JAN 8 — Dear State and Federal religious officers,

Let me start by thanking you for your efforts at keeping immoral activities at bay. You and your officers are the unofficial, unelected moral police of the society. 

Or so it seems.

While the majority of smart, intelligent, well-read Malaysians dare not claim the moral high ground, you and your officers don’t seem to have any qualms declaring and preaching to others about morality. Ironically you and your men are supposed to be amongst the learned ones about our beautiful religion Islam which demands humility in every aspect of one’s life.

One of your successes includes the ability to instil fear amongst Muslims. Unfortunately the fear is not of God, but the overzealous officers from the religious department. 

How can we not fear you? Even when the religious department claims to have limited resources in settling alimony claims arising from divorces, the department somehow manages to employ spies or better known as “mat skodeng” at their behest, eyeing couples in resorts and hotels for immoral activities. To make matters worse, the department videotapes these raids and a few irresponsible officers even post them online for the public to watch.

We still remember how your colleagues raided the apartment of two elderly Americans in Langkawi not too long ago. At that moment in time, you had successfully embarrassed the couple, at the same time humiliated the country and every Malaysian, as well as the very religion you vowed to protect.

Instead of calling it a day, you are now making more headlines than before. But for all the wrong reasons.

You declared Lee Kuan Yew’s book haram, together with a Doremon magazine a few years back. As if that was not enough, your colleagues in Selangor raided a hotel arresting 41 Muslims a few days ago. Though an initial report said only 18 were arrested for consuming alcohol, I wonder what the other 23 people did to get themselves arrested?

I suppose it is a trend now to judge people, by virtue of their location and how they look. Those wearing skullcaps, sporting a goatie, wearing dark eyeliner and covering their faces must be holier than us all. 

I was being sarcastic, in case you were wondering.

Can we not be judged that way, please? Don’t you have anything or anyone else better to chase after?

Muslims involved with drugs, or even the Mat Rempits pose a greater danger to society, no? A danger not only to themselves and their families, but also our community. They steal, rob, and at times murder just for a few measly ringgit. 

And if you think it is not a big problem then you are wrong because in the long term we will lose the very asset our government is trying to protect — human capital. A severe situation could cripple our economy and stifle progress as the country will have to spend more on rehabilitation and social support.

What about the rampant corruption and the trillions of ringgit of illicit money lost? Don’t you think this warrants a statement, or a stand from a religious point of view? What about the alleged abuse of zakat, or the scandals involving Tabung Haji, or the missing cows? We know it’s haram, but don’t you think time and resources would be better spent counselling the politicians, CEOs, MDs, of these troubled organisations?

Muslims who commit khalwat and those who take alcohol have indeed erred, but to publicly humiliate them and to use whatever limited resources you have to hunt them down seems like a futile and a wasteful effort. Can we guarantee it won’t be repeated elsewhere? Or are you going to ban them from travelling outside Malaysia and put a GPS tracker on them? 

Enough is enough.

Muslims nowadays are governed by so many written and unwritten laws that do not apply to the other races and religions. 

We cannot read this, eat that, go here or there, sing that song, forget about yoga... cannot do the poco-poco dance etc. People won’t be wrong to assume that we are a bunch of nincompoops, with weak minds and brains that cannot discern right from wrong.   Why are we singled out and harassed this way?

Imposing one’s myopic, religious value on society subjects the religion to even more shunning and ridicule, not helping the stigma and prejudice Muslims are already subjected to.

Religion should not be something to show off, but should be between Man and his creator and this is where the religious department should back off.

Focus on real issues please, before you outlive your shelf life and live to see a solar powered, talking bible. 

Oh wait, I think we call it the iPad.

I offer no apology for saying all this and more.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.