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Category: Singapuraku

  • Jufrie Mahmood: Millionaire PAP Ministers Have Lost Touch, Don’t Understand Anxieties Of Common Singaporeans

    Jufrie Mahmood: Millionaire PAP Ministers Have Lost Touch, Don’t Understand Anxieties Of Common Singaporeans

    Minister Lawrence Wong and his cabinet colleagues don’t live in 99-year lease HDB flats.

    With their millions, chances are, they would be living in landed free-hold properties in choice areas. Their properties are for keeps which they can pass on to their succeeding generations.

    They therefore don’t have the anxieties that we ordinary mortals have.

    That is the difference.

    Unlike your COE for motor vehicles the HDB and most other private properties’ COE is for 99 years.

     

    Source: Mohamed Jufrie Bin Mahmood

     

  • Ahmad Osman: Calvin Cheng Not Fit To Comment On Tudung Issue

    Ahmad Osman: Calvin Cheng Not Fit To Comment On Tudung Issue

    I have refrained myself from commenting on this issue, but I can’t let it continue after coming across this particular post by NMP Calvin Cheng.

    Before I begin I would like to apologize to any parties which may feel offended by my post, and to all Muslim ladies who might just have had enough mansplaining on this entire tudung issue, but at the same time, I am not here to please everyone but simply to right what I feel is wrong.

    This individual right here started off on the wrong foot, talking about the history of politics in Singapore and comparing it to Malaysia for no reason whatsoever. The reality is that the issue we are facing is unique to our own country, and there should never have been any reason to compare our political system with that of our neighbours. And that too, was flawed. You might be well versed in the political history of Singapore, but please keep your mouth shut on the history of politics of other countries, for it seems like you are just taking advantage of this situation to paint our neighbours in a negative light. Silence would then be your best bet for things you obviously have no clue in.

    If the GRC system was supposedly set up to ensure minority representation, why is it that Mr Cheng here is repeatedly against minority MPs championing minority causes? Doesn’t that go totally against the intent of the GRC that he so clearly stated? So if a Malay MP is not allowed to question the parliament regarding the tudung issue, would it be more acceptable for lets say, a Chinese MP to bring up the same issue?

    Mind you, Mr Cheng, this isn’t the first time that Malay MPs have brought up this issue in parliament, and for the past few years a number of Malay MPs from PAP have brought up this issue as well. Why then are they not considered to be divisive or sowing discord? However, when the same issue is raised by a Malay opposition MP, the tables were quickly turned against him to shut him up. Are you telling me our politicians have stooped that low today?

    Yes, Faisal Manap represents people of all races and religions in Aljunied GRC, and I am pretty sure he remembers that, for the simple fact that he brought up a lot of issues in parliament on the very same day, yet unfortunately, only this issue was highlighted by the state controlled media. Mr Cheng, if parliament isn’t the place to discuss such issues, then where else? Where have the so called closed door discussions brought us to? Has there been any changes, any progress? It only makes the most sense to bring up such a large scale issue in front of all government members to discuss it with diplomacy, however, in doing so Faisal Manap was labeled as sowing discord instead.

    I’ll end off with two quotes for you. Last year, the very same Masagos was recorded saying “All matters pertaining to any religion are often discussed in the Cabinet and we do look at ways to lead society to be more open, more accepting.” A year before that, PM Lee mentioned, “we discuss things more openly now, even sensitive matters, we discuss openly in mixed groups and we speak candidly with one another from the heart.”

    I guess you are the one who has forgotten how Singapore’s political system and multi-religious society functions. Coming from someone who has advocated the killing of terrorists, their families and all their children, really, you are the least fit individual to even talk about this issue. You should remember that.

     

    Source: Ahmad Bin Osman

  • In Indonesia, Pious “Punks” Promote Islam

    In Indonesia, Pious “Punks” Promote Islam

    “Prophet Mohammad forever,” chant the young Indonesian Muslim musicians. But instead of a mosque, the men are singing at an outdoor concert with a mosh pit full of followers of the country’s first Islamic punk movement.

    The movement is the first of its kind in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, and has hundreds of members in three of the country’s biggest cities – Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung.

    Sporting mohawks, leather jackets and baggy jeans, members of the “Punk Muslim” group claim that they, like the original British punk rockers, are still defined by rebellion and an anti-establishment ideology. But they express it by singing about Islamic values, freedom for Palestine, and other social issues facing the global Muslim community.

    Ahmad Zaki, one of the movement’s founders, believes the genre of punk is often associated with a “tendency towards misbehaviour” but he wants to change that.

    “We can redirect ourselves to better, more positive things,” he said.

    Many of the group’s members used to be street performers, and say they have changed drastically since joining the movement. They are now encouraged to form their own bands and write their own songs.

    Reza Purnama, a member and a former alcoholic, says others like him are slowly quitting alcohol and their lyrics are becoming more positive.

    “People aren’t looking down on us anymore,” he said, referring to a stigma against punks in Indonesia’s largely conservative society.

    After every concert, the head-banging audience bow their heads in prayer and listen to sermons – something the movement’s founders hope will redirect their fans on to a more pious path.

    Muslims make up nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 250 million people and the vast majority of them practise a moderate form of Islam.

     

    Source: www.reuters.com

  • What Are Religious Leaders Doing To Promote Pluralism?

    What Are Religious Leaders Doing To Promote Pluralism?

    I applaud Dr Yap Kim Hao’s call for “religious pluralism” ( Need for those who can teach religious pluralism; April 11).

    It is a reality that religious communities, even in Singapore, remain in their silos.

    It is not uncommon for religious organisations and businesses to place emphasis on recruiting those who are of the same faith, even for roles not directly religion-related.

    Of course, it is their prerogative to do so.

    But it is sad that instead of living and working side-by-side with non-religious affiliated parties to forge mutual understanding and friendships despite their differences, these groups choose exclusivity and isolation.

    I have seen it even in charity and volunteer organisations, where one can overhear remarks like “this person will not have genuine compassion because he does not share our faith” or “he is an outsider, so he cannot fully understand our religious goals”.

    Rhetoric like this from any religious organisation or individual is disconcerting. Such comments are dangerous and not to be accepted here.

    With the City Harvest case and the one in which an imam made insensitive remarks, it is clear that religious leaders have a big influence over their followers.

    But what are they doing to promote religious pluralism?

    In this age of heightened consciousness of one’s religious identity and of religious diversity, Singapore can never deviate from our pledge of “regardless of race, language or religion”.

     

    Wong Lai Chun

    Source: www.straitstimes.com/forum

  • Abu Sumaiyah Al-Jawi: A Response To Haji Mohammad Alami Musa

    Abu Sumaiyah Al-Jawi: A Response To Haji Mohammad Alami Musa

    The attached article is symptomatic of the confusion and inferiority complex that has infected the Muslims, which has been succinctly described by the eminent Muslim thinker Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in his 1970 work entitled Islam and Secularism.

    In the article, the major premise is “doctrinal basis” upon which ideas are rendered acceptable or rejected. The writer, a bureaucrat, stated that with regards to enmity towards non-Muslims, there is no doctrinal basis and therefore such an idea is rejected. Of course, to an unsuspecting mind, there are no problems in that statement; any sane and matured Muslim can accept that. But when he rambles on about all religions sharing the same roots like the “roots of a Banyan tree”, without evaluating that idea to the same premise he had established for himself which is “doctrinal basis”, he contradicted himself. This kind of thinking, known as the transcendental unity of religions, is already effectively refuted by Al-Attas in his Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam.

    Furthermore, to limit the meaning of the term “fansurna” used in the Imam’s prayer to connote the act of vanquishing and enmity is already against doctrinal basis. Fansurna is derived from “nasara”, which the authoritative linguist Ibn Manzur in his Lisān al-‘Arab already explains as “rendering assistance to the oppressed”. In other words, the condition for asking God who is the Lord (Mawla) and Helper (Nāsir) is that oppression exists. So we can ask the question, is there oppression coming from those who claim to be Christians and Jews?

    In 2005, George Bush claimed that his Christian god told him in his dream to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. The current administration of the United States are filled with people like this too. The Zionists of Israel still justify their atrocities using their Jewish scripture. In other words, extremists who are Christians and Jews, just like how there are extremists who are Muslims, exist. And the prayer is specifically directed at these extremists and not all Christians and Jews, some of which are our friends and family.

    In our bid to preserve and enhance racial and religious harmony, we don’t have to sweep these facts under the carpet or make sweeping statements about religion and Banyan trees that have absolutely no doctrinal basis. Just as how we can talk openly about Muslim extremists without thinking that such discussions are based on enmity against Islam, there is no reason to be offended when we talk about Christian and Jewish extremists.

     

    Source: Abu Sumaiyah Al-Jawi

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