremity and blindness, then there will always be a demand for the far-right conservative, ready to preach the forgiveness of his faith and yet condemn the others who do not share it.
I leave you with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, in a letter dated 1802:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their “legislature” should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”
Nicholas wonders how much Rick Santorum would throw up if he read this article.
2 comments
stan says:
May 15, 2012
While I agree with you that religion should be separated (at least as best it can) from the state, yet I disagree with your reasons as to why it is not separated, and will also point out that it’s impossible for religion to be completed separated from the state, as you seem to think it can.
While your article doesn’t make it too clear which part of faith being ‘dragged’ into politics you take issue with, I’ll quickly run through what I think your article lacks perspective on, and the lack of ground your conclusion stands on. (‘My only conclusion is that they are so invested in their beliefs, and so convinced of the need to spread them… that they feel the need to take their message to the political stage.’)
If you’re taking issue with faith interfering with the business of running the country itself, agreed, politicians shouldn’t veto popular bills based on personal convictions (following from your given illustration). However, things are never so clear-cut, and I doubt things will ever reach the black-and-white stage you suggest for the Catholic president: if the Bill reached him, it went through a hell of a time through the bill-making process, and you can never say that it was ‘popular-voted’. What does that mean – do you count 51% approval as a popular bill? If you’re running a divided country, you’re going to get bills where there is no clear majority vote that THAT is what the citizens want. If so, how do you, as a politician, make your decision? On what you were elected on, yes. In which case, voting based on beliefs can’t be objectionable if you were elected on them, as you concede. Even if you weren’t elected based on your religion, if you can’t tell what your electors want/it is not clear, what do you turn to but your personal convictions? My basic argument is that personal morality (to use a less objectionable word) cannot be separated from political duties the way you think it can.
In which case, you might say, fine. Take religion out of the electoral process, then. Candidates shouldn’t be able to be elected based on their faith. To which I would say, religion is another distinguishing mark. For a candidate to use it to advance his prospects is no more objectionable than a candidate who campaigns on the promise that he will eject all immigrants and close the borders to foreigners. This is where I object to your conclusion: I don’t believe candidates campaign to advance their religion; I believe they do so due to a baser human instinct that is, to one-up the other candidate by giving the electors what they’re looking for. This conclusion, while still objectionable, at least does not impute to all the candidates competing on religious grounds the intention that they use politics as an ‘evangelical’ ground. Some might, granted. But not all.
All things said, while I agree with the idea that religion and state should be separated at least in so far as it can be, I don’t believe that it can be fully separated. This brings in deeper issues such as how far morality and/or religion can be separated from politics (which is a reflection of society itself), which your article never fully delves into.
Nicholas92 says:
May 22, 2012
*Was gonna highlight your paragraphs to respond, but comments don’t have formatting
so I hope you understand which ones I’m referring too. Comment would be much longer otherwise*
That ‘conclusion’ wasn’t the conclusion of my whole piece, but just the question of ‘Why are there people who know politics is dirty but still want to drag religion in anyway?’. It doesn’t deal with people who might choose to manipulate religion insincerely for votes, as I later talk about.
This is where I have to clarify things. Maybe I came across as implying that religion pervades everything in politics, which it doesn’t. So no, not all candidates campaign to further their religion – they campaign because they want to represent the people. My article was meant to address why the people who do push religion into politics do so, and how it has resulted in religion being a prominent (though not necessarily dominant) part of politics in general.
The politicians I am referring to are the relative (but vocal) minority who actually DO campaign to advance religion – like PAS. And at the same time you’re right, they do it because they think it is what people would/should want, and is good for the country.
I probably should have tried to be more direct about what I’m taking issue with. I don’t think that religion is an all-encompassing issue in politics that covers every political development. The majority of issues are, thankfully, not debated on the basis of religion – some matters of the economy, education, etc.
Sure, religion is another distinguishing mark. And I get the point you’re trying to make – just like the immigration issue, religion is just another trait that someone holds which may differ from others. My issue is that religions often provoke absolute opinions and are fundamentally irreconcilable, which give rise to very sharp divisions and very heated disagreements. We might disagree on immigration, but we probably won’t come to blows on the issue. But the kind of conviction religion gives a person’s belief makes it much more likely.
So to sum up the points I tried to make: Religion is still around in politics because there will always be people (not necessarily the majority, or even a huge minority) that truly believe their religious code is what’s best for the country. And also because it’s a powerful tool for getting votes. Why shouldn’t it be a part of politics? Because I see religion as a matter of personal faith, and given the inherent (and recognised) ‘dirtiness’ or politics I wouldn’t want something I value personally to risk getting tainted. Whether that is actually possible or not: When it comes to voting, or campaigning, nope. When it comes to the foundation/structure of a state, yes. The state can technically be secular, even if within it religion continues to play a role.
I agree that the ‘popular bill’ matter is a huge assumption. But that goes back to a fundamental problem with the democratic system, and I don’t think I’m a position to debate that. So I took it as a theoretical case: assuming that the representatives would vote on the Bill based on the direct feedback of their constituencies (which is the ideal, but obviously doesn’t always happen), then if the Bill passed, then it would technically be popularly voted. I know the math isn’t always clear-cut (the votes aren’t proportional) but that’s a lot of detail that I don’t think we should go into.
So the scenario I set up was a theoretical scenario, purely to illustrate my point: that in a situation where you know the Bill is something people want (which I concede, is obviously not always apparent in reality) then to strike it down because of your sole, personal convictions would be wrong. I totally agree with you that the element of personal morality steps in when the decision falls squarely on the elected representative, absent of any other method of decision.
But I also have to say I distinguish between personal morality and religion. The two are extremely linked, yes. Actually I’d argue that people impose their personal morality onto religion. Take the way people can interpret one holy text in so many different ways – you get pacifists and you get extremists, all referring to supposedly the same text. I think that the differences in interpretation arise from a person’s own internal morality. The difference, to me (and I’d understand if you disagree) is that I know my personal morality is not absolute, and different from everyone else’s – but the people who call their morality religion sometimes see it as all-encompassing. In other words, people don’t impose their own morality on others as much as they would their religious code.
So you are correct – personal morality cannot of course be separated from politics, but religion (theoretically) can.
As for not delving into ‘how far can politics and religion be separated, well, length constraints. Haha. That would probably take a whole book to really explore, but I suppose I could try writing another article addressing that some time in the future.
Anyway, thanks for commenting! If there’s anything else, feel free to bring it up