JUNE 11 — Only in Malaysia: religious authorities having no qualms about gatecrashing your wedding or your funeral. Self-appointed guardians of our souls, they seem to believe that it's God's job to look after the poor, the elderly and the infirm while their job is to make sure that people don't get married or buried without their say-so.

Now let me step into dicey theological territory. Do the religious authorities have more claim over a dead body than, say, the deceased's family? Will God really send you to hell if your body isn't interred the "correct" or "theologically preferred" manner?

Funerals are not for the dead. They are for the living. They are for those who want to mourn those who have passed on; to grieve, to remember and to bid farewell to loved ones.

What do I believe? That no religious body has the right to snatch a corpse or dispose of it, not unless the deceased had specifically left behind instructions to be buried in a certain manner.

No religious authority should have precedence over a family's wishes. But that is the problem with our religious authorities -- the searing, zealous belief that they are doing God's work, that what they are doing is God-sanctioned.



The truth is, you will never know.

You won't really know if God exists until you die. You can't really justify 100 per cent that you are doing the right thing by God without His/Her official sanction.

Faith is in the realm of belief. What you believe may or may not be the truth and your believing in something does not make it true.

The columnist thinks that one of the biggest lies in Malaysia is that minority religions and races are protected. — Reuters pic

I would suggest that the religious authorities voluntarily go to Heaven and ask God if what they're doing is OK by Him.

That's not possible? Really? The way they act, you would think they have a direct line to God.

I don't have a problem with God. I have a problem with people invoking his name to cause suffering, to separate families, to prevent marriages and to steal corpses.

At the same time, all this bodysnatching and wedding crashing is insidious not because of the patent lack of compassion and the brutish abuse of power.

One of the biggest lies in Malaysia is that minority religions and races are protected. Under the Constitution, they are. But in the eyes of our religious authorities, there is no Constitution except the ones in their (likely non-existing) hearts.

Let us be the guardian of our own beliefs, which we hold in our own hearts.

Our tax money shouldn't be going to paying people to police our souls.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.