PAS President publishes in Harakah ( saw it on X ) that secularism ( as a variety of blasphemy ) is a greater sin than murder. I wish to give this tweet a platform. It introduces fertile topics for discussion, which can improve national unity, if understood properly.
Further banter :
The point MPP is making here, is not immediately a legal point for non-Muslim citizens/NMC. For Muslim citizens/MC the laws regarding blasphemy would apply.The narrow legal space for public discussion appears to be ( I might be mistaken ) :
- 1. to invite MPP to say more about how (subject) should lead to what specific actions by MCs
- 1.1. perhaps a recent tangent is the recently passed Mufti bill which expands the legislative process to include policies declared legal by non-elected officials (too much to unpack in a single threaded chat here; mainly affects MCs)
- 2. to invite MPP to opine on how NMCs should interpret MPP's public statement (possibly MPP would play safe and say, no special comment, while inviting NMCs to convert to MCs)
- 3. To invite NMCs to opine on how they view MCs beliefs, and MPP's opinion on (subject) ; this part is limited by civil laws about what NMCs are allowed to say about MCs' beliefs and official teachings ( civil law is asymmetrical regarding various religions in Malaysia )
- 4. Given 1/2/3, to invite more public discourse on the { norms, legislated policy, executive policy }, and the shaping thereof over time. ( And as a legal caveat, one always has to highlight 'the purpose of this is to improve peace, and unity' in case the usual political activists start filing police reports calling for an investigation of activities that run afoul of sedition laws, etc. )
Overall, religion is a huge part of the 'bread and circus' industrial complex, so philosophy's (epistemology's) role is simply to encourage people to be aware of that.At some point it falls afoul of speech laws. The limits of this remain popular subjects in theory and in practice (referred to in the news under 3Rs). The entrepreneurship of developing the nation depends on risks being taken in this space. It is also possible to simply say no risks are welcome. This fluctuates according to the maturity of the discussants, I suppose.
Further banter :
The popular mechanism of politics since 1969 has been [ thing ] -> [ threat to national security ] -> [ ban the thing ]
So the relevant ontological and ethical questions regard the key parts of the system : "what is security?" "what is national security?" "how is it threatened?" "do the existing laws designed to protect national security, succeed, or are the laws self-defeating?" etc.
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