COMMENT Malaysian oppositionists are shooting themselves in the foot if they want Islamic preacher Dr Zakir Naik banned from holding forth in Malaysian forums.

Zakir has been accused by those who want him banned of being a peddler of hate.

The accusation, if true, would render the preacher impugnable. Upholding freedom of speech does not mean pyromaniacs should be allowed to hold a lighted match to tinder.

But those who have branded Zakir a purveyor of hate have been long on assertion, short on substantiation.

It is not quite apparent the Mumbai-born Islamic preacher is an inciter of hatred of followers of other religions and a supporter of terrorism.

He may be one but those urging a ban on Zakir have not furnished proof of it. The onus is on them to do so.

The police have reacted to the urgings by allowing with conditions a speaking engagement of Zakir’s scheduled in Kuala Lumpur on April 17 but disallowing another in Malacca the next day.

This is puzzling behaviour by the police in light of their conduct at similar events in recent years.

Last year, the police not only did not cancel a forum at a university campus in Malacca on Christian proselytisation of Muslims, they sent a speaker from the Special Branch to hold forth on it.

Inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar was nonchalant when queried on their participation.

He retorted: “What law was broken? Under what provision? Did the police breach any law? Did the organiser breach any law?”

Khalid can be petulant on occasion and schoolmarmish when it suits him.

In cancelling Zakir’s speaking engagements in Malacca, Khalid offered the justification that the cancellation was to forestall public unrest and protect religious sensitivities.

The titles of Zakir’s speaking engagements in KL and Malacca - ‘Is the Quran God’s Word’ and ‘Similarities between Hinduism and Islam’ respectively - are decidedly less incendiary than the one about Christian proselytisation of Muslims held in Malacca last year.

Yet the police saw fit to participate in the one and have moved to cancel one of Zakir’s engagements.

Actually, the titles of Zakir’s talks in KL and Malacca are interesting and ought to draw scholarly interest.

It would help if the organiser of the talk in Malacca had invited an expert on Hinduism to give his views on interpretations of the religion that Zakir would have made in his take.

Seeing that discourse and questions are civil

The police presence at both public engagements should be usefully confined to seeing that the discourse and questions from the floor are civil.

If a speaker on religious subjects does not espouse hatred, there is no reason to proscribe him or her.

We should be a long way from the attitude the French thinker Voltaire counseled in the 18th century which was that when religious matters are discussed, masters ought to do it behind closed doors to prevent servants from listening in.

In these times when dozens of opposition politicians and social activists have been hauled to court on sedition charges, not to mention such other charges as violating the Official Secrets Act, Malaysian oppositionists ought to be wary of urging the banning of those with whom they are apt to disagree.

Spouting sedition and secreting secrets are not the only charges being laid on oppositionists.

Several have been prevented from entering Sarawak for the legitimate purpose of campaigning for their party’s candidates in the upcoming state election.

In all, the sedition charges, ‘secrets’ violations and entry bans, constitute a range of trammels aimed at stifling democracy with a single set of vocal chords.

Wouldn’t oppositionists afford legitimacy to repressors by themselves urging the banning of exponents of any creed save that which savours of racial and religious hatred?

An expositor of Islam who does not espouse hatred and who takes questions from the floor should be interesting to listen to, for one can always ask him for his take on the Jew-hatred that is embedded in his religion.

There’s plenty of worth in the observation of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead that “a clash of doctrines is not a disaster; it is an opportunity”.

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.