Living a lifetime with the ‘other’

Together despite the differences: The columnist (standing, second from left) with his two sons, three daughters, three grandchildren and wife (seated, in brown tudung).

IN my public talks on nation-building and unity, I always use a “joke” that sums up the topic succinctly: I would explain that when I got married 37 years ago, our first few years were filled with arguments 98% of the time, but now that we have lived together for almost four decades, I am proud to say that we now agree on 8% of the issues! A mere difference of 6% after all that time.

I use my experiences with my family as a simple lesson on unity and nation-building. Unity, it seems, is less about agreeing on the majority of issues and more about living with differences of views and perspectives most of the time.

One of the major differences my wife and I had early on was the direction our children’s education would take. She believed in the traditional and conservative education of Islamic schools to produce good Muslims while I disagreed and favoured international schools with a Malaysian curriculum (only because I could not afford the ones without a local curriculum). She preferred that our children socialised with kids from our own race while I wanted them to mix more with others. I wanted our children not to have any preference of race or religious bigotry when they grew up and so I would facilitate them going on outings with their non-Malay friends.

Even though my wife might not have agreed with my decisions, she kept quiet all through the children’s years at school. Then the subject came up again when the children had to choose a university. I wanted them all in private universities with mostly non-Malay students and lecturers but my wife wanted them all “safely” in public universities. Eventually, only one of our children chose a public university – mainly to be with her friend, a boy from an Islamic school.

As a result, our children grew up to be independent thinkers and don’t have racist attitudes and are not religious bigots. All of them, save one, decided not to adhere to traditional Islamic dress codes. I would say that this topic was a point of major difference between my wife and me.

My wife felt that it was wrong of me to allow them the freedom to choose whether they wanted to conform to traditional dress codes and begged me many times to exert a father’s discipline.

I thought long and deep, and after several attempts at carrying out her request, I decided to allow their choices. This decision was not easy on my part and it caused serious arguments between the children and us.

I had to appease my wife with the idea that, firstly, if we pressed the issue, we might lose them altogether and they might never come back. Secondly, I told her that in politics and society, there are many “religious people” who treat those unlike them with utter contempt and mistrust. Our children show no such attitudes. Thirdly, I explained that I believe all people are responsible for their own path in life and the faith they choose and how they express that faith, and God will judge them as individuals and not put the blame on parents if they do not conform to certain rituals and lifestyles associated with their faith.

Although my wife remained silent after hearing my reasoning, I knew it was hard for her to accept it. She does not read as widely as I do – the books she reads are of only one particular kind. She listens to religious ustaz while I find their preaching shallow and wanting in many aspects of nation-building and a global existence.

The one other major rift between my wife and me is my social and political writing. As a majority of my writing touches on issues related to my own race and religion in a way that is academically critical and progressive, I receive a lot of backlash from people. Most of my wife’s family members are teachers and government servants who support one race-based party and they turned on her. She has also had to leave many WhatsApp chat groups because of my writing. On several occasions, she asked that I stop such work and just “write about things that people are not angry about”.

It was a difficult time for me because I cared more for my wife than her friends or her family but those were important considerations.

I finally told my wife that if she can identify for me someone who would write in defence of the “other” in race and religious issues, I would gladly stop. My own faith taught me that it is the duty of “the one who knows” to educate “those who do not know”. I happen to be in the former category while she does not have the knowledge that I have. The burden of knowledge and truth is usually heavy and difficult. I do not write just to help broaden other people’s horizons but also because it is about my own spiritual faith.

Though the children have grown up, this issue remains a shadow between us to this day. I am torn between the sadness of seeing my wife’s shrinking social and family circles and my own sense of social responsibility and spiritual calling to ensure justice for all.

I’m sure most of you reading this think that the word “other” in the headline refers to my wife. Actually, it is I who is the “other” here. My wife had to learn to live with someone who did not share her views on our shared race and religion but who had sound, important and unselfish reasons for holding those different views.

She has had to live with shrinking social circles and a lifetime of stepping outside her comfort zone to learn to tolerate or accept new ideas and perspectives, many not to her initial liking.

The message here is that if we are to be a family – that is, a nation – we all have to live with differences in perspectives, ideas, lifestyles and faiths, and we all have a lifetime of learning to tolerate or accept new ideas and perspectives, some perhaps not to our initial liking.

We are all different and the magic of unity is that differences complement and make life an interesting, nurturing and rewarding journey of discovery. Being the same makes us go nowhere, and we would be no different than boulders that lie in an eternal rest of blissful ignorance. Failing to honour differences is not only failing at being a united nation but also failing in life in its entirety.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.