Merry Christmas to all Malaysians! How now, ISMA?

Rest assured, I'll be enjoying the day with my Christian friends and family members.

And, it looks like I will be accompanying Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan in the pits of hell (no pun, intended!) if what ISMA says rings true.

Apparently, our dear minister will suffer the wrath of God for wishing Malaysians ‘Merry Christmas’ on his Twitter posted a few days ago which seemed to ‘ignore’ ISMA’s declaration that the act is 'forbidden'.

I’d normally be outraged by a statement like that and start ranting on my social media platforms and prompted my thoughts to spill over into my column, too.

But, this time around, I don’t feel so angry or frustrated. This is because it seems that people who disagree with extremists like ISMA and PERKASA are slowly creeping out of the woodwork.

It started with the ‘Prominent 25’ who, in their open letter to fellow Malaysians, promoted moderation and open discussion when it comes to religious issues.

Although it didn’t spark a huge movement immediately as I had hoped it would, more people are coming out now, including an influential personality, Tun Musa Hitam followed by Rahman Dahlan.

The former, who is the country’s ex-deputy prime minister, on Monday, expressed in an interview with English daily, The Star that he is a liberal and moderate, and these were concepts that are the basis for the formation of Malaysia.

Musa went on to criticise politicians saying that those who use race and religion for their personal agenda and gaining political support are ‘bankrupt politicians’.

Religious leaders were also not spared. Musa went to say that there seem to be many of them who seem to want to be politicians, instead.

The word ‘liberal’ itself is something that extremists, our national religious council JAKIM included, have stated is something that is apparently so wrong and against the teachings of Islam.

But, with more rational and moderate Muslims voicing out that it is essential that we be more understanding living in a multi-racial and multi-religious society, I am more hopeful.

Liberalism and moderation are supposed to be the basic tenets of democracy. But of course, if we don’t want to live in an authoritarian regime then it is all good to declare it all evil.

Even Muslim scholar Dr. Reza Aslan has mentioned that having these extremists being so vocal is actually a positive sign that the country is progressing in a healthy way.

It is because they are scared that their right-wing ideas and opinions will end up obsolete, so they are trying hard to cling on to whatever influence they still have (if any).

So when these extremists claim that there is a ‘liberal plot’ to take over the country, what they don’t realise is that it is just normal societal progress that is catching up to them.

At first I thought we would be doomed, by slowly and surely - it looks like Malaysians and Malaysia would prevail.