For much of my life, I was largely indifferent to activism. I minded my own business, focused on my personal world, and was not particularly concerned with public opinion or political struggle. Even as I gradually moved away from Islam, I encountered tension and resistance in my working life. There were remarks, assumptions, and moments of friction but I was not easily intimidated. I pushed back, asserted myself, and made it clear that I would not be an easy target. In time, I was left alone.
What changed was not my capacity to fight, but what I witnessed later in Malaysia. There, I encountered individuals who did not have the same protection, confidence, or social footing. I saw people bullied, silenced, and in some cases actively hunted simply for expressing disbelief or questioning religious authority. It was no longer a matter of personal resilience. It was a system that punished vulnerability. Exposure to that reality marked the point where detachment was no longer possible.
Even after my identity became known while I was in Malaysia, the situation did not soften. I received threats including demands that I retract my support for closeted ex-Muslims. The pressure was clear: withdraw publicly, or face consequences. I chose not to comply. Not out of recklessness or heroism, but because I understood what capitulation would mean. To bow under coercion would not only silence me it would signal to those already living in fear that intimidation works. That was a line I could not cross. What I chose, consciously and deliberately, was defiance not as performance, but as refusal to legitimise bullying and moral terror.
At the same time, that experience forced me to confront a difficult question how does one stand firm without becoming hardened, and resist injustice without allowing resistance to consume one’s humanity?
This question has returned to me repeatedly as I observe contemporary forms of activism. Watching high-profile figures such as Greta Thunberg expand their activism across causes, or witnessing hunger strikes carried out by pro-Palestinian activists in London and intermittently in Singapore, I find myself less concerned with the causes themselves than with the methods being employed. These are undeniably acts of activism. Yet they also raise troubling questions about effectiveness, proportionality, and ethical restraint.
Hunger strikes, for example, carry a long historical legacy as a last resort a protest of the powerless when all other avenues have been closed. But in modern contexts where states intervene medically, where suffering is managed rather than allowed to exert moral pressure, such acts risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative.
The body suffers, attention is momentarily captured, but power remains unmoved. When sacrifice no longer creates leverage, one must ask whether harm is being endured for change or merely displayed.
Similarly, when activism becomes increasingly mobile, symbolic, and media-oriented, moving from one global flashpoint to another, it risks losing rootedness.
The danger is not insincerity, but identity entrapment when the activist becomes inseparable from the activism, and escalation replaces reflection. In such conditions, restraint is mistaken for weakness, doubt for betrayal, and withdrawal for moral failure.
This is the point at which activism can turn toxic. Not because it is passionate or disruptive, but because it begins to collapse complexity, glorify suffering, and punish nuance.
When methods alienate more people than they persuade, when the cause shrinks rather than expands the moral circle, and when identity hardens around perpetual struggle, activism risks drifting toward extremism not necessarily in violence, but in mindset.
From a humanist perspective, this is deeply troubling.
Humanism insists that human life has intrinsic value, that suffering is not proof of righteousness, and that ethical action must remain accountable to its consequences. Activism that damages bodies, communities, or understanding without producing change fails that test.
Standing firm, I have learned, does not require abandoning restraint.
Resistance need not be loud to be courageous, nor self-destructive to be sincere. The challenge is not to care less, but to care without losing one’s humanity and to recognise when the line between conviction and compulsion has been crossed.
December 31st, 2025
