Let’s say you’ve got 3 competing theories about the world, universe and everything in general. Suppose each of these theories presents a different take on the world, a different point of view. How would you decide which has the most validity? I suppose in science, viz. the natural world, you determine which has the most ability to explain natural phenomena. With religion, it becomes far more dicey, because the religious dimension is essentially social in that it operates as beliefs held by people.
What constants do we look out for in diverse religious beliefs to determine “which is better”? I think most would shy from the question, because make evaluative statements about the validity of this or that religion is firstly generally frowned upon, and secondly such judgements would proceed from a particular point of view. Some would even argue that the use of objectivity in such judgements is misleading; these would say that religion is a subjective experience, and objectivity would miss the point.
What about ‘consequences’? Islam in the past has been a driving force for innovation and learning (we wouldn’t have known of Aristotle without Avicenna and Averroes, for example), of modern day chemistry and such (aqua regia, anyone?). While most would bring up Galileo, what they forget are Schoolmen scientists like Bacon and the rest of the crowd. Let’s not forget attrocities committed in the name of religion, yah? We have the crusaders and conquistadors of Spain, the Spanish Inquisition, terrorism, Protestants vs. Catholics in Northern Ireland (a simplication, however) and others.
What about culture? How do you decide which culture is “better” than another? Most would shy away from this question as well. Fundamentalists rave against the “morally bankrupt” Western culture, some pundits decry the pre-Modern culture of Islamists the world over, almost all practice an active chauvanism in relation to other cultures. There’re a number of theories about identity and the Other, how while identity is self-reflexive, it finds definition in the presence of the alien. We define ourselves not just by what or where we came from, what we used to do or what our traditions are, but also in many senses, all of the latter in relation to someone else and such.
But I suppose most would not like to spend too much time discussing culture, or questioning another’s culture, because as with religion, it’s always a judgement from somewhere. Worse, picking apart cultures to judge what is laudable and what is not laudable about that culture is not only applying different sets of ‘rules’, it’s very un-PC. Some would call it a precursor to outright racism, and I tend to agree. It is fundamentally wrong.
However the problem is this: cultural relativism, the idea that all cultures are equal but different, is also a subtle kind of racism. It’s what Ayn Rand would call a tribalization of cultures, I suppose, in which all are different and yet possess the same moral validity with respect to their belief systems and traditions. The laudable motive is to recognize cultures as different, and to appreciate the differences among cultures, true. But it invariably promotes an exclusivity of membership. If you’re Malay for example, you’re Malay, you have your culture, your beliefs, I either emphatize or worse, tolerate them and that’s about it. The Malay person however, will remain invariably other, the point at which you begin to define yourself in distinction to that Malay person.
Another question on a more superficial level (maybe) is this: how do the children of mixed marriages view themselves? Are they, for example, Malay? Chinese? Our identity cards define you easily: if your father’s a Malay, you are therefore Malay. But this is an example of a specious categorization: you are more than either of your parents’ ethnicities - and some would say less. Simply because you’re difficult to pigeon hole in a ‘multicultural’ society that celebrates such a cultural relativism. You’re either too Malay to be Chinese, or too Chinese to be Malay. What a fix.
To bring the context in focus: what about the situation in Malaysia? On the one hand, one could argue that it is effectively a ‘monocultural’ country, with the dominance of the bumiputera. That kind of chauvanism, however, leads to an idea of ethnic supremacy which is really the recognition of differences without the appreciation thereof. In Malaysia, it’s not just about finding dividing lines between cultures anymore, it’s about finding those lines and then thumping one’s chests; all sides react with the same kind of chauvanism in response to the other, and actively. So in Malaysia, not only do you have differences, but differences with truly negative connotations.
And here, there’s no singular unity presented as an alternative to indentification except for nationalism. Has that also been subsumed into the larger morass of cultural ‘distinctions’? Is it something worth thinking about at all?
