COMMENT “To every thing there is a season and a time for every purpose under Heaven” are the wise words of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.

How many of us must wish we possess the wisdom of knowing the propitious time for the purposes for which we must act, to know the “receptivities of the moment”, as the philosopher William James put it, on which effective leadership is dependent.

The Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM) has chosen this time to register a strongly worded protest at what it described as the desecration of copies of the bibles that were returned to them by the authority that seized the books, the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (Jais).

Jais had the returned copies which were sent to their putative owners in Sarawak stamped with a notice that they were not to be disseminated in Selangor.

There is a 1980s law in Selangor that bars non-Muslims from using terms that are deemed exclusive to Islam.

The copies of the sacred books that Jais seized from BSM in January employ the banned term ‘Allah’ for God in their text.

On those grounds the books were seized by Jais from the Selangor-based premises of BSM, though the attorney-general later opined that under the terms of an agreement reached by the federal cabinet and the Christian churches in Sarawak and Sabah in 2011, the books in the possession of BSM seized by Jais were not in violation of the law.

It’s hard enough governing religious matters in a unitary state, what more in federal polities, like Malaysia, where religion is a state matter.

Religion is fertile ground for contention in any circumstance. Multiply the jurisdictions, you are certain to accentuate the quota of contention.   

Still, insofar as governance is imperative, the decision of the Selangor palace to oversee the return by Jais of the books they seized in January to their putative owners broke a tense stalemate between a Muslim authority and an aggrieved Christian group.

On the face of it, the return of the seized books on Nov 14 was a huge relief and a welcome thaw in the tense situation.

Not surprisingly, public reaction to the event was near-universal acclamation.

Now the stamping by Jais of the returned copies has come as a rude surprise but this is one furtive act - taking into consideration the horizon of circumstances in which the wise counsel of Ecclesiastes becomes pertinent - that called for prudential reaction.

Just now that horizon included the bracing intrusion into the national debate on Islam and its status in a multi-religious country of a voice that many believed to be present but somewhat leery of being noticed.

As strident voices from the right wing rose in this debate that has spiraled in the years since the general election of March 2008, they became the dominant voices by default of the forces of moderation which were conspicuous by their absence.

The most baffling absence was that of the prime minister who seemed to subscribe to the astonishing proposition that a leader could lead by being led.

Hitting a nadir of sorts

When he virtually did just that at the recent Umno general assembly, Malaysia’s moderate middle knew that things had hit a nadir of sorts.

Still, many persisted in believing there were these middle octaves in the country, which the former felt were certain to be troubled by the stridency of the hard right and appalled by the supine weakness the PM.

It was just that the middle tenors were leery of announcing their presence. In some ways they exemplified the effete qualities of the liberal as described by the poet Robert Frost - as “too embarrassed to take their own side in an argument”.

 

As they hesitated to insert their presence, the shrill voices of the hard right became the controlling ones in the debate.

Good developments are good even if they are late.

The voice of the moderate Muslim, which in its newest apparition encompasses a coterie of retired luminaries of the civil, judicial and diplomatic services, has entered the debate.                

Tardy, though, their entry in the national debate, but moderate Muslims have now inserted themselves into the discourse on Islam, whether the religion is going to be compatible with democracy, which is, in this 21st century, a world-historical issue.

We know what the position of the hard liners on this issue is: Islam transcends everything else and has no need to be compatible with man-made constructs, even if these have evolved out of humankind’s moral and intellectual enlightenment.

Dialoguing Christians, or for that matter, others of different faiths who are not averse to democracy cannot accept the Islamic hard right’s stance.

So, too, we now know, do moderates of the Islamic faith in Malaysia which is why Christians should recall one of their best thinker’s advise in straits like the current ones in Malaysia.

In the 12th century, Thomas Aquinas gave Christian worldview a new lease on life by making the thought of Greek philosophy’s incandescent fount, Aristotle, compatible with Christian thought.

He managed that with help from Islamic thinkers who translated the works of Greek philosophy into Arabic and thus preserved them when, in a debilitating instance of close-mindedness, Christian ecclesial authorities burned them all as inimical to their religion.

Aquinas was all for the prudential application of principle which makes it incumbent that one surveys the horizon of circumstances before standing up for a principle.

Just now, the Christian gripe about ‘desecration’ of their bibles by Jais is not prudent application of a principle to the matter at hand.

It is a good principle that none should desecrate holy books. Seized holy books have been returned, but not in their prior state.

It’s huge they have been returned. It’s regrettable they were returned with a blemishing stamp.

But would Christians want to make a hubbub over something that diverts attention from a hugely favourable development: the emergence of the moderate Muslim in the national debate and all that it augurs for the future?

The “receptivities of the moment” do not favour making a commotion out of the issue of stamped returned bibles.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for more than four decades. A sobering discovery has been that those who protest the loudest tend to replicate the faults they revile in others.