Blame it on the West.

H. Muhammad

I wrote this letter back sometime ago, can't remember exactly when. This letter was intended to a Muslim writer whom with the mindset of 'blame it all to the west' for all the suffering and misery of the Muslims. And he went all the way blaming the 'misguided' system of secular west. How convenient it was for some to blame others for our own weaknesses, but never once we blame ourseves. The letter goes:


"A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones." — G.K. Chesterton, (1874-1936)

I refer to a letter by our own transcultural philosopher (the writer), ‘West must demand cure for itself’.

It is hard to comprehend for one who is very critical in his writings towards the government, would have a double standard stance towards others who have critical views to matters that rivet to the public spectre. One should have been able to differentiate between personal domain (ie faith,belief etc) and public domain (laws,gov. policies, constitution etc) in which any creeds that impinge on the latter are of public concern. For some to be critical on matters of public domain manifest their concern and love for the country, just as his (the writer) ever-critical views towards the government especially the higher education system. Even Dr. M himself is now very critical of the present administration. After all, their motives are always the same and that is better future for all Malaysians.

It is admirable of a Muslim thinker like (the writer)himself who actively contributes ideas in seeking to reconstruct the Islamic identity with prime objective to revive the Islamic civilisation of global political power it once used to be. He follows the familiar theme of relating contemporary realities of the West as ‘morally decadent’ and ‘un-Godly secular’ values as the cause for all problems plaguing the Muslims and Muslim world.

However, it would be injudicious for one to judge morality through one’s own stiff moral lens, and magnify the inconsistencies in order to create discourses on moral issues with the objective to support and advocate one’s simplistic view in championing Islam. One need to step out of the box and disregard outdated paradigm of designating the ‘morally decadent West’ as the cause for all the ills and misery in the Muslim world, lest one fails to look at the big picture. A prudent move would be to end this ‘blame it on the West’ rhetoric but rather look inwards to find and acknowledge our own weaknesses.

On the need of secularism; it is evident that religion plays a role in people identity that in turn would indirectly play a role in politics. Since religion and politics are complexly intertwined, there is tendency that religion is exploited as a pawn that underpins political logic and camouflage political objectives. Political parties would produce discourses to legitimise their strategies and goals in order to garner support for their political objectives. One can find that political party ‘Islamicize’ mundane issue for example declare a city as an ‘Islamic City’ and also coined the brand name ‘Islamic state’ into various versions respectively to the political parties for the same reason.

Noteworthy, when there are other faith communities or other interpretation of the same faith that the state can become an instrument of religious oppression in the hand of the majority. Some religious issues might eventually affect the collective identity of the people and trigger religious sentiment that consequently turn into controversial political issues. Warily, as religion becomes more assertive and religious zealots become more proficient at playing the system, constitutional guarantees become futile thus religion disguised as national interest dubbed with political motive can become the instrument of crime against humanity.

Justifiably, there is a need for a functional device that is independent of religion to protect religions from the corruption of politics and politics from becoming an instrument by zealots. There is a need for secularism.