The liberal conception of equality and social justice in Malaysia

Open Dialogue Centre regularly invites prominent speakers to discuss about liberalism as part of its Philosophy, Politics and Society Discourse Series held at Madrasah Al Hidayah, Sungai Petani, Kedah. On Sunday 24th June 2007, they invited Khalid Jaafar, the Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research, to travel from Kuala Lumpur to give a talk on the liberal concept of equality and social justice in Malaysia.

The seminar aims to provide explanation on the concept of liberalism and its practice, its kindliness and badness in the society. It also aims to explain the misunderstanding and the prejudice that people have towards liberalism. The audience is young professional who should be given opportunity to learn the modern thinking of liberalism, said Hashrul Muhaimin, the programme manager of ODC.

Khalid Jaafar opined that polemic in liberalism has become something that is important and popular. Liberal Islam and the meaning of it has been debated publicly recently. people should not be influenced by the propaganda too easily. They should not be prejudiced and have wrong assumption on certain issues. People should instead refer to the right resource and understand certain ideas before making any conclusion or evaluation. Liberal thinking must be given attention and consideration without prejudice. An assessment must be done based on the academic study by consulting the list of liberal scholars such as John Locke, J.S. Mill, Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Alexis Tocqueville and many others.

To a question about rights and freedom of individual which were considered by some participants to oppose a religion, Khalid highlighted a case in the court to explain. The case was that there was a man who complained that he was punched. The party who punched was questioned: “What made you do that”, he then replied, “I am free to move my hand. That is my freedom”. The judge argued, “You are free to move your hand but the freedom is limited when the fist touched another man’s nose.” Khalid concluded that liberalism comes with a rule. Rule helped to free people or to stop a man to move freely where it was done on purpose.

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