THE area of human experience where our bifurcated “Us versus Them” pattern of thinking is most deeply entrenched is religion. Higher than ethnic or political barriers, the notion that “only my religion has the truth or the complete truth” has kept Malaysians of different communities apart and oftentimes at loggerheads.
This “superior to you” posture goes against all evidence discovered by the sciences and humanities. In another article, apart from the current Adam and Eve series, we will explain the scientific basis for a transcendent unity of religions.
The greatest strength of religion lies in its special ability to bind millions of people together. This is also its greatest weakness when any religious authority claims exclusivity and sequesters the truth within one belief system.
Bifurcation triggers conflict when our minds cling to the notion that only we are right and others are wrong. Labels such as “unbeliever”, “kafir”, and “infidel” get thrown about. These were ancient military terms used to demarcate enemies approaching the gate. Anyone now using them to label others should receive a summons to halt war-mongering.
How can a great strength also be an equally great weakness? Religion was not always there: it emerged to meet new sociological conditions accompanying the invention of agriculture and a consequent shift to permanent settlements from the nomadic lifestyle.
Hunter-gatherers lived in societies of 150 to 165 people only. Evolutionary anthropologist and psychologist Robin Dunbar has discovered that this is the natural size limit for personal networking and cohesion that enables people to act cooperatively and minimise conflict.
Agriculture began in 10,000 BCE. As it required large workforces, primitive tribes that had gone into it merged. Settlements began with populations of hundreds, and over the millennia they became towns with thousands and then cities populated by tens of thousands and now millions.
How did all civilisations manage to bind cohesively their massive urban multi-ethnic populations? They found the answer in religion and politics – two connected institutions that acted like the double helix of DNA with two strands that wind around each other.
Today, all the big religions continue to be anchors for their civilisations – Islam is the anchor for Muslim nations, Christianity is the anchor for Western civilisation, Hinduism for India and the trinity of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism for China.
The primary function of religion is to bind all citizens together cohesively despite the huge populations, so that there is peace and minimal conflict within that civilisation. All big religions achieve that objective by using the same three devices: beliefs, prayers and rituals.
Civilisations differ, just as a tropical person is different from an Inuit in snow-bound Iceland or a Tibetan who breathes rarefied high mountain air. So it is that the big religions serving as anchors for their civilisations differ in their beliefs, prayers and rituals.
A shared belief system fosters group thinking and the adoption of a one-mind approach to all matters. Congregational prayers ensure that the population speaks with one voice on all issues. Rituals exert strong emotional pull and through mass participation demonstrating commitment to the group, citizens develop collective power.
Shared beliefs, prayer gatherings and community-oriented rituals bind the faithful together in one body, one voice and one mind. As Saint Paul tells Christians: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (Bible New Testament, 1 Corinthians 12:27).
All political systems are defined to some extent by religious ideology that shapes economic, social and political attitudes and institutions.
But shared beliefs, prayers and rituals work as a binding force only so long as they relate to the geographical, sociological and political context of that civilisation. As every civilisation is nurtured in a different context, major differences in beliefs, prayers and rituals between anchor religions are bound to occur. They are natural and reflect the diversity that stimulates life.
These differences, unfortunately, provided justification for hostility whenever two civilisations encountered each other in non-friendly circumstances.
Unlike China and India, civilisational encounters in West Asia have always resulted in warfare. The reason is largely geographical: whereas China and the Indian subcontinent had only one civilisation each, West Asia – slightly larger than India and smaller than China – had seen a dozen civilisations and, hence, a dozen anchor religions in close or near proximity to one another.
When civilisations clash, their religions also fight. To give you a vivid example: theology students often hold monotheism versus polytheism debates, attracting many listeners, none of whom are aware that this is not at all like a Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate but is a clash of swords.
Monotheism began to take firm hold over the Jews 3,500 years ago when they were living in Sinai after fleeing slavery in Egypt. The idea that only one God is to be worshipped reflected the sparseness and monotonous singleness of the desert landscape.
Monotheism gave them a single-minded determination to see their vision of Canaan as the promised land come true. Moses set this mission for them: conquer and occupy Canaan. “You shall have no other Gods before Me” (Torah, Exodus 20:3). From this command given in the desert spawned the Zionist war cry: one God, one people, one mind and body, one promised land.
The Jews would remain loyal to Yahweh for “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 20:2). Monotheism stood out in contrast to the polytheism of the Canaanites. These other Gods who were rivals needed to be destroyed – a much needed justification for the invading Jewish army to subdue the Canaanites, destroy their cultures and occupy the land.
Monotheistic preachers occasionally make spiteful comparison with Hindu polytheism. Hindus are polytheistic because India, especially the south, has a rich natural landscape with a huge diversity of forms, flora and fauna. Hindu polytheism embodies the belief that the unity of God is manifested in diversity and plurality.
Polytheism also developed as a reflection of the political autonomy enjoyed by numerous ethnic groups with their own subculture and unifying points. Each has its Deva (translated as God) to represent that subculture. But always in Hinduism, there is recognition of Brahman, the one and only God who is the All.
Hear this revealing passage in the Brihadaranyaka-Upandishad scripture: “Then Vidagdha Sakalya asked him: ‘How many Gods are there, O Yagnavalkya?’ He replied... three and 300, three and 3,000. ‘How many Gods are there really, O Yagnavalkya?’ 33. Yes, he said, and asked again: How many Gods are there really, O Yagnavalkya?’ Six, he said. ‘How many Gods are there really, O Yagnavalkya?’ Three, he said.”
The questioning persists, and Yagnavalkya finally reveals: “Two”, then “One and a half,” then “One”.
Realising that there are no valid reasons to stay divided, one of the world’s leading Islamic nations – Jordan – initiated a drive to bring all religions of the world together as one global family.
Promoting interfaith harmony is a major goal of the Royal Institute of Inter-Faith Studies, set up in 1994 to strengthen cooperation and interfaith relations, eliminate mutual misconceptions about the “Other” and ultimately expand shared commonalities. In line with this mission, King Abdullah II and Prince Ghazi Muhammad initiated the World Interfaith Harmony Week that has become a United Nations observance since 2010.
Following the lead set by Jordan, another Muslim nation – the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – marked 2019 as a Year of Tolerance to celebrate different cultures and faiths. Adding to its two Hindu temples, a Sikh temple and a Buddhist monastery, UAE inaugurated the Abrahamic Family House, an interfaith complex housing a mosque, a church and a synagogue, in 2023.
Malaysia took a baby step forward when it enshrined “Belief in God” as the first principle of Rukun Negara. However, we subverted our own principle by allowing the use of the term “unbeliever” to label adherents of other religions and adherents of the same religion with opposing political views.
We fail to realise that theological concepts of God are shaped by context, as we have explained. All theologies convey truths about God, albeit from different and often contrasting angles.
Without interfaith partnering in recognition of a transcendent unity of religions, Malaysia will suffer the devastating consequences of national disunity in the face of a worsening ecological crisis that manifests as climate change, biodiversity loss and plastic contamination.
In his book, Towards the True Kinship of Faiths, the Dalai Lama warned: “The line between exclusivism – which takes one’s own religion to be the only legitimate faith – and fundamentalism is a dangerously narrow one, the line between fundamentalism and extremism is even narrower.”
“The challenge before religious believers is to genuinely accept the full worth of faith traditions other than their own.”
The Dalai Lama spoke about his breakaway from the “parochial and exclusivist vision of my own faith as unquestionably the best” and his move to a position of “convergences with other religions”.
The way forward is to accept every honest-living citizen as a believer and a partner to restore ecological balance. This is the message that authorities of the six big religions in Malaysia – Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism – must disseminate to everyone.
In the fifth part of this series, we shall focus on the disastrous impact of our mental bifurcation on the political process and the decay of public governance.
The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
