The recent conference on dignity to all people in the world graced by His Majesty Sultan Nazrin and organised by IKIM, an Islamic think tank, is both worthy, important but, I am afraid, is 30 years too late.

In this article, I will elucidate why I think the conference has very little meaning if it does not recognise who controls the narrative of dignity presently in Malaysia and which platform becomes the ultimate weapon of communication and influence.

From 25 years of close observation on Malaysia’s politics and discussions of issues from a few media outlets deemed popular, I have come to the following conclusions about who is actually in charge of the dignity narrative and which platforms are the most effective in driving the said narratives.

Presently, there are two main groups as agents in forming narratives of dignity.

First and foremost are the ustaz-politicians and the ustazs themselves who are either independent speakers in mosques and social media or the ustazs and muftis of the religious departments and institutions.

Clearly, professors of Islam in universities are dead in relation to narrative building because they are busy fulfilling their paper KPIs and politicking within the universities for better positions.

ABIM and IKRAM are two important narrative builders who are also silent as a mouse.

Academic institutions such as IKIM, ISTAC and IAIS are all useless totally in narrative building for they do not know how to speak to the masses but only good at fulfilling their KPIs of conferences and ‘kissing ministers’ hands’.

So, the narrative building is by the likes of Hadi Awang as the ustaz-politician and the likes of Azhar Idrus as the populist ustaz independent speakers. Who else has the audience and the exposure of these two agents of narrative building?

These narrators build the idea of dignity by proclaiming that the Muslims (preferably one who supports PAS) are superior beings than mere mortals like the non-Muslims in Malaysia.

These agents build a narrative of hate and distaste of all the alcohol drinking, women-men mixing and pig eating people who are the enemies of Islam.

Then there are also ‘liberal Muslims’ like Anwar Ibrahim and yours truly as hypocrites and charlatans to Muslims for supporting the ‘enemies of Islam’.

The second kind of narrative builders are the non-ustaz in the form of politicians and civil society personalities.

Politicians like Muhyiddin and Akmal Salleh represent the strong communicator of the wrong values in Malaysia while Mariam Mokhtar and R. Nadeswaran are the examples of the other.

The first group builds a superior race and religious construct that one race is superior and ‘cleaner’ or purer than other groups.

The other group of narrative builders are keyboard warriors condemning everyone including the Prime Minister in the most derogatory manner that finds audience in editors of online portals.

The platforms of building the dignity narrative are the media, social media and the mosque.

Of the three, social media holds tremendous power many times that of the other two. The mosque influences a great number of Muslims and the media also an equal number of both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Thus, the principles, guidelines and philosophy of the conference end product that will be tabled to the cabinet, to me, is worth only the paper that they are printed on.

Unless these principles and guidelines that number more than twenty items be summarised into four simple values, and that these values are propagated in the social media as well as the mosque and the mainstream media, then nothing will happen to our country.

The conference is wasted in terms of time and money. Nothing will change.

The audience of the conference should have been the main players of ustazs, columnists and social media influencers. They are the agents of either great development or mutual destruction.

Academics who do not use social media as a platform of knowledge dissemination and conflict mitigation are as useless as the paper that their ideas are printed on.

Where were these populist ustazs, politician ustazs, columnists and influencers in the conference?

Malaysia, I am afraid, will never change if academics as ‘think tank’ institutions fail to make values very simple, fail to use social media and the mosque and also fail to identify the real and effective agents of social change.

IKIM is still operating in ancient history prior to the social media revolution and will never serve the people of Malaysia well.

I weep for our country.

(Prof Dr. Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at a local university and his writing reflects his own personal opinion entirely.)