IF you cannot trace the cause of a disaster, just place it on the altar of God and let Him take responsibility. Malaysians may still remember the horrendous floods last year that destroyed lives and property. They may also recollect that a Cabinet minister stood up in the Dewan Rakyat to declare the floods as “an act of God” and so no one should take the rap.
Religiously-orientated nations have this advantage over secular nations in that we have God as our shield to ward off the arrows shot by environmentalists. But there are very few truly secular nations. In the United States, secularism is just a layer of wax polishing. During the 2020 presidential election campaign, Donald Trump, who does not believe in climate change, told mammoth crowds of churchgoers: “I really do believe we have God on our side.”
Is Britain a secular nation? Just partially. The British Parliament consists of two chambers, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Bishops sit in the House of Lords and play an active role in legislation. Britain retains traces of ancient theocracy, and the queen is head of one religion.
Is India a secular nation? Read the country’s report: India is rapidly turning into a Hindu nationalist state as the government seeks to restore the country’s ancient greatness through Hinduism.
Malaysian politicians will be keenly watching Brazil’s presidential elections in October because the winner may be the candidate who is best able to convince religious authorities that he is a man of God. Millions of Brazilian churchgoers will simply embrace the politics of their pastors, who explicitly tell them how to cast their votes. No need to talk about saving the Amazon jungles, just tell the crowds that you believe in the word of God and that only God can defeat you.
Adolf Hitler was the first democratically-elected leader to play the religion card. Nazi Germany was not driven by atheism or secularism to establish the most evil form of dictatorship in the 20th century. No, Hitler was adept at harnessing the overwhelming power of religious emotion. German financiers, business tycoons and other social influencers spread the message to the common people that Hitler was sent by God to become Fuhrer of the German people.
Hitler encouraged this portrayal of himself as a servant carrying out God’s will. In his 1924 book, Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote in Chapter Two: “I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.” In Chapter 10, Hitler made a subtle call for the public to support him on religious grounds: “Everybody who has the right kind of feeling for his country is solemnly bound, each within his own denomination, to see to it that he is not constantly talking about the Will of God merely from the lips but that in actual fact he fulfils the Will of God, and does not allow God’s handiwork to be debased. Whoever destroys his work wages war against God’s Creation and God’s Will.”
Hitler’s Nazi party won the Reichstag or parliamentary elections in 1932, and he was appointed Chancellor the following year. His craftiness in harnessing electoral support by invoking God and attributing his policies to God’s will has long served as a lesson for politicians in religious-orientated nations on how to secure an easy victory.
Hitler was by no means the world’s first politician to use the religion card. Historians know that this notion of God as a partisan supreme being, with a domineering hyperactive personality is a creation of religio-political forces at the dawn of civilisation. Unlike a hunter-gatherer tribe that has just several hundred members, civilisations are mass societies of diverse ethnicities. A supernatural authority in the form of a divine or divinely-appointed ruler was felt necessary to unite a million or more people.
This partisan hyperactive God is used as a convenient dumpsite for everything that goes wrong in our lives. When a popular actress suffered a miscarriage two years ago, she explained it as God’s will and a test from Him. But miscarriages are a common natural phenomenon and they happen because of genetic abnormalities in the foetus. A natural miscarriage is a necessary occurrence.
Before the advent of modern medicine, anyone suffering from mental illness was not treated because the prevailing teaching was that mental illness was a punishment from God and, hence, no one should intervene with an attempted cure. Today, preachers blame tsunamis on gays for provoking the wrath of God. The audience never asks how is it that yogis are better at controlling their emotions than God?
Back in 2014, a particularly dry year for Malaysia, houses of worship of many religions were crowded with devotees praying to God for rain. They received their answer in 2021 when massive floods inundated eight states (Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang, Perak, Negri Sembilan, Malacca, Kuala Lumpur, and Selangor). How many prayed for the rains to stop, turning God into a tap with on and off controls.
In March 2020, the Indonesian health minister praised clerics for their power of prayer in keeping the nation coronavirus-free. His praises came far too early, for Indonesia eventually ended up with more than six million cases and 156,000 deaths.
Belief in a partisan hyperactive God who works magic for our benefit has caused many pious retirees in Malaysia to lose all their savings in a scam investment scheme organised by religious-sounding conmen, who promise them that God will multiply their investment tenfold within hours.
A partisan God who favours your religion, political party or humanity against nature cannot exist. We are misled by dictionaries to think of God as the supreme being who grants us favours if we worship Him. But the highest conception of God is denoted by the Sanskrit word “Brahman”, that means an impersonal all-pervading force of cosmic unity, or in short the “One and All”.
How can the “One and All” act in your favour against political rivals or guarantee humanity’s survival even as we drive a million animal species to extinction? Being a partisan means taking sides. God then ceases to be the “One and All”, and in that instant the universe will also cease to exist.
When the 15th General Election comes around, be wary of candidates who bill themselves as defenders of faith, and flash claims that they know the Will of God and are anointed to implement God’s Will for our nation.
Adolf Hitler made this claim with disastrous consequences for Germany. No partisan leader advancing partisan interests in favour of any one group over others can ever know the Will of God.
The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
