Anti-Malaysian Jingoism, and the missing Golden Rule

Being out of the country means there is often a substantial delay before one gets one’s news, especially those lower down the rungs of urgency. So it is that your author, doing his Sunday web browsing, typed in ‘Jakarta’ in the Google News search box, and belatedly discovered the latest round of the perennial Indonesia-Malaysia dispute.

From today’s Jakarta Globe:

Having a movement has taken on a totally new meaning in this country thanks to some nincompoops who see the brown-colored end product of the bodily function as a viable instrument for expressing patriotism.

I’m referring to the farcical incident last week where a group of demonstrators flung human feces at the Malaysian Embassy in Jakarta.

I’d recommend reading the letter in full to get the whole picture. My initial reaction is that of despair, one I shared with the columnist, Mr. Siahaan — the lower elements in our society has again made a fool of all of us, with scant hope of anything positive coming out of this. One also thinks of similar xenophobic demonstrations in other countries whose political systems fall short of mature democracy — where such demonstrations are useful to let off steam, and to redirect resentment away from the ruling political class. After all, one could hardly imagine our own Parliament or National Palace be defaced in a similar way, with our national flag burned, without the perpetrators being severely dealt with.

It’s this double standard that, upon reflection, is the gist of my concern. Public display of fecal matter is a controversial topic — recall the New York controversy involving Chris Ofili’s painting of the Virgin Mary, even though in that context, the use is hardly derogatory, whereas in this case it certainly is. Not only insulting, but illegal — if defacing your neighbour’s property is illegal, defacing sovereign property is … I’m not a lawyer, but definitely a matter of foreign policy concern.

Compared to this, the flag-burning itself is less worrisome from a legal perspective, though equally troubling as a cultural phenomenon. After all, in most countries, only one’s own flag is sacrosanct from such acts of vandalism, and some more enlightened countries even protect the right of citizens to burn their own flag (kudos to the United States). Are we to be equated with the mobs of the Arab street, where US and Israeli flags, and effigies of their leaders, are periodically burned?

All the Abrahamic faiths, and many others, teach the Golden Rule:

“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

—Talmud, Shabbat 31a
Do to others as you want them to do to you.
—Bible, Luke 6:31a
“None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
—An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith 13 (p. 56)

As such, until we’re open-minded enough to see our public building defaced by a foreign mob, and our flag burned, we should not do so to others. The beauty of tolerance and mature rationality, of course, is that at that point in time we would not want to do it to others to begin with.

source:http://hircus.indonesiamatters.com/anti-malaysian-jingoism-and-the-missing-golden-rule-52/

One day the Indons will throw faeces to their flag and President. How rude...