A Weekend with Tariq Ramadan

It was probably a good thing that the people who invited Tariq Ramadan didn't organise the talk somewhere in PJ. If they had, the venue would probably have been surrounded by the police in order to arrest the Swiss-Egyptian Islamic scholar for not being licensed to speak. Luckily it was held in KL where it is still relatively safe to speak on Islam. Although if religious authorities like JAKIM and the Mufti of Perak had accepted their invitations to attend, who knows what might have happened since Tariq Ramadan is critical. Very critical. So critical that he is barred from entering no less than six Muslim countries ( Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and Libya).

But someone who is critical is, in our intellectually-starved country, a breath of fresh air. And it didn't hurt that it came in an eloquent passionate French-accented package either.

Tariq Ramadan was here on the invitation of a new organisation called the Islamic Renaissance Front which is dedicated to empowering young Muslims especially to use reason to bolster their faith. For two days, under the theme 'For People Who Think' and in dedication to the late renowned Islamic scholar Muhammad Asad, Prof Ramadan gave talks on the need for reform and renewal in Islam.

It is a pity that the audience was mostly from the English-speaking Muslim middle-class as well as some foreign students and scholars residing here because Prof Ramadan's message really needs to be heard by the masses. Not least because it is a radical message for people used to not thinking and blindly following whatever anyone they think of as a religious authority says.

Prof Ramadan's talk challenged many things that we in Malaysia have come to accept as Islamic. He asserts that while Islam is a universal religion, it doesn't mean that there is no room for diversity, both in space and time. Meaning that there should be room for many different interpretations and there must also be room for evolution due to the passing of time. It's not that Islam isn't relevant for all times but we must look at new innovations and challenges based on the same principles. And those principles are always justice and equality.

These principles are found in the Quran and the Sunnah but there have been many confusions. For instance, there is the confusion on the relationship between text and context. Many people do not, for example, place the text of the Quran in context of when and why they were revealed. They dealt with specific problems of the time but there are principles within them for all time.

Secondly, there is a failure to distinguish between principles and models. "Models," he said, "are historical while principles are universal." A model for a type of governance may be fine for a certain time but not for now. But the principles of that governance, based on jstice and equality, should still apply.

Thirdly, not being able to differentiate between laws and the way. He reiterated that syariah means 'the way' towards faith, not a set of laws. If we take it simply as meaning laws, we may well contradict 'the way', and 'the way' is always about achieving justice. If all we do is to make law but forget the way, then we may well lose 'the way'. Punishment which is almost always how we define syariah is far from 'the way' because 'the way' starts always with justice.

Fourthly, we often confuse rules and meanings. We are so obsessed with rules that we forget about meanings. We may pray five times a day but forget God at the same time. We need to distinguish between a religion of only rules, and one which connects spirituality with rules. We pray not just to follow rules but to remember God; if we don't, we miss the point.

In talking about reform, Prof Ramadan challenged us to think about what type of reform we want. Is it one where we have more and more rules, more and more adaptations? Or one where we transform both ourselves and the world? He feels that the essence of Islam is to reform in order to transform. He repeated many times on both days that we should not simply imitate.

Referring Asad, he said that imitation is wrong because it is colonialism.We should not simply take on what other people have done and put an Islamic veneer on it by making it halal (at one point he shocked the audience by saying, "I don't know what it means to eat a halal Mcdonald's"). The point is not so much to ensure things are always halal but to contribute our own input to the world. In other words, why are we eating McD which is from another culture anyway when we have our own foods?

In order to contribute however, we must have a vision of what we want to do and what world we want to live in. And visions have to be far-reaching and beyond what is reality now. We can't do that if we do not know the world. "If you want to change the world, know the world" he said.

It is therefore simply not enough to rely solely on religious texts and scholars. We need experts in all fields, indeed to 'shift the centre of gravity of Islam' away from just scholars. This, he says, is why Muslims have contributed so little to knowledge these days. The only area where we have been quite good is medicine because religious scholars realise that their lack of knowledge in this field could lead to death and therefore they have deferred to medical experts, thus allowing it to advance.But in other areas we are still lacking.

Prof Ramadan also said some things which few Muslims in our country have ever been bold enough to say. "Islam," he said, "has no problems with women, but Muslims have." He elicited applause from us women in the audience when he said that domestic violence is simply unIslamic. (Later on I had the opportunity to relate to him how it took us six years to pass the Domestic Violence Act in 1994 mainly because there were people who thought such a law would be unIslamic.). He said it vexed him that there are Muslim countries today where women are not allowed to enter mosques. Is that a problem of Islam or of some Muslims?

He asked what are our contributions today in culture, the arts, architecture, music? In music, he said he was so happy that Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) has now returned to making music of the highest level, and regrets the low standards of music in the Muslim world today which seems to regard audiences as infantile and only capable of understanding the simplest lyrics. Furthermore he stressed, "to be good Muslims, you do not have to Arab-ise yourself." I could feel an uncomfortable shifting in the audience's seats.

He also said something else which almost made the audience stop breathing. "Anti-Semitism," he stressed, "is unIslamic. We must acknowledge the suffering of the Jews." This is different from Zionism which is a colonial project which must be opposed, just as we oppose all colonialisms (including Arab ones). He deplores the people who, when unable to agree with Asad, said things like, "Don't forget he was a Jew." It is totally unacceptable, he said, to refer to people's past when you disagree with them. Indeed this is something we see very often here; when you can't find a better argument, discredit the other person.

Prof Ramadan's main emphasis in both his talks is that the way to faith, to be closer to God, is to think critically always."It is not because you are Muslim that you get everything. It is the quest for faith involving ongoing critical thinking that is most important."

Principles and ethics are important. Someone asked him a question about the ummah and he urged us not to romanticise the ummah in such a way that we are blind to wrong-doing. "I will not be your brother if, in the name of brotherhood, I am to support injustice...I belong to the principles, not to my community when they betray those principles."

It was really refreshing to hear Prof Ramadan speak because it was so different from the usual stuff you hear all the time but which are almost always unsatisfactory because they don't provide answers to contemporary questions. But there will undoubtedly be many who will not like what he says. Indeed, he himself pointed out the issue of power, where people in power hate to be criticised or challenged. This must be what prompted our own muftis here to object to any invitation to the Grand Mufti of Syria, Dr. Ahmad Hassoun to speak here because he is known to be open and progressive. What could be worse for those in religious power than for their flock to find out that other religious people think very differently from them?

Someone from the audience got up to say that he liked what Prof Ramadan said but he should be careful because he risked being assassinated. He should have mentioned that those most likely to assassinate him  are Muslims, not anyone else.

The Ugly Malay, Part II

Well actually it's the same as Part I because I think they're virtually the same people. Yet another bunch of unattractive slow-witted men who try to make up for their lack of vocabulary by shouting and trying to get some legitimacy by making a police report.

I'm not going to put up the video here because somehow videos don't come out right on my blog and I don't know how to fix them (they come out too big). Besides why should I give them more airtime? So am just going to post the link here.

But let me just say this. This is what I call ketuanan porn. It's for people who get off on having their 15 minutes of fame not by doing anything good for humanity but by showing off how low-grade their mentality is. They can't even get the name of their own organisation right and somehow seem to think that May 13 happened on May 16. Must be a reflection on the state of our schools.

If this is 'supremacy', they can have it.

And if these are 'first class' citizens, I'd rather travel in cattle class, thank you very much.

The gall of it is at the end of their little tantrum, they do a 1Malaysia ( or as one of them put it, Oh-nay Malaysia) cheer.

Hip, hip, hooray, get me out of here!

Oh, and another thing...where do all these 'NGOs' (do they even realise that NGO stands for 'non-governmental organisation'? In bahasa penjajah no less...) spring up from? Usually it takes two years for the Registrar of Societies to approve the establishment of any NGOs. So how come these types of 'NGOs', filled with lunkheads spewing hate, are profilerating like mushrooms? Can we ask the RoS if they've approved them?

My Busy Busy Week

Hi folks, sorry for the long silence but life has been ridiculously busy. I've been running around at various meetings and conferences so have hardly been able to sit properly at my laptop just to write something for this blog.

In the past week or so, I've been to Penang to give the keynote speech at the National Malaysian HIV Conference organised by the AIDS Action Research Group at USM with support from the Ministry of Health. Basically I said that although global and local trends show that new infections are declining, we must still be watchful because it is clear that new groups, especially women, are now being infected more than before. Also although national infection rates are declining, in some states they are actually increasing and we need to know why. What's more the economic crisis cannot be the excuse to cut budgets for HIV programmes because it is times like these that people actually become more vulnerable to infection. So in fact budgets must be increased or at least maintained.

Unfortunately my speech was slotted before the Minister of Health and other officials arrived for the opening ceremony so they, um, couldn't avail themselves of any of this information.

Anyway, then I had to rush back to KL because Melanne Verveer, President Obama's Special Ambassador on Global Women's Issues was in town. She wanted to meet women's groups and particularly  listen to what we were doing and what issues we faced. There was a roundtable on women and health in which she got the opportunity to meet people working on various women's issues related to health including cancer, and HIV. It was very interesting, not just for her but also for many of us because it isn't't often that we get a whole roomful of health activists.

There was particularly a lot of emphasis on the need to involve men in many of these issues because most of them related to gender dynamics. And we found out one interesting but rather important tidbit: that health insurance packages in this country typically include coverage for prostate cancer but not breast cancer! Hmmm...who designs these packages?

This roundtable was followed by a lunch for her hosted by Dell and Intel to which I was also invited. Here she got to meet women in the private sector. I really think there is a huge gap between women in the private sector and those in NGOs because the private sector women seem to have no clue as to gender-related issues at all. Most seemed to think that money was the answer to solving all issues.

Yet Ambassador Verveer gave some examples of programmes that have helped women in business which began with no money at all. One great example is an event called the Mentoring Walk which began when the CEO of Oxygen, Geraldine Laybourne, asked a young woman who had come to her for career advice to join her on her morning walk because that was the only time she had. That simple idea grew into a global event.

After Ambassador Verveer's visit, I had one day off before I had to go down to Johor Bharu to talk to students at UTM about 'Love Without HIV'. This was a special camp organised annually by engineering students where they invite various people to come and speak. It wasn't a big group and I had not a lot of time with them but it was fun to be able to work with young people again.

Then upon returning to KL, I had to moderate a forum on human rights organised by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). Tomorrow, December 10, is Human Rights Day and the theme this year is 'Embrace Diversity, End Discrimination'. Rather apt for Malaysia.

The panel I had to moderate was on human rights in Malaysia. The Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail was supposed to speak but he sent his regrets the day before. So we only had two speakers, Andrew Khoo from the Bar Council and Tunku Aziz, formerly of Transparency International and now a member of PKR. Andrew has very sound knowledge on the UN human rights treaties and gave a very comprehensive and clear presentation on Malaysia's compliance (or rather not quite compliance) with these treaties.

For instance, there are nine core human rights treaties or conventions and we have ratified only two, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). However we have placed some reservations on both and there seem to be no signs that we are going to lift them. The reservations on CEDAW are apparently there because some people think that they contravene syariah but then Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, and some North African Muslim countries have ratified CEDAW without any reservations at all.

(By the way, the US has not ratified CEDAW at all. This is because, as Ambassador Verveer explained to us, all such international treaties become law in the US so to pass them through Congress, they need 'supermajorities', not just majority votes. The Democrats don't have that supermajority to do this and the Republicans aren't keen on CEDAW anyway. Hence stalemate all this while.)

We have signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities but have not ratified it (ratification means we will turn the convention into national laws). The other conventions that we have not signed include the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on Refugees and the Convention Against Torture (which would mean we can't have corporal or capital punishment). So we have some way to go.

There was a lot of discussion during the panel but we didn't have a lot of time because Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah was coming in to make a speech. But generally people were concerned mostly about racial and religious discrimination but didn't have much to say about other forms of discrimination for instance on the basis of sexuality. And I had to mention discrimination against people living with HIV of course.

Tengku Razaleigh gave a good speech making the link between corruption and human rights. I wish I had the full text but basically he spoke about the new trend of direct negotiations versus open tenders and  how some people seem not to be able to differentiate between personal and professional entitlements and assets.

Anyway it was a good forum all round although I couldn't help thinking we were preaching to the converted because everyone in the room worked in human rights in one form or another. There were no government people or parliamentarians or from law enforcement or anyone who should be listening to the discussion and the concerns that people have. I was talking to the Argentinian ambassador and she said that in her country, Human Rights Day is usually commemorated in Parliament. Here, I wonder if any of our MPs even know what it is.

But it is Human Rights Day tomorrow and the theme 'Embrace Diversity, End Discrimination' seems tailor-made for Malaysia. Let's remember that discrimination goes in every direction. (For information on  Human Rights Day and human rights issues in general, visit the website of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights here.)

Meanwhile, in case anyone thinks I've had nothing to say about the Fatine case, here's my column today.

Will try and blog more often, folks, if time and work permits!

World AIDS Day 2009: Still A Long Way To Go

It's the time of year again, time to remind you of where the global AIDS pandemic is going. And guess what, there is some good news. According to the latest UNAIDS Global AIDS update, the number of new infections has declined by 17% over the past eight years. That's mostly because many countries have stepped up their prevention efforts especially among those most vulnerable to HIV.

Another piece of good news: less people have been dying of AIDS too. That's mostly because more people around the world have been put on antiretroviral treatment and so are living longer normal lives.

But not everybody who needs it has access to the treatments. That's partly because of ignorance and lack of money but also because of fear of the stigma and discrimination. In Malaysia, only about half of the people who need it are on treatment even though first-line treatments are free.

Now with the economic crisis, budgets are being cut everywhere even though now is the time when people need prevention and treatment most. The rise in drug use and subsequently HIV infections in Indonesia is directly related to the 1998 economic crisis. Today about 52% of all injecting drug users in Indonesia are HIV-positive. So it is during economic crises that we need to step up prevention, treatment and care programmes.

(And here's some food for thought: the current economic crisis in Dubai will mean thousands of foreign workers being laid off and unable to remit any money back to their home countries. As a result their families will have to find other ways to survive. Their wives and daughters will inevitably be the most vulnerable to exploitation including trafficking into sex work.)

In Malaysia we have about 85,000 people living with HIV in the country but in the last few years the numbers of new infections have been dropping. That is good news but what is worrying is that more women are becoming infected, usually because they are the partners of HIV-positive men. From virtually none a decade ago, women now make up 19% of all infections. The impact of this will be huge because women are expected to be caregivers for the family. If they are ill, who will care for them? Do women have the same access to treatment as men?

In early 2010, the AIDS2031 project will issue its report. This is a project to see what can be done today to achieve the best possible results in 2031, the 50th anniversary of the discovery of HIV. The preliminary report is not optimistic: even if every country in the world does the best thing possible, there will be 1.2million new infections in 2031 globally. That's better than now but still a lot of people.

So what we need now are true 'gamc-changing' strategies and more cost-effective prevention programmes. The most cost-effective is to do focussed prevention for the most-at-risk people ie injecting drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men. That would mean also amending laws that make these programmes hard to implement such as those that criminalise these groups and increase stigma and discrimination. It would also mean ensuring that all the people in these groups who need treatment are able to get it. Again that would mean eliminating stigma and discrimination against them.

At the same time we need more impact mitigation programmes. What do we do with all the children orphaned by AIDS? We don't even have any formal system to keep track of them so we have no idea how many there are. Their rights as children are neglected and abused as they are sometimes refused schooling, ensuring that their already bleak future is even worse. Children with HIV are living because our government provides them with free treatment, and they are growing up; do they have the same rights to higher education when our universities require HIV tests for  incoming students?

What do we do for families affected by AIDS? Do we leave them to fend for themselves? Do we find ways to help them survive when the main breadwinners are gone? Or do we do everything to keep breadwinners alive and working?

If there is one thing standing in the way of the 'game changing' is a real lack of political will to do the right thing. We spend a lot of time wringing our hands, umming and ah-ing and doing the 'politically' correct thing which is not necessarily the right thing. We let people try and ban condoms from convenience stores, we allow discrimination against most-at-risk groups and we do little to empower women and then wonder why they become infected. Heck, we don't even have a National AIDS Commission to deal with the whole issue in a holistic manner unlike Indonesia.

What we have instead is a Cabinet Committee on AIDS chaired by the PM and filled with people who don't know much about the issue and a small department in the Ministry of Health who can't even begin to grasp why women, for example, are becoming infected even though it was entirely predictable. The Ministry for Women has a small budget just to 'raise awareness'. Yet almost every woman who has become infected will say that she'd never heard of AIDS until her husband was diagnosed.

And let's not even begin to talk about HIV education in schools, everyone's favourite question. It's the most obvious delivery system but if it happens, it's spotty and sporadic. Do we deal with sexuality at all?  Do we talk about drugs in a truthful manner or just about the punishment we'll get if we get caught? Kids simply don't believe they'll get addicted or get caught. And they don't think that amphetamine-type substances are as bad as heroin because they don't shoot ecstasy up in back alleys. We have to get real about this or, as UNAIDS warns, we'll have a new wave of infections from drug use which will require a very different approach from what we're doing now. As it is, ATS use is growing in Malaysia.

But let's not get too despondent. Some things are happening including harm reduction programmes such as methadone substitution therapy and needle and syringe exchange programmes. Some new studies are being conducted to ascertain knowledge among some vulnerable groups. (See the Malaysian AIDS Council website here.) But budgets are being cut...

So let us on this 2009 World AIDS Day remember that it's not over yet. People all over the world, including here in Malaysia, are still becoming infected even though it's entirely preventable. Those who are living with HIV are still hiding because they don't know how you, their fellow citizens, will react if you knew their status.

Ask yourself tomorrow on December 1: do I know enough about HIV? If I found out my friend or family member was HIV-positive, would I embrace them or turn away?

Let's Be Civilised and Just Stop Violence Against Women

A man throws acid over his wife and daughter while they slept.


An Indonesian maid dies after being abused by her employer, including being locked up in a toilet for a few days.


Some Penan girls from a remote village in Sarawak are allegedly raped by workers from a logging company.

It goes on and on...violence against women remains an ongoing issue both in this country and all over the world.

Tomorrow, November 25, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. If anyone still thinks there is too much attention being put on this issue, consider these facts from UNIFEM:

Based on available country data, up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime. It happens everywhere — at home and at work, on the streets and in schools, during peacetime and in conflict.

For women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability

In a 1994 study based on World Bank data about ten selected risk factors facing women in this age group, rape and domestic violence rated higher than cancer, motor vehicle accidents, war and malaria.

Women who have experienced violence are at a higher risk of HIV infection: a survey among 1,366 South African women showed that women who were beaten by their partners were 48 percent more likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not.

 Out of ten countries surveyed in a 2005 study by the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 50 percent of women in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania reported having been subjected to physical or sexual violence by intimate partners, with figures reaching staggering 71 percent in rural Ethiopia.

In a recent survey by the American Institute on Domestic Violence, 60 percent of senior executives said that domestic violence, which limits women’s workplace participation, has an adverse effect on company productivity. The survey found that domestic violence victims lose nearly 8 million days of paid work per year — the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs.

The victims in today’s armed conflicts are far more likely to be civilians than soldiers. Some 70 percent of the casualties in recent conflicts have been non-combatants — most of them women and children. Women’s bodies have become part of the battleground for those who use terror as a tactic of war — they are raped, abducted, humiliated and made to undergo forced pregnancy, sexual abuse and slavery.

Although women, men, girls and boys can become victims of trafficking, the majority of victims are female. Various forms of gender-based discrimination increase the risk of women and girls becoming affected by poverty, which in turns puts them at higher risk of becoming targeted by traffickers, who use false promises of jobs and educational opportunities to recruit their victims.

Other forms of violence against women include female genital mutilation (FGM), dowry murders and honour killings. Another form of sexual violence is early marriage since young girls are often forced into the marriage ( often with much older men) and into sexual relations, which jeopardizes their health, raises their risk of exposure to HIV/AIDS and limits their chance of attending school.


To raise awareness of this scourge, many human rights organisations are commemorating the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence beginning tomorrow and ending on December 10 which is International Human Rights Day. In Malaysia too, several events will be held including the launch of The Gender Trap: Women, Violence and Poverty, a report by Amnesty International on how poverty makes women vulnerable to violence and the launch of their Demand Dignity campaign and also a Unite To End Violence Against Women media forum organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).


Local NGO, Women's Aid Organisation (WAO), which has long been at the forefront of violence against women issues in Malaysia, is embarking on a campaign to highlight the links between ICT and violence against women. Collaborating with the Body Shop and the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), they have produced a brochure which provides information on how to stay safe online and offline.


Despite the laws that we have to protect women from violence such as the Domestic Violence Act 1994,  we still have some 5000 police reports of violence a year including both domestic violence and rape. For each case that is reported, it is believed that nine other cases go unreported either because women are unaware that they can report or they are afraid to report. But out of those cases that are reported, precious few actually go to court and perpetrators punished. Nor do we have much information  on what happens to the women and girls whose lives have been changed by those traumatic experiences.

Women will continue to be vulnerable to violence if laws are not implemented. What's more if laws that discriminate against women remain in our books, they create a society where discrimination is acceptable and where women are believed to be inferior and therefore have to be submissive, abused and exploited. Most at risk are women who are poor, marginalised and isolated but every woman is vulnerable if attitudes towards women remain patriarchal. A friend witnessed a man slap his wife publicly at a wedding reception simply because she had not replied in the affirmative to the invitation and therefore there was no place for him. The sad thing was that nobody tried to stop him or tell him off.

The level of violence against women and the types of violence says a lot about our society. Should we not hang our heads in shame when we read stories like this? Or the second story in this report?

Confusing the 'Confusers'

Hi folks, very sorry to have been quiet for a bit. Once again it's been a busy time for me with various bits of work. There have been too numerous issues to think about that it's been difficult to sort out what to write that might be fresh and original.

Also as I have mentioned before, being on Twitter and microblogging is so much easier that I tend to concentrate on that, rather than this blog. It's a fast way to get news and to pass on news, with a bit of comment thrown in. However commentary in 140 characters is limiting so I will occasionally be fleshing things out in this blog but it would depend on having the time to spare to do it.

What have I been busy with? For one, keeping tabs on the Dr. Asri case. As you know they have charged him with teaching 'matters related to Islam' without certification. Nobody knows what 'matters related to Islam' is meant but the lawyers acting for JAIS say they will elaborate on January 5 when the trial starts at the Gombak Timur Syariah Court. Hardly the fairest way to go about things since how are the defense lawyers to go about preparing a defense when they don't even know what the accusation means. But that's the way the Syariah court in this case works. If anyone is worried whether justice will be served, they are totally justified.

Meantime while people are accusing Dr. Asri of confusing Muslims with his teachings (yes, we get confused if people tell us to be nice to others. But very clear if they tell us to be nasty...), there are politicians who are totally confusing me (not that this is the first time...).

First there is that Zulkifli Nordin of PKR, the one who barged into the Bar Council to interrupt someone who actually agreed with him some months ago and who has a whole list of private members' bills basically meant to shut up anyone who disagrees with his point of view. He's an ardent supporter of Dr. Asri who does not believe that diversity of opinion in Islam is a bad thing and in fact welcomes it. However, very confusingly, he's proposed that Pakatan Rakyat be led by not a politician (although some might argue that he is anyway) but a religious leader, the Mufti of Perak. Who happens to not think much of Dr. Asri.

Are you confused yet? Some of you may recall a very early post of mine about the same Mufti here.

Then the de facto leader of PKR gets up to accuse the BN government of orchestrating this harassment of Dr. Asri. Which is a bit disingenious considering that JAIS is an institution within the Selangor state government, regardless of what the state government does to distance themselves from them and the state Exco member (PAS) in charge of religion, Datuk Hassan Ali, is fully supportive of JAIS. But then up jumps Dr Mashitah, Deputy Minister in charge of religion, not the brightest tool in the shed, who says something like "even if you're a good driver, you need a license to drive."

Uunhhh??? Is that a good analogy at all? Does Michael Schumacher need a license to drive on Malaysian roads? But even more curious, does this mean that the BN government, or at least the said Deputy Minister, is actually supporting the harassment and charging of Dr. Asri???


There have been some people who are speculating that perhaps this has nothing to do with politicians and indeed may be beyond politicians altogether. My blogbro Walski has talked about this in his blog here and here.


Yesterday, Dr. Asri himself talked about a similar movement in his column which was censored by Utusan. For the full version, please read here.



Is something happening here that we are not paying attention to? Are politicians so busy politicking that they are oblivious to insidious threats such as these?

A Tale of Two Launches

I think it would be fair to say that every day there's something or other being launched in KL. Sometimes it's a commercial venture, sometimes a book, new movie, album. Or sometimes a new cause and campaign.

Last week there were two of the latter. But they were rather different in the way they came out.

I blogged about the launch of the Charter of Compassion on November 12. On that day, people all over the world witnessed the launch of the Charter and affirmed it. They promised to show compassion to others and to forego any violence towards people different from them. They agreed to live by the Golden Rule 'Do Unto Others as You Would Want Others To Do Unto You".



I went along to the KL launch of the Charter. It was held at the pretty posh PJ Hilton. Unfortunately I noticed straightaway the lack of 'vibe'. You know that feeling of excitement that surrounds something big? I couldn't feel it.

There was a big board up where I dutifully scrawled a message but I took so long about it that I didn't notice that the Guest-of-Honour Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had arrived and was scrawling something beside me. So embarassing!

Anyway on to the launch proper...the event was organised by Yayasan Budi Penyayang, JUST World Trust and the Malaysian InterFaith Network, all worthy organisations. They had the usual speeches and video and children going up onstage with signs that spelt out 'COMPASSION'. I saw several people I knew from various NGOs.

The event actually ended earlier than scheduled so I managed to get back to the office, all the while wondering what was missing from the whole thing. To me, it felt rather flat. Perhaps it was just the launch. In the afternoon there were two panels, one of religious leaders and one of young people. Unfortunately I had to go to a funeral so had to miss them but I was told they went well although by the time the youth panel came on, the room had emptied considerably.

Meantime I was following other Charter launches elsewhere in the world and they all sounded like wonderful inspiring events. Karen Armstrong herself spoke at the one in Washington DC. Elsewhere people held prayers, walks, readings, meditation, blogs for compassion, a coming together of people for one cause. There was even a 'Compassionate Financial Planners' event in Canada!

But in Malaysia, we had an event in a room where people sat passively, watched and listened.

It was only when I went home and looked at the brochure they gave out that I realised what was the problem. The brochure had photographs and small write-ups of various charities. Orphanages, societies for various diseases, for disabled children. All very worthy but it told me one thing: the organisers had equated compassion with charity.

Which it is most decidedly not. Compassion is about being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and empathise with them. It is not simply about pitying someone or giving them money. It is about genuine and sincere embracing of another to alleviate their pain and suffering. It is most of all about respect for the other, and understanding that they have the same human rights as you do.

It would have been so much better if they had had people get up and say what compassionate act they would do as they affirm the Charter. For example, if someone got up and said that they would ensure that their town was friendlier to disabled people. (As it happened, in an act of non-compassion, the PJ Hilton did not make ramps available for Dr Chandra Mudzaffar, who is in a wheelchair, to get onto the stage. And he's the chair of the Charter for Compassion in Malaysia!). Or if someone said they would tutor orphans facing exams so that they would not be disadvantaged. Or would help transgendered people get jobs. Things like that.

If you go to the Charter website and look up the acts of compassion, you will see many examples big and small that people have pledged to do as part of this movement. Some are just every day acts that they have seen or experienced. Here are some examples:

" My friend Amber's daughter Jessica is dying, she may die anyday. Tonight when I was visiting Jessica in hospital, Amber showed her incredible compassion when she knelt at my feet by Jessica's bed and lovingly cared for my broken foot, an injury so minor compared to her own suffering."

"Last week I met a couple who had recently become parents to an intersex child. I learned from them that their Minister, unable to understand this, had refused to christen the child. I called round and found three ministers who were willing to perform the ceremony and provide pastoral care."

"My friend was a doctor in Zambia working on AIDS. He came home with an idea: link US communities with Zambian caretakers of orphans so the children could go to school. I joined him and others to form Communities without Borders. Now we are providing education for more than 1100 children."

That's what compassion means. Obviously it is something that we Malaysians can also do, if only we truly looked around and saw what was needed. Needed by others, not ourselves.

I read a story in a blog of a teacher here in Malaysia who was faced with a schoolboy who was late to school every day. After several warnings, he had to cane the boy as punishment which the boy submitted to passively. Yet the next day, the boy was late again.

Finally the teacher went to the boy's house and found that he lived in an extremely poor area. He saw him and his mother standing by the roadside waiting. Eventually another boy ran up, promptly took off his school uniform and gave it to the first boy, his brother. It turned out that the family was so poor that the two brothers had to share one set of uniforms.

But what was the teacher's reaction? After crying and hugging the boy, the teacher decided that what he should do was pray, fast, read the Quran and after about six other things which mainly was about himself, he finally came to 'help orphans and those in need'. It didn't seem to occur to him that his very first action should have been to find some way to get a set of uniforms for the boy so that he would not only not have to share with his brother but would also not need to be late for school. Or better still, buy a new set of uniforms for both the brothers because the current one must be worse for wear by now.

That's a lack of compassion. I would put that in the same category as able-bodied people who park in disabled parking spaces because those are nearest the lifts or who abuse their domestic workers by making them clean three houses and six cars and sleep for only 4 hours per night.

So we shall see where the Charter goes in Malaysia.

A day later I attended another launch and this time the atmosphere was completely different. The Bar Council's Constitutional Committee launched a campaign called PerlembagaanKu/MyConsti which was not only a timely one but one that was conducted in a way far different from any BC campaigns thus far. I think it helped that the 99 members of the MyConsti team were young and were not all lawyers because they devised a campaign that was hip and happening, innovative and creative.

Using a fun cartoony logo, they used Facebook and Twitter to tell the public about the campaign. In so doing they managed to viral spread the message and create a buzz. At the same time, they got the mainstream media involved and got more coverage than any other campaign before.

At the launch, there was a real air of excitement. Instead of hiring a professional MC, one of the committee did it himself in perfect and correct Bahasa. Then Edmund Bon, the baby-faced chair of the committee gave a rousing speech about the campaign and why it was necessary. It was the sort of inspiring speech that would have been good at the Charter for Compassion launch too. (Perhaps one should not get politicians to launch these things. Datuk VK Liew, the Deputy Minister in the PM's Department in charge of law, gave a speech that seemed dull and pedestrian compared to Edmund's.)



They showed a video which was funny yet gives the message. And after the launch there was an interesting forum on the Constitution in which five legal experts gave their sometimes differing views. At times hilarious (as when Prof Azmi Sharom said that some politicians took the Constitution as a manual titled 'Governance for Dummies'), the forum was nevertheless informative and inspiring. We realised that we really know so little about the Constitution and that very neglect of it is what allows us all to be manipulated.

So two very worthy causes but two different approaches. Guess which one is likely to have more legs?