THE strict division of church and state was an Enlightenment solution to a uniquely European problem that has inappropriately become a fundamental characteristic of modernity itself.
The problems in Europe associated with the dominance of the church did not necessarily exist elsewhere, and thus this solution need not be compulsorily included in the raft of principles the world values from the Enlightenment.
Indeed, concepts like freedom, rationality, reason and the rule of law, which Western historians would have us believe were discovered by Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, were all understood and valued in non-European civilisations for hundreds of years before the Renaissance, and arguably with greater societal success.
It is a mistake to superimpose Western models, which arose out of a particular experience to address unique issues of those people at that time, on non-Western nations whose histories and cultures were not plagued by the same problems.
Consider, for example, the fact that the great French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who laid the cornerstone of modern social and political thought in Europe, praised the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's Peace & Blessings be upon Him) as one of "the greatest legislators in the universe" who combined spiritual and worldly power.
It is quite remarkable that the awe with which the leaders of the Enlightenment beheld Islamic civilisation seems now to be adopted by the Muslim world towards the West, so much so that we imagine our own advancement can only be achieved through mimicry.
I would argue, however, that not only are Western interpretations of Enlightenment concepts unsuited to our nations, it is questionable how successful they have even been for the West itself.
The insistence on a rigid separation of church and state has made Western perspectives on freedom, for instance, demonstrably dysfunctional. Divorced from a traditional, religious framework of morality, freedom has become a perpetual and futile struggle to define boundaries.
There is no solid standard, and no reliable way to reach a consensus. This approach has left their societies today riven with crippling controversies that our societies find bizarre. When Malaysia enshrined Islam as the religion of the state in the Constitution, it was a wise recognition that the European rejection of the symbiosis of religion and the state was a Western peculiarity that would not serve the interests of our nation.
We are a country of many faiths and multiple ethnicities, the establishment of an overarching standard of public morality, of fundamental rights and responsibilities drawn from Islam but common to the religious traditions of all our citizens, has been crucial to the maintenance of social cohesion.
Far from being an oppressive feature, Article 3 (1) has provided Malaysia with the stable foundation on which we could build the thriving multicultural society we are today in which rights and freedoms are responsibly enjoyed by all, without diminishing our shared values.
This constitutional provision has also served as a bulwark against cultural imperialism, stopping the invasion of moral ambiguity and relativism from the West.
It is precisely because Malaysia has not accepted to divorce religious mores from governance that we have a strong position to resist new, radical interpretations of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the United Nations has attempted to retroactively revise under pressure from identitarian Left activists.
Islam has over a millennium of scholarship on matters of human rights, the role of reason and rationality, and the balance between freedom and civic duty.
Intellectuals who spread the Enlightenment through Europe and America expressed their admiration for the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's Peace & Blessings be upon Him) and the vigilance of Muslim rulers like Süleyman for their strict adherence to constitutional laws.
We should never suppose that preserving Islam as the religion of the state in any way contradicts the principles of modernity that the West embraced just three centuries ago.
The writer is a founder, Centre for Human Rights Research & Advocacy (Centhra)
