Religion, Politics and Democracy

Religion is actually a very valuable asset. Religion is about spiritual values of love, compassion, humility and justice.

We all should take note that it is religion that should remind our political leaders and rulers to behave rather than to let politics dominate religion and later political leaders or rulers will use it as tool to advance their political powers and interests.

The Prophet of Islam Muhammad s.a.w. has been mentioned in the Quran as Rahmah Lil Alamin which means "Mercy of the World".

Unfortunately, today's powerful political leaders and rulers have made life miserable for their people in the name of religion, purportedly under their control. Many political leaders and rulers today had distorted facts and made religion their political tool in order to remain in power and control their people.

Therefore, when religion is used for political means, people would tend to get confuse, got cheated and follow blindly or they might have to follow it just because the religion had "mentioned" it, for example a verdict or "fatwa".

Because of religion has been deliberately mixed up in political environment, the religion itself had became a power-obsessed institution due to religious leaders are also becoming too involve in political power plays, rather than functioning originally as an asset with values of love, compassion, humility and justice, where the people could refer to for spiritual consultation and development.

And because of these religious leaders had also became politically power-obsessed, the entire religious institution had lost its spiritual and moral values. Religious leader no longer give sermons and lecture based on the original teachings of the Prophets, but began issuing verdicts and fatwas based on political motivation and instructions from political leaders and rulers.

As religion and politics began the mixtures in the day to day state of affairs, the people's freedom, justice, equality and democracy would eventually lost because political leaders and rulers would decree and control their people in the name of the religion.

Political leaders, rulers and religious leaders would control the people by using their verdicts or fatwas by instituting fear onto them, should they dare question the verdicts or ruling - with remarks "those who question would be punished by god" or "condemned to hell" and so on, thus the democratic values in the country would soon be vanished and disappeared.

The democratic institution has its own principles and values which are different to that of the religious values that emphasize more on spiritual care and development. The democratic institution is an avenue where political leaders would practically be responsible of providing material, welfare and physical care to the people.

Therefore, the most important thing in Muslim countries today is to separate the religion from the state of affairs institution by democratizing the politics and governance, and return the religion to the household, leave it to the people and their conscience.

In resolution, the state should not interfere in the religious institution and in turn the religious leaders also should avoid interfering in politics and the affairs of the state.

Religion provides us not only values but also meaning and direction in life spiritually to the people, and that is why it should remain under the roof where people could practice it in peace. Politics in the other hand should only deal with basic needs of the existence such as material, welfare and physical requirements of the people.

If religion were to continue to become supreme in the state of affairs, the rulers and political leaders would take advantage of the situation by prolonging their power base, the ulama or priest would become powerful and interferes in the daily governance of which would resulted to the destruction of democracy because the government would instead be responsible to the religion instead of to the people.

A pure democratic institution and a government elected by the people is in no way going to responsible to a bunch of ulamas, priests or religious leaders.

In today's phenomena, we had witnessed and saw that in most of the Muslim countries, the people there have no say in governance and their politics because they being frequently bound by the laws, verdicts and fatwas enforced by the so-called religious governments of the day.

There are no democracy, freedom of views or speech, justice and equality, no elections and if there is, it would be a limited one, thus paving way for a longed dictatorships.

The real challenge here is can the people realize the difference between religion, politics and democracy? Are the people able to use their wisdom to realize the importance of the separation of religion from politics and the state in order to let democracy flourish in their countries?