By Bishop Hwa Yung

We live in a democratic country—or do we not? Well… for many, constitutionally this country may be a democracy but it is also one that is a deeply flawed! For example, many non-Muslims increasingly feel that their rights are being eroded away. The MCCBCHST, speaking on behalf of non-Muslims in the country, has often drawn attention to unresolved cases in law courts over the conversion of children to Islam, local authorities acting with disregard for non-Muslim sensitivities in dealing with their places of worship, and the like. Within the Christian church, similar feelings exist with respect to the still unresolved issues over the word ‘Allah’ and the Al-Kitab, amongst others. As many see it, basic freedoms have been denied, the rule of law sometimes set aside, built-in checks and balances in the Federal Con-stitution often prevented from functioning, and increasingly many are even questioning the integrity of the electoral process.

Many Christians are deeply concerned about the future of democracy in our country, and rightly so. But at the same time, it is likely that few Malaysian Christians today fully understand where the keys concepts underlying liberal democracy come from. Some will suggest that it originated in ancient Greece, without realizing that only a small minority had the right to vote then. For example, in 5th cen-tury Athens, only male citizens born of Athenian father and mother could vote. Women, huge numbers of slaves and all others of non-Athenian parentage were simply excluded.

Again, many today would assert that modern democracy came from the 18th century French and American Revolutions. There is no doubt that some key concepts underlying modern democracy like ‘lib-erty, equality and fraternity’ came to the fore during these revolutions. But did these ideas emerge out of the French and American revolutions, or did they come from elsewhere in history and drove those revo-lutions instead? I believe that the evidence shows the latter to be the case.

Christians often are unaware or forget that the foundational ideas upon which modern forms of democracy and civil society are built have their roots firmly embedded in western civilization’s Christian history. Scholars like the late legal scholar Harold Berman have drawn attention to the clear relationship between concepts of freedom of conscience, human rights, universal franchise, the rule of law and other foundational concepts in western liberal democracy to their roots in Christianity.

In his book, The Interaction of Law and Religion (1974, pp. 66f), Berman argues that it was people like the Calvinistic Puritans of the seventeenth century, who carried forward the Lutheran concept of the sanctity of the individual conscience and thereby helped lay the foundations of the English and American laws of civil rights and liberties. In the history of the evolution and life of western society, law and relig-ion were simply inseparable. He further argues that the great principles of the Western legal tradition were largely created by the impact of western civilization’s Christian history. He writes: ‘These principles may appear to some to be self-evident truths, and to others they may appear to be utilitarian policies, but for Western man as a whole they are, above all, historical achievements created mainly out of the experience of the Christian church in the various stages of its life ... These successive ages of the church have created the psychological basis, and many of the values, upon which the legal systems of de-mocracy and socialism rest’ (p.72f).  

Consider the simple idea of the equality of all human beings, irrespective of race, religion, social class, caste, wealth, education, sex, physical prowess, health, and so forth. Where did this concept derive from? It clearly goes back to the Christian teaching that all are created in the ‘image of God’ (Gen 1: 26f). It is this ‘image of God’ imprinted on every human being that makes them equal in the world, that gives their lives dignity and value even if they are poor, sick or deformed! And it is this concept that underlies the foundational principle of modern democracy: One per-son, one vote! The point is that, whatever else may have contributed to the emergence of liberal democracy in the modern west, Christianity played an indispensable and fundamental role. 

More recently, the sociologist Rodney Stark has reiterated Berman’s argument and taken it further. In his book The Victory of Reason — How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (2005), he asked the question of what was it that led to Europe’s great leap forward in modernization. His answer is that ‘the truly fundamental basis not only for capitalism but also for the rise of the West was an extraordinary faith in reason …. Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth…(F)rom early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase their understanding of scripture and revelation’ (p.x). This paved the way for the victory of reason over ignorance, leading to the development of a rational theology, cultural, scientific and technical innovations beginning in medieval monastic communities, and the emergence of political freedom and modern capitalism. 

Specifically, with respect to freedom, Stark argued that it began with the rise of individualism within the Christian tradition. Individualism and human rights emerged out of the New Testament emphasis on moral responsibility and sin. Indeed, Augustine’s emphasis on free will fully anticipated Descartes’ famous phrase, ‘I think, therefore I am’ (pp.24-26). Similarly, the New Testament teaching on the equality of all humankind in the eyes of God, regardless of social background and status, ethnicity or gender laid the foundation for the moral equality of all before the law. This in turn led to property rights and limitations on the powers of kings and the state. From these came the democratic state with its safeguards of freedom, equality, and rights, without which capitalism could not have emerged.

If Berman and Stark are right, then it has to be accepted that freedom, human rights and democracy in their modern forms are ultimately rooted in Christian teaching. This may be one reason why some Mus-lims find these concepts incompatible with Islam.

Islam has traditionally struggled with the issues of civil liberties and the equality of minorities, including Muslim minorities. For example, according to the Shari‘ah, women do not have the same rights as men in family and inheritance matters. Moreover in a court of law, a woman’s testimony is equal only to half that of a man. The treatment of non-Muslims in history as dhimmis (protected peoples) without full civil rights has been carefully and thoroughly documented by scholars. (Just google the word ‘dhimmi’!) Even today, in no Muslim-majority nation are non-Muslims accorded full religious freedom, with the possible exception of Indonesia. 

Yet the world of Islam is experiencing great ferment today. Whilst large numbers of Muslims still insist on treating non-Muslims in their midst as dhimmis, as less than equal citizens in Muslim-majority nations, many others are arguing that in the modern world such outmoded ideas must go. Many like those involve in the so called Arab Spring of 2011 are seeking to accommodated Islamic values to the modern world. But even among the latter, there are differences of opinion.

For example, Rachid Ghannoushi, the leader of the Ennahda party which won the elections in Tunisia a few months ago, accepts that the rule of law, freedom and human rights are essential for modern societies, and that all are equal regardless of race, religion or creed. Yet he wants to maintain the traditional Islamic notion of non-Muslims as ‘protected’ people, and to provide for two classes of citizenship (John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam, 2001, pp.114f).

But there are others like the leading Iranian scholar, Abdolkarim Soroush, who insist that all citizens must have equal rights, irrespective of whether they are Muslims or not (Esposito and Voll, pp.162f). Similarly, Anwar Ibrahim, has asserted the same within our multi-ethnic and multi-religious context: ‘We should be modern; we should be democratic. We should not condone …oppression of any form, or deny basic rights …But don’t tell me that democracy and freedom can only be preached by some countries and political leaders in the West’ (cited in Esposito and Voll, p.197).

What would the future of democracy be in Malaysia in the coming years? Will we see a ‘Malaysian spring’ with the full flowering of democratic principles, or will we see a growing restriction of freedom in our nation? To some extent this is a debate that has to be resolved by those within Islam itself, and not by outsiders. Yet non-Muslims must be allowed to have a say to the extent it affects them directly. Muslim minorities in many countries, especially in Europe, are constantly asking to be respected and treated with full equality. This surely is right. But such requests will always lack credibility and moral integrity unless Muslims themselves are prepared to treat other minorities in Muslim-dominant lands as full citizens, with equal rights in every respect.

It is at this point that Malaysian Christians must engage our Muslim friends in dialogue concerning our shared destiny in our nation, within the globalised world of the 21^st century. Many Muslim thinkers, both within and outside our country are wrestling with the immense challenges faced by Islam in the modern world. We need to encourage Muslims at large to look seriously at concepts within their own religious and cultural tradition on which the best practices of democracy can be built.

For example, Bernard Lewis in his book, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror (2003, p.145) has drawn attention to a whole list of things found within the Islamic tradition that can act as meaningful foundations for democratic forms of government. These include, ‘the rejection by the traditional jurists of despotic and arbitrary rule in favor of contract in the formation and consensus in the conduct of gov-ernment: their insistence that the mightiest rulers, no less than the humblest of his servants, is bound by law. Another is the acceptance, indeed the requirement of tolerance, embodied in such dicta as the Qu’ranic verse “there is no compulsion in religion,” and the early tradition: “diversity in my community is God’s mercy.” This is carried a step further in the Sufi ideal of dialogue between faiths in a common search for the fulfillment of shared aspirations.’

Similarly, the Malaysian Muslim scholar and President of IDEAS, Tunku ’Abidin Muhriz, has recently argued in a recent article, ‘History of Checks and Balance’ (The Star, 17 Feb 2012, p.38), that we owe the checks and balances in our Constitution only in part to the Reid Commission. In other words, the idea of checks and balances is not a merely western or Christian one. He argues that there are clear antecedents of the same historically in the Malay culture and history. Here then is another source of ideas on which that Christians can meaningfully and fruitfully engage with our Muslim Malay friends.

The task of nation-building in Malaysia requires us to enter into such intellectual and political engagements with love and respect with Muslims in our country. The goal of such dialogue for Christians and Muslims is to enter into better mutual understandings of each other’s traditions and concerns, and thereby be enabled to work together for the common good of all citizens in our country. But for us to do this effectively, we need first to understand more fully local history, the Malay mind and, most of all, the religion of Islam itself. More than that, we also need to have a proper and comprehensive grasp of the Christian roots of modern democracy, and thereby know how they can be defended and advanced for the welfare of all Malaysians!