Tag: Singapore

  • Asatizah Perlu Pertingkat Bimbingan Agar Belia Jauhi ISIS

    Asatizah Perlu Pertingkat Bimbingan Agar Belia Jauhi ISIS

    Anak-anak muda Islam harus mengejar ‘jihad keamanan’ dengan mencari jalan terbaik untuk membentuk keamanan bagi manfaat masyarakat, negara dan penduduk Singapura amnya.

    Jihad sebenar dalam konteks Singapura hari ini adalah membentuk suasana aman dan mempamerkan nilai-nilai murni Islam.

    Mantan Mufti, yang kini Penasihat Pejabat Mufti, Shaikh Syed Isa Semai ketika diminta mengulas mengenai kes dua belia radikal sendiri – seorang diberkas dan seorang lagi ditahan – di bawah Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (ISA) berkata:

    “Anak-anak muda mempunyai kefahaman yang masih tipis terhadap agama. Apabila mereka bercakap tentang jihad, mereka terus memikirkan tentang perang. Mereka lupa sebenarnya Islam cintakan keamanan.”

    Menurutnya remaja Islam di Singapura perlu memahami dengan lebih jelas konsep jihad dengan membuktikan kepada Singapura bahawa Islam bukan agama keganasan dan anak-anak Melayu sebenarnya juga menolak pengganasan, kata Shaikh Syed Isa.

    Beliau berkata masyarakat Islam sendiri perlu berusaha keras untuk membanteras anak-anak muda meradikalkan diri sendiri menerusi Internet.

    Beliau turut menyarankan agar pakar-pakar media sosial bergabung tenaga dengan ustazah bagi membolehkan setiap keraguan tentang Islam di kalangan anak dijawab di laman Internet.

    “Kebanyakan ustaz mungkin tidak mendalam keupayaan tentang Internet. Kita boleh bergabung dengan pakar Internet di luar dengan tujuan mendidik anak-anak muda ke jalan Islam yang sebenar.

    “Janganlah Islam dilihat selah-olah ia satu agama yang tiada keihsanan dan kebaikan. Kita mesti melawan arus kejahatan dan moga Unknown memberikan kita taufik dan hidayahnya dalam usaha kebaikan ini,” ujar Shaikh Syed Isa.

    Seorang lagi pemimpin agama, Ustaz Sheik Hussain Sheik Ya’kub berkata usaha perlu dipertingkat untuk menyesuaikan pendidikan agama dengan keperluan golongan remaja.

    Beliau yang juga presiden Persatuan Muhammadiyah berpendapat syarahan agama misalnya harus memberi perhatian khusus untuk remaja dan bukan diadakan secara umum.

    “Berdasarkan maklum balas yang saya dengar, ada sebahagian anak muda yang tidak menghargai golongan asatizah dan sudah hilang rasa hormat.

    “Saya juga rasa kurikulum agama kita perlu diubah. Teknik pengajaran juga kita perlu tukar. Kita tidak boleh lagi ikut pendekatan macam 50 tahun lalu. Yang penting, kita sendiri harus bersedia untuk berubah agar dapat lebih mendekati anak muda masa kini dengan isu semasa dan cabaran mereka,” kata beliau.

    Naib Ketua Pusat Harmoni yang juga Pengerusi Masjid An-Nahdhah, Ustaz Muhammad Fazalee Ja’afar pula menambah: “Banyak usaha telah dilakukan oleh masyarakat Islam untuk mendidik masyarakat kita mengenai Islam yang sebenar iaitu Islam yang membawa kepada kesejahteraan dan keamanan buat semua.

    “Bahkan di Pusat Harmoni, melalui program yang kami anjurkan telah dapat mendekati seramai 40,000 pengunjung ke pusat ini semenjak ia mula beroperasi pada tahun 2006.

    “80 peratus dari pengunjung merupakan masyarakat bukan Islam yang mana melalui program ini, mereka diberikan pendedahan akan erti Islam yang sebenar.

    “Melalui pendedahan ini juga mereka memahami bahawa pengganasan serta fahaman radikal sama sekali bukan merupakan sebahagian dari ajaran Islam.”

    Menurutnya peristiwa penangkapan ini memberikan isyarat peri penting semua lapisan masyarakat berganding bahu untuk terus bersikap berwaspada dalam menangani isu pengganasan ini. Usaha mendekati dan mendidik lebih ramai anak serta belia mengenai Islam adalah penting dan harus dipergiatkan.

    Sementara itu, Imam Masjid Ba’alwie, Habib Hassan Al-Attas, yang juga anggota majlis Pertubuhan Antara Agama (IRO), menambah:

    “Sebuah pohon yang akarnya kuat jika tertiup angin kencang tetap tidak akan berganjak. Mereka yang ikhlas dan teguh imannya akan sentiasa di dalam jagaan Allah dan tidak akan terayun dengan tipu daya nafsu dan hasutan syaitan.”

     

    Source: http://beritaharian.sg

  • Singapore Identified As Possible Target For Attack By Recent ISIS Social Media Post

    Singapore Identified As Possible Target For Attack By Recent ISIS Social Media Post

    Singapore has been identified as a possible target for attack by a recent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posting on social media, a report this week said.

    ISIS supporters from the region have also cited the Philippines and the United States as targets, the report’s author, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies analyst Jasminder Singh, told The Straits Times.

    This development comes as Malaysia last month nabbed a cell with explosives targeting Putrajaya and the federal Parliament, and as Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry on Wednesday announced the detention of a 19-year-old student who made plans to join ISIS in Syria and carry out attacks here.

    It is not the first time Singapore has been cited by radicals. Last year, extremist English-language magazine Resurgence cited the Phillip Channel and Sembawang Naval Base in a piece on how militants could attack at sea.

    The threat to Singapore and the region is set to grow as ISIS’ Malay archipelago combat unit, Katibah Nusantara, formed in Syria last August for South-east Asian fighters who find it easier to communicate in Bahasa Indonesia and Malay rather than Arabic, gains ground.

    There are now more than 700 fighters from Indonesia and over 200 fighters from Malaysia fighting in Iraq and Syria, Mr Singh noted in the report published this week. While they make up a small proportion of over 30,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries, the unit scored its first major combat success last month, seizing five Kurdish-held areas in Syria.

    The unit is likely to gain importance in ISIS’ strategic goal of setting up a worldwide caliphate, with returning fighters mobilised to undertake attacks and even declare a new branch in this region.

    “The downward slide of jihadist appeal and success since 2009 has been reversed by Katibah Nusantara’s success in Iraq and Syria,” Mr Singh wrote.

    He said Malaysian fighters have also seized on local issues like the push for an Islamic penal code to win support. More recently, ISIS sympathisers online have called on Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar to go to Syria.

    Professor Rohan Gunaratna, who heads Singapore’s International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, says the unit poses a severe threat to Singapore and South-east Asia.

    “It has multiple functions: to train people capable of carrying out attacks in Iraq and Syria, to instigate South-east Asians to mount attacks in their home countries, and to radicalise South-east Asians online, recruit them and physically facilitate their entry into Iraq and Syria,” he said.

    Hence, the strategy to counter this influence has to be multi- pronged, from engaging the community to exposing ISIS’ evils online. Muslim leaders worldwide are also leading the effort to counter ISIS, he added.

    They include Singapore’s Mufti, Dr Fatris Bakaram, who said it was a religious obligation for Muslims here to report to the authorities those who pose a threat.

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

  • Zulfikar Shariff: Jangan Bandingkan Lee kuan Yew Dengan Nabi Muhammad

    Zulfikar Shariff: Jangan Bandingkan Lee kuan Yew Dengan Nabi Muhammad

    I received a message from a Tipah who is trying hard to promote LKY. According to this Tipah (who claims to study at UIA)

    “i done my homework…and sy dapati beberapa perkataan LKY yg sama dgn cara Nabi awak….yg paling ketara ketika Nabi masuki Madinah Baginda menukarkan sistem ekonomi Madinah dari pertanian dan penternakkan kpd perniagaan…tidakkah itu ucapan LKY di city hall tahun 1965??”

    Dah kena tipu gila.

    LKY pun tukar sistem ekonomi Singapura dari pertanian/ penternakan ke perniagaan juga?

    Wahai Tipah. Singapura sejak zaman nenek moyang memang pusat perniagaan.

    Singapura’s location and harbour made it an ideal centre for sea trade.

    And when the British came, they did not develop an agriculture based economy. They focused on trade.

    There were gambier and pepper plantations prior to British colonization and there were attempts to promote a rubber industry but none of these industries stood close to the entrepôt trade that Singapore conducted.

    The British developed the trade system that is still applied in Singapura today. Not LKY.

    Will you now claim the British colonization of Singapura is based on Islam?

    These Tipah keep insulting Rasulullah by saying a man who is known for his zalim model his governance after Rasulullah.

    Sayang LKY sangat sampai boleh hina Rasulullah?

     

    Source: Zulfikar Shariff

  • Alfian Sa’at: Calvin Cheng Getting Too Big For His Boots

    Alfian Sa’at: Calvin Cheng Getting Too Big For His Boots

    Last one before I wash my hand of this tawdry ex-NMP, ex-price-fixer, ex-young-PAP and current has-been-yet-wannabe affair. Uh, yucks:

    I have been off Facebook for almost two weeks, trying to find some quiet time. The grief comes in waves and the feelings are still raw.

    Imagine then my shock at reading Calvin Cheng’s post, trying to link me and my writings with radicalised youths, calling me a ‘domestic agitator’ who deserves to be detained without trial once ‘red lines are crossed’ (of course with draconian instruments like the ISA the definition of this ‘red line’ is meant to be conveniently arbitrary).

    Was this a response to something recent that I posted? No. It was a response to the recent ISA arrests of some Muslim youths. And somehow Calvin Cheng found it necessary to tar me with the same brush, perhaps in the hope of threatening me to keep silent, or not raise questions about certain issues that make him uncomfortable—or that he doesn’t have the capacity to rebut robustly and convincingly.

    The suggestion that I might be linked to Muslim extremism would be hilarious if not for the fact that Calvin Cheng thinks that it is a valid charge. He probably has no idea about how I’ve been attacked by those from the Wear White campaign and accused of being a ‘secular fundamentalist’. He doesn’t know that my play, ‘Nadirah’, was about interfaith understanding, and that my play ‘Parah’ critiqued Malay-Muslim ethnocentricism in Malaysia. These details don’t bother him, because he probably thinks that when you want to get a Muslim person to shut up, then you go full on McCarthy and try to associate him with terrorism. Which is its own kind of racism.

    I have at various times tried to record the experiences of being a Malay minority in Singapore. And they have all been above board–it’s there in my plays, my books. These works have been funded by government bodies, which have very strict guidelines on anything that might cause racial and religious discord. Online, I don’t join clandestine closed groups and polemicise in echo chambers. The very fact that my posts are set to public means that just about anyone is free to tell me whether I have indeed crossed a line, like for example if any of my points about Singapore not honouring the ideals of multiculturalism is seen as vile hate speech against the Chinese. Calvin Cheng would have ample opportunity to engage me on these matters. And if indeed he had reasonable arguments to offer, then I would most certainly temper my posts. But he has chosen not to, and instead snipes at me without specifying which of my writings fall into the category of ‘terrorist propaganda’—which is what those youths (in MHA’s account) had been exposed to.

    I actually think that this Calvin Cheng has had me in his gunsights for a while now. I don’t write exclusively about race, and I’m sure my writings about Amos Yee or Lee Kuan Yew must have pissed him off in some way. So he seizes the opportunity to lambast me based on some current event and spectacularly misfires.

    The online world is a strange one. For some reason some of the most articulate social commentators—Alex Au, Andrew Loh, Carlton Tan, Howard Lee, Vincent Wijeysingha, Kirsten Han, Lynn Lee, Joshua Chiang, Gwee Li Sui, Imran Mohd Taib, Sudhir Thomas, Loh Kah Seng, Thum Ping Tjin, Isrizal, Martyn See, Chris Ho, Donald Low (whose smackdown of Calvin Cheng really revealed what an intellectual pygmy the latter was) etc—tend to be critical of the establishment. And in the other corner, we have Jason Chua and Calvin Cheng. It must be terribly frustrating and lonely. Once I get past my annoyance, I realise that what I really feel for Calvin Cheng is pity. Pity that the sheer paucity of people in his corner has led him to think that he is bigger than he really is. Pity that his responses in the wake of his slander has run along the lines of yapping taunts like ‘come sue me’, ‘come slap me now…you don’t have the balls’, ‘take a queue number’, ‘make me take down the flag from my profile (if you think I dishonour it)’. Pity that in shooting his mouth off, he’s succeeded in shooting the messenger–oh, and his own foot.

     

    Source: Alfian Sa’at

  • Record Deal Nets 26 Year Old Property Agent $1.5 Million

    Record Deal Nets 26 Year Old Property Agent $1.5 Million

    A property agent who went into real estate against the wishes of her family has become an overnight millionaire after selling a penthouse at the Le Nouvel Ardmore for a record $51 million last month.

    The deal would have reaped PropNex agent Shirley Seng a commission of about $1.5 million.

    Ms Seng, 26, was reluctant to disclose details of the sale at the 43-unit freehold condo but confirmed that the transaction was completed last month after negotiations started in March.

    The huge sale price – it is believed to be a record for a local penthouse – was paid by Mr Sun Tongyu, the co-founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba.

    Mr Sun is a Singapore permanent resident.

    While it looks like a life-changing transaction deal for Ms Seng, a Nanyang Polytechnic graduate, she is determined to carry on as before.

    “This deal is good money, like hitting the jackpot. But this is my lifelong career; if I go for a long holiday now, I may lose my clients when I return,” she said.

    “I still sleep in the living room of a terraced house in Serangoon where I live with my parents, grandparents, two sisters, four other relatives and one maid.

    “I bought a seven-seater Volkswagen MPV so that my grandparents can travel in comfort. They have been supporting my family all these years as my dad has been sick and unable to work. My mum is a housewife.”

    Ms Seng has not slowed down either, submitting around 16 transactions last month, with another seven this month. She is said to have made about $1.7 million in commission in 53 deals – mostly struck in the rental market – since she joined PropNex in January.

    Quite a record for someone with less than five years of experience in the job, one her family was against her taking as they felt she was “young and has no contacts” on which to base a real estate career.

    “They told me how their friends didn’t make it and advised me to get a job with a stable income. My grandpa then offered to support me in a degree programme with Singapore Management University,” said Ms Seng, who holds a diploma in multimedia and infocomm technology. “But I was determined to give it a try. I thought, if I couldn’t make it in a year, then I will go for a degree.”

    Ms Seng joined HSR International Realtors for four months before moving to ERA Realty, where she stayed for four years.

    She said she penetrated the network of wealthy people by helping to rent out their apartments, especially those in Marina Bay and the Orchard area.

    Mr Sun was a referral from a client she had previously served at Marina Bay Residences.

    “I only knew that he is someone of high net worth. And like any high-net-worth clients, they usually know what they want. And I am there to help to execute their plans,” said Ms Seng.

    And if there is one tip she could give in dealing with wealthy clients, Ms Seng advises: “Speed is crucial. I always try to get back to them within one to two hours. I want to let them know that they are my priority.”

    Ms Seng, who zips around town in a white, three-year-old Audi A4, said she also goes the extra mile for clients, such as picking them up in her car and dropping them off wherever they want to go. Sometimes she also helps them run errands.

    “Times are tough, unlike 10 or 20 years ago. Today’s agents need to do more for their clients. But you need to do it with your heart, so they can feel your sincerity,” she said.

    “I often get people asking me if it is money that drives me. I would tell them that many people are motivated by money, especially when they come from a poor family background.

    “I work hard to give my family a good life.”

     

    Source: www.straitstimes.com

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