It’s up to us to save the nation

Datuk Seri Jahaberdeen Mohamed Yunoos is on a mission to turn Malaysians into Rapera, or ‘saviour citizens’, because he believes that a nation is saved not by politicians, but by the rakyat themselves. 

LAWYER and founder of Rakyat Penyelamat Negara, a movement which encourages thinking and compassionate citizens, Datuk Seri Jahaberdeen Mohamed Yunoos is a “thoroughbred Penangite”.

He never gave multi-racialism and multi-culturalism much thought because it was part and parcel of life.

These were concepts he lived, breathed and perhaps took for granted. Influenced by Plato’s The Republic, debates about ethnicity, morality and religion were common for him.

“Penangites easily accept differences, especially religion. I’ve attended Bible classes in church – it wasn’t an issue. When something is an issue, it means that it’s something extraordinary in our minds. Interracial debates were common. No one gets aggressive. It was just a natural state of affairs for us. We didn’t need propaganda to accept each other,” he shrugs.

All this changed for the Penang Free School boy when he attended university in Bangi. It was there that he started questioning his racial identity.

After leaving the island to study in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), he began to realise how cosmopolitan Penang was. He recalled an incident in his first year when a student stopped him on his way to the mosque for Friday prayers and asked about his faith.

“I was in my baju Melayu and songkok when a Kelantanese stopped me to ask about my ‘conversion’ to Islam. Surprised, I proceeded to share with him how I’m a seventh generation Muslim in the family. It was only then that I started asking myself if I was Malay, Indian or Indian Muslim. My family descended from the Saljuk Turks, but aren’t we all Adam’s descendants?”

Fast forward to recent times in Malaysia. A Moral Studies test paper for Year One pupils of a school in Petaling Jaya went viral, shocking many with the racial and religious stereotyping of one of its questions.

The pupils were asked to match four names – Devi, Hock Lee, Kamal and Steve – to four places of worship, namely a church, a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple and a mosque.

Jahaberdeen laments how people tend to stereotype non-Malay Muslims as converts. It’s shocking, he says, because in states like Malacca, there are generations of Muslim-Chinese families.

Married to a Chinese, Jahaberdeen shares how their son had come home from school one day, bringing back a form which asked about his race.

“He was in Year One at the time. Pointing to the ‘race column’, he asked if he was Malay, Chinese, Indian Turkish or Myanmar, because these are all part of our bloodline. That’s when it hit me – as adults, we are the ones who teach children to classify people. That’s why we should just do away with things like the race column.”

On March 14, the Prime Minister’s Office named Jahaberdeen as one of the six task force members to conduct preliminary investigations into foreign exchange losses – allegedly amounting to billions of ringgit, suffered by Bank Negara in the 1990s.

The task force, expected to wrap up its probe in three months, was set up by Cabinet to identify the actual amount of losses and its cause, and to see if there was any misconduct.

The blogger and author of Islam: Antara Isi dan Kulit, confesses to being surprised at the appointment but is “honoured to serve the nation”.

He talks to Sunday Star about Islam, moderation and the law.

> The Private Member’s Bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act or RUU355 has divided even the Muslim community. What’s your stand?

Legally, there’s no issue because the MP’s Bill is democratically allowed. Whether or not it’s going to be passed, is up to Parliament. But since it concerns Islam, I’d like to see more Muslims talking about it from an Islamic viewpoint.

The Bill talks about 30, 80, 100 lashes, but it leaves out the element of forgiveness. For every offence mentioned in the Al-Quran, there’s also an element of forgiveness.

As a Muslim, I question this omission. The Bill doesn’t allow for repentance which even the Penal Code has. Under the Penal Code, a judge has the discretion to dispense with sentencing yet this is not provided for in RUU355. It looks like the Penal Code is consistent with Quranic principles whereas RUU355 isn’t.

So, instead of saying that civil law is un-Islamic, and Syariah law, as it is in existence now, is Islamic, let’s go beyond labels and look at whether the substance of the law is consistent with the Al-Quran and the principles of the most authentic and undisputed Hadith. To me, at least 90% of our Constitution is Islamic. Most of the civil laws passed in Parliament are Islamic. The Internal Security Act (ISA) wasn’t, but that’s been abolished.

> Increasingly, religious leaders and their supporters are turning Malaysia into an ‘Islamic theocratic state’, you say. Do you find this worrying?

Article 11 (1) of the Constitution allows freedom of religion. Believing in God is like falling in love – you cannot force it. But as a Muslim, I love the Al-Quran because it teaches me to embrace all human beings. In Surah Al-Isra (Verse 36), Allah teaches us to question, do research, and never to accept anything we cannot verify. I’m worried because there’s too much ritualisation and politicalisation of Islam.

It’s cruel when leaders do that because they’re duping innocent, sincere God-fearing Muslims, who’d support anything with the label ‘Islam’. To serve Allah, Muslims must be freed from ‘human Gods on Earth’.

The problem with a theocratic state is that it oppresses the faith. Some Muslims are trying to mislead believers by claiming that plurality, multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity, are against Islam. Not true. These are the ways of Allah – read the Al-Quran.

> Former Chief Justice Tun Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim recently came under fire for arguing that any law contrary to Islamic scriptures is null and void, and anything that didn’t run along the lines of the Al-Quran and Sunnah, was also against the Constitution. What’s your take?

I’ve always had a problem with judges in the civil sector making general statements about Islam without looking at the ramifications of their words because it leads to confusion. Ahmad Fairuz talked about Islam being all embracing, which I agree with. The problem is that he didn’t go on to explain which interpretation of Islam he was talking about. As a Muslim, anything in life that’s inconsistent with the Al-Quran is to be discouraged but I disagree that anything contrary to the Al-Quran and Sunnah, is against the Constitution. Faith is a private matter.

> The Dangerous Drugs Act will be reviewed to allow judges to use their discretion in sentencing offenders instead of imposing the mandatory death sentence. Is it a win for justice?

Giving discretion to judges is better than having a mandatory sentence because they are the ones presiding over a trial, evaluating the evidence and circumstances. A mandatory sentence limits a judge’s duty to dispense justice.

Meanwhile, pending executions should be put on hold. We can’t be too quick to terminate lives. A death sentence is irreversible. The review should also consider whether the amended law is to have retrospective effect, and its impact.

> The Government and the police are going all out to fight terrorism. But is that enough to curb religious extremism?

Any form of terrorism – religious or otherwise, can be eradicated if the people’s welfare is taken care of. If you want to fight terrorism, improve the well-being of the people. Frustrated people will join any kind of terrorism.

> You’ve stressed on the need for a national philosophy to unite and guide us forward. Isn’t the Rukunegara enough?

Whether it’s the Rukunegara or whatever, all schools and institutions in the country must move together sincerely in an organised manner to ensure that we all subconsciously feel Malaysian, as opposed to being told that we are Malaysian.

There must be consistent policies to achieve this. Political play has brought about artificial division and disunity. I believe ordinary Malaysians don’t hate each other at all. We need a committee or a ministry to remove symbols and policies that keep reminding us of our differences because these prevent us from being Malaysian. One of the most important guiding principles is balance. If everything is done in moderation, we’ll be able to coexist peacefully.

Moderation or wasatiyyah should be our national philosophy where everyone can live together equally as human beings. Any philosophy based on ethnic nationalism is certainly the seed for future discord and hostility, because you’re saying that everyone else doesn’t matter.

> You admire the late Tun Abdul Razak and Tan Sri Adenan Satem, and Perak Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abd Kadir. Why?

The late Tun Razak put our socio-economic issues into perspective with the New Economic Policy (NEP). He was forward-thinking. He knew that poverty had to be eradicated irrespective of race and economic activity. He was the one who started Malaysia’s transformation process. Unfortunately, he didn’t stay on long enough to see it through.

The late Adenan spoke from his heart and stood for multi-culturalism, which I strongly believe in. I know Dr Zambry. He’s very humble. I like leaders who aren’t full of themselves. Things are slowly changing but 10 to 15 years ago, our political leaders were treated like kings and had an air in the way they talked, walked, laughed and sat. It was very feudalistic. Dr Zambry doesn’t have any of these traits. I was at his house once and he not only served me coffee, he made it himself. That’s how leaders should be.

Political leaders must realise that YB stands for ‘Yang Bekerja’. Malaysia’s 2050 Transformation Plan (TN50) should officially redefine the title so that our mindsets also change.

Leaders are appointed by the people. We mustn’t spoil them. The most important characteristic for any leader is that they must feel the rakyat’s pulse. Political parties should make the next generation of leaders they’re grooming, live with the people. When Gandhi was freed, every political party in India was trying to get him to join them but he said: ‘I cannot be the leader of India without knowing India’. So, he travelled all over India, living with the common people. You must know the people’s hopes, aspirations, dreams and pain or you’ll just be making policies from your posh air-conditioned room, spoilt by titles.

> How did Rapera come about?

Rapera, or Rakyat Penyelamat Negara, or saviour citizens, is a term I coined with an Indonesian scholar when I was studying for my Master’s in Comparative Laws at the International Islamic University of Malaysia.

Citizens are mostly only concerned with their individual rights. But we must all be proactive in charting the destiny and shape of this nation. We’ve to learn to look at the similarities and commonalities we share as human beings and not be divided by artificial differences of ethnicity, culture and so on.

We must evolve into a Rapera – a citizen who is aware of his or her responsibilities and has empathy for fellow citizens. A Rapera must think and be compassionate so that the heart and mind work in unison, leading us to moderation.

When I was young, I thought all educated people were good and reasonable. As I grew older, I realised that much of life’s major atrocities – environmental damage, manipulation of policies and a just system, and people causing confusion in the Islamic world with self-righteous, dogmatic, frightening and ‘clever’ Arabic words, are caused by the educated.

So at the end of the day, intelligence alone is insufficient. Without compassion and empathy, the world won’t be a better place even if we have 100% intelligent people. You must want for others what you want for yourself.

> Have you thought about joining politics?

When I was in Year Four, I visited Parliament House. I remembered thinking: ‘Wow, these are all our selfless leaders’. I was so full of admiration and respect for them. I told myself that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up.

When I was in UKM, I got involved in campus politics. I genuinely thought that politics was a way to serve the people. Then I realised that political involvement is so overrated.

At age 30, when I started studying the Al-Quran seriously, I decided not to get into politics. The way to change society is to change yourself because then you’ll be representing the values you want to see in society, and you will find others taking the same path as you.

The nation is saved not by politicians but by Rapera or saviour citizens. So, every citizen must be concerned and aware of economic, social, legal and political developments.