Fascism is a political philosophy that stands for a centralised autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader with severe economic and social regimentation and exercises forcible suppression of opposition.

Secularism is an idea that is indifferent to or exclusion of religion or religious consideration. It is an idea to be applied with context. For example a secular court means a non-clerical court or a court without relation to any religious institution. Similarly a secular government means a government without relation to any religious institution. It simply means the separation of state and religion. It does not imply that a secular government is anti-religion.

A secular fascist government is an authoritarian government that is indifferent to religions in its governance. It does not automatically imply rejection of religion of its people. It is only up to the dictator. A closer example of secular fascist government that suppresses all religions is probably Communist China.

A religious fascist government would be an authoritarian government that favours one religion and uses the teaching of the religion as that basis of its power. Under this system the level of religious freedom is againdependent on the dictator.

However, since the source of its power is from the religion in favour, full religious freedom is never possible for it threatens the legitimacy of the regime. It may even forbid any alternative interpretations of the same religion it upholds. A good example of religious fascist government that suppresses all other religions is probably none other than the Taliban government, which may sentence those caught spreading other religions to death.

For the Islamic state proponents and PAS leaders, who repeatedly emphasised that Islam is compatible with democracy, to convince the non-Muslims to accept the establishments of the Islamic state, they will first have to answer the question of whether a religious democratic government can exist?

They should consider and answer these questions to their satisfaction in full:

1) What are the premises of its existence? Are these premises in anyway conflicting to democracy?

2) What is the goal of its existence?

3) With its full implementation can we still identify it as a democratic system?

4) If yes, what is the difference between this implementation of religious democratic government and that of a secular democratic system?

5) If the two systems are similar, what are the pros and cons of the two and what advantage does one have over the other?

Personally I think that a religious democratic government is an oxymoron. To keep one religion in favour over others, one would have to prevent full religious freedom. Hence, the phrase religious tolerance is thrown around a lot by PAS and not religious freedom.

In addition the implementation of Syariah law without democratic debate and possibility of modifying the law to fit the social situation and even just to keep up with the social advancements, could easily conclude that religious democratic government cannot exist and any religious-based government has a fascistic tendency. (Not to mention freedom of speech, freedom to choice of life-style, etc.)

As for the letter from the self-proclaimed Smart Mullah, his mistake is the liberal use of terminologies with gross disregard of the true meaning of the words. In addition, he is also comparing general, political and religious philosophies as religions, which in my opinion made his analysis worthless.

I don't know why malaysiakini still chose to publish it. Oh! It must be this thing call freedom of speech under a democratic system. I think malaysiakini should be commended for its effort to make sure that all quarters are represented and all opinions are heard.