An item in the agenda of public debate has emerged recently, that of morality and law. This new round was prompted partly by two young people Ooi Kean Thong, 24, and Siow Ai Wei, 22 accused of kissing and hugging in a public park, they could be charged with indecent behaviour.

This debate has in actuality been long in coming, now that it has I do wish to contribute my own analysis and perspectives on what is morality and law, and what is or are the relationships between the two.

Morality relates directly to what a society considers as 'good'. It is conformity to an accepted standard of moral conduct. Moral conduct in turn is an act of empathy given or shown by one person to another, and usually without expecting any reward.

To illustrate, giving charity is to the majority view a moral conduct, so it is a 'moral' act. It is difficult to locate a society that deems giving charity as an immorality.

There are six important and relevant points here:

1) Morality is the good conduct of the greater number of people in a set of population. Kissing and hugging in public may be immoral to say 30 percent of the population. But that leaves 70 percent who might say this is not immoral. Morality is statistical and thus scientific.

2) It originates from the sense of what is 'good' of an individual. It is the individual who defines his own morality, following his conscience and values. It is a reflection of his freedom of action.

3) Morality changes with the time. Again kissing and hugging might have been considered immoral once upon a time but this can change following public perceptions of it.

4) It is a voluntary act. No one must be coerced to give charity, for instance. It has to come from the heart. Nothing will happen to a person who does not give charity. I do not believe the two lovers were forced to kiss and be kissed either.

5) It is not the result of any legislation. In fact morality by definition is not law precisely because of this absence of legislation.

6) In a developed 'first class' community no one imposes his morality on another. If I think kissing in public is immoral, I keep this view to myself. I do not make others follow it.

What is law?

Law on the other hand is a rule or set of rules devised by a society to get organised, regulate the relationships between one person with another person, and one person with the government. A person must drive on the left side of a road, this is a small example of one such law. It is devised to foster order in driving, which therefore is a 'good' thing. Without this law, there will be anarchy on the roads and highways.

Both morality and law are reflections of a 'good' thing, but with one major difference between them. Which is this: while morality originates from the individual, law originates from the legislature. One starts at the bottom, the other at the top. This difference in origin is of importance but often neglected by many people. My wish is for it to be factored in any future debate on this issue.

The following are some of the features of law:

1) Law is the perception and codification of what is 'good' by legislators or law makers, not by an individual. Phrases like 'the greatest good for the greatest number' are normally used as reference point when a law is framed.

2) Law is by definition the result of legislation, it is imposed on the people. The people who might not agree with the law will have to observe it, even involuntarily. Some income tax laws to be sure are unpopular, but citizens still need to pay taxes.

3) It is nevertheless flexible. A law can be repealed or modified as time goes by. The people can make the legislators change or modify a law.

These features are agreed and accepted fairly universally by the modern human civilization. They are essential features of the 'first class' mentality of the people of developed countries, and of human rights.

Bad law

Another important point to remember is that while morality reflects what is good by an individual the legislature can pass a law considered bad by both individuals and society. A law can be passed but considered bad by the society. There can be such thing as a bad law.

A despotic king, a dictatorial president or prime minister can pass onerous tax laws for example. Or, Hitler must have passed some very bad laws that enabled him to annihilate over six million people. And, in this country we have seen some very bad laws; we are still suppressed under the yoke of some of them.

With the analysis above I tend to agree with Jeffrey ( Kissing: Let's not mix up morality and law , malaysiakini April 6) when he protested that kissing and hugging in a public is treated as indecent and immoral. Indeed "morality is morality, law is law", he says with sadness and despair. Jeffrey represents one side of this debate.

Religious law

But in this country such a loud and sorrowful cry might not get any sympathetic hearing. This debate has added the inevitable dimension of religion.

For a start, "Morality cannot be a private matter" retorts Fathima Idris ( malaysiakini , March 14) with authority and finality to demolish Jeffrey's protestation.

"Immoral behaviour and consuming alcohol are prohibited by Islam and are punishable offences under Islamic law," she says further.

Morality and civil law both of human construct are suddenly cast aside in favour of God's law, known as the Syariah. With religion in, human construct is out. Fathima represents the other side of the debate.

Her statements pretty well illustrate and summarise the thinking norm, the way the Ketuanan Melayu (Malay hegemony) government looks into morality.

To this norm morality is embedded within the peripheries of amri bil maaruf nahi an al munkar or do good and if you can't do good, do not do bad. It is the basic thinking parameters of Islam.

I list the stand of this thinking on morality and law:

1) Morality is good human conduct as determined and prescribed not by the individual but by religion. In this way what is good is determined by religion, as well as what is bad. To give charity is 'good' so is encouraged in Islam, while kissing and hugging in public is 'bad' therefore punishable.

2) Morality does not come from the heart of the individual, nor from a legislative body. Instead, but from a central transcendent source.

3) Its parameters are imposed on the people.

4) Punishment is meted out if morality it is not observed.

5) There is no human-made law, there is only God's Law.

From this list it can be seen that in this country morality rests on a higher plane. It is more than just morality. It is law, and more importantly it is religious law. To Ketuanan Melayu thinking morality is law is religion. They are synonymous.

When religious (instead of rational) principles are the determinants in debating issues the following Islamic religious boundaries appear:

1) What is good and bad, right and wrong, are centrally determined by Syriah Law. They define what is perfect for mankind in this world, and must be approximated and emulated. No alternative definitions are allowed. No statistical element can ever be put to gauge this statement. It is unscientific.

2) Other concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, are of human design so will inevitably contain corruption and oppression. Morality falls under this category.

3) As morality is religion, it has to be right. Other meanings of morality are therefore wrong.

These features carry the element of elitism, uniqueness and holiness. They are also unilaterally declared. They are furthermore not be subjected to debate. When religion is in, intellectualisation and debate are out. Any Muslim person who dares say something against it is deemed berfikir secara barat , or, thinking the western way, conjuring grave immorality and a corrupt mind.

Dogma

So far as I know, when an opinion, statement or even in this case religious postulation is forcibly asserted as if authoritative and unchallengeable, it is deemed dogmatic. I believe this is the case here. What we are facing in stark reality therefore is religious dogma. So what we are debating is Jeffrey's human rationality versus Fathima's religious dogma.

The situation is dicey, for the records show that any comment on Islam has always been defended by Muslims with arrogance and contempt on at least the following grounds:

1) Islamic tenets are the Words of God. They define the perfect life for humans on earth.

2) Mankind must approximate or emulate these tenets in order to have good balance between life on earth with that in the Hereafter.

3) Any deviation from perfection will spell doom, despair and anarchy.

They are nevertheless not the pattern of behaviour emanating from within the individual. Nor do they come from any human conduct or legislation. They are certainly not universally accepted. They are formulated by a central authority (God Almighty), therefore authoritative and binding forever.

A Muslim who still goes against this norm by saying something critical of Islam will not only be branded as berfikir secara barat but suffers the indignity of who-are-you character assassination. His qualification will be put to question. For example, a Muslim who still dares to criticise may be taken as committing syirik or blasphemy, and be branded as an apostate.

The defenders of the faith in other words do not go for the message, but for the messenger. To them the message is never wrong.

Likewise, any non-Muslim person saying radical things about Islam will be chastised. He will be told in very clear terms that he has no idea what Islam is all about, and so the better for him to just shut up. In any case Muslims do not criticise his religion, so why must he make too much noise about Islam?

If the non-Muslim still persists, then he is told that he is barking up the wrong tree. The person he should address his grievances is the ulama, the learned one. But just who is this ulama (whether a person or an institution, or example) no one knows.

The fact of the matter is that religious postulates and tenets are sacrosanct and quite beyond criticism and reproach. In the meantime we are just to follow whatever decree that has been handed down to us even if it differs from our moral and legal standing, like kissing and hugging being labelled as indecent behaviour. There can be no debate, no conceptualisation, no intellectualisation on such matters. Any call for debate and intellectualisation has always been rebuffed on one pretext or another. Religious dogma rules supreme and the mere discussing it is taboo.

I hold the view though that debating religion is not something taboo. This surely is the message and wisdom Prophet Mohammad imparted to his adherents, he had told them to seek knowledge 'even if you have to go to China'.

Ethnocentrism

The show of authority and finality as demonstrated by Fathima and the Muslim refusal for open debate reflects a thinking norm of an ethnocentric and closed mind, a mind governed by old paradigms. Which reminds me of Stephen Covey, arguably the most eminent authority on paradigms, who says that paradigms reflect the memory of past values. He goes further to say that people with closed minds live on past memories. This is one item not in favour of the Ketuanan Melayu thinking norm. They do not have any benefit of cross-changing of ideas, and stuck with the same old ones.

There is another: that it does not know that it is living in its old paradigm. It does not know that it does not know. So it had brush aside the apparently radical 'new' meanings of morality and law I have listed above.

Debate winner

Because of ethnocentrism and static paradigm the debate has no potential for marching intellectually forward. The 'Jeffrey vs Fathima' debate will find an obvious foregone winner hands down: Fathima, by decree, and by the fact that her party are the decision makers of the land. All other element s like human right, freedom of the individual, freedom of action, etc, etc, have no place in this debate.

The religious interpretation of morality carries the day, as exemplified by Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim's decision suggesting that Ooi Kean Thong Siow Ai Wei kissing and hugging in public constitutes indecent behaviour. So, kissing and hugging in public no matter how lovingly, affectionately and sincerely done are deemed an indecent, disorderly and anti-social behaviour by the dogmatic Ketuanan Melayu thinking norm and therefore punishable offences.

A great pain is that such static paradigms are still taken as current, and implemented assiduously as public regulation and policy. They form as a contradiction of sorts. They are at variance with those of the 'first class' minds which Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has been exhorting the Malaysians (but more the Malay) to develop. Kissing and hugging in public might have been considered as indecent, disorderly and even anti-social many hundreds of years ago, but today it's hardly worth a bother to first class minds. To sublime minds, what's the fuss?

It is heart warming to recollect that Pak Lah our prime minister, is privy to the damages dogma can bring to the human mind. It gives me the impetus to end this little contribution by making the following appeal to him.

Prime minister, Sir. When you were deputy prime minister you hosted an international forum on July 23, 2003 called Forum Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur Mengenai Islam or Kuala Lumpur International Forum on Islam with an aptly catchy acronym Kalif.

In this forum you mentioned that Islam is a religion of justice and equality, of faith and respect to our fellowmen, of forgiver of sin, to which I would agree unhesitatingly. But you lamented that Islam has been more known for its medieval-type punishments meted to criminals and sinners. You were talking about dogma that seems to smear and erode the prestige and sanctity and prestige of Islam. You were talking about Muslims still under the yoke of dogma. You were talking about the lack of intellectualism in Muslim thinking.

With you hosting this forum you indicated your flawless knowledge about dogma, and wished to expunge it from Muslim thinking.

Today we are facing exactly the same situation you described, though the details differ. Dogma is coming out strong and in this case confronting the Ketuanan Melayu mind. Dogma is dictating terms. It has become a prime impediment to the Malay from developing into a 'first class' mind.

Today you are in the perfect situation to reduce or downplay the strong grip of dogma into the Malay mind. Should you intercede today, you might just create the catalyst for the emergence of the first class Malay mind.

I have one simple proposition to develop this impetus; it comes in four stages:

1) Intellectualise the Malay mind. This will intellectualise the Ketuanan Melayu mind as well.

2) When this is achieved it can be more analytical in its deliberations.

3) It can then separate morality, law and religion neatly and effectively. They are different elements altogether.

4) When stage three is achieved then dogma will lose its magic and strangle hold.

If Islam Hadhari equates with these four-stage propositions, then it is well and good. We are going somewhere.

If not and if you missed this chance, the Malay mind wanders its way weakly into the future as it has done in the past. The continuation of the New Economic Policy (or its new label National Development Policy, followed by Vision 2020, and now the National Mission) targets first to 1970, then to 1990, and now to 2020 bear testimony to the lacklustre performance.

If you missed this chance, it is very unlikely for the Malay to develop into a person with a first class mind in 2020, or ever.

AB SULAIMAN is an observer of human traits and foibles, especially within the context of religion and culture. As a liberal, he marvels at the way orthodoxy fights to maintain its credibility in a devilishly fast-changing world. In his free time, he loves to read, travel and play golf (although his game could be better).