Gossip-lovers take note: It's the 'look under the sarong' season again, as the tabloid press in Malaysia goes into overdrive with lurid stories and exposes into the private lives of politicians and prominent members of the public.

Once more, the society that prides itself with its 'Asian values' is keen to show the world what these values really are: Sell your story (and your soul) to the Devil in the media and make a few bucks in the process the media is guilty of producing and disseminating it, and the public figures themselves are also guilty of providing the hacks with the cruddy raw materials for their dirty work.

But the fact that Malaysian public figures can resort to such attacks on each other says something else about this society of ours, which would be of interest to scholars of human relations and sociology.

Looking good

It shows, for instance, the value we attach to self-pride and our public image. And it underscores the fact that for many of us, our public image is more important than inner substance and content itself.

What matters most is to look good in society  a mistake becomes a sin, and a sin a mortal sin.

Such a reaction is a stark violation of the spirit and teachings of Islam which encourages Muslims to think well of other Muslims, to try and find an excuse for their misbehaviour and to try and help them improve their words and deeds."(2)

Qaradawi goes on to add that: "A Muslim is not even allowed to publicise the minor mistakes and faults of others, or become blind to their merits." But such an attitude is clearly absent from this so-called 'Islamic' society of ours, and the constant eruption of private scandals made public is proof, if any was needed, that ours in a society guided by the values of profiteering, conceit, hypocrisy and self-righteousness more than anything else. Rather than hold our heads up high, we should bury our heads in shame instead.

Endnotes:

  1. A good example of such cultural critique at work can be found in the Islamist polemics against the Moghul empire. By the 19th century, many Indian Muslim scholars were desperately trying to explain how and why the Moghul era in Indian came to its untimely and graceless end. The more conservative scholars among them pointed to the moral failings of the Moghul rulers themselves, whom they claimed were laid low by their own personal vices and moral failings. This sort of cultural critique has become very popular among Islamist intellectuals in Asia today, who fail to see that the real reasons for the collapse of Muslim power in India and the rest of the Muslim world have more to do with the workings of international politics and economic relations. If the Moghul empire was finally brought down, it was mainly because of the internal structural contradictions within the empire itself: it was overstretched and decentralised, with a top-heavy bureaucracy that was centred more on the life of the court. (As was the case of imperial France before the French revolution). This led to uneven development, incoherent policies and a weakening of the sovereignty of the state. The net result was an empire that could not sustain itself economically and militarily, and which was subsequently exposed to external economic competition and political threats.

  2. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Islamic Awakening: Between Rejection and Extremism. First published in Arabic in 1981. Republished in English by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Cairo. 1991. Reproduced in Charles Kurzman, Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 1998: (pg. 202)

Dr FARISH A NOOR is a Malaysian political scientist and human rights activist. 'The Other Malaysia' tries to unearth aspects of Malaysia's history and culture that have been erased or relegated to the margins in order to remind us that there remains another Malaysia that is often forgotten.