I attended an interfaith dialogue, which was organised by local Roman Catholic and Muslim leaders.

There were 5 panellists, each representing their own religion: Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.

Each speaker spoke for 10-20 minutes, followed by a questions and answers session, and here are my observations from the event.

All speakers presented their religion very well. There was common emphasis on the goodness of religion, they all had a very positive attitude towards mutual learning.

However, there was a serious lack of in-depth engagement on the actual interfaith challenges in our society. The panelists described their respective religions beautifully, which was only possible when religion is abstracted from social reality.

For example, the Muslim presenter talked about the Quran teaching that people should be respected and protected for their religious practices, “For you is your religion, and for me is my religion.” (Q 109:6).

This of course, sounds good. But if we take Malaysian social reality into consideration, where Muslims are the hegemonic majority with non-Muslims being a minority, then this Quranic verse actually reinforces the hegemony.

Take for instance, the (for lack of a better word) propagation of religion that is equally taken as religious obligation by both Muslims and Christians.

If the Quranic teaching of mutual respect for religious practices is to be upheld, then non-Muslims should have their rights to propagate be protected in the same way as Muslims’ rights to propagate. This is what I understand from “for you is your religion, and for me is my religion.”

But that’s not the case in Malaysia where the majority has its hegemony over the minority, and thus only Muslims’ religious obligation to propagate to non-Muslims is protected.

The same abstraction from social reality is found across the other four presentations.

Take Christianity for example, the speaker emphasises that Christianity teaches people to “love our enemy”.

Again, this sounds good when abstracted. But when we actually look at how this is manifested in history, there were Christian theologians like Augustine and Aquinas who had taught about “just war theory” that is not seen as contradictory to loving the enemy.

When abstracted from social reality, all religions can be presented as too lofty to shed light on the real interfaith challenges facing our society.

I raised this during the Q&A session, asking the panelists for their opinion on how to engage our interfaith discourse in a more constructive manner. Perhaps with the issue being too sensitive, none of them had attempted to provide an answer to my question at the time.

There is much room for improvement for interfaith work in the country. The event was an encouraging initiative but more can be done.

Joshua Woo Sze Zeng is a municipal councillor with the Seberang Prai municipal council (MPSP) and an alumni of Cambridge University’s Inter-Faith Programme.

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