Our Agong, His Majesty, Sultan Ibrahim, in conjunction with his official birthday, has advised all us to be true to the Rukun Negara
“Any Malaysian who refuses to adhere to the principles of the Rukun Negara, I advise, is not worthy of being called a Malaysian citizen,” he said.
When I heard that, my heart was pained because although I do very much appreciate my life in our country, I can't with a full heart admit that I am fully in tune with the "kepercayaan kepada tuhan" part of the Rukun Negara.
If you ask me whether there is a god, I think I will lean more to a no than to a yes.
I think you will believe in a god if you believe that creation has a starting point. If you believe that the Creation has a starting point, then you will likely believe that there is a god that created creation at the starting point.
But the older I get, the more my views about Time are changing, to the point that i feel that at this juncture, I feel that Time is more of a mental concept than it is something true by itself. In other words, i think that Time related concepts like the Beginning or the End, or the Past, Present and Future, are likely mental concepts that exist in our mind rather than in reality itself. That being the case, I am more inclined to believe that there is no necessity for there to be a Beginning of Creation, and ipso facto, there might not be any necessity for a Creator of Creation.
Also, there are many religions that don't recongnise the gods of other religion. So if you belong to one religion that believes in one particular god, then from your point of view, everybody who is not of your religion doesn't believe in god, isn't it ?
Other than the "kepercayaan kepada tuhan," part, I also feel that recent events, like the Tony Pua conundrum, is also pointing out the possibility of there being an inherent contradiction in our Rukun Negara.
For context, Tony Pua had recently questioned the decree of the Sultan of Selangor to ban pig farming in Selangor, because he wanted to uphold the constitution.
According to Tony, the constitution does not provide for such a royal decree.
Because he questioned the constitutionality of of the royal decree, Tony is currently being investigated by the police, but even the police are not sure what to do, because they have reportedly called a constitutional expert to advise them on how to proceed.
The problem with the Tony Pua conundrum , I believe, is that Tony's insistence on upholding "keluhuran perlembagaan" part of the Rukun Negara has caused him to be faulted for infringing on the "kesetiaan kepada raja dan negara" part.
That even the cops seem to be bewildered by this conundrum, suggests that there might be an inherent contradiction in the Rukun Negara, that makes it possible for you to adhere to one of its principles while infringing on another simultaneously.
I do believe that all of us who appreciate our lives here will do our best to appreciate the Rukun Negara, if that is what it takes to appreciate our lives here.
But saying that, I also feel that perhaps the government needs to do more to shed light on the Rukun Negara, so it will be clearer to all us as to how to believe in the Rukun Negara with strength, and sincerity, without contradictions .
TheRealNehruism (nehru.sathiamoorthy@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
The User Content (as defined on Newswav Terms of Use) above including the views expressed and media (pictures, videos, citations etc) were submitted & posted by the author. Newswav is solely an aggregation platform that hosts the User Content. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact creator@newswav.com.