IT is dangerous that the righteous fury that broke over Munirah Bahari’s head comprised primarily of outraged dismissal, scandalised handwringing, and the more virulent brands of bigotry. As vice-president of the National Islamic Students Association of Malaysia, Munirah must represent a body opinion sufficiently large to motivate her appeal in the Press to review girls’ white baju kurung school uniforms. And yet we have by and large refused to engage with her and, by implication, that body. The most authoritative critique so far has come from the dependable Sisters In Islam, but English-language opinion has otherwise focused entirely on Munirah’s admittedly faulty logic. Certainly, the student leader opened herself to attack simply by drawing the indefensible conclusion that the uniform tempts otherwise rational men into acts of sexual depravity, leading to rape and babies being born out of wedlock. Whether or not she had a point in saying that baju kurung uniforms were immodest was waved aside in the all the mockery, and likewise no one asked why the idea of making camisoles compulsory was so terribly objectionable. This points more to a failure in what we now like to call “civil society”, than it does to the shortcomings in Munirah’s grounds for her point of view. Few of us troubled ourselves to read her original statement in Malay, and likewise, far too many relied on English translations contained in news stories alone as the primary source of their criticisms. The business of news is to draw out the most important, outrageous, ridiculous or otherwise noteworthy parts of an event, speech or document. Not only do subtleties get lost in translation, but whole chunks of fact disappear in the observation of word limits and the determination of newsworthiness. In this case, the part left out was her last paragraph recommending that those wishing to wear the white baju kurung should also consider wearing a singlet beneath it. This practice is already compulsory in at least one girls’ mission school in Petaling Jaya - and has been for some years without parental or any other objection. How then do we approach the idea of a nominally Christian school preceding in practice Munirah’s apparently wild assertion? This brings us to the related question of how quickly we judge a person’s words and actions based on what we perceive to be their peculiar socio-political platforms or particular hobby-horses. If, for example, a respected liberal opinion-maker such as Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir were to say that the quality of uniforms had deteriorated to the point of becoming transparent, it was immodest, and that something ought to be done about it, would we be so quick to judge her a Taliban loony? The same people who would shut her up for entertaining dangerous or preposterous views would be identical to those who decry an infringement of their constitutional freedoms when told to be quiet themselves. Is that not a paradox? Should we not at least talk to her before we condemn her, and anyone she might represent, to the fringes of what we consider our modern, civilised and multicultural society? Munirah, however, is not Marina. On the contrary the student leader represents the same group that made itself infamous last year for objecting to the Gwen Stefani concert (Stefani was too sexy for the country, they said, and the masses would therefore descend into immoral chaos). Past remarks, however, are not sufficient reason to dismiss current arguments as unreasonable without further investigation - and investigation requires dialogue, which in turn requires competence in the language Munirah and her group feels most comfortable. That language can be Bahasa, or religion, or anything. It is incumbent upon us to find out. To attack her without first doing this is to attack her for no other reason than that she is different, or that she represents a different view from our own. If that is what we mean by civil society, then who can blame her for not wanting to have anything to do with it?
• U-En Ng graduated in mediaeval languages and is a journalist. He is currently parliamentary sketchwriter for Malay Mail

Source: Malay Mail – June 2, 2008