The sky will not fall

Lady Justice: Justice should be blind and serve everyone. — Agencies

WHEN I was a mere schoolgirl many decades ago, I took a class on logic. The idea was to teach us how to think logically, to move from one fact to another in a straight line and come up with a viable, demonstrable conclusion. I found that logic came naturally to me although I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because if you stick to facts, you will come to a logical result. It might be nice to exercise some imagination when you’re writing fiction but not when you must write about evidential things, say for example, in History exams.

In our world today, I find that logic is often cast aside in favour of whims and fancies that come straight from someone’s head without any grounding in facts and figures. Others may suggest these come from ruder orifices. We’ve seen some global examples recently that have resulted in dire consequences for groups of people.

Take a certain orange-skinned leader of a country who believed that if he imposed tariffs on other people’s imports into his country, automatically his people’s lives would be bettered because lots of jobs would magically appear for them. In his head, this was logical but in fact, given that the world is so interconnected, this didn’t make sense at all. Similarly, his instruction to universities to get rid of all foreign students immediately even though such students bring in a lot of economic benefits. It’s not as if all the places they vacate would be filled with American students either.

Further afield we see logic falling victim to political expediency. One country attacks another without any warning and then all its allies blame the one that was was attacked rather than the aggressor. Much like in rape cases when victims are blamed for getting raped. Facts would support who did what to whom, but instead they are ignored because they don’t suit the narrative some want to promote.

There are many examples of this ad infinitum, so much so that sane thinking people begin to question their own minds. Are measurable facts no longer true? Or are we now obliged to only accept what someone in power says even if we find that it doesn’t make sense?

Recently we saw the culmination of a 10-year court case. Justice is often based on the facts at hand and doing what is right. In this case, a group of women were obliged to defend themselves from unfair charges that were vague and had not gone through due process. In the end, the facts of the case prevailed and the highest court in the land agreed with their arguments.

But the pushback soon roiled. Instead of seeing it as a cut-and-dried case of neglected procedures, the pot was stirred and cooked into a stew of misinformation mixed with a lot of creative whimsy. The court decision was apparently going to lead to the complete destruction of not just a society but an entire religion, all because a bunch of women spoke up about an unjust charge against them. This seems to give an organisation with only 38 female members a power way beyond their size. Rather like a believing that a mouse can threaten and endanger a herd of elephants.

In fact, the next day, the sky did not fall, our rivers did not dry up, and zombies were not roaming our streets. Most people’s lives simply carried on quite calmly. Except for those who found their imagined power (and egos) threatened. It might be logical to say that when you ask the Divine to rule for injustice, He may decline to approve.

Perhaps some reflection is needed on how our religious authorities conduct themselves. Surely they should be held to the highest standards of behaviour when they claim to uphold the name of their religion. Certainly, they should be absolute sticklers for proper procedures, including room for debate and discussion and not claim that a “dialogue with an unclear agenda was the opportunity for the group to defend themselves”. At the very least, surely they should have been told a fatwa was being imposed on them instead of discovering it by accident only 10 days before it would have been gazetted and implemented. Would this have not given a bad name to Islamic justice?

And yet, in Surah An-Nisa, Verse 135, we are admonished: O believers! Stand firm for justice as witnesses for Allah even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or close relatives. Be they rich or poor, Allah is best to ensure their interests. So do not let your desires cause you to deviate ˹from justice˺. If you distort the testimony or refuse to give it, then ˹know that˺ Allah is certainly All-Aware of what you do.

What else is there to say? We have been told and logically we should follow. Now we should worry about bigger things, like the price of essential goods, the horribly hot weather, and whether we’ll all start glowing from radiation from all those nuclear bombs that some people are so eager to drop.

Marina Mahathir is wondering if justice is only reserved for some people, especially if they don’t have Y chromosomes. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.