LEGISLATING THOUGHT: THE KASSIM AHMAD STORY

While on the subject of Malays, I have noticed many comments by people (somehow mainly by non-Malays) who say that Indonesians are not Malays or the Bugis are not Malays and so on. Some even say that the Malays do not belong to Malaysia and are actually colonialists on grounds that the Orang Asli are not Malays and are the real owners of Malaysia.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

While we are bogged down with the issue of the spate of sedition charges against opposition leaders and the internal power struggle in PKR that involves the position of the Selangor Menteri Besar, let us not lose track of another very important issue: the Kassim Ahmad trial.

Kassim Ahmad is basically guilty of thought. He thought the wrong thing. Hence he was arrested and charged for having the wrong thought.

It is not enough that Malaysia wants to determine what you can and cannot say (under sedition and criminal defamation laws, which I too have been subjected to), it also wants to determine what you can and cannot think.

This is called legislating thought. You can legislate conduct and punish people for misconduct. But how do you legislate thought?

In mediaeval times, if someone suspected you of having wrong thoughts, he or she would report you to the church. The church would then arrest you and torture you to make you confess that you are having wrong thoughts.

The torture would continue and not stop until you confess or you died under torture. Most who could no longer endure the torture would confess just to end the torture and then would be put to death. By the time they were executed they were already half-dead or dying anyway and had to be carried to the gallows or the stake where they would be burned.

That was how Christianity ended up as the largest religion in the world. They legislated thought and murdered those who harboured the wrong thoughts. And based on the Christian example, the Muslims want to ape the Christians (who stopped doing this only a couple of hundreds of years ago) and punish those with the wrong thoughts.

But how do you legislate thought and punish those with the wrong thoughts? In Malaysia, anal sex between two males is a crime from both the common law and religious law point of view.

What if I think it is not wrong for two men to have anal sex? What if I think, under a libertarian society, what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their home are their business and not the government’s business?

Is not having the ‘wrong’ thought about what constitutes a crime also a crime?

What if I think Communism is better than western democracy? What if I think Hamas is wrong for attacking Israel and therefore the suffering in the Gaza is the fault of the Muslims and not the fault of Israel?

In Malaysia, such statements are considered crimes and if I openly say such things I can be punished. But then I am thinking those things so how do you punish me for thinking all that?

As I said, how do you legislate thought and punish those with the wrong thoughts? And should Kassim Ahmad, therefore, be punished for having the wrong thoughts?

If the answer is yes then how far do we want to go with this? Islam says that Jesus is not the Son of Allah and neither did Jesus die on the cross or get resurrected. But many Malaysians believe this to be true and we call them Christians.

Should not Christians then all be rounded up and punished for such thoughts, which definitely go against Islamic beliefs? And if Christians are free to think whatever they like, why are people like Kassim Ahmad not allowed the same freedom?

Is this not discrimination? Non-Muslims are allowed freedom of thought but Muslims are not. Hence Malaysian Muslims have been reduced to second-class citizens who are denied the same rights as the non-Muslims.

And the non-Malays have the cheek to scream they suffer discrimination and are victims of double standards when it is the Malays who are actually the victims.

While on the subject of Malays, I have noticed many comments by people (somehow mainly by non-Malays) who say that Indonesians are not Malays or the Bugis are not Malays and so on. Some even say that the Malays do not belong to Malaysia and are actually colonialists on grounds that the Orang Asli are not Malays and are the real owners of Malaysia.

I suspect these people making those comments are not anthropologists; hence their ignorance. This is like saying that the Taiwanese are not Chinese. But what is puzzling is, it is the non-Malays who debate the issue of who is Malay and who is not.

Anyway, there are about 400-500 million people who come under the Rumpun Melayu or Malayo-Polynesian group, also called Austronesians. The Arabs refer to this entire group as Jawi. Under this category would be those who speak:

INDONESIAN

Indonesian, Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Tagalog, Visayan, Malagasy, Minangkagau, Achinese, Batak, Buginese, Balinese, Panagasian, Igorot, Maranoa, Jaria, and Rhode.

MICRONESIAN

Marshallese, Gilbertese, Chamorro, Panapean, Yapese, Palau, Trukese, and Nauruan.

MELANESIAN

Fijian, Motu, and Yabim.

POLYNESIAN

Maori, Uvea, Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Rarotongan, Tahitian, Tuamotu, Marquesan, and Hawaiian.