Rantings byMM

Gong Xi Fa Cai!!

2012-01-22T19:32:00.000+08:00

Chinese New Year Dragon by Claude Martinot

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year! May the Year of the Dragon bring joyous dances, dazzling adventures and fulfilled dreams!! And plentiful prosperity of course!

The Year of Obliviousness

2011-12-31T18:13:00.000+08:00

If there was a word that kept popping out at me this entire year, it was 'obliviousness'. It just felt to me that so many people spent 2011 being completely oblivious to what was happening around them. Whether it was Middle Eastern dictators who refused to understand why their people were taking to the streets, to Wall Street bankers who kept awarding themselves humongous bonuses even after their banks had gone bankrupt and people had lost their homes, to the politicians who refused to connect all the many floods and other extreme weather to climate change, so many people at the pinnacles of power remained oblivious to changes going on in the world.

In the Arab countries, people went out onto the streets not because they are a bunch of thugs wanting to destabilise the government. They went out because after years and years of repression, they simply got fed up and wanted to say that they want the same things as other human beings around the world - freedom to speak, to have choices, to have a say on what happens to their countries. Why did they 'suddenly' want this? Because they saw that it is possible for other people to have that freedom without their country going to the dogs. In any case, their countries, with so much poverty and unemployment, were already going to the dogs under their leaders. So what was there to lose? For a great summary about the many myths about the Arab Spring, read this by Prof Juan Cole.

Yes,the revolutions remain incomplete and imperfect. The leaders coming in may not be the nicest people on earth but hey, that's what you get with democracy. What the Arab rakyat most cannot stand is corruption so any alternative to that is welcome. If the new lot also proves corrupt and incompetent, then they should know that they'll also face the same protests.

The Arab protests perhaps could be said to have inspired other protests, most notably the Occupy movement. The Occupy movement started from people's anger at how the US banks, indeed the whole economic system, have favoured the rich 1% while the other 99% have had to suffer the consequences. When people have lost jobs and their homes, it's hard to read about bankers and other corporate tycoons living it up on huge salaries and bonuses, spending money on all sorts of designer goods and toys. It's the sheer obliviousness of the small number of the wealthy, just like the corrupt Arab dictators, to the fact that people will resent such ostentation insensitively pushed in their faces.

It is also obliviousness that fueled the growth of these Occupy movements. You might be able to count people on the streets but you can't count how widespread the idea behind it is, nor can you control what happens to it. So if you try and dismiss these few people, or worse, try to disperse them with violent means, then you ignite a spark which allows the idea to spread. How can you talk about democracy in the US, say, when the police are teargassing their own citizens in the same way that the Syrian government is? OK, the Syrians are using real bullets but still, what sense of obliviousness is it that let mayors and police chiefs allow their cops to teargas, and in one infamous case, pepperspray students full in the face, and then expect things to peacefully die down? People are no longer ants meant to be sprayed away, nowadays they get larger and bite back.

Which brings me back to the obliviousness in our own country. I wonder why we act as if the rest of the world have nothing to do with us, and yet still want to stand tall in the world? One example of an oblivious statement this year: the MCA guy who said that we should not give overseas Malaysians the right to vote because they don't know the true picture of what is happening back home. Hello, what planet are you on? Have you heard of the internet, or even relatives who can talk on the phone to their families overseas?

Of course, the prime example of sheer blindness is the government's response to Bersih by refusing to see it as anything but a 'ploy' by opposition parties to supposedly overthrow the government. I never saw a worse example of bad public relations ever. While there may have been political parties involved in Bersih, the government failed to recognise that there were also many ordinary Malaysians who were watching it all happening and deciding for themselves what they thought of it. And every government misstep became major recruitment ads for Bersih. Ban t-shirts? Join Bersih. Badmouth Ambiga and make ridiculous accusations about her? Join Bersih. Arrest six people, including a popular MP, under Emergency Ordinance? Join Bersih.

If I were the PM, I would have gone down to the street that day on July 9, stood between the FRU and the rallygoers and seen the many Aunties and Uncles and young people who were there, and decided, right, these are not thugs and there has to be a better way to deal with this. That was the moment when leadership should have overwhelmed politics.

There is no denying of course that Bersih had an effect, with the Parliamentary Select Committee being formed and some changes being made. In the end, the Election Commission agreed to using indelible ink. Honestly, did we really have to go through all that rigmarole just to get that? It just goes to show that when there's a will, there's a way. Now we just need the will to implement all the other recommendations. I have a particular bee in my bonnet about the overseas voting. Every few years I see my husband and maid trudge off to the Indonesian embassy to vote in their elections. Gee, if that country that we constantly look down on can do it, why can't we?

There are other examples of obliviousness in our country. One of the main ones is the habit of being oblivious to the fact that our people are not as dumb as our government thinks it is. Despite our failing education system and our cowed mainstream media, people still manage to rise above the dumbness to learn for themselves what is happening. They can see what are lies, manipulations and injustices. After all, if the Arab people can, why can't we, with our better education and infrastructure? And we can also see when we are being treated like dumb asses.

For instance, there was this bit of news yesterday. All I can say is, if you're fool enough to hand over a cheque for RM1.7million for services not yet rendered, then you're asking for it la. And it's not going to make us more sympathetic, sorry.

I also don't get how oblivious we can be to the fact that the world is watching us. Thus far this year, the rest of the world knows Malaysia as the country that banned line dancing for religious reasons, has a club for women who think they should be whores for their husbands, believes that minorities are overrunning the country, passes a law for peaceful assembly which ostensibly does not allow any assembly, thinks yellow t-shirts are dangerous and that Muslims are being converted by solar-powered electronic Bibles. Are we aiming for the Silliest Country in the World Award? And do we expect to be taken seriously anywhere?

Of course, obliviousness cuts both ways. Our oblivious leaders rely on us being oblivious to what they're up to too. They rely on us accepting uncritically everything they say and do. So when someone says, "This is politically-motivated." or "How would I know what they do?", they expect us to swallow it all and smile benignly at them, poor victims that they are. I despair sometimes when I see people, especially young people, repeat word for word what is told to them. Most despairingly are the students who say that if they are allowed to participate in politics, they will do badly in their studies. I have to ask, are they straight A students right now? Are they currently embarking on groundbreaking research that they can't take their eyes off their books for even a second, except to make ridiculous statements like that? But then again, when you have lecturers that say this, what can we expect of our students?

I was thinking of doing up a list of Most Oblivious Malaysians in 2011. But I don't think I'll get away with it. Suffice to say, that there are far too many public figures who are oblivious to the fact that, to the rest of us, they are greedy, arrogant, corrupt, stupid and have no business being where they are. And to the fact that we the public are totally sick of all the posturings and pontificatings that they assume we want and need.

The rest of the world is waking up to the fact that in order to survive, you simply have to have your ear to the ground, to genuinely and humbly listen and to give people what they want. It is no use saying that people don't know what they want; sometimes they have to be given what they think they need in order for them to learn. That might mean hardship sometimes. But it has to be their choice, not yours.

It's not easy being non-oblivious. Sometimes it means sleepless nights. But in the longterm, maybe long after we're gone, it'll be worth it.

Wish you all a 2012 that's alert and aware.

Merry Christmas from Down Under!

2011-12-25T09:53:00.001+08:00

Hi everyone, wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas and a New Year that's joyous, peaceful and fulfilling!

I'm in Australia on a short holiday. It's been pretty hectic. We drove from Melbourne to Sydney, with a stop to have lunch with friends in Albury and then to Wagga Wagga to stay overnight. It was mostly a nostalgia trip as hubby went to uni in Wagga Wagga. In Sydney we had to take our Harry Potter-obsessed daughter to see the Harry Potter exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, and then did what we've always wanted to do, climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I really recommend it. It's completely doable by anyone except those who get totally paralysed by the fear of heights. It's perfectly safe because they dress you in the right clothes and you are tethered the entire time to the railings. The day we went up, the weather wasn't too great but still the views are breathtaking.

Meanwhile, in case anyone's still fussing over whether it's okay to wish anyone Merry Christmas or not, here's an enlightening article about Muslims in the US here.

Have a fabulous holiday!!

Boogieing on My Own

2011-11-29T14:44:00.000+08:00

A question I'm often asked these days is, why don't I enter politics and why don't I stand for elections? It always puzzles me when I'm asked this because it's not a question that I ever entertain myself. So for people to even think of it is something I find curious.

But I suppose I shouldn't be. I come from a 'political' family, apparently, and for many people, it is only 'natural' to go into the 'family business', given that other 'political families' have done the same. But what most don't understand is that in my family, it is not at all natural. If my parents had their way, all their children would be doctors because that's their real wish for us. But none of us did. They left us to decide for ourselves what we wanted to do, hence we all wound up doing anything but medicine.

Nor was there much encouragement to go into politics. My father doesn't happen to believe in dynastic politics so he never encouraged us to enter the field, certainly not while he was in office. That's why my brother Mukhriz didn't join until after Dad stood down. We don't as a rule huddle as a family to talk about political strategy of any kind, though of course as people who are aware of current affairs, we do talk about what is going on around us on the rare occasions that we get together. And believe me, it's a much more well-rounded conversation than you'd expect.

So there was never any talk about me going into politics or even joining any political party, which would naturally, I suppose, have been UMNO. Certainly my parents have never insisted I should, probably because they know me well enough to know that I won't fit in. Neither did I think of it myself, having a natural aversion to any sort of political organisation, whichever side they may be on. Something about the need to always toe the party line, wear uniforms, sing party anthems etc turns me off. I'm one of those people who cannot stand dancing poco-poco for too long because I get impatient with the need to conform with everyone else. I prefer to boogie on my own.

So entering politics is something I've never considered. My only regret really is that in all the years that Dad was in office, I never ever went on the campaign trail during elections, not to campaign but to observe it from close quarters. I sort of feel that as a writer, I should have done that for the experience but I never wanted to at the time and didn't really think of what I missed til Dad stepped down. Ah well, can't turn back time now and yes, it'll be a major omission in any autobiography I might one day write.

But lately I've had to analyse why people want me to go into politics. There are basically two categories of people who keep mentioning it. One lot are those who get very irritated with the many comments I make on the state of politics today. They think that if I want to comment on it then I should enter politics or butt out. By that they mean join a political party and stand for elections. The thing is I don't find a single one of the political parties in Malaysia today at all appealing, whether in Barisan or in Pakatan. I think it's because they are all filled with politicians.

Unfortunately politics today is pretty much a discredited occupation. Once upon a time it was a noble profession because people entered politics to fight for their fellow citizens. They wanted freedom, self-determination, the right to progress on their own terms. Politicians then came from professions who were in touch with the realities on the ground - teachers, doctors, lawyers, social workers.

Today we have to wonder what background some of our politicians have. Some don't seem to have worked at a regular job at all, going almost directly from being student activist to national figure. Some may have worked before but seem to lack a basic grasp of the fundamentals of political representation and governance. Some have been there so long that they seem to have forgotten what life as an ordinary person is like.

If we had problems with our health, we would go to a professional who has done years and years of study to qualify to certain standards. This is important because we need to trust them in order to place ourselves in their care. Similarly we wouldn't ask just anyone to design and build our homes, offices, roads etc. We would go to architects, engineers, contractors and others who have the sort of professional qualifications that would be required.

Yet when it comes to governing the country, these days we accept pretty low standards. We choose people with either little governing experience or qualifications which are often suspect. That's partly because at the candidate level we don't have a say as to who gets to stand for elections. We just vote for whoever is there on the slate. And really very often, as was the case in the last election for me, we really don't know what makes these candidates worth voting for. We're supposed to simply trust the party they come from. If that were all it takes to secure votes, why do parties talk about 'winnable' candidates? The candidate himself or herself does matter.

Perhaps we should institute some sort of exam for wannabe politicians and only allow them to stand for elections if they pass. Certainly the exam should include knowledge of the Federal Constitution and world affairs. Plus maybe a long essay on "why I would be good for this country." Exam papers should be marked by a panel of ordinary citizens and results made public.

So one lot thinks I should enter politics because as an individual or as an NGO, I shouldn't be talking about politics. I have a problem with that line of thinking because for one, why should I have any less qualifications than the lot that we have right now? And secondly, as Aung San Syu Kyii said, "even if you don't like politics, politics will come to you." Like it or not, politics affects everyone so we should all be able to have a say, any time, all the time and not just once every five years. Politics cannot be limited to 'professional' politicians from political parties only. After all, what they, the limited few, do affects the rest of us, the majority of the citizenry.

Then there's the other lot who think I should enter politics because they like what I've been saying and doing all these years. Well, thank you but... no thanks. Firstly, as I said, I'm not about to join any political party and therefore if I ever stood, I'd be an independent. The impact of independents thus far has been pretty minimal. Standing for elections is a difficult and expensive business and there is no point, I think, in standing and in the unlikelihood of a win, being one of a tiny number of independents in Parliament. Against the behemoths that are our existing political parties, we'd just get drowned. Unless there are enough independents that they essentially form a third party which both sides need to court. But fat chance of that! (I did once on Twitter jokingly suggest forming a Common Sense Party, because that seemed to be the trait most lacking in our politicians across the board. Surprisingly many people said they would join it!)

In any case one needs to enter politics at a relatively young age in order to have the stamina for it. And I'm getting a bit long in the tooth for that I think.

So I kinda like being where I am, an independent observer of events. But I know I confuse people a lot, principally people who are so immersed in politics that they can only see things in black and white. Well there are some of us who prefer to stand on principles rather than politics. I've talked about hyperpartisanship before, where people on one side, by default, insist the other side is wrong because they are on the other, and therefore 'wrong', side. I think all political parties are guilty of this, which is really a shame because then we, the electorate, get forgotten. Surely nobody can be totally wrong, or totally right all the time.

Standing on principle means that regardless of who, or what party they belong to, if they're right, they're right, if they're wrong, they're wrong. And if civil society ie NGOs, individuals, writers, artists and everyone else who don't belong to political parties, is to have any credibility, then we should call it as it is. Our strength is in NOT being partisan.

Personally, my principle is that I will always support and help those who have no voice. Unfortunately, usually, though not always, the voiceless are the ones most ignored by those in power and even those who aspire to power. They don't know anybody, have no money, have few outlets to have their grievances heard. Often they are scorned and stigmatised by society for being different. Yet I do believe that the true measure of a good government is how it takes care of the weakest segments of society, not the strongest.

I also do not understand injustice and inequality. My years at the Malaysian AIDS Council opened my eyes to a lot of both. As my 'guru', the late Dr Jonathan Mann, emphasised, one's health is directly affected by one's enjoyment of the basic human rights. The more rights you have, the better your health. And the opposite is also true.

So if you cannot have basic health care, your right to life, to health, to employment is jeopardised, if not totally violated. If you do not have the right to education, then again all your other basic rights are affected. All these rights are guaranteed not only under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also in our Federal Constitution. Therefore I think it should be the role of all of us, as well as politicians, to fight for those rights for everyone. And if our politicians don't, then it is incumbent on civil society to call them out on it. (By the way, Norhayati Kaprawi explains it all more succinctly than me here.)

For me therefore, life is about principles. And trying to tell the truth is a great part of that. This Raya, I had several people come up to me at open house and ask me why I have joined the opposition. I'm sure the oppos may be just as surprised as me to hear this! Apparently, joining the Bersih rally is tantamount to joining the opposition and these people believed it because some noisy people said so.

Well! That's news to me! I went to the Bersih rally for all the reasons I said in my post about it. I do believe in clean and fair elections. Who on earth would want dirty and unfair ones? I'm sorry, that is beyond my comprehension. I also did not feel it right to remain in the safety of my home while so many young people I know, including my daughter, were risking being teargassed at the rally. My presence there doesn't mean that I have thrown my lot in with those political parties in the opposition. I'm afraid I don't particularly trust them because after all, they ARE politicians and by nature they'll say anything to get a vote. They may sound good on some things but a good test, I find, is to check their attitudes towards women. Most of them are quite shaky or fail miserably on that score. (Of course I would welcome any election pledges to lift every single reservation on CEDAW for example but I don't see anyone doing that yet...)

On the other hand, there are those who purport to work for the ruling government who do them no favours either. When they censor news, or worse, make them up or distort them, then they only make people angry. It is a mistake to think that the ordinary Malaysian is too dumb to see through all sorts of political machinations. And when you see the powerful unjustly attack the powerless, then the decent citizen's natural inclination is to get indignant. It is beyond unseemly really when the most powerful people in the country see fit to call individuals all sorts of ugly names. For one thing, it makes them look dreadfully insecure.

This is therefore a plea for some common sense and decency to return to our political arena. Voters like me want to elect representatives who truly represent us and our concerns, are regular people with good values and are nice to everyone, even those they don't feel naturally comfortable with. We want people who respect every citizen in this country and who understand that everyone has the same rights under the Federal Constitution, with some exceptions (okay, it's there in the Constitution, let's not deny that). And we want gracious and magnanimous people who, if they lose, will reflect humbly on what they could have done better and not go all out to sabotage winners.

We want leaders who realise that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are among the rights they need to protect, not curb. We need leaders who have the guts to say so. We don't want wishy-washy people.(And as a fine example of wishy-washiness and confusion, today the lawyers' walk to protest the Peaceful Assembly Bill was itself protested at by others who didn't seem to realise that with this new Bill, they too would be prohibited.)

And I think we want a stop to nonsensical statements by all parties, statements which seem more geared to getting headlines than about real well-thought-out policy on real issues, not manufactured ones. People, there's a global economic disaster looming!!

Perhaps for the coming elections, instead of our political parties or coalitions issuing manifestos on what they will do for us, we the voters should issue a people's manifesto on what we want from whichever coalition that wins. A list of demands which, if they want our vote, they must promise to fulfil. In other words, WE set the agenda. Then they can compete for our votes. And let's make it clear that our votes cannot be bought with money. We are just way too expensive for any amount of money.

So for anyone who thinks I'm on this side or that side, make no mistake: I'm terribly snotty about the company I keep. And thus far, there are truly very few people who imagine themselves our leaders who I could stand to sit down at dinner with. I do think however that there are lots of decent people lower down the scale, those who are genuinely progressive and sincere but who are perhaps suppressed by the perennial need to toe the line. And that's a real pity because it's all of us who lose in the end.

Making Room for One Another

2011-11-04T15:32:00.000+08:00

Folks, this was a note (below) I wrote about two years ago after I saw the documentary 'Jihad for Love'. I thought, given the events of recent days, that it was timely to let a wider audience read it.

There may be those who say we should not even talk about this, that to do so would somehow disturb public order. But how have we been able to respond to anything without seeking knowledge about it first? Are we not enjoined to learn before we react? Or do we simply respond based on whims, fancies and rumours? Is that what we call an intelligent response, or do we not care whether our responses are intelligent or not? And how does this urge to constantly punish benefit us? Does it make us feel better about ourselves when we punish someone else?

It so happened that recently a report on Muslim LGBTs in the US came out. Not all of it is relevant to us here in Malaysia but some of it is interesting and enlightening. Read it here and then, if you want, criticise it. But please don't react without reading it.

Al-Quran 58:11 (Asad) O YOU who have attained to faith! When you are told, “Make room for one another in your collective life”, do make room: [and in return,] God will make room for you [in His grace]. And whenever you are told, “Rise up [for a good deed]”, do rise up; [and] God will exalt by [many] degrees those of you who have attained to faith and, [above all,] such as have been vouchsafed [true] knowledge: for God is fully aware of all that you do.

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Jihad for Love: My Response to the Movie

October 5, 2009

I watched a film last night which moved me so much I felt I had to write about it. At the post-movie discussion I felt so inarticulate in expressing what I felt about it that it kept me up all night. So in order to exorcise those thoughts from my head, I thought I would put them down here.

The movie was 'Jihad for Love' by Parvez Sharma, made in 2007. It is essentially about the plight of several gay Muslims, men and women, around the world including a gay Imam in South Africa, a gay Egyptian man who is forced into exile in France, some gay Iranian men also forced into exile after undergoing torture ( 100 lashes in one case) and some Egyptian and Turkish lesbian women.

My response to it is from that of a Muslim woman who believes that Islam is based on justice, equality and compassion and who wants to fight the injustices perpetuated in the name of Islam from within.

The first thing that struck me about all the gay people in the movie was how religious they were. Indeed, far more than me. To them, praying and seeking help from God was the most natural thing. No doubt the Imam from South Africa had far more formal training than the rest but it impressed me that all of them, without exception, were always conscious of God, of their duties as Muslims. Furthermore in seeking to find answers to what they view as sexual orientations that they are born with and cannot help, it is to God and religion that they turn to, nowhere else. Not a single one seemed to have turned to drugs or anything. Certainly the idea of abandoning religion totally seemed not to have occurred to any of them.

Secondly, they all seemed like very loving family people. The imam was in fact a divorced father of three and the scenes with his children, who clearly adore him, are particularly touching. He has not hidden the fact that he is gay from them because he is out in the open but their love for him and declarations of support should anyone try to harm him underscored to me what family values is supposed to be about.

Similarly with the others. The young men forced into exile are seen phoning their mothers and the conversations are clearly emotional. Their mothers miss them, they miss their mothers. They all wish they did not have to be apart. I was intrigued that the Egyptian's conversation had so many references to religion ( as in "I have wonderful news today on the Prophet's birthday!) including ending the conversation with his mother saying "There is no God but God" and him responding, "And Mohamad is the Prophet of God." Perhaps this is typical of Egyptian culture but certainly no Malay I know ever speaks like this.

All of them live with the constant need to find some way of reconciling their sexuality with their religion. It is difficult and most have to live a life of secrecy. But not once do they abandon all hope that God is always merciful, compassionate and full of love and, as one of them said, "always by my side." The Egyptian man who was imprisoned and raped said he got through his ordeal by always keeping his Quran by his side and reading it constantly. I don't know of anyone with more privileged lives who do that.

In the discussion afterwards, I said that the film was the best religious lesson that I ever had because it illustrated how Muslims, in times of adversity ( and God knows these men and women faced adversity beyond most of our imaginations), find their solace in religion because they had been taught all their lives that God is Merciful and Compassionate. And in fact, these are His most important attributes. It served to remind us who are constantly having to face so many issues regarding religion to be steadfast and to keep the faith.

One of the commenters after the film had asked why it was that Muslim gay people wanted to "have their cake and eat it" ie be Muslim AND gay. This assumes that there is simply no room for gay people in Islam. I had to respond to this because it is the same argument that Muslim feminists hear: how can you want equality between men and women and still be a Muslim? That comes from a profound misunderstanding of what Islam is, and confuses human interpretations and implementation of Islamic law with what I believe God intended. I find no references in the Quran that God said we should discriminate either between the sexes or between heterosexuals and homosexuals. So why would it not be possible to believe in equality before God?

Besides, who is anyone to tell me, any gay person or any Muslim for that matter, that they should not be Muslim just because your views are different from what is considered 'the norm'? If you are born and bred Muslim, the values, ethics and indeed rituals of Islam are part of what you are, the very fabric of what you are made. How does anyone simply abandon this? Indeed few people do and I would suggest when it happens it is often because there was nobody to explain to them what Islam really means, particularly by referring to the Quran. (And it is the Quran that says "there is no compulsion in religion"). Instead 'Islam' to them is exemplified by the political environment around them which tends to be harsh and extreme, and indeed far from the spirit of justice that Islam is built on.

Which brings us to the issue of the state and religion. It is clear that the men and women who have been forced into hiding or exile are not running away from God or their faith but just from the state. The state which justifies imprisoning, beating and killing in the name of religion. The young Iranian who finally goes to Canada may have left his family and country behind but he brought his faith with him. This was what caused him to collapse into tears once he landed in his new country; that he had been able to escape but not the many thousands of others who did not have the means to. He was not talking about escaping from God but only from the clutches of the state.

Indeed what moved me most about Jihad for Love was how intensely personal each person in it felt about his religion. It dispels the stereotype that homosexuals or transvestites are people without religion or have abandoned it. And it is clear, that no matter what the state does in the name of religion, it will not be able to erase Islam from the hearts of these people.

And that is our only weapon, those of us who have chosen to fight for equality and justice within Islam. That no matter what our detractors do to us - call for boycotts, censure, threaten us with harm - they cannot take Islam away from us. We may not be THEIR Muslims but we are Muslims nevertheless.

How to Win An Election (Not)

2011-10-30T12:38:00.001+08:00

Well, well, well ...this must be a new strategy to win elections...alienate the hearts and minds of half the population by saying that they should not have any rights. Rights are supposedly a Western invention, which seems to say that in Islam, one has no rights, especially if you're a woman.

These are the same people behind HIMPUN. I've always maintained that these supremacist movements are basically macho male movements and women have absolutely nothing to gain from them. Well, here's proof.

Muslim NGO bares fangs over gender rights forum

7:16PM Oct 29, 2011

A Muslim NGO is taking issue with a roundtable discussion on gender rights and women’s issues on the basis that it allegedly promotes “Western” ideas that it claims are a threat to Islamic values.

The group, Majlis Perundingan Pertubuhan Islam Malaysia (Mapim), in a statement today objected to the event ‘Gender Equality: Unaddressed Women's Rights Issues’ organised by Empower on Oct 31 in Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Mapim general-secretary Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid singled out two sessions at the roundtable in particular, ‘UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Defending the Human Rights of Lesbians, Bisexual Women and Transgenders in Malaysia’ by Angela Kuga Thas and ‘A CEDAW Approach to Family Law in Advancing Equality and Non Discrimination’ by Lalitha Menon.

“Mapim rejects attempts by a group of secularists and liberals who are keen to be slaves of the Western agenda,” said Mohd Azmi.

“Discussions such as this is secretly aimed at fuelling campaigns and advocacy to change the values and moral foundations of Islam that are central to Malay-Muslims and Malaysians in general,” he charged.

“We are concerned with attempts by this group which want to highlight the rights of lesbians and bisexual women in terms of human rights within the country.”

He said that it was not acceptable to bring to the fore discussions of the rights of lesbians and gays in terms of human rights.

“Lifestyles that are opposed to Islam and Eastern culture should not be made topics for debate because Malaysian society has already been shaped by religious values that should be respected,” said Mohd Azmi.

According to publicity material on the forum found on the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) website, the full-day roundtable discussion "aims at promoting and monitoring gender equality to see whether it is in line with the rights-based framework as put forward in the rights-based framework as put forward in the CEDAW, ratified by Malaysia in 1995".

It will feature opening remarks by Suhakam commissioner James Nayagam.

No to discussion on women’s equality

In the same breath, the Mapim representative also riled against attempts at the same forum to discuss women-related family laws “from the angle of equality and discrimination”.
“Mapim regrets efforts to challenge Islamic family laws and those who criticise it based on human and gender rights, such as is highlighted in Western culture and values.

“Efforts to continue to question Islamic family laws within the Islamic Family Enactment that now exists in this country will bring with it huge implications, that is to move for Islamic laws to be changed to suit the values and lifestyles of the secular-liberal West, in the name of women’s rights and human rights,” he said.

Using the age-old argument that the position of Islam is guaranteed in the constitution as the nation's official religion, Mohd Azmi argued that this position should be “entrenched as the basis of all forms of thought that are advanced in the mainstream of our society”.

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Perhaps this Azmi fellow should travel to Tunisia where in the recent elections, the Islamist party Ehnnada reaffirmed that they would respect women's rights there. Tunisia has been one of the most advanced Muslim countries when it comes to women's rights, even outlawing polygamy since its independence from France in 1956.

28 October 2011Last updated at 14:06 GMT

Tunisia's Islamists 'reaffirm commitment to women'

Smoke is seen in the sky as police use tear gas on crowds protesting after the country's first democratic elections

The leader of the Islamist party that won the most seats in Tunisia's elections has said women's social gains would not be reversed.

Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi promised to strengthen the role of women in Tunisian politics.
Mr Ghannouchi appealed for calm in Sidi Bouzid where violent protests broke out after election officials disqualified candidates from a rival party.
Tunisian troops fired in the air to disperse hundreds of protesters.
There were no reports of casualties.
The BBC's Chloe Arnold, in North Africa, says the protests have marred what was otherwise praised by international observers as a peaceful, free and fair election on Sunday.
Policy change fears Since its victory in Sunday's vote, Ennahda has sought to reassure secularists and investors, nervous about the prospect of Islamists holding power in one of the Arab world's most liberal countries, by saying it would not ban alcohol, stop tourists wearing bikinis on the beaches or impose Islamic banking.
But despite the reassurances, Ennahda's victory is causing concern in some parts of Tunisia, who fear the party could later change its policies, our correspondent says.

"Ennahda reaffirms its commitment to the women of Tunisia, to strengthen their role in political decision-making, in order to avoid any going back on their social gains," Mr Ghannouchi said at a news conference.
No attempt would be made to force women to wear the headscarf, including in government, he added.
The party, which won more than 41% of the vote and 90 seats in the 217-member parliament, is in coalition talks, reportedly with its nearest rivals, the CPR and Ettakatol.
Correspondents say both are left-wing secularist parties which have insisted they will maintain Tunisia's Muslim identity.

Driving Out the Darkness

2011-10-27T00:07:00.001+08:00

I know this is a bit late, folks, but I wish you all lots of light and happiness in the coming year!

I've been very slack I know. My current excuse is that I've had a bad cough this past week. The trouble with coughs is that you don't always look unwell but when the coughing fit comes, then you become doubled up into this convulsive mess and really it's not a pretty sight. And when it happens at night, then you wind up not sleeping. Cue one very grumpy Marina the next day.

Of course my usual excuse is that I much prefer the fast-paced world of Twitter, where you get news very quickly and move from subject to subject at the pace of eye-blinks. The trouble with that is of course that you get no time to really sit and ponder the issues of the day with any depth. And perhaps that is the problem with all of us today, that we no longer ruminate enough, we react from the slightest of information, stimulated by quick impressions.

Anyway a lot has been happening lately that it's hard to sort out what to comment on. Over in Libya, Muamar Gadaffi finally lost. Unfortunately he lost in the most gruesome of ways, which doesn't bode well for the future of Libya. I get quite amused seeing all sorts of indignant Malaysians commenting on how ungrateful Libyans are about Gadaffi. That's a bit like foreigners telling us our country is paradise when we know there's a lot wrong with it. I don't think we really know unless we live there what it meant to live under Gadaffi. Like many Arab leaders, there were some things he did well, and many he didn't. We might like his defiance of the West, but that didn't help some of the Libyan citizens who were jailed and even killed during his very long regime. Besides, there is really no excuse for anyone, no matter how benign, to stay in power for 42 years.

As an aside, Gadaffi was wellknown for his flamboyance including his odd costumes and his female bodyguards. Many thus assumed he was somewhat nuts. But about 20 years ago, I sat next to a foreign ambassador who had actually served in Libya and he said that most assuredly, Gadaffi was not crazy. Which rather makes things worse.

In much the same week, the Israelis and Hamas finally came to an agreement to exchange prisoners. In return for the one Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who has been held for about five years by Hamas, the Israelis agreed to release 1027 Palestinian prisoners. This was fabulous news for for the families of the released prisoners, some of whom had been in Israeli prisons for over 30 years, but not so great for the remaining 6000 or so Palestinians still imprisoned, including women and children. So as always with the Palestinian issue, one tiny step forward but millions more to go before peace actually becomes reality.

Back home, I don't even want to get into the ridiculous debate going on about hudud. Despite all the wishful thinking of some of our politicians, it is not going to happen. And it should not happen. And certainly not by force as some delusional so-called ulamas have claimed, without seemingly realising that not only is a system imposed by force ever likely to succeed, but it is in fact unIslamic.

Among the best arguments against hudud is by the Islamic Renaissance Front here and by Art Harun here. And for a view on how hudud will affect women, do go to the Recommended Readings section of the SIS website.

And then there was HIMPUN. I have no problem with their right to speak out and to gather peacefully. But I don't have to agree with them. And it seems that the 995,000 Muslims who didn't turn up at the gathering also didn't agree with them. Or at least couldn't be bothered to get off their butts to.

Not to be cowed by the underwhelming numbers though, HIMPUN leaders, perhaps bolstered by our PM praising them for not being like Bersih 2.0 ( you know, larger numbers, more multi-ethnic and multi-religious, more focussed, also peaceful if it weren't for the teargas and water cannons fired at them), insisted that the Government has to implement their 10-point demands which include an Anti-Apostasy Law. So we'll see la if our dear leaders will accede to a 5000-strong crowd's 10-point demands instead of the at least 30,000-strong rally's 8-point demands, some of which they are already implementing.

I think sometimes our country is just plain crazy. In the same week that the Obedient Wives Club launches a sex manual that nobody will be allowed to read ( because you have to be an overseas OWC member to get it), PAS Youth predictably enough is protesting about Elton John coming for a concert here. Art Harun is tremendously funny and sharp about it here. I saw Elton perform a long long time ago in London when I was a student. I certainly didn't become gay because of it, and neither did the guys who were at the same concert. Meantime in the years since, through his Elton John AIDS Foundation, Elton has raised millions of dollars to fund treatment for People Living with HIV all over the world as well as prevention programmes. No wonder he got a knighthood from Queen Elisabeth II in 1996.

We on the other hand only thrive on condemning people. Some of you may have read my last column. If you don't know what that was referring to, here's the programme in question. (I can't upload the video here because it is unlisted. Hopefully you can see it.)

So my wish this Festival of Light is really for more enlightenment, where people realise that to be hateful, to spew hate, is only to attract more hate, not love.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so aptly put it: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

p/s do you like the new format?

An Israeli Soldier Speaks About Occupation

2011-09-22T17:08:00.000+08:00

The Palestinian Authority is making a bid to have the United Nations recognise it as a sovereign state during this current session of the United Nations General Assembly. Predictably the United States is opposing the bid and will veto it in the Security Council. But more than 100 countries already recognise Palestine as a state and will likely support the bid.

It has to be said that not all Palestinians themselves support the bid for statehood. Here is one of the best explanations why. It is not the same reason as why the US isn't supportive.

Whatever it is, the occupation of Palestine by Israel continues to be a thorn in the side of world peace. If anyone regards it as morally correct and just, then read what a former Israeli soldier has to say about it:

Noam Chayut: Israeli occupation is neither moral nor legitimate

Thursday, 22 September 2011

In 1979, the year I was born, the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was 12 years old. I was 10 during the first Palestinian uprising, when my father and his comrades in a reserve unit forced innocent Palestinians out of their homes and shops and, as a form of collective punishment, sent them to clean the streets of graffiti opposing Israeli occupation.

When I joined the army, the 30th anniversary of occupation was being "celebrated", and three years later, as a young officer, I was sent with my soldiers to confront the second intifada. In one month of riots we killed a hundred Palestinians and many more were wounded by live ammunition.

We were told that our goal was "to sear into the consciousness of Palestinian civil society that terrorism doesn't pay." To achieve this, we were to "demonstrate our presence". This meant entering Palestinian residential areas at any time, day or night, throwing stun grenades, shooting in the air or at water tanks, throwing tear gas grenades, creating noise and fear. For the very same reason, we committed revenge attacks such as demolishing the homes of terrorists' families, or killing random Palestinian policemen (armed or unarmed): an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If militants attacked a road, we would close it to Palestinian traffic; if stones were thrown at cars on a road, we would place an indefinite curfew on the closest village.

The Israeli military regime over the Palestinian population is now in its 45th year, and while Palestinian violence has dramatically declined, Israeli soldiers still testify about being assigned to "disrupt the day-to-day routine" in Palestinian areas to create in the local community the feeling of "being constantly pursued".

It is still unclear what the Palestinian leadership will propose to the UN tomorrow, beyond recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. We don't know if, or how, the outcome of any vote will be felt on the ground. However, testimonies from more than 750 former Israeli soldiers and officers who have served in the Occupied Territories over the past decade, make one thing clear: from the point of view of the Israeli army, the occupation is not a temporary means of controlling the population. There is no end to it in sight.

Those who oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state cling to a false belief that Israel's occupation is temporary, its aim to create political space for democratic rule in a future Palestine. This belief is what makes the occupation morally tolerable. Because if an occupation is a permanent one, it can only be illegitimate, not just because the ruler is foreign, but because controlling people via coercion and military orders is immoral.

Even if we accept that a 44-year-long occupation is still temporary in a 63-year-old state; if we ignore the reality of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews settled in Palestinian territories, or the existence of two separate and unequal legal regimes imposed on the two ethnic groups in the same small piece of land, it is hard to remain optimistic about Israel's intentions to evacuate, when we hear its soldiers' reports to Breaking The Silence, an NGO which collects their testimonies.

We should accept the fact that the army does not intend to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, and that the status quo is the Israeli government's plan for the future. We should take the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs – who lives in a settlement on Palestinian land – at face value when he declares there won't be peace even in 50 years.

When security and prosperity continue to flourish for "us", while liberty and freedom are continually withheld from "them", it is difficult to think of any other non-violent action the Palestinian leadership can take besides seeking international support for ending the Israeli occupation.

The writer is a former Israeli army officer and member of 'Breaking The Silence', an NGO which gathers and publishes testimony from soldiers and works in partnership with Christian Aid to expose the realities of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories

Faith and Inspiration Down Under

2011-09-15T22:32:00.000+08:00

Some of you may have read my column yesterday here. I don't think 800 words really do justice to my visit to Perth so here's a longer account.

I was invited to give the keynote speech at a conference on Ten Years after 9/11: Rebuilding Harmony organised by the Centre for Muslim States and Societies (CMSS), University of Western Australia. I jumped at the chance to speak on the role of civil society to rebuild harmony because it gave me a chance to think and write about something a bit different and to meet some people I'd only heard about before especially Prof Samina Yasmeen, the head of CMSS.

Perth weather was glorious, cool but sunny. And the conference was terrific. The auditorium at the University Club was full and the line-up of speakers was interesting. Although it did not start too well. The US Consul-General was given the chance to speak first and to everyone's disappointment she spoke only of the victims of what happened in New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC that day and didn't even mention Iraq and Afghanistan. In the question and answer session that followed, the audience which comprised various Australian academics, journalists, students and anyone who was interested in the subject, asked her some tough questions which she just managed to answer in as calm a manner as possible.

This made me doubly nervous about my speech and I wondered if the audience would be as tough as me. I spoke about how what happened in New York on September 11 was a terrible catastrophe and that we should remember not just those who died in those three American cities but also those in the many wars in other countries since. I spoke about how because of September 11, the civil liberties of Americans, especially Muslim Americans, have been very much curtailed and growing Islamophobia all around the world has made life more difficult for everyone, especially when there are deranged individuals like Anders Breivik in the world.

I also talked about how, sadly, Muslims themselves have often not helped matters, responding in ways that only served to confirm the stereotype in the Western media of the wild-eyed angry Arab man. And how these negative global defensiveness have translated into local defensiveness, including in our beloved country Malaysia where some politicians have used race and religion to polarise people.

But there have been attempts by ordinary people to build bridges and mend ties between different faith communities. I cited Fast for the Nation two years ago and Tali Tenang early last year as two examples of community-level action to unite people and resist attempts by others to drive a wedge between Malaysians. I also talked about how the Arab Spring has done so much to break stereotypes about Muslims by showing that the hunger for freedom and for human rights to be respected is universal, as much wanted by Muslims as anyone else.

To my relief, my audience approved heartily. Over coffee I had several Australians, including some elderly people, come up and say that I had expressed what they thought, that the response to September 11, as terrible as it was, was out of proportion and unjust. Too many people died because of it and too much money was wasted on weapons.

Jarrod McKenna speaking about his work

The other speakers were even more enlightening. Dr Azza Anne Aly from Curtin University spoke about other community actions to rebuild harmony. A wellknown radio presenter on religious affairs, John Cleary, spoke about how the media talked about September 11 and how that helped or clouded understanding about the event. A Christian youth leader, Jarrod McKenna, talked about 'loving thy enemy' and how he had worked on a project to getting the people who had raised funds to kill his friend in the Bali bombings to see others as human beings and therefore to stop using violence on them.

Me with some of the lovely students from the Australian Islamic College who had come to attend the conference.

After the conference, we went to St George's Cathedral, the main Anglican church in Perth, to attend a choral evensong marking the 10th anniversary of September 11. The church looks modest from the outside but inside has the beautiful stained glass windows that lend a glow to the place and makes it look majestic. The guests that day included the Governor of Western Australia, the Premier, the Lord Mayor of Perth ( who is a woman by the way), the US Consul General and a representative of the WA Leader of the Opposition.

Imam Muhammad (in white cap) waiting to speak

But it was the service itself that was impressive. After some initial hymns, Sheikh Muhammad Agherdieu, the imam of the Masjid al Taqwa in Mirrabooka near Perth got up and recited, in Arabic, the first surah of the Quran, the AlFatihah. For those who may not know what this surah says, here's the English translation which was available in the service programme:

In the Name of of God, the Gracious, the Dispenser of Grace.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds!

The compassionate, the merciful!

King on the day of reckoning!

Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help.

Guide Thou us on the straight path,

The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, with whom thou

art not angry, and who go not astray.

I have to confess that although I knew the imam was going to get up and speak, as soon as he began to recite the AlFatihah, I became overwhelmed by emotions and burst into tears. I think it was because I realised that I would never have this experience at home, where just to be in a place of worship not my own would cause people to suspect my faith. Yet here was an imam confidently getting up to recite the Quran, in its original language, in a church. As far as I could tell, his faith remained intact.

Mine on the other hand expanded and soared. My heart was filled with love for an Islam that is generous and compassionate and respectful of other faiths.

In addition to the AlFatihah, Imam Muhammad recited Surah 3:64:

Say:O People of the book! Let us come together upon a formula which is common between us -that we shall not serve anyone but God, that we shall associate none with Him.

and Surah 42:15:

Because of this*, then, summon us all to pursue the right course, as thou has been bidden (by God); and do not follow their likes and dislikes, but say: "I believe in whatever revelation God has bestowed from on high; and I am bidden to bring about equity in your mutual views**. Good is our Sustainer as well as your Sustainer. To us shall be accounted our deed, and to you, your deeds. Let there be no contention between us and you. God will bring us all together for with Him is all journeys' end."

(* I.e., because of this breach of the original unity of men’s faith in the One God.(Quran Ref: 42:15 ))

http://www.islamicity.com/quranSearch

(** Lit., "between you" - i.e., "to induce you to be more tolerant of one another": evidently an allusion to the bitterness which stands in the way of an understanding between the various sects and schools of thought in all revealed religions.(Quran Ref: 42:15 ))

http://www.islamicity.com/quranSearch The service then continued with more hymns, lessons and prayers including one by Rabbi David Freilich, the Perth Hebrew Congregation, Chief Rabbi of Western Australia. This was preceded by the laying of a commemorative wreath by the US Consul General and various other local Americans.

Imam Muhammad greeting Rabbi Freilich and his wife

After the service we all had some refreshments in the courtyard outside, in the nice cool weather. I was introduced to the Imam and his wife, a lovely couple who, if you closed your eyes, sounded indistinguishable from any other Australian. While we were chatting, the Chief Rabbi came by to say hello and these two religious officials greeted each other warmly. No, lightning did not strike anyone dead just then.

I have been to many multifaith events and they are always inspiring and gratifying. They make me feel hope that things can change for the better. But later on I went on John Cleary's radio show Sunday Nights where we talked about the conference, about the work of Sisters in Islam, and about being a young Muslim in Australia. (Listen to the podcast here.) As always, there are the detractors. But at least everyone gets an airing.

Anyway it was a good experience and I made some new friends. And for a while I felt united with the world. Perhaps one little good thing did come out of September 11.

And talking of good things, tonight the PM announced the repeal of many of the laws we don't like including the ISA. It's almost unbelievable. But since it is Malaysia Day tomorrow, I'm going to allow myself to bask in positivity for at least the next 24 hours and feel happy.

Happy Malaysia Day, folks!

Selamat Hari Raya..a bit late

2011-09-05T17:11:00.001+08:00

Hi folks, sorry for being late but would like to wish you all Selamat Hari Raya, maaf zahir bathin. Hope you had a good Raya and a good break last week. Mine was pretty normal. Spent the first day of Raya with my parents and the rest of the family. Then left for Jakarta on the second day. Or at least it was the second day for us but still the first day for Indonesia because they celebrated Aidil Fitri a day after us.

Since we know longer have my late mother-in-law who traditionally hosted open house on the first day where all our relatives would congregate, this year we went to visit various uncles instead, from both sides of the family. Jakarta open houses are not as elaborate as ours here but no less meriah for it.

Scene from Open House at Dad's yesterday.

Came back to KL in time for Dad's open house yesterday. As always it was very crowded and hot. People queued a long time to shake hands with Mum and Dad and many took the opportunity to take photos with them. The new thing this year was to bring Dad's book, Doctor in the House, and get him to autograph it. Some who didn't manage to get his signature asked for mine instead, which I thought was rather funny. Anyway I marvel at how Malaysians are willing to endure all that heat and crowd just to briefly greet my parents and have a bite to eat every year. Open house is truly a Malaysian tradition that I hope will always remain the same.

A few friends also braved the crowd to come and see me. One of them was Yvonne Foong Ming Niang whom I've written about before. Yvonne is doing well although her hearing is still not great. But she's not one to dwell on her illness but instead is not only gung-ho about life but is also ever-willing to help others.

Today she wrote to me about a friend of hers, Syahidah Ishak, a 33-year old lecturer who has Acoustic Neuroma, similar to Yvonne's case. Inspired by Yvonne, Syahidah is also not one to give up her independence because of her ill-health. She needs to have surgery for her condition in the same hospital as Yvonne's in Los Angeles and to do that, she has been selling all sorts of merchandise. Thus far she has raised RM65,000 through her own efforts, which is quite impressive already. Unfortunately she is still short of RM85,000 to pay for her surgery scheduled for next month. Read about her in her blog here.

If any of you can spare a little change to help Syahidah, it would be really good. May you be showered with Allah's blessings for your kindness and generosity.

"Kalau Tak Senyum, Disqualified"

2011-08-18T10:37:00.000+08:00

Here's a wonderful video by a young man we should all be proud of. In this special month with both Raya and Merdeka coming up, and given the rancour of the past few months, this is exactly what we need. Do support this project and send in your videos. And don't forget, if you don't smile, you're disqualified!

Ramadan Reflections

2011-08-16T12:45:00.000+08:00

It's Ramadan again, folks. I hope your fasts have been going well. Mine has been OK. This year I am getting into the habit of waking up for sahur consistently and finding that I enjoy the quiet of the early morning hours. And my neighbourhood mosque has a bilal with a wondrous voice so I enjoy listening to the azan for the subuh prayers too.

I always think that Ramadan is the time when things should calm down. It is after all the time for reflection, restraint and perhaps renewal of one's faith through the acts of fasting and prayer. It is also a time for charity and kindness. Unfortunately not everyone thinks so. For some reason some people have deemed it necessary to create much anxiety and chaos during this month. They practically froth at the mouth 'defending Islam', while at the same time giving more reasons why Islam is perceived as being oppressive.

My friend Art Harun has written a brilliant rebuke to one of the frothing mouths. There are others that also need to be rebuked. But it is difficult to rebuke people this month and yet still stay true to the ideals of Ramadan. Suffice to say that the so-called Defenders of Islam are not converting anyone to the religion.

Al-Quran 16:90 BEHOLD, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards [one's] fellow-men; and He forbids all that is shameful and all that runs counter to reason, as well as envy; [and] He exhorts you [repeatedly] so that you might bear [all this] in mind.

Al-Quran 35:10 He who desires might and glory [ought to know that] all might and glory belong to God [alone]. Unto Him ascend all good words, and the righteous deed does He exalt. But as for those who cunningly devise evil deeds - suffering severe awaits them; and all their devising is bound to come to nought.

Speaking of which, I hear of abominable crimes being committed against the Muslims who were at the dinner at the DUMC which was raided by JAIS. Before they can be proven guilty of anything, their names and details have been spread all over the Internet. By Muslims no less. What kind of behaviour is this?

Do they not know this verse?

Al-Quran 24:19 Verily, as for those who like [to hear] foul slander spread against [any of] those who have attained to faith ^[20] grievous suffering awaits them in this world ^[21] and in the life to come: for God knows [the full truth], whereas you know [it] not.

May we all fulfill our obligations during Ramadan to the best that we can. InsyaAllah.

My Bersih 2.0 Experience

2011-07-10T22:24:00.000+08:00

So I went.

I have to say that the night before I had many many misgivings, especially after reading about the army doing exercises with the FRU. Could the government seriously be contemplating shooting their own people? Who knows? My stomach was in knots thinking about the many young people I knew who were intent on going, including my daughter. Would I be able to forgive myself if something happened to them?

After seeking advice from various friends, I finally decided that I could not stay safely at home while my daughter, friends and colleagues faced possible danger. I had to walk with them. Besides even if I stayed home, I would have spent all my time worrying. So I had to go.

A friend who lived in the city offered to be my protector and together we devised a plan on what to do. Hubby was supportive and gave some advice on how to stay safe. My neighbours also wanted to come along. So fairly earlyish, my friend drove over to get me with no problem and we headed back into the city. Despite the roadblocks in some areas, we encountered no problems. In fact driving into KL was so pleasant because the roads were so clear. The police directed traffic where they had to and were generally cooperative ( except for one we saw arguing with a man trying to get into his own condo). We got to a roadblock in the KLCC area and my friend explained that he lived in the area and they let us through, four people in a car dressed as if we were going hiking!

From my friend’s apartment block, we walked to Times Square and parked ourselves at the Starbucks for a coffee while we waited. A cursory look around the outlet and mall revealed that many people were doing the same thing. Meanwhile a whole van of police was stationed outside the mall but after a while they all went off.

We kept in touch with various friends around the city to find out where they were and what the situation was. At about 12.30 we started to walk up Jalan Hang Tuah towards the stadium area. We were not in big groups, just people out on a weekend stroll. We thought we would encounter police in front of the big police headquarters in front of Pudu Jail but there was nothing. When we got to the corner of Jalan Hang Jebat, we saw some police motorcycles and only a couple of cops. Lots of people were just sitting on the curbside under the eye of the cops. It was pretty clear what all these people were there for.

We walked along Jalan Hang Jebat in front of Stadium Negara towards the OCM and found many other friends waiting there. Apparently at one point the cops had given chase even though there was no reason to and caught some people and hauled them off. But from then on we could sit and wait by the curb without anyone disturbing us.

Jalan Hang Jebat and the small road that led up to Stadium Merdeka stayed pretty quiet. Members of the Bar Council (who had to suffer wearing their suits in the heat just so that we could spot them easily) walked around observing what was happening. At one point one woman in a suit sat herself at the intersection to take notes.

One lone woman lawyer at her station, Jln Hang Jebat

We all debated whether to stay there or move down to Petaling Street but we were afraid that we wouldn’t be let back up again. Then it started to rain. My friend and I sought shelter under some hoarding along with young people. Just then I got a message that we were to go to KL Sentral. After confirming this with a friend at Sentral, my friends and I started to walk down Hang Jebat just as a large group of people started walking up. The rain was pouring at that point and I didn’t know quite what to do, whether to tell people they should turn round or not.

Seeking shelter for a while under a shop five-foot way, I talked to various other friends and eventually decided to head back to the stadium area where I found my daughter and lots of other friends there. The main group earlier had gone up to Stadium Merdeka, did some chanting in front of the FRU and then headed down again. But many people hung about just to observe everything and soak in the atmosphere. One group of young people had yellow ribbons on sticks and started a little dance. Others were buying ice cream from a bicycle vendor who came by. There was a real carnival atmosphere.

Here's a video of the rally yesterday taken by my daughter. As you can see, it was peaceful. And every time some people started chanting 'reformasi', someone else would start a louder chant of 'Bersih'.

I have to say that I never felt safer than when I was in the crowd. People recognized me and said hello. Some wanted to take photos. It didn’t feel any different from any other Saturday out. And to be perfectly fair, the cops and FRU in my area showed admirable restraint. They saw that people were not doing anything more than chanting and nobody was harming anyone so they just stood there and left everyone to do their thing. We came across a whole FRU unit blocking a lane next to the Chinese temple at the roundabout at the bottom of Jalan Maharajalela, waved at them and they waved. Cool cops!

Of course not everyone had the same experience. Here’s an account from a colleague who was in a different street:

Unfortunately my experience wasn't so benign. I was part of the marchers (along with A and others) who were effectively kettled by the police in Jalan Pudu. FRU units to the front and back of us prevented us from leaving, and we were trapped by the walls of a construction site opposite Tung Shin Hospital after the FRUs pushed us back. It was probably the worst of the hotspots because of that: when the police started firing round after round of tear gas at us, we had nowhere to run to. I think they were determined to make an example out of us, because they bloody well tear-gassed and sprayed us with water cannons when they had no reason to do so.

We were all tear-gassed at least three, four times. An NGO staffer was hit by a canister. V told me that she saw people jumping off the second floor of the Puduraya bus terminal because the police had released tear gas too close to the terminal and the wind carried the fumes into the enclosed building. When the marchers ran for shelter in Tung Shin Hospital, the police fired tear gas and water cannons INTO the hospital grounds. Later the police lured us into re-assembling on the road on the pretext of negotiating a peaceful dispersal. They arrested the MP (Sivarasa) who was doing the negotiating, then -- after ordering us to sit down so (as we realised later) we would be sitting ducks -- they fired more tear gas and water cannons at us. A, myself and our companions eventually managed to find a way out from the trap via the Santo Antonius church and (irony of ironies) the car park of the Hang Tuah police station (near the monorail station). There were so many very brave people yesterday.

I now know that smearing toothpaste under the eyes to reduce irritation caused by tear gas actually works (thanks, A)! I'm still itchy and short of breath from all that tear gas, which is a bit annoying. But really, mostly what I remember of the rally was how moving it was: the solidarity among the protesters, how people looked out for one another. Whenever I was tear-gassed there was a stranger running along at my side and offering me and my friends salt to counteract the effects. When the police sprayed chemical-laced water cannons into the crowd and the people affected cried out for water to wash the stuff away, others turned and ran back toward the cannons with bottles of water to help. People helped others climb up a hill towards the hospital to escape (some guy helped me up the steep slope). Someone always stepped up to make sure that a panicked run doesn't turn into a stampede, including an elderly woman who took it upon herself to guide the marchers to safety. She's a first-time marcher to boot! Actually there were lots of first-time marchers, and more young middle-class urbanites than I've ever seen at any other rallies including the 2007 Bersih rally. At one point people started picking up the tear gas canisters and throwing them back at the police, or kicking the canisters safely away from the marchers and bystanders. I heard via the #bersihstories Twitter hashtag when the police fired tear gas into Tung Shin, there were people who grabbed the canisters and wrapped them in their own towels, then threw the canisters into the drain so there wouldn't be so much fumes.

And another one, about people’s goodness:

My group has a lovely little story to tell as well, of how we escaped from the Tung Shin hospital area after one of the tear gas attacks. We took a little alley uphill between the shophouses, and there was a block of flats there. One of the residents told us to go through the building to get out through the back! We climbed upstairs and then along the opposite corridor a woman shouted and pointed, "That way, go that way, there is an exit out the back!" and we scuttled along our corridor, down the back stairs and found ourselves safe outside on Changkat Tung Shin or something like that.

Rakyat all contributing in their own ways!

There are many stories and photos, both good and bad, of the whole event. But to me what was most important was that Malaysians proved two things: one, they can assemble together on a common cause peacefully and two, therefore showed that they are a mature people. The fact is that there were all kinds of people there, young and old, all races and religions and all classes and creeds. I bumped into many young people, the children of my friends, who had come to see what it was all about and decide for themselves what to think about the issue.

Do these people look like hooligans to you?

Whatever one thinks about the issue that Bersih is espousing, we should all be proud of our fellow Malaysians who did not, despite dire predictions by some, behave like hooligans and destroy property and hurt one another. There were people hurt and one death but people who had participated in the rally did not cause them. The restaurants and shops around the area were doing roaring business as people got thirsty and hungry.

There are also some people claiming that the world now has a bad impression of Malaysia because the foreign media (and the local media for that matter) reported only about the teargassing and water-cannoning. I think people are confusing the government with the people. Yes, the world now has a bad impression of the Malaysian government because it has handled this whole issue so badly. They don’t have the same impression of the Malaysians who stood up for their rights and their cause.

This is what gives a good impression: protestors and police shaking hands before dispersing at 4pm.

And by the way, I can’t believe some of the mean things being said about the man who died after being teargassed! My goodness, every time I read totally uncompassionate things like that, I know that I’m on the right side.

For more accounts by people who were there, read this.

Taking a Break (literally)

2011-06-06T21:19:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, was pretending to be Lionel Messi in an office futsal match the other day and made a mess of it. Fell and fractured my left wrist in a few places and had to have an operation to insert a titanium plate in my hand. So if you see someone who has a hand like Robocop, it's only me.

Of course this means I have to type with one hand which can be tiresome. So even less blogging, sorry. Luckily I just finished a very busy week where I had to speak five times at various events before I fell. Maybe it was just my body telling me I needed to take a break (ho, ho, pun, pun!).

Oh, and if you're wondering what I have to say about the OWC, see my column this Wednesday...:-)

Why Mothers Should Rule the World

2011-05-08T13:38:00.000+08:00

In times of great trauma and pain, it is often mothers who reach out and build peace. I salute Phyliss Rodriguez and Aicha Al-Wafi and all mothers like them all over the world who overcome differences in culture, class, lifestyle, religion and everything else in order to bring healing and peace to the world.

Happy Mother's Day!

The Death of Bin Laden: Why Jubilate, Why Mourn?

2011-05-03T13:58:00.000+08:00

So Osama is dead ( if we take everything the US government says as true). But what exactly does it mean? Here are two perspectives by people who have more knowledge than most of both the man and what the consequences of both his actions and the reactions to them are.

When September 11 happened I was appalled by the jubilation by some quarters at the deaths in New York and elsewhere. Equally I am appalled by the cheering crowds in front of the White House last Sunday night, as I am by those who claim that Osama Bin Laden is a martyr.

Martin Luther King, Jr said it best:

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives but I will not rejoice in the death of one, even an enemy."

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Robert Fisk: Was he betrayed? Of course. Pakistan knew Bin Laden's hiding place all along

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday. And then the world went mad.

Fresh from providing us with a copy of his birth certificate, the American President turned up in the middle of the night to provide us with a live-time death certificate for Osama bin Laden, killed in a town named after a major in the army of the old British Empire. A single shot to the head, we were told. But the body's secret flight to Afghanistan, an equally secret burial at sea? The weird and creepy disposal of the body – no shrines, please – was almost as creepy as the man and his vicious organisation.

The Americans were drunk with joy. David Cameron thought it "a massive step forward". India described it as a "victorious milestone". "A resounding triumph," Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted. But after 3,000 American dead on 9/11, countless more in the Middle East, up to half a million Muslims dead in Iraq and Afghanistan and 10 years trying to find Bin Laden, pray let us have no more "resounding triumphs". Revenge attacks? Perhaps they will come, by the little groupuscules in the West, who have no direct contact with al-Qa'ida. Be sure, someone is already dreaming up a "Brigade of the Martyr Osama bin Laden". Maybe in Afghanistan, among the Taliban.

But the mass revolutions in the Arab world over the past four months mean that al-Qa'ida was already politically dead. Bin Laden told the world – indeed, he told me personally – that he wanted to destroy the pro-Western regimes in the Arab world, the dictatorships of the Mubaraks and the Ben Alis. He wanted to create a new Islamic Caliphate. But these past few months, millions of Arab Muslims rose up and were prepared for their own martyrdom – not for Islam but for freedom and liberty and democracy. Bin Laden didn't get rid of the tyrants. The people did. And they didn't want a caliph.

I met the man three times and have only one question left unasked: what did he think as he watched those revolutions unfold this year – under the flags of nations rather than Islam, Christians and Muslims together, the kind of people his own al-Qa'ida men were happy to butcher?

In his own eyes, his achievement was the creation of al-Qa'ida, the institution which had no card-carrying membership. You just woke up in the morning, wanted to be in al-Qa'ida – and you were. He was the founder. But he was never a hands-on warrior. There was no computer in his cave, no phone calls to set bombs off. While the Arab dictators ruled uncontested with our support, they largely avoided condemning American policy; only Bin Laden said these things. Arabs never wanted to fly planes into tall buildings, but they did admire a man who said what they wanted to say. But now, increasingly, they can say these things. They don't need Bin Laden. He had become a nonentity.

But talking of caves, Bin Laden's demise does bring Pakistan into grim focus. For months, President Ali Zardari has been telling us that Bin Laden was living in a cave in Afghanistan. Now it turns out he was living in a mansion in Pakistan. Betrayed? Of course he was. By the Pakistan military or the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence? Quite possibly both. Pakistan knew where he was.

Not only was Abbottabad the home of the country's military college – the town was founded by Major James Abbott of the British Army in 1853 – but it is headquarters of Pakistan's Northern Army Corps' 2nd Division. Scarcely a year ago, I sought an interview with another "most wanted man" – the leader of the group believed responsible for the Mumbai massacres. I found him in the Pakistani city of Lahore – guarded by uniformed Pakistani policemen holding machine guns.

Of course, there is one more obvious question unanswered: couldn't they have captured Bin Laden? Didn't the CIA or the Navy Seals or the US Special Forces or whatever American outfit killed him have the means to throw a net over the tiger? "Justice," Barack Obama called his death. In the old days, of course, "justice" meant due process, a court, a hearing, a defence, a trial. Like the sons of Saddam, Bin Laden was gunned down. Sure, he never wanted to be taken alive – and there were buckets of blood in the room in which he died.

But a court would have worried more people than Bin Laden. After all, he might have talked about his contacts with the CIA during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, or about his cosy meetings in Islamabad with Prince Turki, Saudi Arabia's head of intelligence. Just as Saddam – who was tried for the murder of a mere 153 people rather than thousands of gassed Kurds – was hanged before he had the chance to tell us about the gas components that came from America, his friendship with Donald Rumsfeld, the US military assistance he received when he invaded Iran in 1980.

Oddly, he was not the "most wanted man" for the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001. He gained his Wild West status by al-Qa'ida's earlier attacks on the US embassies in Africa and the attack on the US barracks in Dhahran. He was always waiting for Cruise missiles – so was I when I met him. He had waited for death before, in the caves of Tora Bora in 2001 when his bodyguards refused to let him stand and fight and forced him to walk over the mountains to Pakistan. Some of his time he would spend in Karachi – he was obsessed with Karachi; he even, weirdly, gave me photographs of pro-Bin Laden graffiti on the walls of the former Pakistani capital and praised the city's imams.

His relations with other Muslims were mysterious; when I met him in Afghanistan, he initially feared the Taliban, refusing to let me travel to Jalalabad at night from his training camp – he handed me over to his al-Qa'ida lieutenants to protect me on the journey next day. His followers hated all Shia Muslims as heretics and all dictators as infidels – though he was prepared to cooperate with Iraq's ex-Baathists against the country's American occupiers, and said so in an audiotape which the CIA typically ignored. He never praised Hamas and was scarcely worthy of their "holy warrior" definition yesterday which played – as usual – straight into Israel's hands.

In the years after 2001, I maintained a faint indirect communication with Bin Laden, once meeting one of his trusted al-Qa'ida associates at a secret location in Pakistan. I wrote out a list of 12 questions, the first of which was obvious: what kind of victory could he claim when his actions resulted in the US occupation of two Muslim countries? There was no reply for weeks. Then one weekend, waiting to give a lecture in Saint Louis in the US, I was told that Al Jazeera had produced a new audiotape from Bin Laden. And one by one – without mentioning me – he answered my 12 questions. And yes, he wanted the Americans to come to the Muslim world – so he could destroy them.

When Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, I wrote a long article in The Independent, pleading with Bin Laden to try to save his life. Pearl and his wife had looked after me when I was beaten on the Afghan border in 2001; he even gave me the contents of his contacts book. Much later, I was told that Bin Laden had read my report with sadness. But Pearl had already been murdered. Or so he said.

Yet Bin Laden's own obsessions blighted even his family. One wife left him, two more appeared to have been killed in Sunday's American attack. I met one of his sons, Omar, in Afghanistan with his father in 1994. He was a handsome little boy and I asked him if he was happy. He said "yes" in English. But last year, he published a book called Living Bin Laden and – recalling how his father killed his beloved dogs in a chemical warfare experiment – described him as an "evil man". In his book, he too remembered our meeting; and concluded that he should have told me that no, he was not a happy child.

By midday yesterday, I had three phone calls from Arabs, all certain that it was Bin Laden's double who was killed by the Americans – just as I know many Iraqis who still believe that Saddam's sons were not killed in 2003, nor Saddam really hanged. In due course, al-Qa'ida will tell us. Of course, if we are all wrong and it was a double, we're going to be treated to yet another videotape from the real Bin Laden – and President Barack Obama will lose the next election.

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Published on Monday, May 2, 2011 by TruthDig.com

On Osama Bin Laden’s Death

by Chris Hedges

Editor’s note: Chris Hedges made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.

I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden was killed, Bob [Scheer] wanted me to say a few words about it … about al-Qaida.

I spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately.

But I’m also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11 – and that this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha – is one that has done more to engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida – that’s clear – he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren about Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned.

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the whole rise of al-Qaida is that when Saddam Hussein … and I covered the first Gulf War, went into Kuwait with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was in Basra during the Shiite uprising until I was captured and taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard. I like to say I was embedded with the Iraqi Republican Guard. Within that initial assault and occupation of Kuwait, bin Laden appealed to the Saudi government to come back and help organize the defense of his country. And he was turned down. And American troops came in and implanted themselves on Muslim soil.

When I was in New York, as some of you were, on 9/11, I was in Times Square when the second plane hit. I walked into The New York Times, I stuffed notebooks in my pocket and walked down the West Side Highway and was at Ground Zero four hours later. I was there when Building 7 collapsed. And I watched as a nation drank deep from that very dark elixir of American nationalism … the flip side of nationalism is always racism, it’s about self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

And it’s about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can’t make war on terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the Jugurthine Wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is to isolate themselves, isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of al-Qaida’s operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawy, the head of al-Azhar – who died recently – who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud … someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed.

If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

And empire finally, as Thucydides understood, is a disease. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides, would finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire, the disease of nationalism … these of course are mirrored in the anarchic violence of these groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening death spiral. So while I certainly fear al-Qaida, I know it’s intentions. I know how it works. I spent months of my life reconstructing every step Mohamed Atta took. While I don’t in any way minimize their danger, I despair. I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become a monster that we are attempting to fight.

Thank you.

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Another good article here.

Robert Fisk's interview with Osama Bin Laden.

No Conflict At All: Promoting Women's Rights Through Religion

2011-04-16T23:46:00.000+08:00

Sometimes it is worth flying 28 hours (including 8 hours' transit) to go to a conference when you come out of it feeling inspired. I was invited to represent Musawah at a human rights defenders conference at the Carter Centre in Atlanta recently. This is an annual conference that the centre organises together with Emory University and this year, the theme was 'Of Heaven and Earth:Religion, Belief and Women's Rights'.

I already wrote a short summary of it in my column this week. The conference was actually preceded by a two-day workshop. The first day we got to know one another through small group discussions around our work. Participants came from several countries, mostly Africa and the Middle East plus academics from various universities in the US, and representatives from some UN agencies. There were presentations from various NGOs working with religious leaders to change society's attitudes towards women and eradicate violence against women in various forms.(For information on Tostan, see here.)

On the second day there were presentations on how to use the Internet and social media for social change. One of the most interesting was RisingVoices which is part of GlobalVoicesOnline which is an international community of bloggers writing on various issues around the world. RisingVoices provides grants and training for groups wanting to learn how to use the internet and start blogs. For instance, in Egypt a group of women in the village of Minya were given classes on how to use the internet and started a blog about their daily lives, providing an insight which would otherwise be neglected by most media. Many of the participants in the conference were quite new to blogging so I was asked to talk about my blog a little bit as well.

Another interesting presentation was by David Kobia, one of the founders of an internet platform called Ushahidi, which uses crowdsourcing to gather information. Ushahidi was begun to monitor the elections in Kenya and now it has been used to do the same in many countries as well as for disaster relief work, for example in Haiti, Queensland and Japan. In Egypt, it has been used to develop a map to monitor cases of street sexual harassment. (I have been wondering if anyone used Ushahidi in the Sarawak elections. If not, this is something that Bersih 2.0 should consider for the next GE.)

The actual conference was chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and Prof Abdullahi An-Naim of Emory University, with a keynote speech by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navenethem Pillay. At 86, President Carter is still sharp and speaks eloquently about how his beliefs as a Christian necessarily makes him a human rights defender. He was a very involved Chair, asking many questions from presenters. Prof Abdullahi is very familiar to us at SIS, having been here several times for various seminars and workshops.

Listening to the presenters, you become filled with hope that change can actually happen. One of the most impressive presentations was by Rana Husseini, a Jordanian journalist whose writings on honour killings in her country finally resulted in tougher punishments for perpetrators. (yes, there are journalists who actually work to change society for the better...).

Sindhi Medar-Ghould from BAOBAB Nigeria talked about the work they do to promote women's rights in that country, also often working with religious leaders. Bishop Timothy Njoya from Men for the Equality of Men and Women in Kenya talked about the research his organisation has been doing on men and boys and what constitutes masculinity. He kept us very entertained with his findings as to why women live longer than men ( "because women nowadays do more work with their hands than men, and this stimulates the brain"). But he also talked about some interesting studies on animals.Apaprently animals are incapable of either rape or child marriage because they cannot have sex before reaching a particular physiological age and male animals can never have sex without being invited by their female partners. Therefore his conclusion was that violence against women is entirely a human affliction.

There were actually three participants from Malaysia, Ratna Osman, Acting Executive Director of Sisters in Islam, Zarizana Abdul Aziz, Chair of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and myself. Ratna shared SIS' work while I talked about Musawah, the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. We all felt very proud when Navi Pillay, the UN Human Rights Commissioner mentioned the work of Musawah in her opening keynote speech and when President Carter told me that he had actually read one of SIS' publications.

Myself, Fulata Mayo, Jane Connors and Pres Carter on our panel.

One of the benefits of these meetings is really meeting some incredible people. I shared a panel with the irrepressible Fulata Moyo from the World Council of Churches who talked about the gender rights work done by the WCC with great fluency and humour. One of the most impressive speakers was Rev Alison Boden, who is the Dean of Religious Life and the chapel at Princeton University, who started off as an actress, worked with paediatric AIDS patients and does a lot on interreligious work. She spoke with such quiet authority and wisdom that you just had to pay attention.

Other people who were there were Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Baha'i International Community to the UN, Jane Connors, from the Office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and Jasmeen Patheya from Blank Noise, an organisation in India who uses the arts to fight street sexual harassment, or 'eve-teasing'. Pamela Scully, the chair of the Department of Women's Studies at Emory University, and Fatma Emam, from Nazra Feminist Studies in Cairo, which is responsible for the Harassmap I mentioned above, were both tweeting up live along with me during the conference.

Me and the Prez!

And of course, meeting President Carter and his wife Rosalyn was a big treat. A truly lovely couple, very dedicated to each other (about to celebrate their 65th anniversary this year!) and to human rights.

Mrs Carter, Fulata and me!

For the concluding session, I was asked to speak once again on the panel with President Carter and some of the other participants. Here's the text of my statement:

My summary of Heaven and Earth - Marina Mahathir, Musawah

I have to start by stating that although I belong to an organisation that works from within religion to address gender inequality and injustice, and I think of myself as a believer, I cannot say that my experiences with religious leaders, particularly from my own religious tradition, have been happy ones. As Azza Karam mentioned earlier, in 2003 I had the privilege of chairing a conference on Islam and AIDS attended by both religious leaders and activists which to this day I think of as the most traumatic five days of my life, despite some very good outcomes from it. I have been repeatedly deeply hurt and mystified as to why the religion that I was born into could be so cruel towards those who are oppressed, poor and marginalised when I was always brought up in my family to believe that it is above all a compassionate one. After all we are taught to begin everything by invoking the name of Allah the Beneficient and the Merciful.

However one of the things that happened to me when I worked in HIV was that I found myself being drawn more and more towards religion rather than away from it. How could this not be when HIV deals every day with life and death, the 2 things over which I believe are in the hands of our Creator. So it was AIDS that brought me to my faith. And it was AIDS that brought me to human rights and of course gender equality.

Along the way my greatest challenges were when I came across men and sometimes women supposedly of faith who thought of human rights as alien to my faith. Who manipulated compassionate precepts in order to justify stigma and discrimination. For instance a mufti once said to me that yes we are enjoined to visit and care for the sick. But we should ask how they got it first. The implication was that if it was their own fault, then there was no need to visit them. Similarly there were ulama who were completely indifferent to the plight of women and children infected by HIV because they thought this is what they deserved because their husbands and fathers had sinned.

I don't have a lot of religious education but I instinctively knew this was wrong. But I was also blessed to have met compassionate scholars who gave me interpretations that I could use to actually help people, rather than harm them. What a revelation this was!

And it was the same with women. How is it possible that this religion which originally brought so many rights for women could now be the basis for so much abuse and violence? It was the pioneering work of Sisters in Islam, which I have been affiliated with since its inception, that changed, or rather confirmed my view of my own religion, that it did include and value me and my sisters and daughters and not the other way round.

Still my encounters with Muslim religious leaders were almost universally disappointing.

Until I came here. For these few days I have listened with astonishment at one after another, religious leaders from all faith traditions who are with all humility admitting that their own traditions have not supported half their congregations, who are not only completely immersed in human rights work but also in promoting gender equality. When I listened to the work of Toscan in Senegal, it made me wonder, which is the more developed country, Senegal or my country, Malaysia where the National Fatwa Council recently issued a fatwa to say that female circumcision is a must for Muslim women, especially since you can have it done in perfectly sterile environments in hospitals.

Not only have I been encouraged by religious leaders from my own faith, listening to religious leaders from other faiths and traditions has made me have faith in my own. Because it made me feel we are all one, we all believe in the same Creator, even if we do it in different ways.

I do know we still have a long way to go. As my Indonesian sister has pointed out, many of us live in far from ideal political systems and religion is no less influenced by politics as anything else. So in promoting equality and justice in religion, we must also promote justice and equality in our political environment because even as we may want to separate secular spaces from religious spaces, in real life there is much overlap. Equality and justice thus has to permeate all spheres of life in order for us to have the holistic enjoyment of human rights.

So I leave here with much hope. I have been so happy to meet so many good people here and I hope we continue to stay in touch and support one another. And one day, insyaAllah, our work will become less and less needed.

I left the conference feeling hopeful and exhilarated by the discussion. There are actually religious leaders who believe in human rights and women's rights! It makes me wish I could drag a neanderthal like this one in front of them and get him to defend himself against them!

Aunty Leha (1923-2011), My Role Model for Strength

2011-03-27T23:36:00.000+08:00

Aunty Leha and I on her last birthday, January 29 2011

If you want to define fortitude, then my Aunty Leha was it. Throughout her 87 years, she endured the loss of her husband former Auditor-General Mohd Zain Ahmad and youngest son Zahari as well as seven serious operations. I can think of no stronger woman than her.

I've always thought that my belief that women are strong stems from growing up with Aunty. From my own childhood, Aunty was always there, directing everything. I used to spend the school holidays at my grandparents' home in KL and played almost every day with my cousins, Aunty's three sons. Being at Aunty's house meant all sorts of treats, from delicious cakes which we'd never seen in our little town of Alor Setar to books to going to see plays. Being a stalwart member of the Moral Re-Armament Association, Aunty was always quick to tell us off for less than exemplary behaviour. Never in a bad way but always firmly.

As we grew into adults and had our own families, Aunty was always the affectionate and encouraging aunt. I remember contemplating an act of rebellion once in protest at some bad treatment of women in a particular state. To my surprise, she was supportive. I think she just likes rebels. But otherwise she lavished love on her nieces and nephews and her grandnieces and nephews. She always remembers birthdays and I always got some gift from her whenever she's around.

Aunty also didn't like to be left out of anything, never mind that in the last few years she was wheelchair-bound. Once she was in hospital and seemed totally depressed and so was not recovering very well. Everyone was wondering what to do. Then Dad had an idea. He went and sat beside her and told her about every single conference and seminar coming up in KL. Sure enough, she recovered.

Another time I organised a mehndi (henna) party for her granddaughter who was getting married. It was a fun Bollywood party and we had planned dancing and games. We hadn't really planned to invite the granny generation but Aunty came anyway and although she couldn't participate in the dancing, she insisted in being included in the games.

Aunty had an impish smile even when she was ill!

When Dad had his first heart attack in 1989, our biggest worry was how to tell Aunty before anyone else did. The trouble was she couldn't be found because as always she was 'in orbit', going around town seeing somebody or other. We knew that if she was not told instantly, we would get a shelling ( and Aunty Leha was not averse to shelling people for any infringements of good behaviour). Luckily we found her soon enough and she came straightaway.

Perhaps the most difficult time for Aunty in recent years was the passing, from cancer, of her baby, her youngest son Zahari. Indeed it was tough for all of us who loved him but it must have been worse for her. Two years later she would still sign birthday cards to me from all her family, including her beloved 'Adek'.

My most enduring memory of Aunty is how generous she is with everyone, no matter what their background. Every open house or any event at her house was attended by all sorts of people, from every ethnicity and walk of life. Aunty was friends with everyone, from the Dalai Lama to the lowliest driver, and everyone was welcome. More than anyone, she taught us that it is good decent human beings who matter, not what race or religion they are.

Mum, my Aunty Jameah, Aunty Leha and my Uncle Zainal Abidin, Aunty's last birthday party, Jan 29 2011.

I happened to be away when Aunty finally breathed her last. But I did see her before I left. She had grown uncharacteristically thin and weak, not the role model of aged female strength that my late frail mother-in-law was always holding up. But she was still alert; the first thing she asked was how my daughter was. Lying there in pain, she only thought of others. Typical Aunty Leha.

Rest in peace, reunited with Uncle Zain and Adek, Aunty. Al-fatihah.

Telling Israelis What's What..with Passion!

2011-03-04T15:00:00.000+08:00

I'm proud to call Mona Eltahawy a friend; she's the most impassioned speaker I've ever come across. Follow her on Twitter at @monaeltahawy.

For those who don't know, J-Street is a progressive Jewish group, dedicated to a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel to be achieved peacefully.

(Sorry this is a bit late but took me forever to find this video)

For those who still think an 'Islamic state' is the way to go...

2011-02-25T13:32:00.000+08:00

Some important points that are also relevant to us here.

This is not an Islamic revolution

Olivier Roy

Published 15 February 2011

The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia show that Islam is now less potent politically, even as its social dominance grows

In Europe, the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have been interpreted using a model that is more than 30 years old: the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Commentators have been expecting to see Islamist groups - the Muslim Brotherhood and their local equivalents - either at the head of the movement or lying in wait, ready to seize power. But the discretion of the Muslim Brotherhood has surprised and disconcerted them: where have the Islamists gone?

Look at those involved in the uprisings, and it is clear that we are dealing with a post-Islamist generation. For them, the great revolutionary movements of the 1970s and 1980s are ancient history, their parents' affair. The members of this young generation aren't interested in ideology: their slogans are pragmatic and concrete - "Erhal!" or "Go now!". Unlike their predecessors in Algeria in the 1980s, they make no appeal to Islam; rather, they are rejecting corrupt dictatorships and calling for democracy. This is not to say that the demonstrators are secular; but they are operating in a secular political space, and they do not see in Islam an ideology capable of creating a better world.

The same goes for other ideologies: they are nationalist (look at all the flag-waving) without advocating nationalism. Particularly striking is the abandonment of conspiracy theories. The United States and Israel - or France, in the case of Tunisia - are no longer identified as the cause of all the misery in the Arab world. The slogans of pan-Arabism have been largely absent, too, even if the copycat effect that brought Egyptians and Yemenis into the streets following the events in Tunis shows that the "Arab world" is a political reality.

This generation is pluralist, undoubtedly because it is also individualist. Sociological studies show that it is better educated than previous generations, better informed, often with access to modern means of communication that allow individuals to connect with one another without the mediation of political parties - which in any case are banned. These young people know that Islamist regimes have become dictatorships; neither Iran nor Saudi Arabia holds any fascination for them. Indeed, those who have been demonstrating in Egypt are the same kinds of people as those who poured on to the streets to oppose Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. (For propaganda reasons, the regime in Tehran has declared its support for the opposition movement in Egypt, though this is little more than a settling of scores with Hosni Mubarak.) Many of them are religious believers, but they keep their faith separate from their political demands. In this sense, the movement is "secular". Religious observance has been individualised.

Above all, people have been demonstrating for dignity and "respect", a watchword that emerged in Algeria in the late 1990s. And the values to which they are laying claim are universal. But the "democracy" that is being called for is not foreign, and therein lies the difference from the Bush administration's attempt to promote democracy in Iraq in 2003. That did not work, because it lacked political legitimacy and was associated with a military intervention. Today, paradoxically, it is the waning of US influence in the Middle East, together with the pragmatism of the Obama administration, that has allowed a native and fully legitimate demand for democracy to be expressed.

That said, a revolt is not a revolution. The new popular movement has no leaders, no structure and no political parties, which will make the task of anchoring democracy in these former dictatorships difficult. It is unlikely that the collapse of the old regimes will automatically lead to the establishment in their place of liberal democracies, as Washington once hoped would happen in Iraq.

What of the Islamists, those who see in Islam a political ideology capable of solving all of society's problems? They have not disappeared, but they have changed. The most radical of them have left to wage international jihad; they are in the desert with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, in Pakistan or the suburbs of London. They have no social or political base. Indeed, global jihad is completely detached from social movements and national struggles. Al-Qaeda tries to present itself as the vanguard of the global Muslim "umma" in its battle against western oppression, but without success. Al-Qaeda recruits deracinated young jihadists who have cut themselves off entirely from their families and communities. It remains stuck in the logic of the "propaganda of the deed" and has never bothered to try to build political structures inside Muslim societies.

Because al-Qaeda tends to concentrate its activities in the west or aims at so-called western targets elsewhere, its actual impact is next to nil.

It is a mistake, therefore, to link the re-Islamisation that has taken place in the Arab world over the past 30 years with political radicalism. If Arab societies are more visibly Islamic than they were 30 or 40 years ago, what explains the absence of Islamic slogans from the current demonstrations? The paradox of Islamisation is that it has largely depoliticised Islam. Social and cultural re-Islamisation - the wearing of the hijab and niqab, an increase in the number of mosques, the proliferation of preachers and Muslim television channels - has happened without the intervention of militant Islamists and has in fact opened up a "religious market", over which no one enjoys a monopoly. In short, the Islamists have lost the stranglehold on religious expression in the public sphere that they enjoyed in the 1980s.

Dictatorships in the Arab world, though not in Tunisia, have often favoured a conservative Islam that is highly visible but not especially political, and that is obsessed with controlling public morals. (The wearing of the hijab, for instance, has become commonplace.) This has meshed with the "Salafist" movement, which emphasises the re-Islamisation of individuals rather than the development of social movements. What has been perceived in the west as a great, green wave of re-Islamisation is in fact nothing but a trivialisation of Islam: everything has become Islamic, from fast food to women's fashion. The forms and structures of piety, however, have become individualised, so now one constructs one's own faith, seeking out the preacher who speaks of self-realisation, such as the Egyptian Amr Khaled, and abandoning all interest in the utopia of an Islamic state. The Salafists concentrate on the preservation of religious values and have no political programme. Moreover, other religious currents until now regarded as being in decline, such as Sufism, are flourishing once more. This growing diversity of faith goes even beyond the confines of Islam, as in the cases of Algeria and Iran, where there has been a wave of conversions to Christianity.

It is also a mistake to see the dictatorships as defending secularism against religious fanaticism. With the exception of Tunisia, authoritarian regimes in the Arab world have not made their societies secular; on the contrary, they have reached an accommodation with a neofundamentalist form of re-Islamisation in which the imposition of sharia law is called for without any discussion of the nature of political power. Everywhere, official Muslim institutions, based on an austere conservative theology, have been co-opted by the state. This has become so effective that the traditional clerics trained at al-Azhar University in Cairo no longer have anything to say about the main social and political questions of the day. They have nothing to offer a younger generation looking for ways of living their faith in a more open world.

These developments have also affected Islamist political movements, as is exemplified by the changing face of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Nahda, the "renaissance party", in Tunisia. The Muslim Brotherhood has changed in response to troubling events, as much in what seemed like success (the Islamic Revolution in Iran) as in defeat (the repression that has been meted out to it everywhere). A new generation of militants has drawn lessons from this, as have such veterans as Rachid Ghannouchi, founder of al-Nahda. They have understood that seeking to take power in the wake of a revolution leads either to civil war or to dictatorship. And in their struggle against repression, they have come into contact with other political forces and formations. Knowing their own societies well, they are aware that ideology carries little weight within them. They have also learned lessons from Turkey, where Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AK party have succeeded in reconciling democracy, electoral success, economic development and national independence with the promotion of values that are, if not Islamic, at least "authentic".

Above all, the Muslim Brotherhood no longer advocates an alternative economic and social model. The Brothers have become conservative with regard to morality and liberal on the economy. This is without doubt the most striking evolution in their outlook, because, in the 1980s, Islamists claimed to defend the interests of the oppressed classes and called for state ownership of the economy and redistribution of wealth. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt endorses Mubarak's agricultural counter-reforms, which have returned to landowners the right to raise prices and sack tenant farmers. So complete has this transformation been that Islamists are now wholly absent from the social movements active in the Nile Delta, where there has been a resurgence of the "left", particularly of trade union militancy.

However, the embourgeoisement of the Islamists is at the same time an asset for democracy, because it pushes them towards reconciliation and compromise, and into alliances with other political forces. It is no longer a question, therefore, of attempting to establish whether or not dictatorships are the most effective bulwark against Islamism; Islamists have become players in the democratic game. Naturally, they will try to exert control over public morality, but, lacking the kind of repressive apparatus that exists in Iran, or a religious police on the Saudi model, they will have to reckon with a demand for liberty that doesn't stop with the right to elect a parliament. In short, the Islamists will either identify themselves with the conventional, Salafist tradition, abandoning in the process any pretence to reconceive Islam's place in modernity, or else they will make an effort to rethink their understanding of the relationship between religion and politics.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood will play a central role in the coming changes as long as the revolt remains largely apolitical. For the moment, this is still the politics of protest; it is not the dawn of a new type of regime. Moreover, Arab societies remain somewhat conservative. The middle classes that developed following the period of economic liberalisation want political stability. They are protesting, above all, against the predatory nature of dictatorship. Here, a comparison between Tunisia and Egypt is illuminating. In Tunisia, the extended Ben Ali clan weakened all its potential allies by refusing to share not only power, but wealth, too. The business class was swindled by the ruling family and the army marginalised both politically and financially. The Tunisian army was poor, and thus had a corporate interest in seeing the advent of a democratic regime that would give it a bigger budget.

In Egypt, by contrast, the regime has had a much larger social base, and the army was involved not just in shoring up political power but also in the administration of the economy, with all the benefits that flowed from that. In this respect, that country is typical of the Arab world. Democratic movements throughout the region will therefore come up against deeply rooted networks of clientelism. Is the demand for democracy capable of overcoming complex arrangements of allegiance and belonging, in the army, among tribes and among the political elite? To what extent will regimes be able to exploit old allegiances - among the Bedouins in Jordan, say, or the tribes of Yemen? Conversely, can such groups themselves become actors in the movement for democratic change? And how will religion adapt to the new situation?

The process of change will undoubtedly be long and chaotic, but one thing is certain: the age of Arab-Muslim exceptionalism is over. Recent events point to profound transformations in Arab societies which have been under way for some time, but which until now have been obscured by the distorting optic of western attitudes towards the Middle East. What the convulsions in Egypt and Tunisia show is that people in those countries have drawn the lessons of their own history. We have not finished with Islam, that is for sure, nor is liberal democracy the "end of history", but we must at least learn to think of Islam in relation to an "Arabic-Muslim" culture that today is no longer closed in on itself - if it ever was.

Olivier Roy is professor of social and political theory at the European University Institute in Florence. His most recent book is "Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways" (C Hurst & Co, £20)
This essay, written exclusively for the New Statesman, was translated from the French by Jonathan Derbyshire

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Reading this makes me think that we are a little behind the Arab countries in our social development (as opposed to economic development). Or at least our leaders are, if they don't recognise that despite what they do to suppress democratic urges among people, people will eventually find some way of expressing that want. Like many of the Arab leaders, they cannot see, or don't want to see, the changes that are happening especially among young people. The response to the recent campus elections, where more independent candidates have been elected, is a case in point. Banking on economic growth alone is not enough, as we have seen in the Middle East. Yes, people want jobs and a better life, but that includes being able to breathe and speak, being free. Isn't it interesting that more than 50 years after the end of colonialism, people are still demanding freedom? And very clearly it's not about demanding to wear bikinis in public, as our less intelligent politicians here have suggested in the past, but the freedom to simply decide for themselves what is good for them, without the state shoving it down their throats.

Our leaders would do well to read this and take heed. (And yes, unless you have the academic credentials of Olivier Roy, do please shut up about all these Mat Sallehs preaching democracy,ok? Egypt and Tunisia have clearly shown that democracy is not exclusive to the West.)

The New Language of Revolution

2011-02-20T18:35:00.000+08:00

Who would have thought it? Only less than two months ago, nobody, least of all me, would have dreamed that the new language of revolution would be Arabic. For so long the language of rebellion has been Spanish or Eastern European, maybe Indonesian.

But Arabic? No, Arabic was the supposed language of piety. It is what you use to show that you're more religious than anyone else. Thus you can begin a speech with long passages in Arabic without bothering to translate and have everyone assume that you were invoking God's name. Arabic is the language of choice when you wanted to name your children so that they will grow up pious and good, although it is difficult to prove that they actually will.

Arabic was also the language by which you exclude people. You tell people they can only read the Quran in Arabic, regardless of whether they understood it or not, because to read it in languages you actually did understand was not the same. Thus God's word was available to an exclusive few, instead of to all humanity.

Arabic was also the language of us and the Other, the ummah and the kafir. About what was haram and halal. Who was with us, and who was not.

But since January 2011, Arabic has become a different language. It has become the language of revolt and rebellion, and of freedom. Suddenly the whole world knows that the Arabic word for liberation is 'tahrir'.

Those of us on Twitter also learnt the word 'Yalla!' (roughly, Viva!). Other new words for us:

Amal = Hope
Democratiyyah = Democracy
Karamah = Dignity
Kefaya! = Enough!

(For an extensive list of Revolutionary Arabic, take a look here.)

How important is it to have this new language of revolution? To me, it is hugely important because language represents mindsets. So when language changes, mindsets also change. And with these new Arabic words we are learning, we are also learning about a new kind of Arab.

Previously we knew of only two kinds of Arabs. One was the fantastically wealthy Arab oil sheikh who goes to Harrods in London and buys up everything without bothering with the price tags. The cartoon stereotype is of the Arab sheikh in his white jubah and red and white headress, being chauffeured in his sleek limousine accompanied by his four wives. Over here, as always, we looked on this wealth as somehow God-given and we bow and scrape as they threw us a few coins here and there. That, we thought, is what we want to be because after all they are Arabs, they guard the Holy Cities and surely it must be all blessed by God.

The other stereotype is of the very holy Arab, intoning away on all the evils of the world, all of which seem to emanate from the West. These men ( for they are almost always men) in their long beards we worship because they seem holy and they seem to do the 'right' things, beginning with putting women under covers, and they must surely be guaranteed a place in heaven. Oh we all must strive to be like them! And we shall start by emulating their clothing!

My, how things have changed! Now we know that the oil sheikhs keep most of their people living at under USD2 a day while they build palaces for themselves and their families. We know that when they take over the leadership of their countries, they often do away with elections and stay for decades (Ben Ali of Tunisia, 23 years; Mubarak of Egypt, 30 years; Gaddafi of Libya, 42 years; Bouteflika of Algeria, 23 years; Saleh of Yemen, 32 years), during which time they enriched themselves while their people starved.

We are also now learning that to stay in power, these dictators can be viciously brutal. Although the Tunisian and Egyptian revolution was relatively peaceful (relative being the operative word), the response to the protests in Bahrain and Libya have been astoundingly ruthless. In Bahrain, the Army (comprising mostly non-Bahrainis in the rank and file) have fired live ammunition at protestors at funerals, refused to allow ambulances to pick up the wounded and even fired teargas and bullets into hospitals. There are extremely graphic photos of the dead and wounded which have been posted on Twitter by eyewitnesses.

In Libya, Gadaffi's army has used mercenaries from other African countries to shoot at their own people. When such governments feel the need to use foreign mercenaries to kill their own people, surely this means that they know they are not legitimate governments?

Meanwhile, the OIC and individual Muslim countries have been completely silent. Deathly silent. Could it be that they are shocked that people in these countries are actually demanding 'Western' things like freedom and rights? Could it be possible that the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the Muslim and the Christian and men and women are actually standing together and saying they want their 'leaders' out? That they actually want a say in how their lives are run? (Oh my, the Star actually published an article by an actual Egyptian today talking about how peaceful the protests were! Could it be that our vocabulary about protest is changing too?)

And predictably our ulama have nothing to say. Why, Al-Azhar University (where we have 6000 students) and the Grand Mufti of Egypt were discredited for supporting Mubarak. And then Yusof Al-Qaradawi, the exiled Islamic leader returns to lead prayers at Tahrir Square and says, well, pretty revolutionary things. (Except he still didn't say that women should be equal to men, even though women were very much part of the revolution...sigh..).

But our ulama remain silent. Instead they spend their time worrying about how Valentine's Day is going to rot our morals, instead of condemning Muslims who spill their own people's blood. I'm sorry but they don't hold any moral authority anymore to me.

Wael Ghonim speaks to the crowd at Tahrir Square after being released after 10 days by the police

Yup, today we have a new Arab. He (and she) is young, internet-savvy, demanding a say in how their countries are run. They want room for everyone, regardless of religion, gender, race or class. They want to speak, and to breathe. Is it any wonder that one of the initiators of the Egyptian revolution is a Google executive called Wael Ghonim? Or a young woman called Asmaa Mahfouz?

So now, do we follow the examples set by these Arabs, just as we so diligently followed before?

Redefining Peace and Stability:Learning the Lessons of Egypt

2011-02-15T16:26:00.000+08:00

Egypt's Muslims and Christian activists, academics and ordinary people protesting against the Mubarak regime at Tahrir Square.

Today is four days after the Egyptian people's revolution toppled President Mubarak, a man who had for 30 years allowed his people to live in poverty, suppressed their freedoms while at the same time enriching himself. Already the Egyptian revolution, inspired already by the Tunisian one, is inspiring the same hunger for freedom in Algeria, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Iran. It's far from over and it's not going to be easy for any of them. But perhaps the time has come for the people of the Middle East to finally taste democracy.

I followed the Egyptian revolution on Twitter and now I'm following all the others in almost real time via social media as well. If we only follow the mainstream media and not the voices of those personally affected by these changes, then we will get an impression that is entirely different from what is actually happening.

For example, as I have said before, our mainstream media is painting the Egyptian revolution as dangerous chaotic riots run by thugs and hooligans. Local politicians, perhaps hoping to boost their election chances, have been called heroes for apparently 'risking' their lives, although a close reading of their accounts have ascertained nothing more dangerous than not being able to take a bath. Our students have had to be 'rescued' from Egypt even though none of the interviews of them has clearly said that they were in any danger, at least not from the protestors. They did say that the dangerous people were the thousands of convicts released from prison. Our ever-diligent journalists failed to note that it was because the Mubarak government's own prisons which could not ensure security and allowed the prisoners to escape.

The Egyptian revolution has taught us many lessons which should not be lost on those with half a brain. Firstly, it has taught us (or should have taught us) to redefine what we mean by peace and security.

There are people here who shudder at the thought of Egypt-style protests because apparently they are a 'threat' to peace, security and stability..and they cause traffic jams. As if we don't have traffic jams without any protests happening. But this definition of protests comes from a warped view of legitimate protest, where we automatically assume that they mean the same thing as riots.

There is a big difference between a riot and a peaceful protest. A riot is violent, a peaceful demonstration is not. In Malaysia we make no such distinction. Our assumption is that if any group of people get together, then naturally they will turn violent.

But as Egypt has shown, this is patently untrue, even when the stereotype of the Arab is that he is hotheaded and quick to anger. If they can have a peaceful demonstration, then why can't we milder meeker Malaysians be also capable of one?

The assumption of the government is not so much that any group of people will naturally turn violent but that any group of people with complaints against the government must naturally want to run riot. For some reason, the assumption is that nobody with any complaint is capable of talking calmly and rationally.

Protestors display a collection of police ID cards found on thugs in Tahrir Square

This is a fallacy. As Egypt's anti-Mubarak protestors have shown, one million and more people with complaints against the government can be perfectly peaceful...until they are provoked. They did not harm anyone until pro-Mubarak thugs and the police turned on them with guns and rocks. The protestors found many thugs, with police IDs on them, who were paid to provoke the violence. There is a sad story of how Cairo's street children were also used by these thugs to throw rocks and how some of them, some as young as nine, were shot dead.

More than three hundred protestors died in the violence in Tahrir Square and around the country, all of them anti-Mubarak protestors. They were not killed by their fellow protestors. If we want to know what true courage is, it is when people are prepared to face tanks, guns and tear gas in order to gain their freedom and dignity. Not flying first class to hang about embassies and then complain about not bathing.

Demonstrations are hardly new to our culture. In the years before we gained our independence, there were many protests against the British, against the Malayan Union etc. They were not inherently violent, unless, in true colonial fashion, the British forces turned on them. So why do we think we are incapable of peaceful protest if our parents could?

Malaysians tend to think of demonstrations as hugely inconvenient. They cause traffic jams and sometimes property damage. But as I've said before, even without demos, we have traffic jams. Not to mention snatch thieves, house break-ins, robberies, rapes and murders. Demos do not increase the number of these problems. Nor do they contribute to unwanted pregnancies, baby-dumping or AIDS.

The same people who complain about demos for freedom of expression have no hesitation turning up for demos for causes close to their hearts, such as against over-development of their residential areas, or for their language or some other cause that doesn't really threaten the status quo. Yet they forget that they are also demonstrating for freedom of expression, because if they are not allowed to demonstrate for their favourite cause, they would also feel oppressed.

Malaysians really need to re-define what we mean by peace. Is it just the absence of demos? Is it a true peace if there are sectors of society who feel oppressed, who feel that our system is unjust to them? There can only be peace, true real peace, when everyone in society feels included, respected and protected. Otherwise there will always be some form of conflict somewhere.

Is the answer to 'stability' then the Mubarak ( and the other Arab dictators') way which is by simply suppressing dissent so that no conflict, no differing opinions, no complaints, can ever be seen? If we can't see it, does that mean it doesn't exist? Is forced ignorance really bliss?

Egypt erupted because of 30 years of that false peace and stability. The people of the other Arab countries are also realising that they have not really been experiencing peace and stability all this time. Because if people are likely to be jailed, tortured or simply disappeared for disagreeing with the government, that surely cannot be considered a peaceful life.

Some people have obliquely said that I am wrong in saying that an uprising like Egypt's can happen here. As always, that comes from both not reading what I'm saying properly and from denial. I am not saying that we have exactly the same conditions as do these Arab countries now undergoing turmoil. We obviously don't, especially economically. Most of our people do not have to live on USD2 per day, nor do we have large numbers of young people who see no hope in the future at all.

Yet we cannot afford to be complacent. We do have lots of young people, mostly young men, who are not seeing much of a future because they cannot get jobs. There may be people who believe they can guarantee these people a future just by virtue of their race, but there are few things more soul-destroying than being given something which you have not worked for. Might be good in the short term but not in the long term.

We are still battling the effects of a global economic crisis, with rising prices while incomes are not keeping pace. In some countries there have been food riots. Algeria had some recently and the President of Bolivia was forced to flee the anger of his hungry citizens three days ago. There are few things that threaten stability like a people's inability to put food on the table.

It is a wise government that looks at Egypt and learns from it. Not from the way that Mubarak responded, which was patently the wrong thing to do and lost him his job. None of the other Arab governments, as well as Iran, seem to have heeded Egypt's lessons either, that when people see others gaining freedom after long repression, it plants an idea that can't be obliterated by sheer force. And when people are no longer afraid, repressing them only angers and emboldens them. Already protestors have died in Iran and Bahrain today, but their compatriots are undeterred.

The naysayers, having not been able to prove that Egypt will immediately become an Islamist terrorist-supporting state under the Muslim Brotherhood, are now talking about how the military are the real winners of the revolution. While there is some basis for this, the standard response is still that the devil you know is better than the one you don't. And that if you have demos, this is what you'll get.

Easy for us sitting far away in our comfortable air-conned rooms to say. But now no less than the Secretary General of the Arab League is saying that nations should not fear revolts:

Arab League leader says nations shouldn't fear revolts

By Leila Fadel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 15, 2011; A11

CAIRO - As Arab League ambassadors convened for an emergency meeting Monday, the organization's secretary general said he had told the group that "we should not be afraid or concerned'' about revolts now sweeping the region.

It was in some ways a surprising message from the leader of a 22-nation group that embodies the existing order. The Arab League meeting at the organization's headquarters was the first since the toppling of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, two important member states.

But the leader, Amr Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, is making plain that he no longer sees his role as being to defend the status quo.

"I conveyed the message that the winds of change are sweeping our societies," Moussa said in an interview Monday. He urged a "feeling of optimism that this is the future,'' and said that in day's session the Arab League ambassadors had "saluted'' and "greeted" the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Moussa is stepping down from his position as early as next month. He said in the interview that there was a "good possibility'' that he would seek to become Egypt's next president, once constitutional changes are put in place to allow for open elections.

"Let us see how a private citizen like me can use the constitution and move on to be a candidate or to be an active private citizen,'' he said. A "new Egypt needs new people,'' he said, "but with a touch of experienced people.''

Moussa remains unapologetic about his past. During a decade as foreign minister in the 1990s, he was a member of President Hosni Mubarak's government but not his party, he said in the interview. He said he had maintained a "constructive relationship'' with Mubarak until the final days of his regime, but had warned both publicly and privately that young people, who make up a disproportionately large share of Egypt's population, could not be ignored.

"I told him that there are difficulties; definitely he knew," Moussa said of Mubarak. "I don't think he was unaware."

With Egypt now controlled by the military, under what amounts to martial law, Moussa expressed faith that a group headed by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was committed to putting Egypt on a path toward democracy.

"I have no reason to doubt their intentions," Moussa said of military leaders. About Tantawi, an official he knows well, Moussa said: "He's a man who has a deep feeling about Egypt and about how Egypt is a country that should be respected and should move on. Now he is in the driver's seat and I trust this will be his intention and his policy."

Moussa said he had watched the youth-led demonstrations from the ninth-floor balcony of the Arab League headquarters in downtown Cairo, overlooking Tahrir Square, and he set he had met with a slew of protesters. He said the broad cross-section of ages, classes and religions that was represented among the protesters should also be reflected in a new Egypt.

"I believe the role of the youth, educated young people, should be promoted in any new government," he said. He said that the leaders of a new Egypt should pursue democracy and reform, as well as recognize "that we are living in the 21st century and no other century.''

Moussa said it was important that Egypt honor its international agreements and remain a steadfast ally with the United States, as equal partners. "We have major interests with the U.S." and "the U.S. also has major interests with us and the Arab world," he said. "I'm against those that believe the U.S. is an automatic enemy."

Would that our leaders be as enlightened..

For those worried bout the 'Hood'..

2011-02-10T12:38:00.000+08:00

A little knowledge is more helpful than speculation, no?

Here are some articles that you might find helpful:

The Muslim Brotherhood Eyes a Comeback

The Muslim Brotherhood Uncovered

Tariq Ramadan: Democratic Turkey is the Template for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood

Meanwhile, Egyptian Vice-President Omar Suleiman talks to Christine Amanpour about the 'Brother Muslimhood'...

If you think he's creepy, it's not without reason. Read his bio here.

Meanwhile, here's a great cartoon by Adam Zyglis from the Buffalo News:

More on Egypt: Countering Media Propaganda

2011-02-08T12:12:00.001+08:00

Folks, I'm very concerned at the way our media is reporting on Egypt as if it is a wild dangerous place that our people need to be rescued from. The only way for accurate news is to come out here is for the Egyptians there on the ground to speak for themselves.

Hadil ElKhouly is a young woman who was working here in KL but returned to Cairo recently to join the protests. The letter I put in the last post was hers. Here is another one:

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I went to Tahrir square with my whole family, Mom, dad and my two younger sisters.

As we approached the square we watched thousands marching towards the square, many of whom carried bags with food for protesters.We got down and marched with them till we reached a long queue of people who were getting inspected by regular youth before entering the square, to make sure no weapons or any harmful material. The military was there as well and checked our ID's.

That day in Tahrir we numbered to at least 2 Million. Just observing the scene there seemed as if everyone had an unspoken determination to resist Mubarak's" divide and conquer" strategy.

Sunday was announced as the day of "martyrs" in commemoration of all the protesters who fell since the start of the revolution.

We witnessed the Sunday Coptic Mass and the Muslim Prayer, with both Father and Sheikh sending prayers of blessings for the people's uprising, and people marching and chanting with the Cross and the Qur'an.

Women and girls were hand in hand with men and boys who volunteered to clean up the square and run the field hospital.

Perhaps one of the most telling scenes was the marriage ceremony ( niqah) in the middle of the square between two people who allegedly met during the protests. The whole crowd joined in prayers for them. When the new bride spoke she said: "This square has turned into my home and all of you became my family, I will not find a people more precious than all of you to share my marriage happiness with than you".

I never felt safer in a crowd of 2 Million people in my life than yesterday.Sexual harrassment turned sadly into a reality that accompanied any public gathering in Egypt. This is the same Egypt where today I could stand alone in the middle of a crowd with men passing behind and in front of me without having the slightest fear and not even a single gaze or inappropriate remark.

A young man who accidentally was pushed slightly against my sister turned around and was extremely apologetic. When a group of us young women stood together ,young men gradually started forming a chain around us to protect us, as the masses of people increased.

Abdel-Halim Kandil, a famous political activist and coordinator of the Kefaya political pro-democracy movement, spoke to the crowds yesterday about the process of change, and that as we demand the change of the system we must change as well.

This change is already happening....

As I'm writing you this update, one of the Satellite TV channels is now posting the picture one by one of each martyrer who were killed in cold blood by the regime of Mubarak,most of them 16 and 17 year old, the youngest being killed is a 10 year old boy with two bullets in his body.Rest in piece my brothers and sisters...

Hadil

P.S: Please feel free to share my updates with my name to your contacts and on your blogs. Many thanks to your messages of support and solidarity and apologies for not being able to respond to each of them yet.

And the most important news channel for reports on Egypt is undoubtedly AlJazeera. We know they must be doing something right when the Mubarak's government is harassing them and even arresting their reporters for days. Here is a roundup of AlJazeera's coverage so far.

And here's a wonderful photo of people praying in Egypt.

Prayers in Tahrir Square. Notice anything?

Egypt: Showing the World What Democracy Means

2011-02-06T20:27:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, slightly late Year of the Rabbit greetings! I went away with my family for a short break so couldn't blog on time. But hope this coming year will be a hip-hoppity good one for you!

Meanwhile....unless you've been hiding in a corner under a colossal rock somewhere you would know that the Middle East has been roiling all of January. I wrote about it in my column this week and it seems that some people have been using it without my permission for their own purposes.

Let me make it clear, what is happening in Egypt now is very important because it is upsetting all past notions about what it means to be Arab and what it means to be Muslim. For the first time, Tunisians and Egyptians are destroying the alleged link between tyranny, corruption and human rights violations and Islam. All of the Muslim world should be grateful for this, having suffered for so long from the most obnoxious stereotypes.

Egyptian Coptic Christians protecting Muslims as they prayed in Tahrir Square, Cairo

And the world should really take notice that their assumptions are no longer valid. No, it is not a choice between a corrupt tyrant like Mubarak and Islamists. Both Tunisia and Egypt are being taken over by ordinary people who are neither anti-democracy nor religious conservatives. Indeed one of the most moving moments of the revolution in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Egypt was when Christians protected Muslims as they prayed. Just as in December, Muslims protected Coptic Christian churches from attacks . Today, Sunday, Copts are holding a mass in Tahrir Square, right after the Muslims hold their afternoon prayers. Egyptians are setting the example for multifaith harmony for the entire world.

Tahrir Square has been filled with people from all walks of life, all ages, religions and from both sexes. And indeed women have played a tremendous part in this revolution. Watch this interview of Egypt's leading female human rights activist Nawal El Saadawi here.

Nor was this revolution the result of Western technology, specifically social media. Yes, the original call to revolt may have been spread through Twitter and Facebook but after Mubarak shut down the Internet, people still managed to get word round and keep the momentum going. Twitter mostly played an important part in keeping the rest of us informed, via various Egyptian bloggers living outside Egypt who got news from their relatives and friends in Cairo and then tweeted, facebooked and blogged up.

Then when the Internet was restored, Egyptians on the ground started sending up news on what was happening. Tweeting after all can be done from mobile phones and the Government could not afford to shut down phone lines completely either. Instead they forced companies like Vodafone to sms subscribers with pro-Mubarak messages. Or so Vodafone said.

Anyway when we have politicians here who say we should not believe what bloggers say about Egypt and instead rely on the government, I really wonder where their heads are at. Many of us are getting first-hand information from twitterers right in Tahrir Square live, as things were happening. We felt the sense of panic as the Egyptian army tanks circled the square and when thugs entered it to assault the anti-Mubarak protestors. We worried about twitterers and bloggers who got beaten or arrested and relief when they were released. We cheered along as AlJazeera got banned in Egypt but kept on broadcasting somehow, even while it continued to be harassed. We saw courage as we have never seen before, live.

One of our Egyptian friends working here in KL just flew to Cairo and this was her first email back to us:

Dear Friends

Today I flew back to Cairo to join family and friends in this historic uprising against Mubarak's despotic regime. A few of us on the plane found ourselves in tears just laying our eyes on Cairo as its lights appeared from the sky.

Many of my friends have been camping in Tahrir square all night, while others have been arrested and beaten and humiliated.

Yet the determination and strength of everyone is like an earthquake that shook Mubarak's system.

On my way from the airport I passed by at least 10 security checks, including neighborhood watches from ordinary people who sat up all night ,set up fire to warm themselves in the cold and arming themselves with whatever weapons they could find against thugs and secret riot police who try to terrorize and intimidate people.

I stayed up all night chatting with friends who have been going regularly to Tahrir Square, sharing stories upon which we cracked up laughing and stories whch made us shed tears.Two of them had just been released from secret police who caught them bringing much needed medical aid and cotton to injured protestors at the square.These were a group of 16-19 year old teenagers, yet this didn't stop the police from terrorizing and assaulting them.

Muhamad Haeikal, one of the prominent Egyptian thinkers summarized the whole situation in one beautiful sentence " the ugliest of what is in Egypt tried brutally to kill what is most noble in it".

It was eye opening to all of us, especially the pro-democracy opposition activists like us, that while the world, then UN, the various Human development reports, were telling us how uneducated, poor, corrupt, violent and racist we are, it was amazing to see a humane, noble, conscious and aware people that is humbling to say at least. It is incredible to see how when our ruthless dictators lose their ground, a nobility and love for one own's country emerges.

A picture in the front page on one of the newspaper here was showing a picture of an army solider who was shedding tears beacuse he could not protect the protestors from the violent thugs. The picture is showing one of the protestors wiping away his tears.

Coptic Christians formed human chains around Muslims protecting them while they are performing their friday prayers.

The stories of heroism are incredible, this is the first time in our history we witness riot police being inspected by neighbourhood watch people.

A doctor was sharing, on the funny side, how an old man with more than 30 bones broken still insisted on coming to the square every day! He was begging the man not to return so he can give medical aid to others.

In the middle of all of this, Egyptians did not lose their sense of humor, people chanting and dancing in the millions " Mubarak went crazy' as the tanks stand behind them and try to terrorize them.

There were the stories of Azhar scholars and students joining the protestors in their cloaks , even though the only slogans they knew were from the times of resistance to the British colonial rule, people embraced them laughingly and warmly while carrying them on thier shoulders and chanting.

I will head to the Tahrir square in an hour. Please do share the updates with your contacts and media.

And how do we react back home? People all over the world have come out in support of the Egyptian people, demonstrating peacefully in cities everywhere, including in Amman, Jordan and in Palestine. In KL, there have been three attempts to show support for Egypt. The last one, on Friday, was the biggest and even then it was all of 2000 people who marched from KLCC to the US Embassy and then to the Egyptian embassy.

And how do our authorities react? Exactly like the Mubarak government. With teargas and watercannon and by arresting people. So what does this mean? That our government supports oppression and injustice? After supposedly saying that the Egyptian people's wishes should be respected? If there was ever a time to show how we can take the moral high ground, this was it. And as always, our government blew it.

And what of those people echoing the Mubarak government by saying that the protests were a Western plot?? What, you mean Arabs are not entitled to want justice and democracy unless some American tells them to? Have we forgotten that Mubarak has been supported by the Americans and Europeans (including Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi and Dick Cheney) all along and has been complicit with the Israelis in the siege of Gaza? That the Egyptian government closed off all entry to Gaza from their side, just as the Israelis have? So which is the Western agenda, tell me, supporting Mubarak and the status quo or the protestors?

To those who are trying to put a religious face on the protests, forget it. The Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa has come down for Mubarak and told everyone to go home. Al-Azhar university, where we send thousands of students every year to supposedly study religion, has been discredited because of its continual support for Mubarak all these years. Its spokesman just resigned to join the protestors.

Indeed the Muslim Brotherhood, that great bogeyman of the Western world and Israel, has been very cautious about how they are seen in this revolution. They are not taking credit for it and they have been explicit about not wanting to field anyone for President in elections that will take place after Mubarak goes. Of course, as with all politicians, we should not completely trust them. But for the moment, they are bowing to the will of the people. No politics, only freedom.

Tahrir Square should be a lesson to everyone, especially politicians, that power really does lie with the people. The only flags on show are the Egyptian flag. There are absolutely no political flags nor banners nor logos anywhere in sight. There are only witty and fervent signs in Arabic, English and interestingly in Hebrew. Can’t say the Cairiennes aren’t media-savvy.

Protestors in Tahrir Square

In the days to come, the whole world will be watching Egypt. As many analysts have said, what happens to the most populous country will have an impact in all countries in the region. Already the Yemeni president has said he won’t stand for elections again. Syria, whose President Bashir Assad is the son of the previous President Hafez Assad, is already shifting uncomfortably. The Saudis too should get nervous as their citizens try to emulate their neighbours.

From Silkworms to Butterflies: the Asian University for Women

2011-01-25T23:02:00.000+08:00

In 2008 you may recall that I visited Bangladesh. During that trip I made a special visit to a new and exciting project called the Asian University for Women. I've just come back from another visit and am thrilled to report that it is indeed blossoming.

At the entrance of the present AUW campus in Chittagong city.

Last Tuesday I, along with a plane load of others involved with the AUW, took the short flight from Dhaka to Chittagong to visit the campus. From just one building when I first went, it's now expanded to four buildings housing classes, dorms, cafeteria, a library and a shop. The girls too had increased in number, from about 120 in the preparatory Access Academy in 2008 to over 400 from Access Academy through to second year undergraduates. The curriculum too, after some hiccups, had been refined and the girls were studying, in a more organised fashion, degrees such as Politics, Philosophy and Economics. (Although the AUW offers a liberal arts degree, it does also teach science subjects such as Chemistry.)

The crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony for the AUW campus

We also had the opportunity to attend the groundbreaking of the AUW campus outside Chittagong where the first building will be built and ready in two years' time. Under a large gossamer-like tent, various luminaries such as the newly-appointed Chancellor Cherie Blair, the architect Moshe Safdie and the President of the University of Western Ontario, Prof Amit Chakma (who had been born in the Chittagong hill tracts) spoke on their hopes for this wonderful vision for women's education.

And the vision is already showing results. Over and over again, in the classes we attended, at special presentations and at the AUW symposium back in Dhaka, the students showed us what education can do for girls who once could only dream of it.

At lunch, five of the girls from the Art of the Personal Essay class got up to talk about how they came to AUW and what it means to them.

In a presentation on personal essays, five girls got up to talk about their lives before and after coming to AUW. Parwana comes from a very remote part of Afghanistan ("Taliban country") and she talked about how coming to Chittagong has meant the world to her. She was determined to do well not just for herself but for her mother, her sisters, her aunts and all the other women who didn't have the opportunity to do so back home. She was indeed growing from being a silkworm to a butterfly.

The style of teaching obviously was part of what was building the girls' confidence. We sat in on a class on world literature. In the first place, the curriculum was impressive. That day the girls were discussing Naguib Mahfouz's The Arabian Nights and Days. They were not shy to discuss what the texts meant, what the motivations of the characters were and even more to disagree with one another. I don't recall ever seeing our students at home being quite so lively and forthcoming with their opinions.

During lunch one group of girls presented a research project on infant undernutrition. During their holidays they had interviewed dozens of mothers in their home villages to ask them about what they fed their infants and what their beliefs were about nutrition. Deepa, a Nepalese second-year student, presented their findings in a lively style, asking us whether we knew what beliefs about the different foods were. Then all of them submitted to questions from the audience. And not for a minute were any of them anything but confident in their answers.

Similarly two days later at the symposium in Dhaka , which all the students attended along with many delegates from Dhaka and abroad, a group of Sri Lankan students presented a moving account of the research they had conducted and project they had conducted on peacebuilding in their country after the war.

When the war in Sri Lanka ended, the Tamil, Singhalese and Muslim Sri Lankan girls at AUW found themselves in a strange situation. While the Singhalese girls celebrated, the others mourned. Tensions mounted when they saw these differences but curiosity was also aroused as to why they should respond so differently. They started having moderated discussions about the issue and found that they all knew very little about one another's backgrounds and how their own communities had experienced the war. Many realised that they only knew about each other's communities from the media and were shocked to find that much of what they thought they knew were untrue.

Sri Lankan students from three communities presented their project 'Moving Beyond Conflict'

Having made this discovery, the girls didn't want to stop there. They decided to embark on a project to build bridges between their communities back home over the holidays. Back in Colombo they sought out experts and people who had experienced the war from different points of view. Then they set out to a village with both Singhalese and Tamil inhabitants to see what they could do.

They started off by organising a cricket match! As in much of South Asia, cricket is a religion in Sri Lanka so if there was anything that could bring people together, that was it. And along with some other programmes they conducted, it started that one village on the road to peacebuilding between the different communities.

Nobody could have been unmoved by the Sri Lankan presentation. And it really represented what AUW is all about, bringing people together for education and in the process teaching them about similarities and differences, and that there are many different ways to look at the same issue.

Throughout the next 2 days the students showed how much being at AUW has instilled knowledge and confidence in them. At every session, they stood up to ask questions of the speakers, regardless of whether they were leading experts in their field or government officials. Their questions were to the point, fearless and sharp. They were also not at all shy to go up to any of the adults present to ask questions, seek an opinion or just to say hello.

During my first visit two years ago I had listened to a presentation by Dola, a Bangladeshi girl who wanted to be an artist. This time a smiling girl came up to me to remind me of my visit, and it was Dola, now in the 2nd year.

Dola, whom I first met in 2008.

After my last visit and my blog posting about it, one of the students, Jyoti Shresta from Nepal, had written to tell me that I had gotten someone's name wrong. This time I was delighted to have a slim pretty girl ask me if I remembered her email.

And over and over again, girls I had met on my first visit came up to say hello and take photos with me. I really was tearing up to see how well they were doing.

AUW is growing from strength to strength. They now have girls from 12 countries including about 20 from Afghanistan and two from Palestine. The provost of the university, Dr Mary Sansalone, told an interesting story about the two Palestinians. Ever since they arrived at Access Academy, they had kept to themselves and not mixed very much with the other girls. The teachers were perplexed by this problem and although they tried many different ways, could not quite break through to what the problem was.

Bayyan and Haneen from Palestine (West Bank).

Then at the groundbreaking ceremony, the two girls met Moshe Safdie the architect who has designed the masterplan for the AUW campus. Safdie is a Canadian citizen who was originally Palestinian (and Jewish). But for the two girls, the fact that he was Palestinian and had designed their university was enough. Suddenly they opened up, spent a lot of time talking to him and was smiling and talking to everyone else. And interestingly, they started talking about doing a similar project to the Sri Lankan one back home. From a little seed...

Prof Yunus, Nobel laureate, always an inspiring person.

Of course the AUW symposium was not the only thing I did in Dhaka. No visit to the Bangladeshi capital could be complete without a visit to the Nobel laureate Prof Mohammad Yunus of Grameen Bank. You may have heard that Prof Yunus is going through some legal problems right now, being accused of many things related to the Grameen businesses he started. It is sad and distracting because Grameen has really put Bangladesh on the world map. But the Prof is handling it with equanimity and happy that so many of those in town for the symposium went to visit him (with some notable exceptions I must say).

There are apparently plans afoot to send Malaysian students to AUW in the future. I think this would be good but I hope the scholarships will be reserved for those most deserving, from those who really would not have been able to get a university education. I know we have many universities here but AUW does provide some extra value in terms of the exposure to different cultures and a liberal arts education that you really cannot get here. There are also possibilities for AUW students to come to Malaysia for internships and study visits as well, which would also benefit both ways.

(Those of you who follow me on Twitter would have also followed my entire trip in real time. Some really great speakers at the symposium especially Dr Hans Rosling who is brilliant at explaining statistics about global health in an entertaining way, and Sunita Narain who talked passionately about climate change from a human rights point of view.)

Violence Doesn't Happen in a Vacuum

2011-01-09T23:59:00.000+08:00

In the very first week of 2011, we have seen several instances of violence that has led to deaths. In Pakistan, the outspoken politician Salman Taseer was gunned down by his own bodyguard, ostensibly because he supported a Christian woman who had been accused and found guilty of blasphemy under Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws.

Yesterday, a Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in the head as she was speaking to a small crowd in a supermarket carpark. She survived but is critically wounded while six people including a 9-year old girl died and 13 others are also injured. The police have caught the shooter but has not been able to ascertain the motive.

What is common about these two events besides the fact that they were both politicians? They were both working in environments where the political debates had taken on so much hate speech and vitriol that it could have encouraged nutcases to actually do what most people actually just wished for in their heads.

In the case of Taseer, his murderer has been feted and garlanded by many Pakistanis for his deed. They claim that to kill a person who supports a blasphemer is the duty of any right-thinking Muslim. Already another politician, Sherry Rehman, who has also questioned the Blasphemy Law, has to go into hiding because of fears for her safety. Under what religion do these killings and threats of violence get their legitimacy?

In the Arizona shooting case, the Sheriff of Tucson where the shooting took place was very clear that it is the atmosphere of hate that has led to this tragedy. Arizona, he said, had become the Mecca of hate and bigotry. Many commentators had pointed out that Giffords was one of the Democratic politicians who had been targetted by the Republicans, notably Sarah Palin, for their support of President Obama's Healthcare Bill. And indeed that targetting had been graphically depicted as the crosshairs of a gun. Giffords herself had warned that this type of graphics will have consequences. Even some of the rightwing Tea Party has now paused to reflect on their role in this.

There will be many who said that these killers acted alone and nobody else can be responsible for them. But killers rarely kill people at the spur of the moment. They tend to believe that killing a public figure is a cause that is justified. In the case of Pakistan, the killer-bodyguard calculated correctly that he would be celebrated instead of condemned. In Arizona, we don't know yet but certainly more than one person who has known him has mentioned that he always seem a disturbed person who lived in his own world and had strong opinions about what was going on around him.

We may think that these events are remote from us. After all we are not historically a violent people, nor do we have a gun culture like some other societies. But it doesn't take much to change that. All it takes is for our environment to become one where violence becomes normalised and goes unpunished. The violence doesn't really even have to happen. It can just be threatened but as long as it goes unpunished, those who have a violent bent will keep pushing the boundaries. Until one day they actually do something. By which time, it will be a tragedy.

We have already seen cases here where violence is threatened and yet the authorities have ignored it and instead focussed on the victim. This only sends clear signals that such threats will be tolerated, as long as they are aimed at the 'right' people. Anyone who is not mainstream is thus fair game.

At the moment, our form of violence is limited to making police reports and making threats online ( and in one case, in mosques where congregations were exhorted to do something about Sisters in Islam). But already we have had places of worship being violated, and although some of the perpetrators have been found guilty, we have no clue why. If we don't know why, we won't know how to prevent the next -and possibly, worse - one. Once again, we signal that we don't think such acts are very serious.

I hope we never have the misfortune to one day look back and regret our lack of foresight. That it is only with tragedy that we finally take a hard look at ourselves and realise that we have allowed extremist elements to have their way for too long. They themselves may not actually do anything but there's no way of knowing whether some mixed-up person will decide that they should gain kudos for acting out what others only talk about.

Islamophobia..and its counterpart, Other-phobia

2010-12-30T00:12:00.000+08:00

The writer Max Blumenthal has written a very interesting article called the Great Islamophobic Crusade, detailing how Islamophobia in the US and Europe is a planned hate campaign by the far-right and Zionists. It's a very interesting read and lays to rest the idea of Islamophobia as a mere figment of Muslim imagination.

I'm not reprinting the whole thing here because it is a very long article with many links to other articles. But here are a few choice extracts:

Erupting so many years after the September 11th trauma, this spasm of anti-Muslim bigotry might seem oddly timed and unexpectedly spontaneous. But think again: it’s the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era. It was then that embittered conservative forces, voted out of power in 2008, sought with remarkable success to leverage cultural resentment into political and partisan gain.

Little of recent American Islamophobia (with a strong emphasis on the “phobia”) is sheer happenstance. Years before Tea Party shock troops massed for angry protests outside the proposed site of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, representatives of the Israel lobby and the Jewish-American establishment launched a campaign against pro-Palestinian campus activism that would prove a seedbed for everything to come. That campaign quickly -- and perhaps predictably -- morphed into a series of crusades against mosques and Islamic schools which, in turn, attracted an assortment of shady but exceptionally energetic militants into the network’s ranks.

Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade, conservative elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the network’s apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate. One philanthropist in particular has provided the beneficence to propel the campaign ahead. He is a little-known Los Angeles-area software security entrepreneur named Aubrey Chernick, who operates out of a security consulting firm blandly named the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination. A former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has served as a think tank for the American Israel Policy Action Committee (AIPAC), a frontline lobbying group for Israel, Chernick is said to be worth $750 million.

Do give it a read.

It must be said however that many a time Muslims are really good at providing the fuel for Islamophobia themselves. Whether it's from ensuring that many Muslims remain poor and uneducated to leading dictatorial and corrupt regimes, we truly don't help our cause. Plus there is the counterpart to Islamophobia which I would call Other-phobia, fear of the Other or of really anyone different from what we regard as the 'norm'.

Malaysia is a good example of Other-phobia gone mad. Not only is there a phobia of people of other faiths supposedly out to convert those from the majority faith through simple things like using the same word for God, singing hymns and wishing people during their festivals, there is also a phobia against anyone even within the same faith who may worship somewhat differently. Calling Shiites a threat in Malaysia is only one of the bizarre things our so-called religious officials do. And let's not forget the persecution of all other small sects and cults. Either we adhere to the small strict box we call Malaysian Islam, or we risk not being deemed Muslim at all. When Malaysia got picked by God to be this special, I don't know.

[But] it may well be that God will bring about [mutual] affection between you [O believers] and some of those whom you [now] face as enemies: for, God is all-powerful - and God is much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace (Surah Al-Mumtahinah, Verse 7)

Let us also not forget the phobia against other Others, people of different opinions, gender and sexuality. If you believe in freedom of speech, in Malaysia apparently you're not a good Muslim. If you believe in justice and equality for women, apparently that also makes you not a good Muslim. If you don't believe in discrimination against anyone because of their race, religion, gender and sexuality, apparently that also makes you a bad Muslim. The Islamophobes would certainly agree with our self-appointed mullahs then, because they welcome 'bad' Muslims (even when they themselves discriminate against people because of their race, religion, gender and sexuality).

When Islamophobes say that Muslims are a bunch of violent people, we all jump up and say that that's untrue because Islam is a religion of peace. Yet when it comes to our own people, we are ever willing to inflict violence on them for what we deem are 'infringements' including death. How does this promote the cause of Islam as a peaceful religion? What Quranic basis is there for calling for punishments of gay people by stoning them or throwing them off high cliffs as some have done? To protect the dignity of Islam? This only undermines Islam in very fundamental ways, especially when the person in question has not done anything but try to encourage others to be strong. In what way would this be insulting Islam?

In Sabah, the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Islam Negri Sabah has said they will enforce apostasy laws. How are they going to do that? Are they going to go round checking whether people are apostasising or not? By what criteria are they going to decide this? And more importantly. under whose authority are they doing this? Certainly not God's.

.. and it is He who accepts repentance from His servants, and pardons bad deeds, and knows all that you do (Surah Ash-Shura,Verse 25)

Excepted, however, shall be they that repent, and put themselves to rights, and make known the truth: and it is they whose repentance I shall accept - for I alone am the Acceptor of Repentance, the Dispenser of Grace. (Surah Al-Baqara, Verse 160)

"I alone am the Acceptor of Repentance" How dare then human beings demand and accept repentance? How arrogant is it to presume that we can? I want to see THE surat tauliah for that.

There is something truly sick in our society that we ignore those calling for violence and instead focus instead on the person who had the courage to come out and say he doesn't want to hide anymore. As Amir Muhammad points out here, our people are inordinately interested in other people's sex lives. As long as we hide it. As long as we're dishonest about it. (And one of the great dishonesties is when men say that they had to marry their 2nd, 3rd or 4th wife because they 'takut terlanjur'. Should they even be thinking of 'melanjur'?)

We sit in moral judgment of people, forgetting completely that others also sit in judgment of us, and are just as prejudiced. Or do we think that two wrongs do make a right? There is only One who will look at everything we've done in our lives and make the only judgment that matters. And I don't believe anyone is blacklisted just for being something they can't help. After all if it is God who decides the course of our lives, then how can anyone help being what they are?

God does not burden any human being with more than he is well able to bear: in his favour shall be whatever good he does, and against him whatever evil he does. (Surah Al-Baqara, Verse 286)

Go out in peace, people.

A Jew Explains the Quran

2010-12-23T16:30:00.000+08:00

Dear folks, while we quarrel about pluralism, we forget about peace. And peace comes from understanding one another's faith with respect. As well as understanding our own faith.

Here is a truly wonderful video by an agnostic Jew who has studied the Quran more than 99% of Muslims, explains its beauty and corrects many of its misquotes. (with thanks to Kak Zu)

Peace on earth to all humankind!

Merry Christmas and a here's to a tranquil and fulfilling year ahead!

Having Our Cake and Eating It..in Intrafaith Relations

2010-12-19T17:37:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, as the year ends, I wish I could say that it was a great year where we moved forward on so many things. Sadly we haven't, at least on the things I care about such as gender equality, child rights and interfaith harmony. Women continue to suffer violence each and every day, some people think we should accept child marriage simply because religion allows it and interfaith harmony is threatened daily because some people think pluralism is dangerous.

But it's not like that everywhere; there are more enlightened people in the world. And they are willing to put their enlightenment in writing. Such as in the document The Amman Message which is summarised below:

The Amman Message

Summary

Frequently Asked Questions

'[T]he best resource for those who wish to travel along the straight path in their words and their actions, and in their spiritual and religious life'.

— The Grand Shaykh of the Azhar, Shaykh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi (may God have mercy on him), 2006.

The Amman Message started as a detailed statement released the eve of the 27th of Ramadan 1425 AH / 9th November 2004 CE by H.M. King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein in Amman, Jordan. It sought to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and what actions represent it and what actions do not. Its goal was to clarify to the modern world the true nature of Islam and the nature of true Islam.

In order to give this statement more religious authority, H.M. King Abdullah II then sent the following three questions to 24 of the most senior religious scholars from all around the world representing all the branches and schools of Islam: (1) Who is a Muslim? (2) Is it permissible to declare someone an apostate (takfir)? (3) Who has the right to undertake issuing fatwas (legal rulings)?

Based on the fatwas provided by these great scholars (who included the Shaykh Al-Azhar; Ayatollah Sistani and Sheikh Qaradawi), in July 2005 CE, H.M. King Abdullah II convened an international Islamic conference of 200 of the world's leading Islamic scholars 'Ulama) from 50 countries. In Amman, the scholars unanimously issued a ruling on three fundamental issues (which became known as the 'Three Points of the Amman Message'):

They specifically recognized the validity of all 8 Mathhabs (legal schools) of Sunni, Shi'a and Ibadhi Islam; of traditional Islamic Theology (Ash'arism); of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), and of true Salafi thought, and came to a precise definition of who is a Muslim.
Based upon this definition they forbade takfir (declarations of apostasy) between Muslims.
Based upon the Mathahib they set forth the subjective and objective preconditions for the issuing of fatwas, thereby exposing ignorant and illegitimate edicts in the name of Islam.

These Three Points were then unanimously adopted by the Islamic World's political and temporal leaderships at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit at Mecca in December 2005. And over a period of one year from July 2005 to July 2006, the Three Points were also unanimously adopted by six other international Islamic scholarly assemblies, culminating with the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of Jeddah, in July 2006. In total, over 500 leading Muslim scholars worldwide (as can be seen on this website) unanimously endorsed the Amman Message and its Three Points.

This amounts to a historical, universal and unanimous religious and political consensus (ijma') of the Ummah (nation) of Islam in our day, and a consolidation of traditional, orthodox Islam.

The significance of this is: (1) that it is the first time in over a thousand years that the Ummah has formally and specifically come to such a pluralistic mutual inter-recognition; and (2) that such a recognition is religiously legally binding on Muslims since the Prophet (may peace and blessings be upon him) said: My Ummah will not agree upon an error (Ibn Majah, Sunan, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith no.4085).

This is good news not only for Muslims, for whom it provides a basis for unity and a solution to infighting, but also for non-Muslims. For the safeguarding of the legal methodologies of Islam (the Mathahib) necessarily means inherently preserving traditional Islam's internal 'checks and balances'. It thus assures balanced Islamic solutions for essential issues like human rights; women's rights; freedom of religion; legitimate jihad; good citizenship of Muslims in non-Muslim countries, and just and democratic government. It also exposes the illegitimate opinions of radical fundamentalists and terrorists from the point of view of true Islam. As George Yeo, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, declared in the 60th Session of the U.N. General Assembly (about the Amman Message): "Without this clarification, the war against terrorism would be much harder to fight."

Finally, whilst this by the Grace of God is a historical achievement, it will clearly remain only principal unless it is put into practice everywhere. For this reason, H.M. King Abdullah II is now seeking to implement it, God willing, through various pragmatic measures, including (1) inter-Islamic treaties; (2) national and international legislation using the Three Points of the Amman Message to define Islam and forbid takfir; (3) the use of publishing and the multi-media in all their aspects to spread the Amman Message; (4) instituting the teaching of the Amman Message in school curricula and university courses worldwide; and (5) making it part of the training of mosque Imams and making it included in their sermons.

God says in the Holy Qur'an says:

There is no good in much of their secret conferences save (in) whosoever enjoineth charity and fairness and peace-making among the people and whoso doeth that, seeking the good pleasure of God, We shall bestow on him a vast reward. (Al-Nisa, 4:114).

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It is interesting that Malaysia sent an official delegation to this conference in the form of Tan Sri Hamid Othman in 2004, endorsed the document and then returned home and said nothing whatsoever about it. Do we say one thing overseas and another back home? Is our word no good at all? This explains why we sign various international conventions overseas and then do little to implement them back home.

Or is political expediency everything? How do we explain the blatant contradictions in a statement like this, below?

Ahad Disember 19, 2010

Malaysia Tetap Hormati Ajaran Syiah Negara Lain

YAN: Malaysia sentiasa terbuka dalam hubungan diplomatik dan mengiktiraf fahaman Syiah yang diamalkan oleh negara-negara Arab seperti Iran, kata Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom. (Btw Minister, Iran isn't an Arab country...)

Bagaimanapun, beliau berkata, kerajaan tetap mengharamkan fahaman Syiah diamalkan di negara ini ekoran terdapat beberapa faktor yang boleh mengelirukan orang Islam dan bertentangan dengan fahaman Ahli Sunnah Wal Jamaah yang diamalkan oleh rakyat Islam di Malaysia. (Such as..?)

"Jika ada dua mazhab di negara ini mungkin akan berlaku pertumpahan darah kerana masyarakat Islam berbeza pendapat seperti yang berlaku terhadap masyarakat Islam Pakistan dan Iraq. (Why do we assume that there will be violence amongst Muslims when we've lived with large non-Muslim minorities in relative peace for so long?)

"Kita tidak menyekat masyarakat di negara ini mengamalkan amalan Syiah tetapi kerajaan tidak membenarkan penyebaran ajaran Syiah ini dibuat ekoran terdapat beberapa dakyah songsang yang boleh menggugat keharmoniah umat Islam di negara ini," katanya kepada pemberita selepas menyampaikan sumbangan pakaian sekolah di Dewan Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Agama Yan di sini, Ahad. ("Yang boleh.." is not the same as "yang akan..". No faith in his own people obviously.)

Seramai 450 pelajar dalam kawasan Parlimen Jerai dipilih menerima sumbangan Umno Bahagian Jerai.

Khamis lalu, Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor (JAIS) menahan 200 pengikut ajaran Syiah dalam serbuan di sebuah rumah kedai di Taman Sri Gombak, Batu Caves apabila dikatakan terpesong dan berbahaya kerana menganggap penganut Islam mazhab lain sebagai kafir dan halal untuk dibunuh. (Um...where did they get that from, eh?)

"Kalau amalan lain tak menjadi satu kesalahan tetapi nak menyebarkan pegangan seperti ini dan menyimpang jauh hingga mengatakan semua mazhab lain tidak betul dan kafir adalah tidak betul dan melanggar undang-undang," kata Jamil Khir. (But aren't we also saying other mazhabs are tidak betul and kafir as well?)

Katanya, demi keharmonian masyarakat Islam di negara ini, kerajaan dan Jabatan Agama Islam negeri sentiasa melakukan pemantauan dan mengambil tindakan bagi mengekang kegiatan tersebut berleluasa.

"Kalau kita tunggu sampai dia jadi akar dan jadi lebih kuat sudah tidak berguna lagi kerana sukar untuk menghapuskannya," kata beliau. - BERNAMA

Meanwhile few people have said anything about this except for this:

Asri: Shi’a arrests proof of Talibanisation

December 18, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 18 — The arrest of Shi’a Muslims by religious authorities in Gombak earlier this week is proof Malaysia is heading towards “an era of Talibanisation”, says a former Perlis mufti.

“Malaysia is trying to become a country a la Taliban that only allows one school of thought,” Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin said in a press statement today.

“Even though I personally don’t agree with Shi’a teachings and even frequently criticise and debate with them, I cannot accept the approach of the allegedly democratic Malaysian government in denying the people’s right to practice their faith, so long as it does not endanger public safety.”

The Islamic scholar criticised the government for allowing a trend of “non-openness”, saying that if the trend continues, there will be greater tension in the country that may lead to violence.
“[Violence] usually explodes in countries where the right to speak is constantly denied. Perhaps the government has its own agenda in this matter?” he said.

Discourse must always come before use of force when it comes to the people’s rights in today’s globalised world, Asri (picture) stressed.

“Arguments are countered by arguments, not by power,” he said.

Some 200 local and foreign followers of the Hauzah Ar Ridha Alaihissalam group were arrested at a shophouse in Taman Sri Gombak, Batu Caves on Wednesday by authorities concerned that their activities constituted a security threat.

The group, led by two men including an Iranian national, had been operating in the four-storey shophouse for up to two years.

Followers included locals, Indonesians, Myanmars, a Pakistani, an Iranian, some of whom were lecturers and students in institutions of higher learning, lawyers and civil servants. Several children were also found at the location.

Those arrested were brought before the Gombak Barat Lower Syariah Court by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) last night and subsequently freed on bail.

Hauzah Ar Ridha Alaihissalam reportedly permits the killing of Muslims who follow other schools of thought, whom it considers kafir (unbelievers).

It has also been accused of propagating the practice of drawing blood through self-flagellation with chains every 10 Muharram as a way to cleanse sins.

The arrests were the largest recorded in Selangor involving allegedly deviant Islamic teachings.

The current Perlis Mufti, Dr Juanda Jaya, had also criticised religious authorities of acting like Talibans in the debate on religious pluralism.

Malaysia has been seeing a higher frequency of debate on interfaith ties this year following a High Court ruling last December 31 that said a Catholic weekly has the constitutional right to describe their God as Allah.
A protest by Muslims led to a wave of attacks on religious houses of worship, particularly churches in January. Several people have been convicted for the attacks.
The government won an appeal to stay the High Court order on using the word Allah and has set up an interfaith panel to resolve issues.

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Here's another opinion on the arrest of the Shiites in Selangor.

And for those who don't know the history of Sunnis and Shiites, here's a good read.

Meanwhile, despite all this, we must remain optimistic that if we all do good, good things will continue to come to us.

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and may 2011 bring peace and prosperity to all!

May there be peace on earth and may it start with me!

Tell Them What You Think: A Survey on Domestic Violence

2010-12-17T21:45:00.000+08:00

Despite the passing of the Domestic Violence Act in 1994, domestic violence remains a scourge in our country. Every day we read about women being abused by their own husbands and sometimes even killed. We know about them partly because the Act has encouraged women to report these crimes. But such violence continues to occur.

The UKM Gender Studies department would like to find out how people perceive domestic violence in our country as well as to get a better idea of how many people experience such abuse themselves. The survey is anonymous, can be taken by both men and women and is in Bahasa Malaysia and English.

Please take some time to look at it and answer the questions. The more people who do it, the better the quality of results they will get and the more realistic a picture of the domestic violence scenario UKM will get. With empirical evidence, we can get our government to craft better policies to eradicate domestic violence.

To participate in the survey, click here.

Thank you!

Farewell to an Elegant Lady

2010-12-05T23:59:00.000+08:00

Srihadi Chususiah 'Susi' Soemaryo, 1925-2010

There are really few people who personified elegance and gentility like my mother-in-law Srihadi Chususiah Soemaryo. Born to a traditional Javanese family near Solo, 'Susi' went on to become the wife of an Ambassador, hosting guests to the Indonesian embassy in Buenos Aires and Rome. Along the way she and her husband Soemaryo Sosrowardoyo had four children, including my husband.

Three days ago, on December 3, Susi Soemaryo passed away, aged 85. For a number of years she had been suffering from a persistent cough. It did not curb her energetic self and she continued to work at her women's association office, host tea parties at home and travel everywhere with her friends. Her greatest joy were her four grandchildren, of whom my daughter ShaSha is the youngest. In fact when we told her, on the day she was born, that our baby was named Shaista after her late older daughter, she immediately named her 'ShaSha' and it has stuck ever since.

That seemingly incurable cough however led to increasing health problems. One day after her usual walk around the neighbourhood, she blacked out and fell, bruising her face. Many years later a neurologist opined that she may have had a stroke. After that she contracted tuberculosis, a disease which traumatised her by its stigma more than anything.

Mama was never without her batik and pearl earrings and neat hair.

Susi then somehow decided that she would become old. Slowly she 'forgot' to walk, taking to a wheelchair wherever she went. Her short-term memory started to become faulty although her longterm one remained strong for a long time. She could still speak Dutch, as Indonesian women of her generation and social circle do, and she loved listening and singing old showtunes from The King and I, the Sound of Music and those types of musicals. They reminded her of her days living in New York in the early 60s.

After a while Susi, whom I called Mama, was almost entirely bed-ridden, staying confined mostly in her room in the house where she lived with her younger daughter and her family in Jakarta. She started to forget more. One day I visited her and she greeted me with a big smile and said "You look lovely!". We had a nice conversation where she asked me many questions about my parents, children, her own family. Over dinner, she stared at me a long time and finally asked, "And who are you married to?" It turned out that she had no idea who I was and had spent the entire evening asking me generic questions which might have given her a clue. When she truly could not figure out who I was, she finally asked. The sad thing was even when I showed her photos of my husband and daughter, she could not recognise them.

Mama trying to entice ShaSha with a cookie...

In the past year or so, Susi's health deteriorated further. She grew extremely weak and thin and unable to talk. She could only take very soft food but occasionally she was taking so little nutrition that she had to be hospitalised and fed intravenously.

Last week she had trouble breathing and was admitted into the intensive cardiac care unit at a private hospital. Her blood pressure was extremely low and recovery did not seem a possibility anymore. I flew to Jakarta to join my husband and we decided that all our children had to be brought there too to say goodbye to their grandma.

On Tuesday we took the agonising decision of taking Susi off the ventilator and moved her to an ordinary room where she could be more comfortable. Surprisingly her pulse and blood pressure got stronger. After two days the family had a discussion with the doctors to decide what interventions we could do to make sure she was always comfortable and not in pain.

On Friday I decided to take my two daughters back to KL and return in a few days. After we had checked in, passed immigration and was sitting waiting for our flight, my husband called to say that Mama's pulse was weakening rapidly. I quickly made my way out again, recovered our luggage but just as we were heading to the taxi counter, I received the message; Mama had gone at 3pm. She was surrounded only by her most immediate family and had opened her eyes for a while, looked at everyone and then very simply and peacefully closed her eyes forever.

Our emotions were of course very mixed. It had been a difficult week and my husband and sister-in-law had slept little as they took turns to stay by Mama's side at the hospital. We were all of course devastated to lose her but at the same time, knowing her suffering for so many years, we also knew that this was a great relief for her. When her pulse and blood pressure had improved, the doctors had talked of the possibility of a miracle. But what miracle did they mean? To me, a miracle would have been if Mama returned to becoming that elegant and energetic grandmother again and that was obviously not possible.

Her funeral was a simple but far from solemn affair. Of course all religious rituals were observed but the crowds of people who came to pay their respects attested to how much she was loved. Old friends and extended family came at all hours; one even arrived at 1am. They said prayers for her and then sat around to socialise, which made the house exactly the way Susi the generous hostess, liked it, filled with warmth and laughter. Interestingly for me, Indonesians are so much more relaxed about these events than we are. They came as they were, didn't segregate themselves by sex and didn't spend much time being sombre.

The ceremony at the cemetery was also brief but beautiful. Unlike in Malaysia, the departed are not called by their maternal names. Nor is the 'talqin', the graveside prayers, said. Instead the religious official says a brief prayer, explains what is to happen and after the burial, a member of the family gives a speech about the departed, thanks everyone and then it's over. (I am told that occasionally the speeches can be very long, with people quoting philosophers and everything). It seemed entirely in Susi Soemaryo's style, which was never to inconvenience anyone, that it only rained when we reached home after bidding our last farewell to her.

By the way, another interesting thing: at the cemetery, a couple of family friends turned up to say some prayers at Susi's grave. It was only when they crossed themselves afterwards that I realised they were Christian. Indeed when my brother-in-law said some final prayers in his speech, he did ask whoever was not Muslim to say prayers in their own way. Such generosity is rarely heard of here in our country.

Three nights of tahlil are being held for her. I only attended the first night and again it was interesting and, for me, unusual. Instead of doing the entire thing in Arabic and by rote, the ustaz followed the prayers by explaining every single funeral rite that we had gone through in simple clear Bahasa Indonesia. The tahlil, he explained, is not just to pray for the departed but to also comfort the family. His whole message was about the lessons we can learn from the rituals and how they should keep us humble because they all show that 'from earth we are made, and to earth shall we return'. None of the hellfire and brimstone type of speech that we are used to here. It was indeed very comforting.

Mama will undoubtedly be missed. I prefer not to remember her last invalid years but rather when I first knew her, with her elegant batiks and earrings. And how I had to search everywhere for shoes to fit her tiny tiny feet, finally finding the perfect ones in Japan.

A tiny person with a big heart, that was my Mama. Rest in peace. Al-fatihah.

This Takes the Cake!

2010-11-22T21:18:00.000+08:00

Now I know we're one paranoid country but this is really getting too much. They're actually monitoring tourists?? How Soviet is this??

Malaysians abroad under watch

November 22, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — The Foreign Ministry monitors Malaysians who go on tours or reside overseas to ensure that they safeguard the good name of the country and government leaders, the Dewan Rakyat was told today. ( Since when do we have to safeguard the good name of government leaders??)

Deputy Foreign Minister A. Kohilan Pillay said attempts by irresponsible people to tarnish Malaysia’s good name and spread a wrong perception of it breached loyalty to the King and country.

“The ministry monitors the behaviour and actions of not only people from the opposition parties but also tourists and those who reside abroad,” he said when winding up the debate on the Supply Bill 2011 at the committee stage for the ministry. (This guy is seriously stupid...)

Kohilan Pillay also said Malaysian missions abroad constantly fostered positive relations between the media and the office of the prime minister to promote the national agenda and rebut any unfounded negative perception of the country’s leaders. (cosy, cosy, cosy...)

The ministry also monitored foreign media reports and immediately set right any unfounded allegation in the national interest, he said. (set right, huh?)

Kohilan Pillay also said that the latest information on issues was channelled to Malaysian missions abroad from time to time to uphold the government’s stand on the issues, besides providing clarification on current political, economic and social developments.

He said all Malaysian diplomats and officials were equipped with skills and information in various fields, including tourism, investment, education and national security, to help promote Malaysia at the international level.

Malaysians abroad should provide a good perception of the country and safeguard national interest so that they were not labelled as traitors, he said. (!!!)

The House will sit again tomorrow. — Bernama

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So..if I say that Malaysian women experience discrimination because of their sex, or that Malaysians living with HIV suffer stigma because of society's ignorance about the epidemic, I'm a traitor???

Travels, the flu and Hillary...

2010-11-03T21:36:00.000+08:00

It's been an extraordinary 10 days or so for me, folks. So many good things for which I feel totally blessed.

First off, two Fridays ago, on a night I was feeling really quite tired, I got dressed up to go to the Royal Selangor Club to receive the KL West Rotary Club's 2010 Vocational Service Award. It was a big honour especially since I was in the company of two other distinguished recipients, Professor Emeritus Dato' Dr. CP Ramachandran and 'the Lion of Jelutong' himself, YB Karpal Singh. Had a chat with the lovely Mrs Karpal Singh before we were treated to some food and entertainment.

YB Karpal and Mrs Karpal and I after we got our awards.

The next night I had to fly off to Barcelona to attend the 7th East-West Dialogue held at Casa Asia, which is a Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs institution geared to bettering ties between Spain and Asia. The theme this year was Gender Equality and Development and they gathered about 15 women from Asia to speak on various issues ranging from violence against women, health, education, media and political participation. It was an experience not just interacting with Spanish women but also with one another from Asia. Also interesting was to find out that there is a large Pakistani migrant community in Spain, many of whom came to Casa Asia to listen to us and ask questions.

The beautiful Barcelona City Hall where we had the opening of our dialogue.

As I was away in Spain, I missed a rather major event at home which was the 65th United Nations Day celebrations in Malaysia which was a bit of a shame because the UN in Malaysia had decided to present me with its 2010 Person of the Year Award. Very nice of them to do that and I felt so bad about not being able to be there. Anyway managed to send my two daughters to collect it on my behalf and by all accounts they represented me pretty well.

My two girls receiving the award on my behalf from the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

After Spain I stopped over for two days in Amsterdam, somewhere I had never been before. I found it a lovely city with much to see. Unfortunately I had the beginnings of a cold so didn't do much other than a canal tour and visit the Van Gogh Museum which was lovely. Wanted to also see the Old Masters at the Rijksmuseum but couldn't muster the energy because I already had a runny nose and fever.

The 12-hour flight home unfortunately made my cold worse because it added a cough to my misery. But I had to muster some energy to do an interview with Zain Verjee of CNN as part of a whole bunch of stories they are doing on Malaysia this week. We did the interview in KLCC park and it aired yesterday morning. Pretty innocuous stuff, especially since they cut a lot out to make it within 2 minutes plus.

Mostly they wanted to talk about Muslim women in this part of the world. I must say that Muslim women is THE subject these days and the main group anyone wants to talk to is my bunch at Sisters in Islam. By the way, we had great news while I was away because the court threw out an attempt by a group called Malaysian Assembly of Mosque Youth to stop us from using the word Islam in our name and publications on the grounds that they had no locus standi.

Yesterday I was invited to attend US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's talk at ISTAC. Despite my cold I went along, fervently hoping I wouldn't be refused entry for harbouring too many germs. To my surprise I was ushered along to a small room with some of our top women from government, academia, NGOs and business to have a private meeting with her before the main session with some 500 others. We were told that she would have 15 minutes with us but as it happened, she arrived early and we had close to 30 minutes with her.

Passing on cold germs to Hillary Clinton...

Hillary Clinton proved to be an extremely adept politician. She was so well briefed that apart from a few of us, she already knew who we were and what we did. I was introduced to her by Dato Seri Shahrizat and as soon as she heard my name, she complimented me on my HIV work. (She may well have been briefed by Melanne Verveer, Pres. Obama's Gender Advisor who was here in KL last year.) Similarly when she was introduced to Tan Sri Zeti Aziz, the Governor of the Central Bank and Tan Sri Zarina Anwar of the Securities Commision.

In the main 'conversation' with everyone else, she was an articulate, personable diplomat, fielding questions on everything with equanimity. Pity some of the questions, especially by the male moderator who seemed visibly uncomfortable with interviewing a woman far more powerful than he, were so shallow. I don't know who was stage-managing it, whether it was us or the Americans, but none of the questions were particularly difficult for Hillary to handle. In fact she did pretty good PR for Malaysia, with no reference to any of our problems. (For a transcript of the Hillary Clinton conversation at ISTAC, see here.). I think some of us would have preferred a more intimate setting where we could have had a more frank conversation with her but there you go.

Still, Hillary was certainly impressive compared to our politicians. She seemed genuinely interested in the people she met, was very well-informed and spoke in a conversational non-lecturing way without sacrificing the information and messages that she wanted to put over. Our politicians could really learn how to connect with people the way she did. Of course, she was putting over solely the American message and some of it you have to roll your eyes over ( eg saying that the US gives more money to the Palestinians than any Arab state while conveniently not mentioning what a pittance it is compared to what they give to Israel. Pity the moderators didn't jump on that...).

But on the whole the opportunity to see someone who's undoubtedly a world leader, and a woman at that, was one to remember.

And then I went home and somehow managed to lock myself in my bathroom...

I've Been Pirated!

2010-10-15T16:05:00.000+08:00

Today I am a bit irritated because instead of dealing with the piles of work that I have to do, I've had to spend time at the Pantai police station making a police report. No it's not against some horrible organisation, just a person who has been impersonating me and dropping my name all this while.

Here's what I wrote in my police report:

I would like to make a police report about a female person who goes by the name of Tengku Imann Suraya who has been impersonating me as well as using my name to obtain favourable treatment from others and also to deceive some people for her own benefits. This person is not known to me personally and I believe that Tengku Imann Suraya is not her real name. In this report, I will refer to her as Tengku Imann Suraya.

1. In late 1999 or 2000 at the official opening of the Malaysian AIDS Council office in Sentul, Tengku Imann Suraya and two of her friends turned up to the event uninvited and told my staff that she was related to me.

2. The following day I received a phone call at my office from one of Tengku Imann Suraya’s friends from the event above, Jane. She thanked me for paying for her cancer treatment in Germany. After telling her that I had never heard of her and had certainly not paid for her treatment, she replied that ‘Imann’ had told her that I did. Soon after that call, the said Tengku Imann Suraya herself called me to try and explain it. She said that she tells lies so that people would treat her with more respect. I told her to stop doing that.

3. In 2003, I received a call from the then Mayor of Kuala Lumpur. He told me that he had received a phone call from someone claiming to be me asking him not to demolish a stall with a Temporary Operating License (TOL). The Mayor had called me to be sure and he could tell immediately that the person who called earlier was not me as my voice was different from hers. I asked him who the owner of the stall was and he answered Tengku Imann Suraya.

4. About two years ago, I received a call from the Immigration director at the passport department in Damansara who said that someone there named Tengku Imann Suraya was dropping my name and telling him that he should expedite her passport renewal. I told him not to believe her.

5. Two days ago on 13^th October 2010 a woman called Begum Jan Khan came to see me and told me that the said Tengku Imann Suraya has been dropping my name all the time, causing her to trust her. As a result, she entered into business with her. She subsequently loaned RM250,000.00 to her. An additional RM50,000.00 from her Amanah Saham Bumiputera account had been diverted by her bank into an account belonging to the said Tengku Imann Suraya.

6. There were also allegations in a graft investigation that I had deposited a sum of USD15 million into an account in a Singapore bank in the name of “Tengku Iman”. I have never been involved in such activities.

7. This person has clearly told many people of her alleged relationship with me and has used my name to obtain favours from as well as to deceive unsuspecting people for her own benefits.

8. I hope the police can investigate this complaint.

Regarding item No 6, I actually blogged about this in 2007. To refresh your memories, here it is.

This person is a pesky irritant who is doing something criminal, ie impersonating me. Somehow there are a lot of people who are gullible enough to be taken in by her. Apparently Tengku Imann is not even her real name yet somehow she managed to get a passport.

Tg Imann Suraiya is also the President of something called the Sekretariat Sukarelawan Barisan Nasional Malaysia. I checked on the Registrar of Societies website but there is no such organisation listed.

The cops took a statement from me and will now start investigating. If any of you know anything about her, I would really appreciate any information you might have.

Human Resilience and Heroism Can Be Truly Amazing

2010-10-14T14:16:00.000+08:00

Hello folks, I know I've been a bit lazy these past few weeks without posting anything. Life as always has been extraordinarily busy. It never seems to end. Then in the middle of it all, I had to dash off to Melbourne because as you know, Dad fell ill and had to be hospitalised. He is now very well although we are trying to find ways to 'rationalise' his crazy schedule. He got sick because he had caught a cold in China but didn't really rest and let it clear completely before he went off to Australia.

Not that I'm any better when it comes to crazy scheduling though. Mind you, I kinda screeched to a halt yesterday morning because I was rivetted by the Chilean miners rescue being broadcast live on TV. If any of you watched it, you will know what gripping human drama it was, and what joy and relief when the miners came out safely. I saw the first miner and the last miner rescued and couldn't help the tears of joy.

Here are some wonderful photos of the rescue and the events around it!

Bairon Avalos, aged 7, waits for his Dad, Florencio Avalos, with his Mum and the President of Chile. Florencio was the first miner brought up to safety.(Hugo Infante.Chilean Govt via Getty Images)

Bairon did a drawing of his father's rescue while waiting for his Dad who was being examined in the hospital.(Ariel Marinkovic/AFP/Getty Images)

Esteban Rojas, the 18th miner to be rescued, kneels to pray upon his arrival at the surface.(Reuters/Hugo Infante/Chilean Govt.)

Relatives of miner Dario Segovia react as they watch his rescue.(AP Photo/Natasha Pisarenko)

Franklin Lobos, a former professional footballer, looks at a football his family and friends sent him as he became the 27th miner to be rescued.(Reuters/Hugo Infante.Chilean Govt.)

Richard Villaroel's family rushes to greet the capsule as it brings him to the surface.(AP Photo/Hugo Infante. Chilean Govt.)

Roxana Gomez, daughter of miner Mario Gomez, the 9th to be rescued, as she watched his return to safety.(AP Photo/Natasha Pisarenko)

It's a powerful story of the resilience of the human spirit. To be captive 700 metres underground for 69 days is unimaginable, especially to those of us who can't even bear to be trapped in a lift. Luis Urzua, the foreman and the last to be rescued said that the first 17 days when they had not yet been found was the toughest. But they found ways to hold on and survive. (Read how they did it here.)

But most of all I was impressed by how the Chilean government acted. They spared nothing to ensure the best possible outcome but they also managed expectations well. For instance, they told people that they thought it would take until Christmas before the miners could be rescued and yet it happened in October. Once the capsule was ready they said it would take more than 24 hours to get them out, yet it took them 23 hours.

They also produced the entire rescue for the media extremely well. Everything we saw, especially the live feed from the mine itself when the capsule reached the miners, was produced and managed by the Chilean government and not any TV station. There are some extremely media savvy people there. And they knew it was an opportunity to rally the country, hence the many Chilean flags visible and the constant Chi! Chi! Chi! Le!Le!Le! cheers to boost everyone's energy.

And I don't know if the Chilean president Sebastian Pinera went to bed at all. From what I saw he was there to greet each and every miner as they came up with genuinely warm hugs and smiles. I don't know what he's like politically but for those 23 hours, he was just what anyone wanted in a leader.

I guess sooner or later, someone will gripe about the costs of this operation. Yes it's probably a lot but hey, from every angle it was worth it. 33 lives were saved, Chile became a country of heroes and the rest of us woke up to very good news for a change.

For that, we give our thanks.

Teaching Our Girls to Love Men Who Are Bad for Them

2010-09-23T17:01:00.000+08:00

Today the most read news article was this:

Thursday September 23, 2010

Woman's fatal attraction

By YUEN MEIKENG

SHAH ALAM: Her boyfriend was convicted of murdering her three-year-old daughter but Siti Nurhanim Aziz still loves him.

Siti Nurhanim Aziz, 25, said she was not even angry with Mohd Fazli Azri Jamil who was sentenced to death by the High Court here yesterday for killing Syafiah Humaira Sahari earlier this year.

“He (Mohd Fazli) loved my daughter so much, therefore I love him,” the sales assistant told reporters at the court here yesterday.

Describing the 28-year-old taxi driver as a loving person, she said she was not satisfied with the court’s verdict which found her boyfriend guilty of the crime. It was also Mohd Fazli’s 28th birthday yesterday.

Still in love: Siti Nurhanim walking out of the High Court in Shah Alam.

Asked if she forgave him, a teary Siti Nurhanim said: “I was never angry at him all this while. He had no intention to kill Syafiah. He is innocent.”

Siti Nurhanim is said to be married to former policeman Sahari Usul, who is currently detained at the Sungai Buloh prison for a separate murder.

In his ruling, Justice Mohtarudin Baki found Mohd Fazli guilty of murdering the girl by kicking and stepping on her with his football boots at a football field on Feb 25.

Mohd Fazli kissed Siti Nurhanim on the cheek as police officers led him away after the judgment was delivered.

His mother Norhaziah Yusof, 52, cried out: “My son is innocent”, as family members sobbed in the public gallery.

Mohd Fazli is taken away after his sentencing yesterday.

A smiling Mohd Fazli then turned to reporters and said sarcastically: “Thank you very much, reporters.”

Justice Mohtarudin said the injuries suffered by Syafiah Humaira were inconsistent with the defence’s claim that the child fell off a motorcycle.

Although Mohd Fazli claimed he was high on drugs and had drunk two bottles of stout at the time of the offence, the judge ruled that self-induced intoxication was not a complete defence.

“It is clear that the accused was rational at the time as he was able to drive his taxi to the field and back,” said Justice Mohtarudin.

He added that Mohd Fazli’s act of slamming the car door on the girl and stepping on her with his football boots was unacceptable and showed that he had intended to murder the child.

Lawyer Gurbachan Singh, who represented Mohd Fazli, said he received instructions from his client to appeal against the conviction. Deputy Public Prosecutors Idham Abd Ghani, Hanim Mohd Rashid and Zureen Elina Mohd Dom acted for the prosecution.

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I'm not sure why it was such a well-read piece of news. Perhaps it is the online equivalent of gawking; this story of a woman who has relationships with not one but two murderers. And doesn't weep over the death of her child.

When I read news like this, I really hunger for some analysis of this situation. What compels a woman to marry men like these? Why is she so forgiving of a man who has killed her child? Are her feelings for her man stronger than those for her child?

No doubt there will be all sorts of condemnation of her for being seemingly a heartless mother. I hesitate to be too quick to judge. I think that there are women who are so conditioned to be submissive to their men that they are unable to bring themselves to condemn them for anything. Already this woman has a husband in jail, which probably left her and her child in dire straits without any way of surviving except to latch on to another. And some women simply go from one bad man to another because that's all they know in their circle. It's a cycle of poverty and hopelessness that just keeps going unbroken, because sometimes people cannot really imagine any other life.

It doesn't help that society itself doesn't encourage women to stand up for themselves and get away from men who aren't good for them. In a small study I did with a colleague on HIV-positive women in Kelantan a few years ago, we found that many of the women knew their husbands were drug users when they married them but married them anyway. Either drug use is so normalised in the kampungs or they thought they could help get them off the drugs. Drug users need help but they need professional help and a wife is not necessarily the best person to help them, especially when children come along. And children will come along because a husband like that is not going to use any condoms, nor allow his wife to use contraceptives, even assuming she knows anything about them.

And in this, she is not supported by society. We have a society that encourages people to get married even when the foundations on which that marriage is built is extremely shaky. People nowadays get married to have sex legally, or to legitimise an already-conceived child, or because it just seems like a good idea. So never mind if the man is unemployed with a history of drug-use, they should marry anyway. Or if he's a good deal older and you're barely out of puberty.

Our society seems to think that getting married makes everything hunky-dory. But if a couple has not seriously thought about it, it could be the worse thing for them, and certainly not good for their children. It is surely no coincidence that in almost all cases of child abuse ( and deaths), the adult perpetrators are very young. Sometimes mothers have not yet reached 30 but already has several children. Often they are also divorced and trying to manage a new relationship. While it's not true in every case, often it is the stepfather or boyfriend who's responsible for the abuse. Could there be a relationship between competition for the woman's attention and the abuse? Add poverty and the pressures of day-to-day living and you get a a situation which sooner or later gets untenable. A child starts to cry for some reason and it all becomes too much. (And still, on the one hand we say we've lifted our reservations to the CEDAW clause that says the age of marriage should be 18, and at the same time we fudge by allowing for younger people to marry.)

How topsy-turvy have we become that a man can claim to be high and drunk as defense against a murder charge, as if we are supposed to nod our heads in understanding? Although he did not get away with it, how is it that nobody seems horrified that he could have been high AND driving a taxi?

And where are the self-proclaimed guardians of our morality? The ones who insist that we should whip women for adultery seem to be sleeping here. Not that I'm asking them to go and whip this woman but it seems that they are inconsistent in persecuting people. Perhaps it's because they know they should have helped a young woman left holding a baby when her husband went to jail, and if they did, perhaps that child might still be alive today?

No, instead we continue to teach young women that men are their leaders, even when they take drugs and kill. And when they take us at our word, and continue to worship these men, we think this is an oddity worth gawking at.

Happy 47th Birthday, Malaysia!

2010-09-16T01:04:00.000+08:00

Well folks, we finally got this day acknowledged and honoured with a public holiday.How are you spending your day?

Here in KL, there're lots of things going on. It started off just now with 47 Minutes of Silence: Peace for Malaysia.I couldn't attend any of the events so my small contribution was to go silent on Twitter for 47 minutes.

Later today there'll be several fun events. At Jalan Bangkung in Bangsar, the MalaysiaKU:Celebrating Malaysia Day project will be a whole series of events in various restaurants in the same row of shophouses. At 3pm I'm launching a book I've told you all about, A Given Path, Harmonious Spiritual Practices in Malaysia by Nafise Motlaq. Nafise is Iranian and took some beautiful photos showing the many common practices in our various religious traditions and was trying to publish a book of them. Nobody wanted to touch it but it seems that now somebody has been brave enough and I'm proud to be able to officiate at its launch at Leonardo's, Jalan Bangkung. There'll also be an exhibition of Nafise's photos and a poetry recital by Cecil Rajendra. Do come along.

Then at 3.30 pm is the launch of another book, Found in Malaysia , jointly published by ZI Publications and The NutGraph. It's a book of interviews of various Malaysians on what it means to be Malaysian, most of which were published in The NutGraph online but also including some interviews exclusively done for the book (including mine). That's also happening at Leonardo's so you can do a two-in-one and attend both book launches.

For more information on the Jalan Bangkung events, please see here.

Meanwhile as a special treat, Matahari Books invites you to download for free their new book, New Malaysian Essays 3, edited by Yin Shao Loong. How generous is that?

Tomorrow evening I'm having a potluck dinner with my neighbours to celebrate Malaysia Day. It's our annual get-together when we renew friendship, trade neighbourhood news and basically revel in living in our quiet little street.

Hope you all have a joyful holiday as well!

A Little Raya Ditty for you!

2010-09-11T22:33:00.000+08:00

A spare reworking of that old Saloma classic by our very own Zee Avi. Enjoy!

From a Raucous Ramadhan to a Serene Syawal..

2010-09-07T14:31:00.000+08:00

Hasn't it been a fractious bad-tempered Ramadhan? All these arguments about all sorts of nonsense, from whether non-Muslims can enter mosques to whether people should read their own Constitution, to demands from certain people that the ISA be used for any anti-Islam postings online ( but not anti other religions?) to controversies about TV ads. What happened to restraint during the fasting month?

Let's hope the advent of Syawal brings more calm. I'll be celebrating again in Jakarta because my mother-in-law is frail and we'd like to be near her.

So in case I don't get to post anything in the next few days, let me take this opportunity to wish you all Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri. May we all be forgiven and may we forgive generously without reservations.

I couldn't find a Raya card I liked for you all so instead, here's a photo of the lovely Butchart Gardens in Vancouver island, British Columbia which I had the great fortune to visit recently.

Have a great Raya, folks! And travel safely!

Is Everything Sapping Our Energy?

2010-09-01T17:07:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, sorry for the long silence. Haven't felt like blogging much really. Seems like too much talking out there.

Anyway if I sound a bit despondent, I said it all in my Musings column today here.

I wish I could be more cheerful. The most cheering thing I'm doing is for Sept 16, Malaysia Day, my neighbours and I are organising a potluck party. Usually we have a gathering for tea on Aug 31, Merdeka Day, but because it's Ramadhan and because it's always at my house, that wasn't possible this time so now it'll be on Sept 16. Yay! My neighbour makes the best mutton curry ever!

Meanwhile there are other things going on. I am really grateful to know so many thoughtful, calm , reasonable people who try and put their money where their mouth is. You may remember last year we had that wonderful event Fast for the Nation. This year, since Sept 16 is after Ramadhan, we're doing something different.

On Sept 5, we're organising Say Sorry Day. Which is a day we all reflect on wrongs we may have done to others and say sorry to them. It's also a day to forgive others. The inspiration for this was Yong Vui Kong, the young boy who was found guilty for drug trafficking in Singapore and is facing the death sentence. (However the latest news is that his appeal will be heard in January). He knows he was wrong, nobody is disputing what he did was wrong, but he's sorry and wishes to help others see the error in getting involved in drug trafficking.

But Say Sorry Day is not just about Vui Kong. It's about ourselves, reflecting on our own deeds and misdeeds and asking for forgiveness for it. Much like Muslims asking each other for forgiveness at the end of Ramadhan for Raya.

There'll be several events linked to Say Sorry Day starting Sept 3. They're all in KL as far as I know; sorry to those outside the Klang Valley, but nothing to stop you from doing your own events.

I must say the energy is low these days. Perhaps we're just tired from all the shouting and quarrelling. And there's not enough being done to make peace. Already, there have been some cases (unreported in the mainstream media) of people being attacked for what seems like no reason other than their race. Just like in the US, where the Islamophobic rantings of a few people are resulting in violence against Muslims and mosques, so are the rantings of some people against minorities encouraging thugs to perpetuate violence against those they feel they have power over just due to a biological fact. We need to stop this before it gets out of hand.

So does anyone have any ideas on how to create and sustain peace among us? Not just between races and religions but also between people of different ideas? I'd love to hear some positivity from you because positivity begets energy. Those who can only condemn, please do take a break (you know who you are!).

But [remember that an attempt at] requiting evil may, too, become an evil: hence, whoever pardons [his foe] and makes peace, his reward rests with God - for, verily, He does not love evildoers. (Surah 42, Verse 40)

Meanwhile, I wish you all a belated Selamat Hari Merdeka, and if I don't get on the blog before then (but I hope to), Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri, maaf zahir dan bathin.

Salam Ramadhan

2010-08-13T22:47:00.000+08:00

Hi folks! Sorry for the belated greetings but have been laid down with the flu. Cough, runny nose, the works...so my first few days of Ramadan have not been great at all.

To those of you who are fasting, I hope you're having a better time of it. Ramadan is a time of restraint not just from food but from all excesses, especially of word and deed. It's also a time of giving and reaching out to those who have little.

In the Quran, God says "[fasting] during a certain number of days. But whoever of you is ill, or on a journey, [shall fast instead for the same] number of other days; and [in such cases] it is incumbent upon those who can afford it to make sacrifice by feeding a needy person. And whoever does more good than he is bound to do does good unto himself thereby; for to fast is to do good unto yourselves - if you but knew it." (2:184)

So spare a thought for those in need, folks. At the moment, there's probably few people more in need than those suffering from the floods in Pakistan. Already 14 million people have been affected by the floods and there's huge need for donations to help them. If you'd like to help, please go to UNICEF Malaysia and click 'donate'. Instead of going for that big buka puasa buffet, donate that amount instead. It all helps.

Selamat berpuasa!

Life's Lessons from Lho

2010-07-29T12:29:00.000+08:00

I'm sure The Star sold out every single copy of their paper today because of their front page story featuring International Mystery Man Jho Lo. Now we know we don't need scantily clad girls to sell newspapers, some rich chubby fellow will do!

Jho 'Chubs' Lo

But reading Jho's interview is instructive nevertheless. There's a lot to learn from him. So here are a few lessons from the 28 years of Jho Lo's existence:

1. Always go to the best schools eg Harrow, Wharton. So all you people who have to go to all those decrepit sekolah kebangsaans where you only speak BM or Mandarin or Tamil, too bad.

2. When at school, pick your friends carefully. Make sure they are scions of the rich and famous. Forget about the scholarship kids.

3. Stay close to your friends and always make them feel good about themselves. This way, they are sure to trust you. Trust is very important.

4. Make sure you know how to do anything for your friends. Book tables at fancy restaurants and clubs, throw wild parties, order champagne, procure friends who are also rich and famous.

5. Bunk in with friends who can pay USD100,000 for a New York apartment. Never mind if you have to sleep on the couch, the address matters!! (12 people in a 5000-square feet apartment...they all slept in bunks or what?)

6. Be so busy arranging things for your friends that you only have time to eat supersized American meals. But who cares if you're chubby if your wallet seems to be too!

7. Tell everyone how you made your first million at 20 and are now making billions for other people. How exactly, you don't have to say. But it's enough to make more people want to throw more money at you. (Never mind that the finance industry is the most derided right now because of the numbers of people it has impoverished. Not the New York party boys of course!)

8. Get a tame local newspaper to do a free four-page ad for you and make sure they ask you only the questions you want them to ask. Don't let them ask you the questions just about everybody wants to know, like how DO you organise these parties?

9. Insist you're a Malaysian through and through but make no mention of any Malaysian friends. Guess partying in KL or Penang ain't quite the same...

There you go, boys and girls, how to succeed in life the Jho Lo way!!

Faulting Footie on Faith

2010-07-24T15:41:00.000+08:00

The Devils' Crest

I never thought they would ever touch football. After all it is the unacknowledged religion of so many. And despite all sorts of mutterings from our mullahs about people mixing together in large gatherings because they could lead to, ohmigod, sex, not a word was ever breathed about the large gatherings of humanity known as the football crowd. Perhaps they thought girls don't watch football or that Malaysian football is so poor these days, it's not worth talking about.

But no, I was wrong! Ever the spoilsports (as opposed to the sporting) they actually tried it. Right after the one month of footie ecstacy known as the World Cup, our mullahs come out and said that nobody should wear Brazil, Portugal, Serbia, Barcelona and Norway t-shirts because of the crosses on them. Funny, no mention of England. Some fans there maybe? (Personally I wouldn't wear England t-shirts after their performance in South Africa..)

Luckily they didn't mention Spain...maybe because Spain has a Muslim past. And France, which is banning the burqa in public places, had of course Zinedine Zidane. And Germany has that Turkish fellow. Wouldn't be good to ban teams that have Muslims in them, would it?

Maybe like me, they don't think about football except once every four years. And then suddenly noticed these jerseys. Obviously they don't watch much EPL football either, having never noticed before that the Man U team is nicknamed The Red Devils. (And the way that red-haired Rooney played at the World Cup, would you call him a devil or a lamb, eh?)

But honestly, are we such a weak people that the wearing of a t-shirt would shake our faith? God must be laughing. Has Saudi Arabia, for many the 'beacon' of Islam, banned any of these t-shirts? Aren't the Arabs trying to buy a football team or two?

Of course, now they've backtracked, sort of. Someone must have pointed out the large numbers of footie fans among the, um, faithful. And no doubt the many UMNO members among them too. (Although funny that their logic is that since Muslims should know what to wear or not to, there is no need for a fatwa. On other subjects, they don't seem to trust us to decide on our own as much.) Maybe the fact that it's yet again brought us 'fame' in the international arena had a bearing.

Now if they'd said that it's a sin to just sit on your bums watching football on TV all the time and that it's much better to actually go out and play it. Or that it's a sin that there aren't enough playing fields out there for kids to play on, that might be something.

Luckily our mullahs haven't yet gone the way of the Somalis who think that there's nothing more sinful than watching the World Cup. But the way things are going in our beloved country, one day we may just get all-Somalian.

Meanwhile, can we please keep sport a religion-free arena? We need to breathe somewhere.

Cancer Claims Another: Remembering Dalilah

2010-07-23T22:02:00.000+08:00

This year for the first time I participated in the Relay for Life at the end of May.This is an event organised by the National Cancer Society of Malaysia to raise awareness about cancer, to remember those lost to the disease and to give support and hope to survivors. Participants gather for the all-night event, walking continuously around a track and raising funds to support the work that NCSM does.

After being invited twice and not being able to take part, I was determined to join in this time. I managed to get pledges for my walk and turned up at the Bukit Jalil Sports School field only to find that it had rained just before the event and the whole track was muddy. Still I did what I could though I didn't manage to stay the whole night.

Paper lanterns to commemorate those lost to cancer and survivors line the track during the 'luminaria'.

The highlight of the event for me was the 'luminaria'. This is when paper lanterns decorated and bearing the names of those lost to cancer and those still fighting the disease were lit in the silent darkness. I had no idea this was going to happen so at the last minute managed to write the names of two beloved cousins lost to cancer. The whole experience is profoundly moving, but also hopeful. Afterwards various people got onstage to talk or show slides about their loved ones who had passed away. It sounds depressing but in fact it's not because these people were obviously loved and their lives were celebrated.

While there I suddenly wondered if my friend the blogger Dalilah Tamrin was there. She replied my text by saying that although she normally attends every year, this year she could not because she didn't have the strength to.

This was the first inkling I had that things were not going well for Dalilah. Those who follow her remarkable blog and who knew her would know Dalilah for her cheeriness and enormous faith and strength. She recorded her battle with cancer in an open and personal way, not only talking about how her body was faring over the years but also how it affected her family and her relationship with her husband and sons. In doing so, she inspired not just those in similar situations but also those of us who are not fighting cancer. Last year she even published a book on her journey with cancer.

Dalilah (on my right) and bloggers Nuraina Samad, Maria Samad, Pi Bani and Daphne Ling at a gathering two years ago.

Last Saturday, one week after returning from her umrah (mini Haj) to Mecca, Dalilah lost her battle. Perhaps the journey to Mecca and back was simply too exhausting or that she felt she had done all she wanted to do and was thus ready to go.

Dalilah was the second blogger we have lost to cancer this year, the first being Ruby Ahmad. While Ruby hid her condition, as she had every right to, Dalilah did the opposite. There can't be anyone who knew her body as well and who followed and shared everything that was going on with it, every step of the way from diagnosis to the end. For Dalilah, it fulfilled a need to have support from family and friends. For the rest of us, we learnt not only about cancer but how to be strong amidst such trials and how to face them all with faith and love.

I saw Dalilah about a week before she left for Mecca. As ill as she was, she didn't seem it and entertained visitors to her simple home in Banting. As I left, she gave a cheery wave and said, "I love you, Kak."

I love you too, Dalilah. Thanks for being my friend and may you now finally get the rest and peace you so deserve.

Related blogpost: Relay for Life, Help Cancer Survivors

Gobsmacked! Malaysians sick of politics and corruption in latest poll!!

2010-07-09T14:49:00.000+08:00

The latest from Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research, our only pollsters:

News Release
July 9th, 2010

Survey: Malaysians split over the direction of national unity

BANGI - Malaysian public appear split in their views over the direction of where national
unity was headed with 48% saying that the country was becoming more united but 43%
feeling that it was becoming more divided while a further 9% were uncertain or did not
know. Bickering among the country’s politicians and political parties along with unease over
inter-ethnic relations were cited by 13% and 9% of respondents respectively when asked
about the issues that divide the people.

Among non-Bumiputera respondents, the survey found only 39% responded positively
towards the One Malaysia concept while a plurality, 46% felt that it was a ploy to win non-
Malay political support while 16% said they did not know or refused to answer.

The survey found that Bumiputera respondents were also split on the who they felt
benefited from government assistance – 48% felt that government programs “benefited
ordinary people” but 45% believed that government programs “benefited the rich and
politically connected”.

The Merdeka Center survey which covered public attitudes towards national unity, trust in
government and democratic participation conducted between late January and April of this
year, found that Malaysians were united in their lack of interest in national politics and
sense of powerlessness in influencing government. In related questions, the survey found
that 58% of Malaysians reported that they were not interested in the country’s politics
while an even larger proportion, 66% said that they were incapable of bringing about the
changes they wish to see happen in the country.

When asked what changes they wished to see happen in the country among a fixed list of
items, 27% chose “making the country more democratic”, 20% wanted “making our
education system world class” and 11% wanted a “reduction in the gap between rich and
poor Malaysians”, among others.

The survey found that Malaysians were generally united in feeling of job security as well as
economic pressure, with 67% reporting feeling confident that their jobs were secure in the
coming year but at the same time, 63% admitted that “making ends meet was a struggle”.

Results from the survey also reveal that members of the public were skeptical towards
government with respect to prudence in public spending and providing access to aid. 53%
reported that they disagreed with the statement that the government was spending public
funds prudently while 63% were not confident that the government’s assistance was
reaching the needy. The survey found marked differences between public attitudes in
Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak, for example, only 35% of Peninsular Malaysia
respondents agreed that the government was spending public funds prudently while the
figure for Sabah and Sarawak was 45%.

Among particular ethnic groups, the survey found that among Malay respondents, 70%
agreed that corruption among the community’s leaders was the main threat to Malay/
Bumiputra’s political position as opposed to “demands made by other races in the country”.

The poll was conducted between 21st January and 26th April 2010 to gauge public attitudes
towards a number of issues such as national unity, integrity, democratic participation and
affirmative action. A total of 3141 adult Malaysian citizens aged 19 and above were
interviewed across Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak comprising 51% Malays, 26%
Chinese, 7% Indian, 9% other Muslim Bumiputeras and 7% non-Muslim Bumiputeras were
interviewed by telephone in the poll. Respondents were selected on the basis of random
stratified sampling along ethnicity, gender, age and state of residence.

View topline and other findings at www.merdeka.org

(About Merdeka Center for Opinion Research

Merdeka Center for Opinion Research is an independent, non-partisan organization focused
on public opinion research and socio-economic analysis. Merdeka’s mission is to act as a
bridge between ordinary Malaysians and other stakeholders with the leading members of
the nation – by providing dispassionate presentation of public opinion survey results,
analysis and position papers. )

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Interesting, isn't it? Not that many of us don't already know this. But it seems that politicians seem blind to what people really feel are the important issues.

It is unsurprising to me that most young people are not interested in politics at all. For a start with the AUKU laws in place, there isn't much incentive to get interested in politics. What's more, there aren't many inspiring politicians to want to emulate. It's hardly a cool thing to do.

Having said that, at some point young people will become interested in politics once they realise that it does affect them in one way or another. But how do they gain any knowledge or experience when they aren't allowed to take any interest while they are at university?

Which brings us to the case of the UKM4. Four political science students who decided to see whether what they learnt in their class really worked that way in real life get done for no reason. We really have to stop being schizophrenic about our young people. Are we happy that they are not interested in politics? If not, why go after those who are? And these aren't your lazy layabout types who have nothing better to do than go out making trouble. These are bright, clean-cut, active types whom we should be proud to have in our universities. Wouldn't it be cutting off our noses to spite our own faces to cut short their education? ( And by doing this, isn't the Government ensuring they won't vote for them?)

I wonder what our politicians' response to this poll will be...

(p/s apologies if the graphs didn't come out as clearly as they should. Took me forever to figure out how to get them onto my blog in the first place!)

This Should Make the Guys Happy

2010-06-24T00:09:00.000+08:00

Not too long this time, guys....

The Female Factor

Feminism of the Future Relies on Men

By KATRIN BENNHOLD

Published: June 22, 2010

In 1965, my mother was the only female engineering student in her class in Germany. There were no ladies’ toilets except in the basement, where the cleaners had their lockers, and her professor urged her to find a husband quickly so she wouldn’t fail the exams.
Feminism in those days was pretty clear-cut: It was about women closing ranks to battle blatant sexism, get an education and go to work. It was, as my mother said recently, “about women pushing into the world of men.”
The feminism of the future is shaping up to be about pulling men into women’s universe — as involved dads, equal partners at home and ambassadors for gender equality from the cabinet office to the boardroom.
In the early 21st century, women in the developed world find themselves in a peculiar place. With boys failing in school and working-class men losing their jobs to the economic crisis, pundits predict not just The Death of Macho (Foreign Policy, September 2009) but The End of Men (The Atlantic, July/August 2010).
Reality is more nuanced. Women earn more doctorates, but less money. They are overtaking men in the work force, but still do most housework. They make the consumer decisions but run only 3 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
“In theory, we now have equal rights,” sighed one senior female executive at a French multinational, who tellingly requested anonymity for fear of riling the men at her company. “In practice, we still have babies.”
In the Western world, motherhood remains the barrier to gender equality. Until they have children, young women now earn nearly the same as men and climb the career ladder at a similar pace. With the babies often come career breaks, part-time work and a rushed two-shift existence that means sacrificing informal networks like the after hours beer-and-bonding experience often crucial at promotion time.
So far, the instinct of politicians, companies and women themselves has generally been to sharpen their focus on, well, women.
Many Western countries protect female jobs during maternity leave, and several offer mothers a right to cut back their hours. In the corporate world, (female) human resource officers lobby for flexible work time, and (female) diversity officers organize female mentoring programs. Female executive networks where the ladies can bond are booming. At countless women’s conferences, women debate with women about women and bond some more.
At best, those initiatives are good for tips and morale. At worst, they trap women in their role as primary carers. What they’re not doing is getting more women into leadership positions.
“We’ve got to wake up,” said Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, chief executive of 20-first, a gender management consultancy. “We’ve got to start focusing on the guys.”
The only thing that can level the playing field at work is a level playing field at home. And that requires a major shift in public policy and corporate culture.
In the few countries where fathers take paternity leave on a significant scale, that leave is highly paid and not transferable to the mother. Predictably, the Nordics have led the way. Iceland, which comes closest to reaching gender equality according to the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index, has gone furthest, reserving three months — a full third — of its leave for fathers. Nine in 10 Icelandic men take time off with their babies. A lawmaker, Drifa Hjartardottir, described the 2000 law as “one of the biggest and most important steps taken towards gender equality since women’s right to vote.”
It took a male prime minister to sell the legislation to the country, and it took male leaders in Sweden and Norway to pass similar laws. It was a man who championed Norway’s boardroom quota obliging companies to fill at least 40 percent of the seats with women.
Would a female Spanish prime minister have been able to appoint a cabinet that is 50 percent female in 2004?
Unlikely, thinks Celia de Anca, of IE Business School in Madrid. “When you want to change a culture,” she said, “it’s easier for a representative of that culture to sell the change.”
Basically, guys are the more effective feminists because other guys are more likely to listen to them.
That’s also true in business. Role models of female leaders matter, Ms. de Anca said. But male role models who take time off with their children, leave the office at a decent time, promote women and spread the word with male colleagues matter perhaps even more.
The message is filtering through.
In France, for example, the Institut d’Études Politiques is making gender studies part of the core curriculum for all students from 2011. Deloitte France is starting an initiative this month to educate men on staff about gender diversity. A handful of companies, including the nuclear giant Areva (run by a woman) have put men in charge of gender.
Jean-Michel Monnot, head of the European diversity program at the food service company Sodexo, says his gender is his greatest asset in convincing male colleagues of the business case for promoting women: “You need to speak the language of the guys.”
Few men are overtly sexist these days, he said. But they don’t think twice about scheduling late meetings. Some who give the promotion to the guy instead of the recent mother think of themselves as considerate.
Mr. Monnot, who until 2007 managed 60 production sites, speaks from experience. It took a man and fellow sports fan to bring home the issue to him when he explained at the bar counter one day why he liked a good gender mix in his teams. It improved the atmosphere, gave rise to new ideas and was more in line with Sodexo’s clients.
“Until then, I didn’t think there was a problem, and I certainly didn’t think of myself as the problem,” Mr. Monnot said. Now he travels his company’s sites encouraging managers to shut their offices at 7 p.m. and recent fathers to go part-time “to set an example.”
Giving the next generation strong father figures would not only help explode the glass ceiling, it might also be the best hope for those failing boys in school who lack male role models.
Men have a lot to gain from the rise of women, said Joanne Dreyfus, an audit associate at Deloitte in Paris, pointing out that at the moment three-quarters of those taking advantage of the company’s flex-time scheme are women.
Put another way: The last frontier of women’s liberation may well be men’s liberation.

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As always with guys, peer pressure works...Now to find a liberated Malaysian man to start the ball rolling...