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Tag: religion

  • Former Malaysian DPM Tun Musa Hitam Is Liberal And Proud Of It

    Former Malaysian DPM Tun Musa Hitam Is Liberal And Proud Of It

    KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 22 — Former Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam has declared that he is a liberal and proud of it, joining a small but growing band of Malay Muslims speaking up in the face of Islamic fundamentalism that has crept into the country.

    In an interview with The Star daily published today, Musa, the first of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s four deputies, also pointed out that Umno was founded on the principles of moderation and liberalism because the Malay nationalist party wanted Malaysia to be one.

    “Only moderation and liberalism will allow us to survive,” Musa was quoted saying.

    “First let me say this emphatically and very firmly – I have always been a liberal and a moderate and am proud of it. My family, my parents, my elders brought me up that way, and in my more grown up days since I entered politics, my political party Umno adopted the stance of moderation from the early days that we gained independence. But I don’t know what’s happening there now,” he added.

    Musa’s declaration of his liberal beliefs comes after a group of 25 retired senior civil servants called for open debate of Islamic legislation in Malaysia and urged Putrajaya to assert the supremacy of the Federal Constitution over Shariah state laws.

    Malaysia’s religious authorities have long derided liberalism and pluralism, with Friday sermons nationwide claiming a conspiracy by “enemies of Islam” to manipulate Muslims through such philosophies and other ideologies like secularism, socialism, feminism and positivism.

    This has been repeated by Prime Minister and Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who in April said that Islam was being tested by new threats under the guise of humanism, secularism, liberalism and human rights.

    Musa told The Star that he was very happy to see the statement made by the 25 prominent Malays.

    “To me personally, that was a very good symbolic statement made by them in that they triggered thinking, arguments and conversations. Then there were the responses, which I compliment also because they are not calling names. They are not arguing based on irrationality but arguing on an almost point-by-point basis. This was absent before,” he said.

    The 80-year-old also noted that “many Malay leaders” were attempting to instil fear and a siege mentality among the Malays, but did not name anyone.

    “As a result, they are also instilling a very serious inferiority complex among the Malays. This is misplaced. So many Malays are capable, yet every day these groups are saying ‘You are inferior, you need protection’ and ‘Those superior people are attacking or threatening us’,” said Musa.

    He said Malays had no reason to fear as they were well-equipped to face such challenges and to be competitive.

    The former deputy prime minister and home minister, who served from 1981 to 1986, stressed that a democracy must have a high tolerance of criticism, amid a spate of investigations and prosecutions under the Sedition Act 1948 targeting mostly dissidents against the government.

    “So, what I am trying to do is appeal to both sides, don’t just arrest them and hassle them. Use rationale and reasoning,” he said.

    Musa also expressed concern about the use of racial and religious issues to gain political mileage, which he said hearkened back to the time leading up to the bloody May 13 race riots in 1969.

    “Very early on in my political career, I saw so many attempts for popular support using racial and religious issues. I hate to use this example but I have to – the May 13 incident was the result of it all.

    “But we were supposed to have learnt and corrected ourselves after that. Yet now, after so many years, we seem to be back to the old days. The basic ingredients are the same, the approach is the same, even the statements are the same in many respects. In the historical perspective, it brings a very eerie reminder of the bad old days,” he said.

     

    Source: www.themalaymailonline.com

  • Reverend Kang Ho Soon Preaches Inclusivity

    Reverend Kang Ho Soon Preaches Inclusivity

    For more than 40 years, Reverend Kang Ho Soon has preached the message of inclusiveness.

    He has welcomed homosexuals to his services, invited religious leaders from various faiths to speak to his Christian flock and reached out to prostitutes and migrant workers.

    The Methodist preacher, who retired this month at the age of 65, said: “I’ve been open to friendship with anyone in any station or walk of life, from all religions.”

    His retirement service at Paya Lebar Methodist Church on Nov 22 was testament to this.

    Among the 1,000-strong crowd were Catholic nuns, a Taoist priest, imams, Sikhs and a representative from atheist group the Humanist Society Singapore.

    Rev Kang, a 30-year member of the Inter-Religious Organisation Singapore (IRO), said he does not set out to change people but to “accept them for who they are and to be their friend”.

    At 23, in his first role serving the Methodist Church as chaplain of Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road) and pastor of the Barker Road Methodist Church, he gave his “full blessings” to a Muslim caretaker – known to him only as Madam Saminah – to hold Islamic classes in her living quarters at the church.

    Their friendship blossomed and he would visit her and her family every Hari Raya. Her grown-up daughters were present at his retirement service.

    Instead of pursuing an engineering degree, Rev Kang studied theology at Singapore Bible College and Trinity Theological College.

    He spent a decade at Paya Lebar Methodist Church, five years at Wesley Church and 17 years at Kampong Kapor in Little India – his longest term. There he reached out to prostitutes and migrant workers in the community.

    He said: “Everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, sex trade workers and migrant workers were welcome to attend our services at Kampong Kapor. If we don’t reach out to them, we end up neglecting them.”

    He credits his openness to having spent his youth growing up in a kampung on the southern isle of Pulau Bukom.

    There, he learnt Jawi, an Arabic alphabet for writing Malay. It was something his late father, a labourer from China, encouraged him to pick up so he could interact with his Malay peers.

    Rev Kang is married to former St Andrew’s Junior College teacher Kang Yeok Lung, 65, and brought up his three children in the same way.

    His elder son, 35, a deputy public prosecutor, has four children of his own. Rev Kang also has a 29-year-old son who works in the communications field and a 26-year-old daughter who is an officer at the Economic Development Board.

    Another friend, Imam Habib Hassan of the Ba-Alwie Mosque, an IRO member, said Singapore needs more open-minded leaders like Rev Kang.

    “One time he wasn’t well in hospital, I went to see him. He asked me to pray for him,” said Imam Habib. “We pray for each other… This is the spirit of inter-faith relations that he has been building up.”

    Bishop Wee Boon Hup of the Methodist Church Singapore said Rev Kang’s approach to reach out to those who might have a “less favourable view of the Church” has been well received.

    “It is difficult to move forward in inter-faith relations unless someone first starts to reach out to another,” he said.

    “Ho Soon is one of those who reach out… He makes friends with people from all walks of life, engages in conversation with them and, in the process of hearing them share their faith journey, he is also able to let them hear of his faith.”

    Rev Kang, who admitted that his approach has not been “fully accepted” in some Christian circles, believes it is time for the Church “to speak more words of love, hope and peace to marginalised communities, instead of words of condemnation and judgment”.

    While he has retired from the Methodist Church, Rev Kang said he will be a pastor till the day he dies.

    He said he will devote his time to people, rather than institutional or organisational concerns.

    He aims to be a “listening ear” and counsellor to people from all walks of life, including pastors, people of all faiths or no faith, and people of all sexual orientations.

    “We’re a conservative society, but everyone can have a place and equal standing,” he said. “We look to try to understand and accept one another, with no agenda to convert.”


    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • Facilitating Interfaith Marriages in Britain

    Facilitating Interfaith Marriages in Britain

    Christian pastors and Muslim imams have come together to draw up guidelines detailing advice on how to deal with inter-faith marriages.

    Although marrying between faiths is entirely legal in Britain, couples often face resistance and hostility, both from family members and religious leaders. Occasionally both Muslims and Christians feel pressure to convert to another’s faith in order to avoid fallouts and ostracism.

    The new guidelines by the Christian-Muslim forum reinforce the need for religious leaders to accept inter-faith marriages and warn that no one should ever feel forced to convert. The publication of the document, which will receive a high-profile launch at Westminster Abbey today, is significant because those supporting it include imams from the more orthodox Islamic schools of thought and evangelical Christians.

    Among those who have signed up to the document include Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, a prominent Leicester-based imam from the conservative Deobandi school, the Right Rev Paul Hendricks, associate bishop of Southwark Catholic Archdiocese, and Amra Bone, one of the only women in the country to sit in a Sharia court.

    Estimating the number of people in mixed-faith marriages is difficult. The 2001 census suggests 21,000 but demographers believe the figure is considerably higher.

    The document, called When Two Faiths Meet, is the product of months of painstaking negotiations between Christian and Muslim leaders and emphasises the need for tolerance and acceptance of mixed-faith marriages.

    Among the recommendations are speaking out against forced conversions, recognising the legality of inter-faith marriages in British law, non-judgemental pastoral care and a complete rejection of any violence.

    “It might sound a little like we are stating the obvious but it does need to be said,” Sheikh Ibrahim told The Independent. “In reality Christian and Muslim couples often face very challenging scenarios where there is not enough tolerance or the right pastoral care and that can lead to a very damaging and negative experience for them.”

    The Leicester-based imam said clerics were motivated to come up with the guidelines because they were seeing increasing numbers of inter-faith marriages over the years.

    “It’s clearly already an issue and something that will become more and more common,” he said. “It makes sense for pastors and imams to be ready for such situations rather than be left without help of guidelines when they get approached by couples seeking their advice.”

    Those with experience of inter-faith marriages say couples often face a variety of difficulties. In Islam, men are allowed to marry “people of the book”, Christians and Jews. But Muslim women are not allowed to marry outside their faith. Many of the more conservative or evangelical Christian denominations, meanwhile, insist spouses convert or promise to bring their children up as Christians.

    Heather al-Yousef, a counsellor with Relate who married a Shia Muslim man, was one of those asked by the Christian Muslim Forum to give advice for the guidelines.

    “There are, of course, a whole range of Muslims and Christians. Some groups are liberal about mixed marriages, others much more proprietorial. The good news is that Christians and Muslims are increasingly recognising the need to talk about these things. The very fact we’ve got so many people talking is in itself a success.”

    ‘We were shocked by how much we were judged’ harshly and told off’

    Happily married for five years this couple (the man is Catholic and the wife Muslim) struggled to find support

    While we came from different faiths, we approached them in similar ways. Although I was in my 30s and well educated, I was treated as though I was a silly little girl who had got herself into an irresponsible situation which could only be solved by my fiancé converting.

    It was also assumed that although my fiancé was Catholic, his religion was less important and that he likely did not believe in it to the same degree Muslims believed in their religion. We were not asked what drew us together, how we met, how we managed differences. Instead we were judged harshly and told off. We had discussed the option of one of us converting but decided this was not for us.

    We were shocked by how divisive and underhanded some Muslim clerics were. Ultimately, we found a Muslim cleric who saw things the way we did. The counsel he gave us was excellent, focusing as we did on what made us similar.

     

    Source: www.independent.co.uk

  • 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

  • Inter-Racial Marriages In Malaysia Risk Harming “National Harmony”

    Inter-Racial Marriages In Malaysia Risk Harming “National Harmony”

    KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 19 — Marriages between Malaysians of different races risk harming “national harmony”, Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail said, noting that many such unions have resulted in bitter disputes over the religious statues of the couple’s offspring.

    The Attorney-General noted that apart from these legal battles, such marriages have also led to claims of “racial discrimination”

    The top lawyer added, however, that law reforms meant to solve such problems have yet to be approved.

    He said interracial marriages also created the “new conflict” between civil law and Shariah law on the issues of unilateral conversion of children and child custody disputes where only one spouse converts to Islam.

    “The increasing number of cases has also raised allegations of racial discrimination by the courts and authorities. The anguish to the families cannot be overstated and that is a fact.

    “In this regard, the failure of the converting spouses to resolve the family arrangements prior to conversion and in fact, attempting to use the different jurisdictions of the civil and Syariah courts to their advantage, jeopardizes not only family harmony but potentially national harmony,” the top government lawyer said according to his written speech from the ILKAP National Law Conference 2014 last week.

    Abdul Gani said the problem of enforcing conflicting orders from the civil courts and Shariah courts in such disputes then calls into question the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) and police’s integrity, adding that this would hamper their ability to effectively carry out their duties.

    Abdul Gani did not name any examples of such court cases, but there are two high-profile cases that have hit national headlines — the cases of non-Muslim mothers Indira Gandhi and Deepa Subramaniam, where both women’s Muslim convert ex-husbands ran off with their children.

    In both cases, the Muslim convert ex-husbands cited the Shariah court orders granting child custody to them when refusing to comply with the civil court’s child custody orders in favour of their former spouse.

    Despite recovery orders from the Ipoh High Court and Seremban High Court directing the police to act to find and return the abducted children to the non-Muslim mothers, the police have declined to take action and are now seeking the courts’ clarification instead.

    Abdul Gani said proposed amendments to three laws were mooted in 2009 to ensure that matters such as child custody and child maintenance would be decided by the court where the marriage was registered.

    “These amendments, however, remain pending,” he said, without elaborating further.

    He listed down the three laws of Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, the Islamic Family Law (Federal Territories) Act 1984 and the Administration of Islamic Law (Federal Territories) Act 1993.

    Lawyers have argued that child custody matters for a marriage that was initially between two non-Muslims should be decided by the civil courts even if a spouse later converts to Islam.

    This is because a marriage that started out as a civil union should end or have any related issues ruled upon in the civil courts, instead of the Shariah courts for marriages between two Muslims, the lawyers said.

     

    Source: www.themalaymailonline.com