Rising above prejudice and suspicion

When our country’s harmony is threatened, the antidote will come from remembering our friends of all races and religions.

LAST weekend, I was in Kota Kinabalu with a group of friends for a short vacation. All of us are married and with families, but we make it a point every year to go on a trip together.

I have known these friends since our days in school. We all studied in a public school in Jalan Gasing, Petaling Jaya. Our lives may have changed since those carefree days, where we skinned our knees on the streets of Petaling Jaya, yet the bond that we forged remains strong even to this day.

We are of different ethnicities and religions, and we are well aware of these differences. Yet these differences are celebrated; they do not divide us. We are so close that we call ourselves “brothers”.

In Kota Kinabalu, we pooled our money and gave it to the “treasurer” of the trip who was responsible for payment of food and activities. He was in charge of the purse strings and we trusted him with our hardearned money.

We shared a room for three nights. We slept and changed in that room, big enough to fit all of us, yet it was still one room with just one toilet.

The Muslims among us even prayed in the room, and when that happened the rest respectfully lowered their voices, even though such a gesture was not required and not expected.

Never did I, or any of the Muslims, ever think for a moment that our nonMuslim friends were “unclean”, that we had to have a separate Muslim section of the room so as to not compromise the “cleanliness” of the part of the room where we prayed.

Between us, there is no prejudice or suspicion.

We were still in Kota Kinabalu when the controversy relating to the “Muslimonly” launderette exploded.

The underlying notion of such a launderette is that nonMuslims are unclean and there would be no way of ensuring that the clothes that they wash would be free from najis (unclean) matter, so a separate laundry is needed to cater only to Muslims.

There are even those who justify such prac tices by saying that they are in accordance with the “Islamic way of life”, even though there is not a shred of evidence from the scriptures or traditions which can support this contention.

I do not think we should forcefully shut down the launderette, or tell the owner how he is to operate his business. But we must condemn and criticise the central conceit of the launderette.

In a multiracial, multireligious society such as ours, we cannot tolerate segregation of everyday affairs such as washing clothes in such a manner. We have seen “halal” trolleys for grocery shopping, we have seen how a school separated cups for Muslims and nonMuslims, and now we are seeing launderettes only for Muslims.

There may come a point where some might not even want to receive money from a nonMuslim, for fear that it may have been contaminated with najis. Where will it end?

I am thankful that I have been blessed with friends of many different ethnicities and religions throughout my life. My experience is not unique either; there are many Malaysians out there who forge such bonds across ethnic and religious lines.

Unfortunately, these days it is the prejudices, the differences and the fault lines that tend to crop up and become topics of discussion.

We cannot let our society be divided further because of ethnic and religious issues. We have lived together for far too long to let the fabric of our society be torn apart by our prejudices and suspicions.

For me, whenever issues crop up that make me fear for multiracial Malaysia, I will remember my friends, my brothers, from school. I will tell myself that we can rise above the prejudice and suspicion if only we focus on our similarities instead of our differences. Syahredzan Johan is a partner of a legal firm in Kuala Lumpur with an interest in the laws that shape our country. He can be reached at syahredzan. johan@gmail.com. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.