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  • Teenage Muslim Weddings In Malaysia

    Teenage Muslim Weddings In Malaysia

    KLUANG (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – A 15-year-old boy ended his bachelorhood early when he married his 17-year-old girlfriend here after dating for about two months.

    Muhd Muaz Mislan, 15, and Nur Izzati Amiera Ishak, 17, tied the knot on Nov 30 and captured the attention of social media after the newlyweds posted photos and a video of their akad nikah (solemnisation ceremony) on Facebook.

    In his posting, Muhd Muaz said he wanted to marry the girl to make their relationship legal after receiving both families’ nod.

    “Young marriage will stir talk from others; but I am ready,” he added.

    Muhd Muaz, who is believed to be waiting for his Form 3 Assessment result, is said to have decided to discontinue his studies next year.

    The video footage showed that Muhd Muaz and Nur Izzati’s marriage was solemnised with a wedding dowry of RM22.50 (S$8.40).

    Nur Izzati has just completed her Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations.

    For Muslims, the legal age of marriage for is 18 for males and 16 for females. With the permission of the syariah court, however, Muslims can marry at any age.

    In Malacca, 15-year-old Nurulain Mohammad married businessman Zulhelmi Kaharudin, 21, at a mass akad nikah (solemnisation of marriage) ceremony at the Malacca International Trade Centre in Ayer Keroh on Sunday.

    Nurulain and Mr Zulhelmi, 21, had the blessings of their respective families. From the start, their love story was not a secret.

    Mr Zulhelmi, who runs a restaurant business, said he was brought up in a strict family.

    “Neither of us dared to meet secretly.”

    The eldest of three siblings said he encouraged his new bride to study right up to tertiary education level. “Only after that will we have children,” he said.

    “She is still a girl but I will guide her with the right values,” he said.

    The couple saw each other while walking around the neighbourhood. Mr Zulhelmi said it was love at first sight.

    “She was walking back from school a few days later when I said ‘I love you’. To my surprise, she said the same back to me.”

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • Starting Pay Of Graduates Dropped 60% In 15 Years?

    Starting Pay Of Graduates Dropped 60% In 15 Years?

    Some jobs in hot demand

    According to the Straits Times news report “Hard skills in hot demand next year” (Dec 16) – “Restrictions on foreign labour, as well as the slowing supply of skilled graduates in engineering, are contributing to the rising demand for those with the right skills for the job.

    Engineers, for example, are particularly difficult to recruit, as not enough students are choosing to study engineering in university.”

    Starting pay only $2,500

    The table in the news article says that the lowest starting salaries for various jobs range from $2,500 to $3,300.

    You can see that all these jobs normally require a degree.

    In hot demand, but pay so low?

    If engineers are in such hot demand and short supply – why is it that their lowest starting salary is only $3,300?

    Similarly, why is it only $2,800 for accountants and project finance managers, and just  $2,500 for digital marketing specialists?

    As much as 60% real pay decrease in 15 years?

    According to a Straits Times news report (April 27, 2013) – “In 2007, the median monthly gross starting pay for a local university graduate was $2,750, meaning that half of them earned at least that. Last year, it was $3,050, up almost 11 per cent.

    Yet cumulative inflation over the same period was 21 per cent – meaning that in real terms, starting pay actually fell 10 per cent (over the five years).”

    I have been told that the starting pay around 1998 was about $3,000. If this is correct, then after adjusting for inflation – it has not increased in the last 15 years or so.

    Since inflation was 33 per cent from 1998 to 2013 – in real terms – pay has decreased by 33 per cent. And if you take the lowest starting salary of $2,500 cited in the news report – pay has decreased by 60 per cent.

    Win battles lose war

    TRS Contributor

     

    Source: www.therealsingapore.com

  • MND Plan For Integrated Multi-Religious Building May Cause Problems

    MND Plan For Integrated Multi-Religious Building May Cause Problems

    Small religious group to share places of worship will create more problems

    Very soon, small religious groups could find themselves sharing places of worship. In a land scarce country like Singapore, it seems just a matter of time.

    No doubt that you have guessed correctly, this idea came from the Ministry of National Development (MND) to accommodate several places of worship of the same religion in a multi-storey building, sharing common facilities. The purpose is to help these groups to cut rental costs. Off one glance, it seems like a fantastic idea for religious groups as they depend greatly on offerings and donations. Furthermore, every penny counts in one of the highest cost of living like Singapore.

    However, sadly to say, I hardly see this will be good for the religious groups in other areas. They will not have autonomy in operations over the place. This disempowered them in having the opportunity to be exposed to operations management and this will hinder them from moving to permanent place in future. More unforeseeable by MND, restriction in autonomy does more in depth damages. Small religious groups are impaired from building or maintaining their unique identity. For example, these could be decorations and extended worship services. Due to these, believers whether existing or new loses their sense of belonging. This bodes badly on small religious groups not only on struggle to keep the existing worshippers but also attracting new ones as well.

    In terms of proximity, religious groups will prefer sites of worship to be near from MRT / bus interchange and neighborhood malls due to convenience for their worshippers. But this is unlikely to be so as the MND announced that the facility is likely to be located within or at the fringe of industrial areas.

    Disruption to their worshippers’ plans will likely to reduce their attendance rate to these inconvenience sites. Poor attendance rates could be attributed to the timing of worship services. Instead of the regular worship timings, religious groups rents the facility based on a first-come-first served basis and many could find themselves with less prime timings. Fixed timings could also creates barriers as too often; worships can be longer than usual depending on the “holy” touch.

    The MND can also consider building a integrated facility building comprising meeting rooms, children’s play room etc. so that the spirit of bonding and communal are not sacrificed at the expense of cost. Come to think of it, since the community clubs are long established since post-independence, can’t they be used for religious purposes. This can also create inter-religious bonding indirectly too.

    As much as MND wants to save up the precious land for “others” developments, a discussion is needed between the MND and the various religious groups to sort things out as I believed any outcome will be much better than the one proposed by MND.

     

    Aaron Chan 

    *The author wishes to write regularly for TRS and he hopes to write for a better Singapore.

     

    Source: www.therealsingapore.com

  • Islamophobia Driving Expectation On The Need For Muslims To Openly Deplore Terrorist Acts?

    Islamophobia Driving Expectation On The Need For Muslims To Openly Deplore Terrorist Acts?

    There’s a certain ritual that each and every one of the world’s billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslim perpetrator. It’s a ritual that is continuing now with the Sydney hostage crisis, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh named Man Haron Monis took several people hostage in a downtown café.

    Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: “As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form.”

    This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise.

    The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion. This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry.

    It is time for that ritual to end: non-Muslims in all countries, and today especially those in Australia, should finally take on the correct assumption that Muslims hate terrorism just as much as they do, and cease expecting Muslims to prove their innocence just because of their faith.

    Bigoted assumptions are the only plausible reason for this ritual to exist, which means that maintaining the ritual is maintaining bigotry. Otherwise, we wouldn’t expect Muslims to condemn Haron Monis — who is clearly a crazy person who has no affiliations with formal religious groups — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, if someone blames all Jews for the act of, say, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, we immediately and correctly reject that position as prejudiced. We understand that such an accusation is hateful and wrong — but not when it is applied to Muslims.

    This is, quite literally, a different set of standards that we apply only to Muslims. Hend Amry, who is Libyan-American, brilliantly satirized this expectation with this tweet, highlighting the arbitrary expectations about what Muslims are and are not expected to condemn:

    This ritual began shortly after September 2001. American Muslims, as well as Muslims in other Western countries, feared that they could be victims to a public backlash against people of their religion. President George W. Bush feared this as well and gave a speech imploring Americans to embrace Muslim-Americans as fellow citizens. But while the short-term need to guard against a backlash was real, that moment has passed, and the ritual’s persistence is perpetuating Islamophobia rather than reducing it, by constantly reminding us of our assumption that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent.

    The media has played a significant role in maintaining this ritual and thus the prejudiced ideas behind it. Yes, that includes openly Islamophobic cable news hosts like those in the US. But it also includes even well-intentioned media outlets and reporters who broadcast Muslims’ and Muslim organizations’ condemnation of acts of extremist violence, like the hostage crisis in Sydney.

    There is no question that this coverage is explicitly and earnestly designed to combat Islamophobia and promote equal treatment of Muslims. No question. All the same, this coverage ends up cementing the ritual condemnation as a necessary act, and thus cementing as well the racist implications of that ritual. By treating it as news every time, the media is reminding its readers and viewers that Muslims are held to a different standard; it is implicitly if unintentionally reiterating the idea that they are guilty until proven innocent, that maybe there is something to the idea of collective Muslim responsibility for lone criminals who happen to share their religion.

    Instead, we should treat the assumptions that compel this ritual — that Muslims bear collective responsibility, that they are presumed terrorist-sympathizers until proven otherwise — as flatly bigoted ideas with no place in our society. There is no legitimate reason for Muslim groups to need to condemn Haron Monis, nor is there any legitimate reason to treat those condemnations as news. So we should stop.

    We should treat people Haron Monis as what he is: a deranged lunatic. And we should treat Muslims as what they: normal people who of course reject terrorism, rather than as a lesser form of humanity that is expected to reject violence every time it happens.

     

    Source: www.vox.com

  • Perbankan Islam Tumbuh Pantas Tetapi Masih Boleh Diperluas

    Perbankan Islam Tumbuh Pantas Tetapi Masih Boleh Diperluas

    BANK Islam tumbuh lebih pantas daripada bank konvensional tetapi ia terlalu tertumpu dalam beberapa negara utama sehingga terlepas peluang membangunkan sektor perbankan Islam sejagat, menurut satu laporan firma runding cara sejagat, Ernst & Young.

    Bank Islam di enam negara utama iaitu Qatar, Indonesia, Arab Saudi, Malaysia, Amiriah Arab Bersatu (UAE) dan Turkey menguasai AS$625 bilion ($812 bilion) sehingga akhir tahun lalu atau 80 peratus daripada pasaran kewangan Islam sejagat.

    Jika mengambil kira Bahrain, Pakistan dan Kuwait, perkongsian pasaran mencecah 95 peratus.

    Laporan itu menganggarkan aset perbankan Islam dalam enam negara utama dijangka mencapai AS$1.8 trilion menjelang 2019.

    Ia tumbuh 1.9 kali lebih pantas daripada bank konvensional dari 2009 hingga 2013.

    “Apabila Turkey dan Malaysia meningkatkan lagi rentak pertumbuhan dan bank-bank Saudi meneruskan rombakan bagi banknya agar mematuhi syariah, kami jangkakan perkongsian pasaran negara-negara utama itu akan mencapai 80 hingga 90 peratus daripada pasaran sejagat,” kata rakan kongsi Pusat Kecemerlangan Perbankan Islam Sejagat Ernst & Young, Encik Ashar Nazim.

    Beliau menambah bahawa industri juga akan meraih manfaat apabila lebih banyak negara seperti Mesir, Pakistan, negara-negara Afrika Utara seperti Tunisia, Algeria dan Maghribi menembusi sektor itu.

    “Namun, tanpa rombakan undang-undang dan sokongan pemerintah yang kukuh, rentak pertumbuhan industri perbankan Islam dijangka sederhana,” tambah Encik Ashar.

    Kekurangan pakar dan kurangnya kesediaan meneroka pasaran luar negara juga boleh menjejas pertumbuhan industri itu di samping menyekat pertumbuhan keuntungan bank Islam.

    Secara purata, pulangan terhadap ekuiti (ROE) bagi 20 bank Islam terbaik di dunia adalah 11.9 peratus bagi tempoh lima tahun sehingga 2013.

    Ini berbanding pulangan terhadap ekuiti sebanyak 14.5 peratus bagi 20 bank konvensional, tambah laporan itu.

    Bank Islam mempunyai saiz satu perempat daripada saiz bank konvensional.

    Walaupun Singapura tidak mempunyai penduduk Muslim sebagai penduduk majoriti, Penguasa Kewangan Singapura (MAS) berkata potensi pertumbuhan bagi kewangan Islam di Singapura amat kukuh, dengan lebih banyak bank luar negara menawarkan produk mereka.

    Penolong Pengarah Urusan MAS, Encik Ng Nam Sin, sebelum ini berkata MAS komited mengembangkan “sektor penting ini”.

    Malah, dengan permintaan daripada masyarakat Islam dan pelabur bukan Islam, kewangan Islam kini sama menonjol sejajar dengan khidmat kewangan konvensional.

    Beberapa bank Timur Tengah pula, seperti Qatar National Bank, bank terbesar di rantau itu, difahamkan berminat mengembangkan khidmat kewangan Islam di sini.

    “Potensi pertumbuhan bagi kewangan Islam di Singapura kukuh dan MAS komited mengembangkan sektor penting ini dalam industri khidmat kewangan,” ujar Encik Ng.

    Beliau menambah bahawa matlamat MAS ialah menggembleng kekuatannya dalam perbankan borong, pengurusan aset dan pasaran modal bagi mengembangkan kewangan Islam.

    Menurutnya, pendekatan serampang tiga mata dilaksana MAS bagi mengembangkan industri itu di sini.

    Pertama, ia memastikan medan permainan sama rata bagi kewangan Islam dan kewangan konvensional.

    Kedua, ia akan juga mempromosikan pembangunan bakat karyawan kewangan Islam di sini.

    Ketiga, MAS akan turut serta dalam memupuk piawaian antarabangsa bagi industri itu dengan menjadi anggota majlis Lembaga Khidmat Kewangan Islam (IFSB).

     

    Source: http://beritaharian.sg