Source: Ibid

There have been proposals to raise the minimum legal age for marriage from 16 to 18 (some have even proposed 21). But, as Arlina pointed out,

Some in the community said more open discussions of sexuality, including safe sex practices, are needed.

Yet,

educating teens on birth control is out of the question because Islam forbids pre-marital sex and parents would interpret any discussion of birth control as giving teens the licence to engage in sex before marriage.

So here again religion circumscribes the allowable solutions to social problems.

In addition, the religious mind tends to see social breakdown as a failure in morality. It reaches too quickly the simplistic notion that getting people to be "good" and pious would be the antidote, thus relying too much on exhortation.

But those who fall by the wayside see exhortation as preachiness, inevitably producing the communication gap that makes things worse rather than better.

On the other hand, we should not be too quick to draw the connection between religiosity and social crises in the Malay community. Other factors should also be considered, such as lower educational standards and lower income-earning power among Malays compared to other communities. It may never be possible to tease out the separate factors, because religion itself can impact on them. Prioitising saving your soul for the next world can lead to downgrading your material ambitions in this.

On a slightly separate note, the same newspaper carried a book review by Asad Latif on 20 March 2007. The book in question was Religious Pluralism In Democratic Societies Challenges And Prospects For South-east Asia, Europe And The United States In The New Millennium. Edited by K.S. Nathan. I have to admit that I myself have not yet read the book, so for now, I am just taking Asad's comments at face value -- and extending them.

An interesting point made was that even as we speak of a secular state, there are at least 3 identifiable types, going by how it is practised.

1. State keeps out of religion, but religion interferes in the running of the state; 

2. Both state and religion keep a distance from each other; 

3. Religion keeps out of the state, but the state interferes in religion.

Asad didn't say much about the United States -- and I don't know whether the book does -- but it seems to me that despite the founding fathers' attempt to build a wall between state and religion, the truth is that religion plays a biggish role in politics and the governmental policies that result.

Elections are won by appealing to religious faith, while laws and policies reflect religious sensitivities, e.g. the "don't ask, don't tell" compromise so painfully crafted in 1994 for gay and lesbian servicemen in the military, that even now is controversial.

George W Bush

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder once remarked that he was stupefied to see US President George W Bush boast that before reaching big decisions, he'd go down on his knees in prayer. Schroeder thought it nothing short of absurd that the leader of the most powerful nation on earth would listen to voices in his head and act accordingly -- and be proud of it.

In short, in the secular state that is the United States, religion has some controlling influence over it. Secularism there means that the state is kept out of religion, but not that religion is kept out of the state, dovetailing with Dyer's view that this may be what explains the higher degree of social ills there despite being among the richest nations on earth.

As for Europe, Asad noted that "its official model of secularism is the converse of the US one. European secularism turns on keeping religion out of the state, instead of the other way around."

Indeed that appears to be true, but the degree by which the other direction is also avoided, i.e. state interference with religion, may differ. France, for example, has an anti-clerical tradition, and the state does think it has a right to keep religion on a leash. It might not have lived up to this maxim -- e.g. turning a blind eye to Middle-Eastern clerics preaching an anti-Western brand of Islam in its mosques -- but the country is potentially not averse to doing so.

Britain however, has tended to practice a very strict mutual separation of church (and mosque, etc) and state despite Anglicanism being the established church. As Asad noted, this almost total hands-off approach "does not create a sufficiently robust platform for the integration of religious minorities."

"Thus, argues former Danish diplomat Joergen Oerstrom Moeller, several European countries allowed Muslim immigrants 'to live in enclaves and establish parallel cultures', enabling dogmatists in the community to isolate Muslims from the mainstream," wrote Asad.

Singapore's secularism is one where the state has subtly intervened in established religions for decades. It has largely proscribed clerics from "playing politics" (a phrase that Lee Kuan Yew was fond of using) and is ever vigilant about maintaining a truce among various faith groups.

Yet, it can be argued that its record is uneven. The state might have been more focussed on Islam than on Christianity, not just in the wake of 9/11, but ever since the 1960s when racial riots broke out, fanned by religion. Furthermore, the presence of large numbers of Christians (sometimes fundamentalist ones too) in positions of power tends to make the state look benignly on this religion even as their wilder proponents grate on everybody else. There have been reports of teachers and medical professionals pushing their religious agenda. State-funded schools pay fundamentalist Christian groups to teach courses on sexuality to their pupils.

Nonetheless, the implicit principle in Singapore is that secularism means that religions should keep out of the state, but not necessarily that the state should keep out of religion.

This principle may be something that newly-appointed Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-Ann wishes to overturn. On 9 February 2007, the Straits Times (Insight section, 'Looking to advance the debate') alluded to this in a short write-up about her parliamentary aims:

A Christian, she advocates that religious values, as well as secular values, have a place in public debate. 'That to me is free debate,' she says firmly.

That sounds awfully like wanting Singapore to go the American way, where the state keeps out of religion, but not the other way around. One has to wonder, since unlike America where the great majority of the people are Christian, albeit of different denominations, in Singapore, every religion is a minority and some religious teachings are diametrically opposed to others, whether this might be a recipe for social tension. Furthermore, considering the social ills discussed in this essay, one should wonder if there is any wisdom in thinking that religion has anything useful to add in the practical matter of governing a state and looking after society.

© Yawning Bread