Daily Times

No trip to Ipoh is complete without driving downtown to Kong Heng Square, the city’s picturesque tourist trap.

On weekends especially, the mouldy, old-world magnificence of the block and its arterial Concubine Lane pulsate to the rhythm of a myriadhuman bodies that descend on the area looking for great food, trinketsor both. Commerce is king and there is little room for anything else.

Imagine my surprise then, on a sweltering late-December morning mere days before the new year, upon sighting a clutch of individuals manning a strange booth outside Concubine Lane on Jalan Market. The booth bore the signage “Multiracial Reverted Muslims” (MRM).

A mixture of races, ages and genders but predominantly Malay, the male MRM members handing out fliers and engaging pedestrians wore bright yellow tees bearing the slogan “Muslims love Jesus & Mohammad.”

Proselytizing in public is risky business in Malaysia. And the authorities are usually cagey about allowing individuals or non-profits to openly peddle a specific religious narrative lest it create unwanted communal friction in a multiracial and multireligious society.

In fact, the few Ipohites I reached out to immediately after sighting the MRM booth all parroted the same question: “How are they allowed to do this in public?”

So, what were they doing there? Robert Ta Honn Yu, a “Da’wah Executive” according to his business card and clearly the man in the charge on location,explained the overarching purpose of MRM was to “encourage interfaith dialogue.” Fascinating.

A mixture of races, ages and genders but predominantly Malay, the male MRM members handing out fliers and engaging pedestrians wore bright yellow tees bearing the slogan “Muslims love Jesus & Mohammad”

A cursory viewing of askislam. me, the group’s website, revealed they wanted to “help you find the truth about Islam.”Moreover, to engagein the Islamic tradition of Da’wah or invitation to the faith andprovide a support system for “reverts.”

Why “reverts” and not “converts”?Well, I was told the Shafi school of Islamicthought predominant in Malaysiastates all humans are born Muslims and hence their conversion is in fact a return to the fold.This manner of thinking is not sharedby all sects of Sunnism.

On further prompting,Honn Yu elaborated the one-dimensional and negative representation of Islam by western media had poisoned the minds of others against Muslims.

Thusly, a distinction between theology and the believer, between the different cultural flavours of Islam, and the core message of peace that was common to Christianity and Islam were all critical toward bridging religious divides.

He has a point. In today’s world, the deeply polarizing bully pulpit that is the Donald Trump White House has sounded the clarion call on a “clash of civilizations” between Muslims and the rest of humanity.

And regrettably, the grandees of western journalism have made Islam inseparable from terrorism and the violation of fundamental human rights, especially those of women.

In such a depressing world, surely outfits like the MRM must be a force for good, right?

Seeing as they were unafraid to preach in public, the next question naturally was to inquire about MRM’s political affiliations. Were they backed by the government or the Islamist party steadily gaining political stock?To which all present quickly shook their heads in unison, denying they had ties to any political party, whether in government or opposition.

As to how they organized themselves, I was told MRM is a social media phenomenon and the brainchild of like-minded Muslims seeking to “revive” the spirit of Da’wah in the community.

All very admirable, but I find the timing suspect.Malaysia is coming off a torrid patch of communal disquiet.First, there was the Seafield Hindu temple affair where a purely legal dispute without warning escalated to racial rioting in which a fireman lost his life.

Next, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government in its ambition to build a “New Malaysia” suffered a telling blow recently when its attempts to engage citizens on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) backfired and sparked massive protest rallies.

Signing ICERD would have mandated the shelving of all affirmative action programs currently favoring Bumiputras, who are mostly Malays. They wanted none of it.

These episodes begat mutterings of discontent among the minority Chinese and Indians who already feel oppressed by the self-styled iron-clad link between Islam and Malays, and their “special status.”

It goes without saying that interracial harmony, or at least accommodation, has been at the centre of the Malaysian success story. Is it beyond the realm of belief, then,that PH has recruited activists such as MRM to engineer a “social steering” campaign among citizens to pave over the potholes caused by recent incidents of communal tension?

That said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The two volunteers I first struck up a conversation with at the booth told me they wanted to convince Christians their belief in the Trinity was misguided. Indeed, the MRM pamphlet titled “Jesus, a prophet of God” contains the oft-quoted arguments rebutting Jesus’ divinity.

Honn Yu however backtracked after jumping into the conversation, explaining MRM sought to spread awareness about the commonalities between both religions and not belittle Christians for their beliefs. It’s hard to see how challenging core dogma will accomplish this goal.

Either way, I must admit MRM appears well-funded for a fringe non-profit. The promo material and website look great, meaning they either have generous privatepatrons or help from the higher-ups in Putrajaya.

The million-dollar question of course is whether Muslims in Malaysia are the only ones allowed to initiate such enterprise. What if the shoe were on the other foot? Would Christian missionaries expounding on the commonalities between the Bible and the Koran be similarly tolerated in the heart of Ipoh?

Lest we forget, a few years ago the highest court in the land backed a ban on Malaysian Christians using the word “Allah” in their religious literature. Yet Christians in the Middle East, and indeed Pakistan, use the term freely to refer to God.

Yet MRM is right in positing that without dialogue, there is no path to reconciliation among the major religions. After all, across Europe and the US, Muslims are singled-out and socially stigmatized everyday based on fundamental misunderstandings about Islam.

“If you keep things in your chest, they fester. It is only when you let them out that the process of understanding can begin,” Honn Yu said. He is probably right.

The writer is an Ipoh-based independent journalist

Published in Daily Times, January 8^th 2019