Cross-cultural communication is always about meaning and such meanings are always resident in people and not just in the mere words. In a recent article relating to the same concept of interpretive nuances of meanings of words in people, Raja Petra Kamaruddin (RPK) wrote:

“For example, when you say someone is a fundamentalist, you may actually mean that he or she is an extremist – whereas to the person in question a fundamentalist is someone who follows the true and fundamental teachings of the religion. Therefore, to the first person, a fundamentalist is a negative thing (something not quite right with that person’s brain) whereas to the second it is positive (they are a purist).

“Again, when you say someone is a liberal, to one person it is positive (this person is reasonable and modern thinking) whereas to another person it would be considered as deviant beliefs (not following the teachings too strictly and straying from the correct path).

“A non-Muslim would look at a Muslim who drinks wine as good (this means the person is a liberal Muslim) whereas a fellow Muslim would not share that view – it would be considered bad. So liberal can be both good and bad depending on where you stand.”

That is precisely the issue of miscommunication in any communication model. The key or core issues are implicit meanings and nuances embedded within the worldview of the communicators; whether the sender of the message or the receiver of the message. Unless these nuanced meanings are fully understood within a moment of “aha” experience by the others, very often the communication is incomplete. That is exactly the point that RPK is making, and I fully agree.  

\"idris

Therefore, unless there are real and serious attempts to understand one another – with a three-tiered tolerance-acceptance and then celebration worldview, as propagated by Idris Jala ( right ) – there cannot be any real and good conversation; both, listening and speaking, to be understood.

Allow me now to generalise this to yet another level. For example, let us take the words “secular and sacred”. What does the word secular mean in common parlance in Malaysia? And what does the word mean in its original usage?  

Concepts founded upon the word ‘secular’

I had the privilege recently of attending a lecture by a Professor Graham Ward at the Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies or IAIS next to Universiti Malaya (UM). The following explanation is what I learned from Dr Ward’s enunciation on the subject of four related concepts to and founded upon the word “secular.”

First was the root word of “ sacculum ” [Middle English, from Old French seculer , from Late Latin saeculris , from Latin, of an age, from saeculum , generation, age] which even today in the Latin-English modern translation means “the time period or era between the first resurrection of Jesus Christ and his Second Coming. Therefore since Jesus has not come back, we are still in the realm of the secular in this original meaning. It is a sacred and very theological word then.

The second and more modern word “secular,” however even since the 16th century in Europe has meant the end of the so-called Christian Kingdom and rise of the modern national state; the first notable ones being England and France.

But, herein too lay the modern meaning: i.e. to separate this “rule by the state” versus “rule by the Pope.” While Emperor Constantine had “Christianised much of faith artifacts by then,” the separation of the explicit rule of Roman Catholic Faith from the rule of the Emperor of the state made the concept of secular, the rule of “non-faith systems.” But, even here non-faith does not mean anti-faith either.

The third iteration and development of the same concept was “secularism” when this worldview became the be all and end all logic for many schools of thought. This way of thinking excluded the idea of “God or any Superior being” and thereby concluded with the ‘God is dead’ movement as the pinnacle of this kind of secularism.  

Therefore man was absolutely free of all external shackles, and ‘pure humanism’ of which ‘man as the centre of his universe’ was born.  Most modern human rights logic, outside of the human dignity definition of old, which recognises the existence of a creative other, belongs to this school of thought.

Finally according to Ward, all the above processes thus gave birth to the “Secularisation hypothesis” that the “now freed humanistic enterprise would ultimately take over and influence the entire worldview everywhere in the world wherein the secular would become the dominant philosophy and any interest in the religious would fade away.” Professor Ward however concluded that this was furthest from the truth today.  

Post-materialistic era

A global series of values surveys have revealed that since the 1990s there has been a trend reversal in Europe and “there is a significant and noticeable rise in the new visibility of religious desire and interest.” This new era is now being therefore called the post-materialistic era. Ward suggested that even the famous sociologist of religion, Peter Berger, admitted that they “got it wrong”.

\"hillary

For much of Asia, defined as all lands east of Istanbul, this is the ordinary nature of truth.  All the places of worship today remain full and crowded.  But to Ward the real question remains whether in our worldviews the public space known as ‘the commons’ has given way to only an interest in the ‘goods in common’ rather than the ‘common good’?”

That question is a matter of great public interest and should become a subject of interest in any public policy dialogue. In my language and lexicon of column writing, I have called this my rhetorical question, “Is the air we breathe green in colour?”

Or rather, did not the Almighty know what he was doing when he created the air we breathe to remain colourless? May God bless Malaysia. Madam Clinton, do you follow?