WHOM SHOULD
MALAYSIANS FOLLOW IN STATECRAFT?
By: Kassim Ahmad
10th May, 2016
The great victory in recent Sarawak
state polls raises the question of the 2018 14th General Election.
We have followed the Westminster parliamentary type of democracy since
independence. We have survived many crises, but still many are the weaknesses
in our system. One of them is the clause in our Constitution stating “Islam is
the religion of the Federation.”
Now a country or state obviously has
no religion. Its citizens have; ours consisting of the religions of Islam,
Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and even animism. Although freedom of religion
is guaranteed in our Constitution, the clause on Islam forever poses a danger
of narrow and rigid interpretation of Islam
by officialdom. It has happened several times in Malaysia. This is a potential
threat to peace and harmony in our
multi-national and multi-religious country.
I remember Prophet Muhammad’s famous Medinah Constitution which stipulates religion
to be autonomously administered by its adherence. This is the right way to
solve the matter.
Taking cue from there, we might as
well go the whole way. Why do not we re-examine our Federal Constitution and
amend it to conform to the Prophet’s Charter. After all, Prophet Muhammad and
Prophet Abraham have been mentioned in the Quran as our examples. Prophet
Abraham was a progenitor of all humankind; he was a strict monotheist and he
set the example of complete freedom for all mankind by destroying all false
powers, even against his own father’s polytheism.
Now Prophet Muhammad’s Medinah Constitution was the first written
constitution in the world. [1] It gives its plural citizenry security,
freedom and justice. Dato’ Din has
kindly published this constitution with my detailed comments in his blog. This
important constitutional document can be excessed in my blog (www.kassimahmad.blogspot.com)
Although our Constitution was
promulgated by great jurists, including two Muslim ones from India and Pakistan, they
seemed unaware of the Medinah Charter. It is time we bring it up, as it is a seminal
legal-political document of early Islam at the time of its republican-democratic
period of the Prophet and the four rightly-guided caliphates of Abu Bakr, Omar
Ibni Khattab, Uthman Ibn Affan and Ali Abi Talib.
Of course, many will object because
we are a constitutional monarchy and the Medinah Charter is medieval, medieval by
European time-scale. Europeans consider the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) as the
beginning of the modern world.
According to Pakistani philosopher,
Muhammad Iqbal, Prophet Muhammad’s advent ( prophethood 622-632) begins the true modern
world.[2]
I agree with him. Muhammad was the only
prophet who was not given any miracles by God. All previous prophets had their
miracles to convince the peoples of their times of the authenticity of their
prophethood. Muhammad’s miracle is the Quran. [3]
The Arab armies of liberation took
only sixty years to conquer the then two superpowers, most of the hegemonic Byzantine
Empire and the Persian Empire, to become the Number One power in the world of
the 8th through to the 15th centuries. It created a brilliant
scientific civilization and culture never before seen in the world. This is
attested by several objective Western writers, such as Robert Briffault [4]and
G. Satron. [5]
Islam had its Golden
Age when its Dar’ul-Hikmah (Academy
of Science) took over and transmitted, with their own incomparable
contributions, to the then world’s knowledge
and wisdom to. Without this important intervening Islamic centuries, European Renaissance would not have
occurred and the modern world would not have emerged.
Such is the magnitude of the contribution of Islam to the modern world. Unfortunately, most
Western historians have conspired to erase this phase of world history. It is rightly
condemned by Briffault and G. Sarton.
KASSIM AHMAD
is a Malaysian author. His website is www.kassimahmad.blogspot.com
[1] M.
Hamidullah, The Fist Written Constitution
in the World (Mohammad Ashraf: Lahore: 1975).
[2]
The first revelation to Muhammad was,”Read, in the name or your Lord, who
created. … Read, and your Lord, Most Exalted, eaches by means of the pen. He
teaches man what he never knew.” These five verses caused a revolution in man’s
thinking. It started the modern scientific age. (Quran, 96: 1-5) See Muhammad
Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam (Lahore: 1958); h. 126-127.
[3]
See Quran, 29: 50-51.
[4] See his book, The Making of Humanity (Lahore: 1919)
[5]
See his Introduction to the History of
Science Vol I-III (1927-48: Baltimoe: Willims & Wilkins).
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