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Tag: UMNO

  • Former Malaysian Minister: Muslims Must Speak Out Against Unilateral Child Conversion

    Former Malaysian Minister: Muslims Must Speak Out Against Unilateral Child Conversion

    Former minister Zaid Ibrahim today appealed to Muslims, urging them to speak up in kindness and fairness against unilateral child conversion.

    “I don’t know if I’m going to heaven, but those who have no heart will go nowhere. How can anyone condone a unilateral child conversion?

    “It’s not too late for good Muslims to speak up. We need to have capacity for kindness and being fair to others, even if not a Muslim.”

    The lawyer turned politician declared on Twitter that “we have lost our soul” if Malaysia did not prohibit the conversion of a child to Islam by one parent at the expense of the other.

    “Is being a Muslim more important than being human?”

    He asked whether the pain of a mother deprived of her child had no bearing in Islam.

    To resolve interfaith custody conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim parents, a bill to amend Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 (Act 164) was tabled in Parliament last November.

    It was to be debated at the present sitting of the Dewan Rakyat but has been pushed back to No 8 in the order of proceedings.

    Once passed, the amendment allows only the civil courts to rule in matters pertaining to civil marriages, even if one spouse converts to Islam.

    However, Muslim legal experts have argued that the bill is “null and void” as it contradicts Islamic jurisprudence, which states that when a parent converts to Islam, his or her child (if the child has not yet reached puberty) automatically becomes a Muslim, too.

    Former chief justice Ahmad Fairuz Abdul Halim said any law which contradicts Islamic jurisprudence, derived from the Quran and Sunnah, was null and void.

    On these grounds, Haniff Khatri Abdulla, who is legal aide to former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, has challenged the validity of the bill that seeks to end unilateral child conversions.

    “In Islam, there is jurisprudence dealing with issues that arise when a person converts to Islam.

    “These include disputes over what happens to the convert’s previous union, to the child from that union, the religion of that child, the matrimonial and custodial rights.

    “On that basis, any amendment to the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 (Act 164) which does not comply with Islamic jurisprudence, in that situation, would be null and void. That’s what I’ve been arguing for the last 12, 13 years,” Haniff Khatri said.

    Zaid, however, has expressed empathy for those embroiled in custody battles for their children, who along with their spouses, had converted to Islam.

    Among the better-publicised cases is that of kindergarten teacher M Indira Gandhi, who challenged the conversion of her three children after a protracted court battle for custody.

     

    Source: www.freemalaysiatoday.com

  • Malaysian Celebrity Criticises Racist Stereotyping Question In Moral Examination

    Malaysian Celebrity Criticises Racist Stereotyping Question In Moral Examination

    A primary school was today criticised by a celebrity over its decision to typecast the country’s ethnicities in a moral examination question.

    In a post on the Instagram photo-sharing service, actress Sarah Lian shared a picture of a moral test paper apparently from a national school in Petaling Jaya that asked students to associate names to different houses of worship.

    The names were Devi, Hock Lee, Kamal, and Steve. Students were required to write the appropriate name under pictures of a church, a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple, and a mosque.

    In the photograph, the student — a daughter of Lian’s friend — linked Devi to the church, Steve to the Hindu temple, Kamal to the Chinese temple, and Hock Lee to the mosque.

    The examiner marked all four answers as wrong.

    “My friend’s 7yr old daughter apparently scored badly. And you wonder who makes kids racist and stereotypical???

    “Well, here’s your answer! A horrible approach to stereotyping people into names races and religions. I’m so furious at this form of racism. How archaic and racist! This is so sad! #shame,” Lian wrote on her Instagram post.

    Malaysian naming conventions, particularly the patronymic system used for Malay names, are regularly used to infer a person’s religious identity.

    Such assumptions have led to problems, particularly in East Malaysia, where non-Muslim natives who use “bin” and “binti” are sometimes wrongly documented as Muslims by authorities.

     

    Source: www.themalaymailonline.com

  • PM Najib Razak Courts Middle-Class Muslim Votes With Welcome From “Controversial” Preacher, Mufti Menk

    PM Najib Razak Courts Middle-Class Muslim Votes With Welcome From “Controversial” Preacher, Mufti Menk

    KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has rolled out the red carpet for controversial Islamic scholar Ismail Musa Menk, a move that analysts have suggested could be part of efforts by Prime Minister Najib Razak to burnish his Islamic credentials to appeal to middle-class Muslim voters ahead of the general election.

    “(Mufti) Menk is popular among middle-class Malaysian Muslims … and if this is to be read as a political motive, then this … will boost Najib’s popularity with that group,” Dr Norshahril Saat, a Fellow at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute told TODAY.

    The Zimbabwe-born Mufti Menk has more than 2.3 million Facebook fans and 1.3 million Twitter followers who regularly share his positive quotes on life.

    However, the cleric has flirted with controversy: His strong stance against homosexuality led universities in Britain to cancel his speaking tours in 2013 and he had allegedly advised Muslims against wishing others Merry Christmas.

    He was due to give a talk at a religious conference in Singapore in 2015 but his segment was cancelled for “reasons the authorities did not disclose”, according to the organiser.

    Still, Mufti Menk was in Malaysia over the weekend for an Islamic conference where he was one of the keynote speakers.

    Mr Najib hosted a religious talk attended by the preacher at his official residence on Monday night after meeting the latter on Friday, an encounter that the Prime Minister wrote about in his blog. Photos of them were uploaded on both Mr Najib and Mufti Menk’s social media accounts.

    “Victory only comes to those who are most patient,” Mr Najib quoted the preacher in his blog, noting that those were the words that “struck me the most” in their meeting to discuss about Islam, extremism, as well as the plight and welfare of Muslims around the world.

    The Prime Minister referenced the trials and tribulations faced by Prophet Muhammad and said: “This is one of the reasons why that quote by Mufti Menk struck a chord with me. That has been the way of Rasulullah SAW, and must continue to be the way forward for us Muslims.”

    Malaysia’s national polls are not due until next year but Mr Najib is expected to call for snap polls this year after battling issues surrounding state firm 1Malaysia Development Berhad and overcoming efforts by former Malaysian prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to remove him.

    Throughout last year, Mr Najib’s ruling party, United Malays National Organisation (Umno), increasingly played up the racial and religious cards in a bid to retain the support from the Malays and Bumiputras — a key voting bloc for his party.

    Mr Asrul Hadi Abdullah, a director with political risk consultancy BowerGroupAsia, told TODAY that Mr Najib’s association with Mufti Menk is in line with Umno’s political Islam narrative to capture the Malay community’s votes, as the scholar is popular with the Malay electorate.

    Mr Asrul’s views were echoed by Mr Adib Zalkapli, a political analyst at political risk advisory firm Vriens & Partners, who noted that any association with Mufti Menk is “definitely a vote winner”.

    “Najib is not the first politician to employ this strategy and he won’t be the last. (Former opposition leader) Anwar Ibrahim used the same strategy by getting support from Yusuf Qaradawi when he was on trial for sodomy in 2014,” he said in reference to the renowned Islamic scholar and the head of the Qatar-based International Union for Muslim Scholars.

    Anwar was convicted and jailed for sodomising a former aide, a charge he describes as a politically-motivated attempt to end his career.

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com

  • Four Decades Of A Malay Myth

    Four Decades Of A Malay Myth

    Masturah Alatas takes a close look at the legacy and impact of her father’s seminal study of ‘Malayness’, The Myth of the Lazy Native, which turns 40 this year.

    “Our Production Manager estimates that we would very likely have finished copies of both books in December, and would therefore be able to publish in January, 1977.”

    With these long-awaited words that reached Singapore in a letter dated 14 September 1976, Malaysian sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas (1928-2007) received confirmation that his books, The Myth of the Lazy Native and Intellectuals in Developing Societies, would finally be published in London by Frank Cass.

    Murray Mindlin was the Cass editor who wrote the letter. He also happened to be the Hebrew translator of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a fitting fact since The Myth of the Lazy Native (henceforth Lazy Native) was caught up in its own, long-drawn-out publishing odyssey. Shunned by publishers in Malaysia and Singapore, Alatas first submitted Intellectuals to Frank Cass in early 1972 at the suggestion of social anthropologist, Ernest Gellner. In corresponding with Cass editors about that book, later the same year Alatas casually mentioned that he was completing the Lazy Native that he had started working on in 1966.

    “At the moment I am finishing a manuscript of about 100,000 words on the myth of the lazy native in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It is a study of the function and origin of this myth in the colonial ideology. Dutch, Malay and English sources are used. The discipline applied is the sociology of knowledge. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first work of its kind,” Alatas wrote.

    Young editor Jim Muir, who would later become the BBC’s correspondent for the Middle East, immediately asked to see the manuscript. Struck by the title and subject, he felt Lazy Native “would probably fit very well into our Library of Peasant Studies.”

    The story of the publishing vicissitudes of Lazy Native is documented in my book, The Life in the Writing (2010), as is the work’s international reception by the likes of Victor Gordon Kiernan, Edward W Said, Ziauddin Sardar and many others.

    There are several ways to assess the status of Lazy Native in the 40 years of its existence. We can check databases to see where it has been cited and syllabi to know where it is taught. Social media will give us an idea of who is reading it, talking about it, and going to conferences, seminars and festivals where it is studied.

    One could say that a revived interest in the book is due, in part, to the efforts of his son and my brother, Syed Farid Alatas, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore, not just through teaching, public speaking and his own writing but also because he solicited a reprint of a paperback and more affordable edition of Lazy Native from Routledge (2010). Malaysians will remember that the hardback Cass edition of Lazy Native once went for over 400 ringgit (roughly $US90 in today’s money). Syed Farid Alatas was also proactive in getting a second edition of the Malay translation of the book, Mitos Pribumi Malas, reissued with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (2009).

    It is worth mentioning—as translation studies scholar Nazry Bahrawi has noted—that the Malay translation, or rather adaptation of Lazy Native from the 1987 Indonesian translation, contains some omissions, including excluded lines and passages that are present in both the English and Indonesian versions. One omission is the line “The degradation of the Malay character is an attempt by the ruling party to absolve itself from blame for real or expected failures to ensure the progress of the Malay community” (Lazy Native, 1977, p 181). The book contains no note from the translator, Zainab Kassim, as to the reasons for these omissions.

    Whatever the case, we can conclude that irrespective of the availability of the book in English and Malay, what the quality of the Malay translation is, or how much or little it is actually read and talked about, Lazy Native seems to have found its place in the sun as a classic, and not just because Bahrawi and other scholars recognise it as a seminal text located within postcolonial theory. Not only has the Lazy Native walked right out of the Library of Peasant Studies into the libraries of Malay studies, cultural studies, sociology, history and literature—not to mention the personal libraries of many Malaysians— the book also seems to be sitting in the collective Malaysian imagination as a disgruntled trope, even though Syed Hussein Alatas himself had doubts about how many people had actually read and understood it.

    It is therefore legitimate to ask: after 40 years, is the myth of the lazy native still a myth? Former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad seems not to think so. According to him, the Malays are lazy because they don’t study hard enough, they can’t master English and they prefer to become Mat Rempit (motorcycle gangsters). What is missing from the narrative is if it is laziness or hard work that has to do with how the current Prime Minister, Najib Razak, was able to allegedly channel more than $1 billion into his personal bank accounts.

    Historian Zaharah Sulaiman, instead, believes that if “Malays are called lazy and not innovative, it’s because the knowledge, the peoples who have the knowledge have gone extinct,” and that ‘foreign invasions’ that led to the ‘grabbing’ of riches has a lot to do with the extinction of this knowledge.

    But in the chapter “The disappearance of the indigenous trading class”, Alatas does not so simplistically attribute the destruction of the trading class to foreign invasion. If anything, he provides sociological analysis showing how local rulers were sometimes complicit with colonial masters in bringing about the disappearance of the native trading class — for example when local chiefs acted as agents for the Dutch East India Company.

    Alatas framed his critique of colonial capitalism that exploited the image of the lazy native with economic and sociological analyses. Indeed, he called it “colonial capitalism” and not white capitalism. And nowhere in Lazy Native does he blame the other ethnicities of Malaysia—the Chinese or the Indians—for the condition of the Malays.

    It is important to understand this to distance the kind of critique Alatas performs in Lazy Native and the language he uses from, say, rants about  “Chinese privilege” in Singapore, in which the term itself makes a direct link of ethnicity—one ethnicity in particular—to majority class and political privilege, and abuse of power. If Alatas has tried to help us see the wrongness in the ideological necessity of giving laziness a Malay face, we are invited to think about the wrongness in the ideological insistence of giving a Chinese face to privilege.

    Finally, Lazy Native has inadvertently generated it own myth that needs to be debunked if we are to understand what unique scholarship really means— the claim that the book contributed to Edward W Said’s thesis on Orientalism. This claim has been made by several scholars all over the world.

    Orientalism (1978) was already written and sent off to the publisher when Alatas’ book came out the year before Said’s did. At the time, the two men never even knew or corresponded with each other.

    I know this because both men told me so.

    Masturah Alatas is a writer and teacher who lives in Macerata, Italy. She is the author of The girl who made it snow in Singapore (2008) and The life in the writing (2010), a memoir-biography about her father, Syed Hussein Alatas.

    The Myth of the Native Lazy marks 40 years of publication today.

     

    Source: www.newmandala.org

  • Kelantan’s Non-Muslims Happy With PAS Rule, But Worried About Slow Economy, Hudud

    Kelantan’s Non-Muslims Happy With PAS Rule, But Worried About Slow Economy, Hudud

    Malaysia’s opposition Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) has won the support of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (Umno) to strengthen the country’s Syariah Courts, in what looks like the start of cooperation between the traditional rivals ahead of the next general election, due in 2018. What is life like under a PAS-led, or at least PAS-influenced, government? TODAY spent three days talking to non-Muslim residents of Kota Bharu, Kelantan — where PAS has been in power for over 20 years — on living under the Islamist party and what possible changes in the Syariah law means for them.

    KOTA BHARU — A steady stream of Muslim men converge on the Muhammadi Mosque built almost 150 years ago. Some are seen performing the ablution in the mosque compound, while those unable to get a spot in the hall lay out prayer mats on the pavement outside. One feels like one is in a city in the Middle East, and that feeling extends beyond the mosques. There are no cinemas in Kelantan. In supermarkets, men, women and families have to line up at the cashiers in three separate queues.

    Yet despite the outward appearance of Kelantan as a state governed strictly by an Islamist party, the non-Muslims here say they are generally happy with life under PAS rule and enjoy harmonious ties with those from other races and religions.

    The east coast state is home to 1.8 million people. Malays make up 95 per cent of the population, with the minority made up of Chinese, Indians and Thais. The main religion is Islam, but there are also many Chinese and Thai Buddhist temples.

    Kelantan has been under the rule of opposition Islamist party PAS for more than 20 years despite the state having one of the slowest economic growth rates in the country. PAS won Kelantan comfortably in the last general election in 2013, winning 32 seats out of 45 seats contested in the state legislative assembly. It did even better in the 2008 contest, sweeping 38 seats out of 45.

    PAS has also long made it a goal to introduce the Islamic criminal code in the state, and last month, party president Abdul Hadi Awang filed a controversial private member’s Bill in Parliament to strengthen the powers of Syariah courts.

    The Bill proposes to increase Syariah punishment caps to a maximum of 30 years’ jail, a RM100,000 (S$32,400) fine and 100 strokes of the cane. (The maximum penalties now are a jail term of three years, a fine of RM5,000 or six strokes of the cane.) Mr Hadi’s motion has been deferred to the next parliamentary sitting due in March 2017.

    The Bill has been supported by the ruling United Malays National Organisation (Umno), prompting an uproar from non-Muslims and politicians from minority parties. These include the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), an ally of Umno in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

    Both Umno and PAS leaders have stressed that the Bill does not apply to non-Muslims and has nothing to do with Islamic criminal law, or hudud.

    Despite this, Kelantan residents interviewed by TODAY said they are concerned about how the proposed law might affect their daily lives.

    “If it applies only to the Muslims, then I will be less worried. But there is also fear in us that things may take a different route,” said Mr Gan Yeong Shuoh, 30, a hotel manager.

    Another resident, Ms Lin Mei Li, 44, said the state government should explain more about the Bill and its position on hudud.

    “Most of them (local people) do not understand the Bill or its implementation even though they know that it is related to Islamic laws. Personally, I feel that our nation is developing to be a progressive nation. I am not willing to see the Islamic penal code being implemented, even though it is limited to the Muslims only,” she added.

    Punishment under hudud law includes the cutting off of one’s hands for theft, as well as stoning to death for extramarital sex.

    There is also concern among some Malaysians that Mr Hadi’s Bill will create a two-tiered legal system.

    “How will punishments be carried out if it involves a Muslim and non-Muslim?” said Mr Wee Pock Sun, president of The Federation of Hokkien Associations of Malaysia, raising a common concern of non-Muslims in the country.

    Mr Wee, 55, said that the Kelantan government should focus more on measures to develop people’s livelihoods instead.

    “They need to look at problems that involve the people. Find measures to tackle social ills and uplift the Kelantanese people. We have problems such as school dropouts and our education standard is still low. These are the problems that they need to address.”

    Mr Yap Cher Leong, 62, a businessman dealing with hardware and construction materials, agrees and said that two areas the PAS government can focus on are ecotourism and agrotourism.

    “Half-a-million Kelantanese are living in other cities because of employment. This itself speaks of the economic situation in the state,” he added.

    Kelantan recorded economic growth of 3.5 per cent last year, lower than the 5 per cent nationally. It was the third-slowest-growing state in the country, doing better only than Terengganu (3.3 per cent) and Perlis (2.3 per cent).

    It is reliant on services and agriculture. The services sector in Kelantan is driven mainly by the public sector, wholesale and retail, food and beverages, as well as hotel and accommodation. Agricultural products include paddy, palm oil, and fruit and vegetables.

    Kelantan MCA Public Services and Complaints Bureau representative Ong Han Xian, 56, said that while relations between the various races and religions in the state have been good, investments have been hard to come by.

    “There is no economic development and investment from companies. Investors are afraid because of the negative perception they have of Islamic rules. Instead of focussing on religion only, PAS must think of ways to develop Kelantan,” Mr Ong said.

    He hopes that the upcoming East Coast Rail Link — a RM55 billion railway project that will span four states on the east coast and ends in Kelantan — will give a boost to the state’s economy when it is completed in 2022.

    Despite slower economic growth and uncertainties over hudud, Kelantan presents a picture of multiracial harmony for now.

    It is common to see Chinese and Malays dining together in halal Chinese-owned coffee shops.

    At the Pokok Pinang market in Kota Bharu, rows of open air stalls sell pork alongside businesses run by Malays.

    Residents say that when the state was under BN rule, pork sellers were constantly harassed and the trade was hidden from public view. The Chinese were also not allowed to purchase houses built on Malay reserve lands.

    However, when PAS took over, all these changed — Chinese markets were improved, and 30 per cent of houses built on Malay reserve land were allocated for sale to the Chinese community.

    Local businessman Michael Ong, 58, said that he feels proud of being Kelantanese and that relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are good because of mutual respect.

    He added that, as a non-Muslim, he does not feel restricted living under a PAS government even though there are some restrictions when it comes to entertainment.

    “We are used to leading a simple life and our entertainment is in the form of interactions with our neighbours and friends. For example, attending dinners or joining various associations — these keep us occupied,” Mr Ong said.

    Residents say another key factor in the good communal ties in Kelantan is a common local dialect known as “Bahasa Kelate” (Bahasa Melayu Kelantan). Everyone in the state, regardless of their race, is able to converse fluently in it.

    Mr Oie Poh Choon, president of the Federation of Chinese Associations Kelantan, said that people who have not visited Kelantan may have a somewhat distorted view of life under a PAS government.

    “Once you have experienced and visited Kelantan, you will know that it is different from what has been reported (in the media). The PAS government has taken good care of all the races living in the state,” said Mr Oie, 57.

    Another reason for the strong support for PAS is the huge respect the non-Muslims have for the late chief minister Nik Aziz Nik Mat, fondly known as “Tok Guru” (Grandmaster). Despite his conservative outlook, the humble lifestyle of the PAS spiritual leader — often dressed in a simple turban and white robe — won the hearts and minds of Kelantanese.

    Mr Michael Ong, the local businessman, said: “Tok Guru took care of everyone under his governance. He used Islamic values to care for the well-being of the people.”

    Politically, PAS has also practised mutual tolerance, said Kota Bharu Islamic City Municipal Council councillor Lim Guan Seng. “During muktamar (the PAS annual general assembly) the leadership would never voice out their dislike for the non-Muslims or play the race card,” he said.

    “Tolerance for other races came from the teachings of the late Tok Guru. The government has truly administered the state with true Islamic values.”

     

    Source: www.todayonline.com