Religious Aspects

Question: What is the Pink Dot Movement and Religious Aspectrs ? Answer : Introduction Since the day of Independence, Singapore has been one of the most diverse countries regarding ethnicity, religious communities, and languages under one, national identity. After the British left the country, it has become the home for diverse religious and ethnic groups. The country is mostly known for its tolerance towards the diversity. However, even in the past the religion and race were two primary issues that have become a threat to the social cohesion in Singapore. Therefore with several clashes over culture, ideology and moral values create tension in the country, especially over the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights (Wang, 2016). The Pink Dot movement has started on a random evening of May 2009, where around two thousand five hundred people gathered together, dressed in Pink and all were holding pink umbrellas, for forming a pink human formation, which was later known as the Pink Dot Movement in Singapore. Later it became a ritual which is repeate d every year, and the attendance rate has increased with the course of time. The movement has framed itself as the serious initiative of the LGBT citizens of the country as they want to claim the equal rights as the heterosexuals in the country. The Reaction of Religious Communities towards the Pink Dot Movement Since the beginning of the Pink Dot movement, it has become the flagship event of the gay community in Singapore. Not only it attracted the media coverage, but it also created several controversies every year while it was being held. This event was not merely a gay parade, but it inspired several similar pride parades in USA and UK as well. With the active organizations and many individuals who support the gay rights in the country, the parade has celebrated the day of recognition of the sexual diversity in Singapore (Tan, 2015). Now the movement has also attracted several commercial companies as it has gained the media attention as well. However, the way was never smooth for the movement, and there have been several oppositions to this movement. However, in 2014, a local Muslim teacher Ustaz Noor Deros had initiated a movement that can widely be seen as the counter movement of the Pink Dot movement. He had termed the movement as the Wear White' movement and called upon all the Musli m citizen of Singapore to support his movement and to wear white when they are attending the weekly prayers and the special Ramadan prayers on every Saturdays as well. He has asked to follow the movement as a symbol of supporting the traditional family values (Tan, 2017). This movement started on June 28th, 2014, on the very same day of the Pink Dot movement happened that year. Later in the same year a pro-family' advocate and Christian pastor, Lawrence Khong from the network of Love Singapore churches issued another statement where he called upon all the Christians of his network to be attired similarly in white while they are attending their church services on that weekend. The minister Lawrence Khong has pushed for another pro family movement with all the members of his churches network at the helm. He has titled his campaign as We wear white' and called on all the citizens of Singapore, regardless of religion and race to wear white on the 4th and 5th of June to support the pro natural family values. All these anti pink dot movements were positioned on the same date as the pink dot movement in 2016. Minister Khong have emphasized each time that the wear white movement was not directly in contradiction to the pink dot, yet he has defined his movement not being a direct pushing back to the LGBT movement in the country (Chiu et al., 2016). This wear white movement has also attracted the media coverage and is actively present in the social media to attract more followers. Through this movement the conservative population wants the LGBT activists to know that they have the majority of the population who will make their best effort to push the LGBT movement back. Rather they want to fight back the liberal ideology and the homosexual lifestyle that directly contradicts the law and legislations of the country. Not only the legislations, but they also believe, that the LGBT movement openly challenges the core national values of the country and the view of the majority of the population who believe in marriage, public morality and family structure. In the meantime, another founder of the movement had taken a step back contrasting Khnag's campaigning saying that his efforts are more directed towards the educational programs of the young Muslim population. However, these movements also received a mixed reaction from the general population. Significant Role of Religion in determining Morality, Identity and Politics Each society has a predominant cultural sense, especially with their religious roots. Religion in Singapore is mostly characterized by the various religious beliefs and different ethnicities who originate from different countries. Several types of research have indicated Singapore being the most religiously diverse country. In Singapore, Buddhism is the most followed religion, apart from that, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism are there (Oswin, 2014). There is always a close relationship between the relation and the society. Many believe that religion only happens in the religious places such as churches, temples or mosques, but with a closer view of the religious aspects of the society, it could be understood that both the religion and society are co-dependent and interconnected. In reality, religion is inherent in several aspects of the society, and the religious values affect the areas like cultural values, politics in an inevitable way. Despite being the home of diverse relig ious beliefs, the impact of religion in the societal life of Singapore is significant in different ways. Such as, it is supposed to be the secular country and it is suspicious of the religious organizations as most of the activities encroach into politics and cultural values (Tan, 2016). Frequently, there is not any strict separation between the both such as the recent issue over the Pink Dot movement and the section 377A where the conservative Christian and Muslim groups voiced in opposition. However, the religious doctrine should not be that much competent enough to have a direct influence on the status of the state. If looked at closely, there are two aspects of the religious doctrine in Singapore. There is an extensive religious environmentalism that requires an approach of multi faith if the majority of the population need to be communicated. However, there is also an environmental religious approach which cannot be exactly connected to the political action of the state since m ostly politics and religion act separately in Singapore (Lim, 2013). Therefore it needs to be more focused while conveying the environmental ethics to the religious population. In Singapore, the religion and politics are greatly connected, even if the government has insisted it being a secular state throughout. However, making it, a secular state can have a huge impact on the politics of Singapore. Secularism can have two different forms when it is looked from a political point of view, the first one being the suppersessionist' model that defines religion as the direct opposite of religion. This form of secularism is often viewed as the militant secularism (Tan, 2016). This form of secularism can mostly be found in the European expressions of secularism. However, in Singapore, the government follows a modest secularism which can also be defined the anti theocratic, but it is not anti religion. Therefore it rejects the political and ideological dominance by any religious belief and their followers; however, it accepts the worth of religion in the society. According to the Constitution of Singapore, it protects the religious freedom of each citizen. The state believes that everyone has the right to practice their religious beliefs, and this right has been extended to the point where not only the religious practice but the state also accepts the propagation of a certain religion (Mendes, 2015). Therefore it can be seen that despite calling the state secular the state of Singapore entirely acknowledges the significance of religion in the society. Furthermore, the religious aspects of the Singaporean population have a huge impact on the societal outlook, which can be seen in the aspect of criminalizing the section 377A and the pink dot movement occurring in Singapore. Starting as a small gathering of few people in 2009, the pink dot movement has been celebrating the liberty to love regardless of any sexual orientation. Over the years the movement has adopted the non-confrontational outlook towards the gay rights in the country. Wearing pink badges the movement has spread throughout the country being one of the biggest social gatherings in Singapore. However, the movement has made a point where it raises the issue that whether the general population of Singapore is viewing the event as a cultural war or the war of morality where the issues regarding ideology, identity, and behavior become the primary ones (Wilson, 2015). The religious groups have protested directly against the LGBT rights claiming that homosexuality is against the traditional family values. The wear white' campaign was the first interfaith cooperation that was supported by both the Christian and Muslim population of the country where the leaders of both the religion have asked their followers to wear white while they come to the church of the mosque. This issue with LGBT rights has exposed the multiple conservative layers in the Singaporean society. It shows the clear division between not only the secular and religious groups but also between the religious liberals and the conservatives and highlights the difference between the majority population of conservatives and the liberal minority. It shows that the section of the total population who find homosexuality to be morally disgusting and the other section who believe in the universal human rights. However, the most obvious and disturbing thing is the huge difference between the view of secular and religious groups regarding the issue of homosexuality (Lee, 2016). The pink dot movement h as shown that the conservative camp regarding the issue is mostly represented by the religious groups of the state where those who have a secular view regarding the issue are represented by the liberal camp. The Christian organizations such as National Council of Churches of Singapore, Love Singapore, Catholic Church and the Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore have repeatedly protested against the pink dot movement and named homosexuality as a sin. They have always been passive about legalizing the gay rights in Singapore however not only the religious conservative, but there is also a huge section of the general population who think LGBT rights would be wrong, around seven people out of ten. Even the people who have no direct relation with any religion have shown the view of gay sex being wrong. This view is also not far from the views of the conservatives where nine out of ten Islam followers and eight out of ten Protestants think that gay sex w ould be wrong. It is also because of the reason that most of the religious groups think if the gay rights are recognized in the country, it will affect their practice of religious beliefs and they would not have the right to state whether a certain thing in morally right or not (Detenber et al., 2014). This made the issue with gay rights one of the biggest problems in the Singaporean society and made it a cultural and moral war between the two groups. However, the moral views of the general population are changing, and more groups are openly supporting legalizing the gay rights, which predicts more such moral and cultural conflict in the society. Distinguishing between Normative claims of Religion and the Scholarly Perspective of Religion In the course of studying religion, it can be distinguished into two distinct sections; the descriptive study of religion or the anthropological study of religion is concerned with the descriptive human behavior, whereas the theological study of religion is considered to be the normative part of it. The two sections are therefore are very much distinct as the scholarly perspective of the religion studies the people, their beliefs and the social systems. On the other hand, the normative study of religion is concerned with the theological study of it which studies the God and its impact on general people (Ho, Sherqueshaa Zheng, 2016). The scholarly study of religion is a product of modern Europe that encounters the beliefs, exploration and behaviors of the population, and sometimes it is considered to be the familiar ones and sometimes as the unexpected. The early scholars who have studied the descriptive religious beliefs were enthusiastic to collect and compare the general beliefs, rituals, myths that were found all over the world. These find its root back in the journals, diaries of the early explorers. This also studies the cross cultural views of people. Also to compare the beliefs in a non-comparative manner, the scholars have searched for the documentable and discernible differences and similarities without making any normative judgments that concerns whether the differences and similarities are derivative or original; modern or primitive; wrong or right. The scholarly study of religion will observe the differences and similarities of the religion and will theorize why any of them are occurring in that specific place. However, the normative claims of the religion will concern the Gods and how they influence the general people. The normative approach to the religion will account the basic differences while arguing that one side is wrong or sinful and the other side to be right, and the anthropological approach will theorize all the differences and similari ties between the belief systems and find its relation back with the psychology of people (Yue Leung, 2015). In other words, the normative approach of religion is the study that is practiced with the presumption that the religious behaviors, beliefs and the religious institution are observable; however, the scholarly approach of religion leaves the study after a point where they cannot find the root back and leaves it on the theologians. Regarding the pink dot movement, the scholars have mostly made the scholarly approach towards the movement that finds the relation between the religion and the movement and how the religions have influenced the movement and the reactions against it. However, in most cases, the theological root is not present in that approach (Lim, 2013). However, few researchers comment that the religious groups are against the gay rights as they think if the LGBT community is given their rights as the minorities, it would be difficult for the religious groups to be the moral guardian of the population. Therefore they will not have the right to say whether a deed is right or wrong. Critical Cultural Relativism in Singapore regarding the Pink Dot Movement Pink Dot movement has been a growing concern in Singapore regarding the political developments which have been increasingly referred as the cultural war by the Singaporean media. The political analysts have indicated that this cultural war defines the new period of political actions over the gaps in value and cultural claims. This puts not only the quiet political and cultural space at stake but also the collective cultural identity as the citizen of the democratic state. It is quite impossible to state the phase where the Singaporeans have entered the new era of cultural pluralism, but several issues have made this issue prominent. The wear white' movement in against to the pink dot movement is one of them. The issue of LGBT rights is one of the most prominent issues after the petition of repealing the section 377A of the penal code of Singapore, which then criminalizes the gay rights (Wilson, 2015). There have been many prominent public disagreements between the anti and pro-LGBT r ights activists since the repealing of the act. There have been public debates over the pro-family issues and the growing concern about the LGBT rights. However, the controversy has taken the most prominent turn while the counter protests of the pink dot movement have started by the religious people. The growing issue with the public confrontation regarding the LGBT rights does not indicate to a peaceful coexistence of all the social groups in Singapore. However, the cultural wars also suggest that this issue is not at all unique to the world. The pluralism of value is an inevitable fact of the multi-ethnic and the multi-cultural states, and it does not necessarily mean that these disagreements will end up being more violent. However, there has not been any case of violence regarding this issue, which indicates that these cultural conflicts can be solved in a peaceful manner. As the political scenario in Singapore is evolving and the government is trying to cope up with the new mode ls that should become accustomed to new conditions and the rising expectation of the citizens (Mendes, 2015). Since the independence, the Singaporean government has changed their models. In the recent times, while there is a situation with the value pluralism, the government needs to take the lead on the contentious moral and cultural issues. The societal norms should not rely only on the conventional norms rather it needs to deal with the antagonism and the value pluralism in a democratic way. Conclusion Before the Pink Dot Movement, the Gay activism was not flourishing sufficiently. Also, the social attitude towards the homosexual people has been mostly negative in Singapore. However, looking at the gay movement in Singapore shows that the gay community of the country has mostly been found behind the closed doors or within the virtual space. It is also due to the Legislature of Singapore, as the homosexuals acts have been declared to be criminalized under the section 377A of the Penal Code of the country. Also, the Societies Act has refused to identify the non-profit organizations which focus on the societal issues regarding homosexuality. Through this movement, the issue of homosexuality has escaped the private space and came in the public consciousness, which has grabbed the attention of media. Even if Pink Dot movement have not yet served any significant purpose in the gay rights in Singapore, but the socio-political movement is quite unnatural as a social initiative. However, th e campaign has marked its prominence in the country which could craft the frame of gay rights in Singapore. Therefore the governments should take effective steps so that the cultural and moral contradiction does not turn into a worse situation and have a peaceful coexistence of both the groups. Reference List Chiu, M. Y., Lim, K. H., Chan, K., Evans, S., Huxley, P. J. (2016). What does social inclusion mean to Singaporeans? A qualitative study of the concept of social inclusion.Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development,26(2-3), 64-76. Chng, B., Jamil, S. (2015). Human Security in Singapore: Where Entitlement Feeds Insecurity. Detenber, B. H., Cenite, M., Zhou, S., Malik, S., Neo, R. L. (2014). 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