While people usually go to Ramadan bazaars to satiate their appetites, visitors to the Kampong Glam bazaar in Singapore this year found something else that seemed aimed at feeding their souls. A banner had been put up, heavy with words and ending in the eye-catching line “Be human first, influence later”.
The first thought that might cross your mind is that surely it is possible to do both at the same time. But if you read the rest of the banner, the message becomes clearer. It is a gentle plea for people to not be so quick to post negative criticism online about the food they buy from the bazaar.
What caught my attention, however, was the reason given for that appeal. Part of the banner reads, “The Prophet (pbuh) taught us, ‘Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, let him speak good or remain silent’.”
This call for constructive speech rather than tearing others down is an idea that echoes across religions and cultures. The Bible carries a similar message: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.” (Ephesians 4:29.) In Buddhism, the concept of “Right Speech” includes abstaining from false speech, slanderous speech, and harsh speech.
Even the animated bunny Thumper famously said in front of Bambi, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”.
Human civilisation, it seems, has been repeating the same advice for thousands of years.
The banner in Singapore was put up by Sheikh Ali Redha, the owner of a tea shop called Tarik and a long-time participant in the Kampong Glam Ramadan bazaar. In interviews he has said it’s something he had been thinking of doing for some time after witnessing what he described as “wars” between reviewers and bazaar vendors during previous Ramadans.
In particular, there was a 2024 dispute when a TikTok reviewer gave a stall’s “smoky fries” a brutal one-out-of-10 rating, claiming the dramatic smoky effect came from nothing more than dry ice and that the fries were “basic”.
The stall owner fired back in the comments, insisting the fries were premium imported ones and were, in fact, far from basic. The exchange escalated into threats of legal action, and what should have been a simple dispute spilled over into a spectacle.
“It’s getting more common recently. I feel uneasy about this kind of thing,” Sheikh Ali said in an interview with the 8days online magazine. His banner, he explained, was meant simply to “spread positivity in this beautiful month of Ramadan”.
I do sympathise with that sentiment. Ramadan is, after all, meant to be a month of reflection, restraint, and compassion. Yet I am in two minds about only speaking when you have something nice to say. Because sometimes, harsh truths need to be spoken.
The real question, I think, lies in the power dynamic behind the criticism. Are you speaking truth to power, giving voice to people who otherwise might be ignored? Or are you punching down, using a disproportionately large digital megaphone to humiliate and embarrass someone who can’t respond?
Take the recent case of a nasi kandar restaurant in Seremban. A viral video appeared to show staff washing leftover food, with the accusation that the restaurant was reusing scraps for customers. People want hygienic restaurants, but this was possibly taking it too far. The clip spread rapidly online and authorities eventually ordered the restaurant closed for 14 days while investigations were conducted.
When the owner was finally able to respond, he explained that the scraps were being washed to remove oil and spices before being given to an animal lover who had been collecting food waste from the restaurant for years to feed stray animals. The animal feeder later confirmed this arrangement.
By the time the explanation emerged, however, the damage had largely been done. The asymmetry here is obvious. A viral video can condemn within hours. A small business may take days, sometimes weeks, to recover its reputation.
Would it have helped if the person filming the video had simply asked someone at the restaurant what was happening before posting it online? Perhaps. Being slow to condemn and quick to verify might prevent misunderstandings from spiralling.
However, there are also moments when waiting politely for clarification is not only unrealistic but potentially dangerous. When powerful institutions act improperly, silence can allow wrongdoing to flourish. Asking for “both sides of the story” from someone who clearly holds overwhelming power may not always be the safest or most effective path to truth.
Asking a balaclava-hooded immigration agent in the United States why he is being overly forceful, for example, seems like an easy way of getting the truth of a baton to the face.
Right now, both abroad and in Malaysia, there are many examples where speaking up remains essential. The conflict in the Middle East is full of subjective viewpoints from all angles, but I hope we can all agree that killing people is not something we should ever want. Yet it still needs to be said.
Closer to home, we have civil servants seemingly breaking rules to enrich themselves. And I would argue it’s even important to speak up in things like sports, when an institution disregards international rules.
In these situations, we need to speak up, even if the accusations are eventually found out to be untrue. The power imbalance means that if we remain silent, then things won’t change. And then wrongdoing becomes culture and the norm.
The advice to “speak good or remain silent” cannot mean that we should never criticise. Rather, it reminds us to think carefully about how and why we speak.
Our prerogative is to try and do good, mandated by thousands of years of what we hope is positive culture. It is what we intrinsically understand by ethics from the laws of man and religion, and is meant to lift us above our baser norms.
Because when we slip to the lowest common denominator, the evidence these days is that we stoop so very low indeed. It is important, now more than ever, to hold aloft the banner and speak the truth in as reasonable a way as possible, and to remember to always be human first.
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