I am glad that the Malaysian Bar Council took a principled stand and was not easily cowed into apologising to those who want to seek political mileage via intimidating methods such as lodging a police report.
I am, of course, referring to the azan controversy and your report on it entitled Don't jump the gun over article , politicians told.
It is not right for politicians to seize out of context excerpts and then blow them up as insulting the official religion merely for the purposes of publicity and the garnering of votes.
Such a move is selfish because it tends to incite religious and racial misunderstanding, even more than the alleged offending excerpts quoted.
Besides this, the manner of expressing grievance over the said article - by lodging a police report and the applying of political pressure - is intimidation and ought not to be the Malaysian way.
Anyone, including a non-member of the Bar, can write to Infoline to rebut in a rational way the article instead of resorting to threats of police action.
Rightly, the Bar Council, as bastion of legal rights, ought to resist intimidation and threats, which if entertained, will only serve to restrict the free space of democratic debate and freedom of speech in this country.
And if it were the intent of any writer (like Yang Pei Keng) to develop an argument for the greater tolerance of human rights by local authorities such as the Subang Jaya Municipal Council, he ought to be more careful in his choice of words and examples. This will prevent their missives from being seized out of context by those whose agenda is political opportunism.
As a member of Johor Bar, Yang ought to have been more careful in his choice of his analogy, which in the case under discussion, was inappropriate and open to challenge.
According to Yang, if the Subang Jaya Municipal Council required owners of pet dogs to obtain their neighbours' written consent before issuing the mutts dog licences, then the same standard should apply in that 'prior consent ought to have been obtained from the local residents before permitting any developer to put up any mosque in their neighbourhood'.
The reason, he added, was because '... as in the case of those developers building mosques in the vicinity of a non-Muslim community, while one recognises that any community's right to perform its religious obligation by way of using a loudspeaker, to some, it is noise pollution created to the annoyance of those residing in the neighbourhood'.
What is the relevance of comparing licencing of pet dogs with that of the building of mosque?
The fact that only dogs - which are viewed by some Muslims as haram - were targeted for neighbours' approval (rather than cats, snakes, rabbits, frogs etc.) must have prevailed onto Yang the religious dimension behind such a ruling.
Yang said that the call to prayer was '... to some, noise pollution, created to the annoyance of those residing in the neighbourhood' but that ' ... this has never been an issue so far, simply because the non-Muslim community recognises the Muslim community's right to freedom of religion'.
What he implied is that conversely, if prior consent from the local residents is not needed for the putting up of a mosque in a predominantly non-Muslim neighbourhood, then by applying the same standard, non-Muslim dog-owners should not be required to obtain their Muslim neighbours' written consent as well.
Yang's argument appears to be that if the non-Muslim community here is tolerant and recognises the Muslim community's right to freedom of religion, so too, by way of reciprocity, the right of the non-Muslim community - in the absence of any particular religious sensitivities - to keep pet dogs should quid pro quo be accorded equal respect by others without the requirement of seeking the neighbour's prior consent.
This manner of developing an argument is as unnecessary as the choice of analogy is inappropriate.
Whatever Yang's suspicions, he is immediately on soft ground because religious sensitivities against dogs was not, as far as I know, the official rationale given by the Subang Jaya Municipal Council for requiring neighbours' consent to keep pet dogs.
Yang had said that 'True, dogs may be noisy at times, but that is a different issue'.
That, however, is precisely the issue.
To many neighbours not taken particularly to dogs, they bark and bite (when unleashed) and therefore represent a greater nuisance than cats (assuming that the keeping of dangerous reptiles, bees etc. are too remote and rare for discussion here).
The point is that the neighbours who view dogs to be a nuisance and would withhold consent could be both non-Muslims as well as Muslims. So, too, that those who don't mind may be represented in both groups.
Even if one believes, as Yang apparently does, that there is a religious dimension to such a ruling, then by all means question it by comparing it to the practices of municipal authorities in other Muslim countries and balance it against our multi-religious and cultural environment.
Why unnecessarily use the Muslim call for prayer or azan as a point of analogy to urge for application of same standards?
It is true that one does not hear any complaint from the non-Muslim community here regarding the azan as it recognises the Muslim community's right to freedom of religion and practices.
This, however, does not advance Yang's argument substantially if he intends to illustrate it by how particularly tolerant the non-Muslim community here is as a justification to expect quid pro quo treatment.
The fact is that the Muslim call for prayer or azan is tolerated all over the world - anywhere where there are mosques or even where Muslims are a small minority.
Using the comparison here where Muslims are a majority and Islam the official religion makes the argument by analogy fatuous in effect.
And this not counting the fact that it provides the platform for the extra sensitive or opportunistic, as the case may be applicable, to create an outcry detrimental to the climate of mutual tolerance of religious sensitivities that ought to subsist here.
