RECENTLY, I was invited by the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) Research Centre to take part in a panel discussion on affirmative action. It was planned so that there would be different sides of the argument. The first speaker was to argue for affirmative action, while I was asked to explain why I am against it.

The first speaker presented a raft of data to explain why affirmative action is needed in Malaysia. He covered almost all the angles I can think of, from evidence of what other countries have done and are doing, to the widening inequality in Malaysia and the risks we may face if we do not have affirmative action in place.

I too originally came prepared with data supplemented by a list of academic literature arguing against affirmative action. But when it came to my turn to speak, I decided to put all the data aside and just speak from the heart.

My argument against affirmative action is quite simple actually. I believe affirmative action is a form of discrimination and therefore, it is immoral and wrong. When something is immoral and wrong, no amount of data can make it right.

Let's take one easy example. Through the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), our government is committed to more than double our gross national income (GNI) per capita by 2020. Various programmes and targets have been set to achieve this aim. But if we really want to increase GNI per capita, there is actually a much easier and quicker way to guarantee that outcome. Why don't we just legalise robbery? Just imagine how much money the bottom 40% can make simply by robbing the right person. Or why not legalise bribery? Surely taking bribes is a much easier way to become rich quick.

Of course nobody in his right mind would propose legalising robbery or corruption. These are blatantly immoral acts and they are wrong. We have a clear moral compass in these cases.

For so long we have been conditioned that when we discuss policies, we must make data the first basis of our thinking. Yes, undoubtedly data is important. But as a free market capitalist, I was also trained to hold true to moral principles and values.

Leading figures of capitalist economic thought rarely, if ever, divorce their economic arguments from morality. Indeed many liberal thinkers are strongly influenced by moral philosophy. To name a few, Ibn Khaldun received a thorough grounding in Islamic knowledge while Adam Smith was himself a moral philosopher. Similarly, Friedrich Hayek was heavily influenced by another liberal moral philosopher, Emmanuel Kant.

It is thus no surprise that scholars of free market capitalism will almost always take a "principle first" approach. The moral compass has to be used all the time, not selectively.

The case of affirmative action is a good example. I do not deny that we can dig out copious data on how a target group benefits from policies that favour them over other groups. In fact, it seems rather obvious that if the government were to introduce policies favouring group A over group B, then surely an objective analysis of outcome data would show that group A has prospered.

But it would be a mistake to examine only the post-intervention outcome data. The most important question we must ask is pre-intervention: Is the policy moral? Just like the case for theft and corruption above, if the answer is no, then we should not even introduce such policies in the first place, or, if they have already been implemented, roll them back immediately.

Those on the opposite side — the statists and socialists — rely heavily on data devoid of morality to justify their ideas. They usually believe in the equality of outcomes, and, to equalise outcomes, the ends justify the means.

In the case of affirmative action, the targeted outcome is to ensure wealth "equality" in society. In order to achieve that outcome, proponents of affirmative action will find various excuses to justify discrimination, forgetting that discrimination in whatever form is immoral.

At the PAS panel discussion, one party leader argued that we live in exceptional circumstances that make it necessary for us to do things that are normally regarded as wrong. I understand where he was coming from. There is an Islamic adage that says even though Muslims are prohibited from eating pork, they can do so under exceptional circumstances. So he was trying to say that there are times when normal measures of morality do not apply and now is that time.

I disagree completely with the suggestion that we now live in exceptional circumstances such that we can disregard morality when talking about socio-economic policies. For example, when discussing how to help the poor, none of our policy-makers talk about the potential of private giving, charitable bodies and social enterprises — three important mechanisms in the liberal capitalist model.

Why do we opt for immoral discriminatory policies when we have not yet exhausted the more moral options? Unless we have exhausted the moral options, we are not living under "exceptional circumstances".

Malaysia has set a clear path towards becoming a developed high-income nation by 2020. It is important that we also become a more moral society by then. For that to happen, we urgently need to bring back morality into our economic discourse by holding true to liberal economic principles.

Wan Saiful Wan Jan is chief executive of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs. This article appeared in The Edge weekly on May 7, 2012.