Reply to Hadi Awang’s open letter

Dear PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang,

This is my response to your open letter to Malaysians. Truth be told it was either responding to your open letter or answering Fa Abdul’s question as to why people have sex in public. The more I thought about it - your open letter that is and not Fa Abdul’s question - the more I realised that I really do not know much about why people have sex in public because whenever I read the news, I read of religious officials breaking down doors to arrest people for having sex in private. But I digress.

Now I know what you are thinking. S Thayaparan is one of those enemies of Islam as evidenced by the numerous articles he writes about Islam and your honourable person. I can understand that. Sometimes, I ask myself why I write about Islam when there are so many other issues to write about.

Everyone else seems obsessed with 1MDB but clearly, you and I are not. You could say that your honourable self and I are the few people who actually care how Islam is practised in this country and not about large-scale corruption that seems to be taking place in a country, which depending on who you ask, is an “Islamic state”.

Like you, I also have friends in Umno, some of whom I would even vote for. I suppose this is why some people in the opposition do not like us very much. So contrary to public perception, we do have some things in common.

I was thinking about your question as to why non-Muslims could give Adam Smith and Karl Marx (amongst others) a chance and not “Islam”. First, I thought who do you mean by non-Muslims? The letter opens with a broadside against a certain party that is the enemy of Islam, that monopolises the vote of a certain community, and cheats the said community and Muslims in general.

At first, I thought why are you disparaging “Umno”? After all, for years PAS was going on about how Umno were the real enemies of Islam who monopolised the vote (though gerrymandering, etc) of the Malay polity, cheat (corruption) and lie (propaganda) to the Muslim community.

Then I realised that you probably meant DAP and the Chinese community, and it made sense. Whenever Malay/Muslim power brokers talk about Malaysians, they really mean the Malay and Chinese community because the Indian community does not really count unless you mistake the Bangladeshis as “Indian”, which makes sense too since their demographic is probably larger than the Indian Malaysian demographic.

They (Bangladeshis) were “Indian” at one time too but this is history and since you have a particular starting point of what actually constitutes history (more of this later), I will refrain from discussing this any further.

Then I thought why Adam Smith and Karl Marx? Suddenly it occurred to me that Marx was a Jew and Smith a Christian, so the subtext is, the Jew and Christian had their chance, why not Islam? I know, I know, that is probably not what you meant but I just cannot help thinking this way because all some Muslims do is talk about Jews and Christians, and about how either they run the world by proxy or they are attempting to subvert Muslim values through evangelism.

Then I thought, okay well yes, Smith and Marx are problematic but could you give me an Islamic economic theory or philosophy to compare with. I am not boasting when I say I have read a few but a little something from the Islamic canon to highlight the difference with the two “Western” ones mentioned could give me something to go on...