SOME years ago, a low-ranking police officer in a Midwestern state in America struck a lottery. Just before the draw, he frequented his usual pancake parlour for breakfast; and as part of his usual banter with the old lady who had been serving him over the years, promised her that he would give her half of his winnings if he got lucky.
Well he got extremely lucky soon after, when he struck close to a quarter of a million dollars. To the surprise of the pancake lady, and the whole community in that small town, the policeman gave her half of his winnings.
He need not have given her the money, for what he said was a gratuitous promise, unenforceable in law. He could have just given her a small part of his winnings if he wanted to keep the old lady happy, but not half.
The extraordinary generosity of the policeman epitomised the true character of a man of honour. Honourable men like the policeman keep their word and their promise with no exception.
To them, honour and integrity supersedes all other matters in their lives. This is a far cry from men who claim to be moral and religious, for these men do not always keep to their word, using their position in society to selectively apply their morality as determined by them.
Let’s examine what happened at the PAS muktamar. Many strange things took place, which should open our eyes to how religious people conduct themselves.
There was a delegate who lambasted his opponents through prayer, which allowed him to exceed the permitted time limit for each speaker and to use words that would not otherwise be allowed in a speech – but because it was camouflaged as a “prayer”, the chairman didn’t dare stop him.
Next, we were given a lecture by certain groups of senior ulama who said that a promise, commitment or an undertaking need not be observed if Islam demanded a departure. How conveniently these religious people make rules to suit themselves.
Even the PAS president accused two of the party’s state assemblymen in Selangor of “treachery”, and he used words that we less religious folk would not think appropriate to use.
As such, I think the people of Malaysia must be very careful when it comes to trusting so-called religious leaders regardless of which political party they come from.
The religious outlook of some of them might be just for show – they know that many voters are easily impressed by those who speak Arabic – and to them, Islam is a selling point: when they go to the Holy cities for their pilgrimage, they make sure the media is present to show they are pious men of God.
When they speak they always invoke God’s name, so there will be no opposition and to give their words divine force – to question them would be to impair one’saqidah or faith.
These people are actually the new tyrants. They tell lies and stab their friends in the back with impunity, and their lack of integrity and moral compass is staggering.
As leaders, they will not help the people of Malaysia in any meaningful way. Instead, they will retard the growth of the rakyat – both physical and moral – to no end.
It would be better if Malaysians were to put more trust in leaders who were honourable and who actually conducted themselves with integrity instead of “religious” leaders who trade on little more than public demonstrations of piety.
The ulama can always abandon accountability, change their positions, disregard their commitments, or even issue new “rulings” to the contrary of what they preached before because they can always invoke God to defend their actions.
It’s a strange irony that the PAS secretary-general warned in his speech that the party would be blind without the ulama: from where I stand, it’s the ulama who appear to be blind. They are blind to Malaysian women, to friendship, to what is right and wrong and to honourable conduct.
Honourable people are more reliable: they keep their word, they do not make false promises, and even if they have to take actions to their own detriment and personal loss, they will do so to defend matters of principle and honour.
The reason why our country was able to forge unity amongst the different races during the time of independence, and later on to form Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak, was because our leaders then were honourable and could be trusted.
Those same leaders would fail miserably by today’s “standards”: in their day, there was a nice bar on the lower floor of Parliament – and a few of them would even gather at the race track – but they were sincere, honest and, most importantly, they were principled.
Malaysia benefited from their leadership and service and from the values they imparted towards the governance of our country.
There is no doubt that honourable men are much preferred to those religious ones.
The measure of their character is visible and quantifiable. The benefit such men confer to the community is easy to identify.
They do not pretend to be anything other than their true nature; and they do not find it necessary to tell lies, antagonise their opponents or mislead them into believing anything that is untrue.
They do not seek God’s name to justify their actions or use religion to further their own ends. So next time we have a by-election, the rakyat should not be too preoccupied with the religious outlook or the dress mode of their candidates. They should rely a bit more on the character of the candidate, whether he is a man of honour.
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