This is NOT Religious Harmony

Okay. So there's this video going around of an apparently Malay Muslim woman in Singapore being coaxed for the camera to participate in a religious ritual that is not Islamic, that has nothing to do with Islam, and that is in fact in violation of Islamic belief. Let me just explain. This is not what religious harmony means. This is not what religious harmony looks like.

Religious harmony means you get to perform your religious rituals without any interference from Muslims or anybody else, and we get to perform our religious rituals without interference or prevention by anybody else. That's what religious harmony means. You perform your rituals, you adhere to your religion, you perform your religious commitments, and nobody stops you, and the same goes for us. It does not mean that people of one religion are expected to participate in the religious rituals of someone else's religion. You are not prevented from your religion and I'm not prevented from mine, and I am not coerced or coaxed or expected to participate in your religion, and you are not expected or coaxed or coerced to participate in mine.

Now, I don't see how this act, the act itself, the coaxing, the direction, and the filming, and the uploading of that, I don't know how that isn't incitement of religious strife because you're obviously going to make many Muslims angry. You're gonna make Muslims angry at that woman. People are gonna be angry at her. People are gonna be angry at the people who made the video. People are gonna be angry at the people who put her up to doing that, and there are gonna be people who for whom that ritual is a serious thing, who will be offended and who will be upset that someone who doesn't believe in it is going through the motions.

You see, you are belittling the religions of everyone involved. The Muslim, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the whoever, all religions are being delegitimized, invalidated, belittled, and demeaned when you're having people who don't believe in them go through the charade of performing rituals that mean something to you. Just like if we had non Muslims performing the salah with us, that demeans the salah because you don't believe in it. That means that it's just a series of motions with no meaning, but it has meaning. Everyone's form of worship has meaning for them.

So don't coerce and coax non believers of your religion to perform your religious rituals. That's not religious harmony. That's coercion. Everyone gets to follow their own religion without interference, without prevention by any other party. That's religious harmony.

You do what you do, we do what we do. Simple. Are you gonna now require Muslims to participate in non Muslim religious activities? Is that how they're gonna have to prove that they're not extreme? Because we wanna just follow our religion, we don't wanna have to follow your religion?

That's not fair, and that's not religious harmony.