Interesting Read: Inadequate responses to recent affronts to Islam
by Sayyid Al-Aiderus

Malaysia Today
http://www.malaysia-today.net/index.html

The recent flurry of suggestions and comments on the conversion of Mohammad Abdullah (M. Moorthy) culminated in a history-making move by non-Muslim Cabinet Ministers who signed and sent an unsolicited memorandum to their boss, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, that has embarrassed the government and raised the eyebrows, concern and temper of Muslims, especially the Malays in this country. The action was seemingly taken because of a series of recent events that resulted in a spate of views expressed by a segment of society that feels that Article 121 (1A) should be reviewed or amended. The Cabinet Ministers appear to have been encouraged and emboldened by the heated rhetoric of a few. Their insensitive and callous act has naturally offended Muslims in this country and has raised suspicion and questions of intent?thus invoking feelings of distrust and misgivings, especially about the sincerity of component parties, a trust that has been a long time in building. This move is all the more curious since it was made by seasoned politicians who undoubtedly knew exactly what they were doing, but interestingly enough, preferred to take the issue to a public platform rather than to a closed Cabinet.

Since then, eight of the nine Ministers have agreed to withdraw the memorandum, leaving Tan Sri Bernard Dompok standing in defiance of the Prime Minister’s call to reconsider the submission. However, the deed is done and the act has served its purpose?to show supporters that an attempt had been made to force the hand of an unyielding government. Where the solidarity of the National Front should have been paramount on the agenda of the component parties, they opted to show fragmentation. Hence, the Prime Minister and his party found themselves standing alone.

The somewhat initial reticent response from officials, either in speech or action, appears now to have been interpreted to mean an admission of the inadequacy of the law or an attempt at a back-handed apology or an expression of guilt.

In a plural society, discussing some issues is like kissing the head of a cobra: the act itself is intriguing, but in itself, it possesses little merit?a side show is a side show no matter how you cut it. Rev. Wong’s statement, which was placed prominently on the first page, right next to the pictures of the nine Ministers, is nothing more than double-talk: a loaded declaration that implies more than it says: it has forked some lightning. It is worth pondering why his statement, and not that of any one of the Ministers, was displayed on the occasion. (He states, “It should not be looked at as only a religious issue. It is a social issue emerging out of a religious matter.” It is interesting that Wong Chun Wah in his column ‘On the Beat’ concludes his article almost stating verbatim what Rev. Wong had said: “The issue should not be treated as a religious or racial issue but a social issue with social problems that have emerged out of religious laws.” More amazing is Rev. Wong’s remark that some people are attempting to turn this to an emotional issue. What did he expect? This is the reason why there are certain forums in which certain discussions should take place.

There is a part of religion that rightfully abandons reason and embraces emotion. The act of sending the memorandum is an affront to all Muslims: it is unacceptable and shows a total disregard for the feelings of a peaceful majority. I am reminded of a heart-rending story of a forced conversion that took place in the United States in 1989.

An Albanian Muslim father in Texas, Sadri Krasniqi, was wrongly accused of molesting his four-year old daughter in public during his son’s karate competition. He was eventually found innocent by the court, when experts proved that the manner of his expression of love to his daughter was part of a 1500-year old tradition of a people who do not have a history of molesting children, let alone have sex with them. However, the system jumped the gun, and the children were put up for adoption by the Texas Child Protective Services before the father was cleared of all charges. The children were forced to become Christians and the civil judge who had presided over the case considered it the right decision, even though prosecutors called the verdict a “disgusting result.” The judge purportedly had even said that the children were better off growing up as Christians. To the parents’ dismay, their children were forced to eat pork, wear crosses, attend church and perform other duties of a Christian. The Krasnisqis, who had owned 5 restaurants, lost everything in the course of clearing their name and attempting to get their children back. The children were never returned to them. It was reported on the news that the Governor of the State of Texas was the only one who could have corrected the situation, but Governor George Bush (yes, the present president of the U.S. of A), a conservative Christian, chose to do nothing.

Mohammad Abdullah’s case is not at all like that of Krasniqi’s. At least, our government has been compassionate and considerate with Mohammad’s family and has done much to help ease their pain. In the eyes of the Syariah court Mohammad was a Muslim; there was no mala fide in the decision. The courts went by his declaration that he was a Muslim. The issue here is Kaliammal was denied the right to be heard, not the right to bury her husband as a Hindu which is an outcome that may or may not have taken place if she was given a hearing. She claims that he was a practicing Hindu. Who is to say that he was not a practicing Muslim? Islam gives those who are physically-challenged or in difficult situations a great deal of latitude. Such a person would have been exempted from having to go to mosques and could have performed his prayers at home by just gesturing with his fingers or moving his eyes.

In recent developments, the Syariah courts have been portrayed as institutions that cannot act impartially and that Islamic law does not accommodate non-Muslims. The Syariah courts may have to take some of the blame for the former perception because of their dismal and embarrassing handling of some divorce cases. What needs to be made clear here is that non-Muslims have a voice in Syariah courts.

All of us jealously guard our own. Even people who are not religious tend to feel strongly about conversions. Hence, it is not surprising to me that some people are reluctant to profess their new faith to their family members or friends, afraid of repercussions that may even amount to violence or loss of life. I know through firsthand experiences narrated by friends who had converted to Islam that their family members stayed angry at them for years, including some who have refused to reconcile to this day and those who were victims of verbal and physical abuse.

Declaring one’s faith to one’s family members is a private issue. No government or institution should interfere with this right of an individual. Only a convert should decide on the right time to announce such an important change in his life to his family, a decision that may anchor upon so many factors, including the ill health or age of family members or the degree of their reaction, revulsion or acceptance of such news: in handling such vicarious situations, it is sometimes all in the timing.

In the last few months, the media has highlighted a great number of subjects that have stirred the emotions of the people: one was an issue of rights that was racially-laced, that is, the squatting incident, the other, the Islamic Family Law Bill that invited solicited and unsolicited comments from all over, including a sweeping character assassination by the Director of the Sisters in Islam, Zainah Anwar, who called the drafters of the Bill “patriarchal” and “misogynists,” words that usually make up her repertoire. Her fury sent her lashing out in every direction, once again referring to the rights of a man to divorce his wife, beat her, in cases of disobedience and a host of other complaints. (Of course, we all know that good Muslims constantly remind their wives of such things to keep them in line. I have reduced my wife-beating activities to only once a week after over twenty years of marriage. For those who are dense enough to believe this, I have to state categorically, I have never beaten my wife in my life). Heads of NGOs and citizens, who profess other religions, were encouraged to come to the aid of SIS, and in their zeal, more often than not, overstepped their boundaries by commenting on matters beyond their jurisdiction and scope, having found their courage in numbers and in the hasty retreat of Datuk Dr Abdullah Md Zin from the controversy. Then there is the incident of Jawi’s setting up of the Morality Policing Squad (The term “Snoop Squad” is a derogatory term and a misrepresentation of the purpose and intent of the program) which elicited naïve and uninformed responses from even the President of the Bar Council, Yeo Yang Poh, who expressed shock that holding hands could be considered a sin in the year 2006, hence, shifting attention from the more severe acts of public indecency that was mentioned and describing the move as a preposterous and antiquated act, thus, ignoring the reality that promiscuity may result from innocent touches. (Yes, Yeo, in a divine religion, a sin 1400 years ago would still be a sin today, though holding hands would not involve capital punishment; in fact, the prescription would be to offer advice and encourage couples from desisting from acts that may lead to grievous sins or incurable maladies. Even the US has moved its position on sex from asking people to use contraceptives to abstinence–while here we are talking about using condoms). We are all for a society that still maintains a certain degree of its conservatism and decorum in public.

The past few weeks have also brought out that highly western argument, in this case from Ivy Josiah, the President of Women’s Aid Organization, that women should not fear dressing in whichever manner they choose since this is their right, neglecting the fact that actions have consequences. If women choose to dress skimpily to attract attention to themselves, then, they should expect to be ‘complemented accordingly’ in the age old fashion of men. (No, we are not talking about harassment, but the kind of teasing and stares that invite hot-blooded, breathing individuals to life.) I doubt women wear mini-skirts to air out their legs or shove on fitting jeans to tighten their skins or squeeze out their fat or iron out their cellulite or wrinkles. The feminist activist Jac S Kee lamented that “Jawi has turned the quality of love and affection into a crime and social ill,” calling the program “ridiculous.” Public indecency is now described as a show of “love and affection” and to check such an expression is deemed “ridiculous,” and what does one call having sex in public these days”goodwill and romance?”

Then, there was the issue of the hijab, brought up by a non-Muslim graduating student at IIUM. There was an uproar from certain quarters of the public that prompted the issue to be discussed in the Parliament: all this over a university graduation attire. When I was a student in the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas, all students, regardless of their country of origin, race or religion, were required to attend chapel seven times in a semester or else they would not be able to obtain their grades. We did not object to this unconstitutional requirement; we just went along. Here in Malaysia, races that have lived peacefully with one another have suddenly become Islamophobics and every expression of discomfort is treated like a major ailment.

The Syariah is the domain of Islam and should be off limits to non-Muslims. Shura on Islamic matters should not involve non-Muslims. Muslims do not need non-Muslims to tell them what is good or not good for Islam. People like Judith Loh-Koh, President of All Women’s Action Society, should not even contemplate the possibility of giving feedback on the Islamic Family Law Act as she expressed the government should recently in the papers. Zainah Anwar, who has the ear of the media and certain quarters in the government and the sympathy of the West, does not represent mainstream Islam or the views of the majority of Muslim women. The organization has ideas and opinions that are highly questionable as far as the religion is concerned. Yet they are included in high level negotiations on matters pertaining to Islam, even though Zainah’s biases are deep-rooted and of a dubious nature, including her opinions about polygamy.

In a recent interview in the paper she said that people she knew who practiced polygamy said that it was difficult–nothing like stating the obvious. No woman need remind a man that polygamy is difficult, and no woman need stand in the way of a man who has the God-given right to practice it. No pilot survey result, as mentioned by Zainah, for or against polygamy, should ever be used as the basis to abrogate God’s laws or discriminate against men.

Zainah’s statement that the young daughters of her friends are “declaring that they have no plans to marry or that they will not marry a Malay” is laughable. People do not get married to get divorced. What are these parents prompting their children to do? lead a life of celibacy or promiscuity? Marrying a foreigner too presents its own variety of challenges. Those who are feeding their daughters with horror stories about marriage are irresponsible parents. The marriage of their daughters, we pray to God, will turn out better than the failed marriages of their parents. (I hope these parents provide better counsel to their very Malay sons). Those of us who are happily married sometimes wonder where this kind of animosity stems from and what bitter experiences in the lives of these angry women have caused them to view the world in such lugubrious terms and wasting their lives fighting a battle that cannot possibly be sanctioned by God or won through time. The issue of love is beyond anyone’s control: I seriously doubt that when love comes a calling, these young girls will be flipping through the pages of the Syariah laws before deciding on their future. (I propose a pre-nuptial agreement). People do not venture into the sacred institution of marriage with a load of confounding ‘what ifs’ that can only be answered by God.

There is a kind of extremeness expressed in our society that confronts decency. We are all for fair play and rights as given to us by the Creator, but there is a limit to everything, and the goings-on in recent weeks have tested our patience and honor sorely.

Interesting Read: Muhammad’s Sword
by Uri Avnery; Gush Shalom; September 25, 2006

Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes.

Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306 – exactly 1700 years ago – encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority.

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, “walked to Canossa”, standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope’s castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication.

But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week’s speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush’s crusade against “Islamofascism”, in the context of the “Clash of Civilizations”.

IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God’s actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah.

As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this “war of civilizations”.

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul?

To support his case, the Pope quoted – of all people – a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had – or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt) – with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary:

“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.

These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them?

WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat.

At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. On May 29, 1453, only a few years after Manuel’s death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years.

During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics.

In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim “Axis of Evil”. Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

IS THERE any truth in Manuel’s argument?

The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur’an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: “There must be no coercion in matters of faith”.

How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur’an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes – Christian, Jewish and others – in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith.

Jesus said: “You will recognize them by their fruits.” The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to “spread the faith by the sword”?

Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith – and they were the forefathers of most of today’s Palestinians.

THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the “spreading of the faith by the sword”?

What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi (“Spanish”) Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the “peoples of the book”. In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service – a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion – because it entailed the loss of taxes.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times “by the sword” to get them to abandon their faith.

THE STORY about “spreading the faith by the sword” is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims – the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions.

Why did he utter these words in public? And why now?

There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of “Islamofascism” and the “Global War on Terrorism” – when “terrorism” has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush’s handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world’s oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers’ expedition becomes a Crusade.

The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?

Pope Benedict, Islam and Violence
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

When the Christians of Jerusalem decided to give in to the Muslim army that had been laying siege to the city under the command of Amr bin Al As (RA), they set a condition that Caliph Umar (RA) must come in person, to sign the peace treaty. Umar and his attendant had only one camel and they took turns to ride from Medina to Jerusalem. He approached the city peacefully and by foot, to be cordially received by its Christian guardian, Bishop Sephronious. Umar signed the peace treaty with the rulers of Jerusalem which read,

“This is the protection which the servant of God, Umar, the Ruler of Believers, has granted to the people of Jerusalem. The protection is for their lives and property, their churches and crosses, their sick and healthy and for all their coreligionists. Their churches shall not be used for habitation, nor shall they be demolished, nor shall any injury be done to them. There shall be no compulsion for these people in the matter of religion, nor shall any of them suffer any injury on account of religion. The people of Jerusalem must pay the poll tax like the people of other cities and they must expel the Byzantines and the robbers …”

The gates of the city were opened and Umar went to the Temple Mount and said his prayer. Afterwards the Bishop invited him to tour the biggest church of the city. Umar was in the church when the time for the afternoon prayer came. The Bishop offered to let him pray in the church. “No” replied Umar, “If I do so, the Muslims one day might take this as an excuse to take the church from you”. So Umar prayed on the steps of the church. He then gave the Bishop a pact that forbade Muslims from ever praying on the steps of the church. Until today, the keeper of the key to Jerusalem’s Church of Holy Sepulchre is in the same Muslim family for generations. The fire-bombing of a church in Gaza in the wake of Muslim protests over Pope Benedict’s speech represents an aberration in Christian – Muslim relations in Palestine, one that is spurred by the radicalization of society under a long and brutal military occupation than the teachings of Islam itself.

The portrayal of Islam as a religion that preaches violence and is primarily spread by it is nothing new in western discourse. It is the most potent argument for justifying all manner of prejudicial treatment on the religion and its followers, from soft discrimmatory policies to islamophobic writings in the media even to occupation of muslim lands killing their innocents, destroying their societies and plundering of their resources. This is something that Muslims have learned to accept to live with, especially in the last few years.

But why did the Muslim react in such a manner when Pope Benedict repeated something that we are already accustomed to hearing from not so friendly western public figures? After all flamboyant televangelists like Jerry Falwell have said worse things than the Pope – calling the Prophet of Islam a paedophile and terrorist – yet we never asked for an apology. In the modern era, not least because of the late Pope John Paul II, Muslims have a genuine respect for the head of the Catholic church. The Crusades, the Reconquista, the Inquisitions were far behind us. The Catholic Church with its long history and tradition, its large number of faithful and the authority of its leadership, its unambiguous moral precepts and its liturgies and rites represent what constitutes Christian orthodoxy to ordinary Muslim eyes, as the last bastion against the inexorable march of secularization of western society. The Pope and the church is seen as embodying the vestiges of sacredness and other worldliness of that society, whose historical trajectory and fortunes is a reminder to us of the dangers of unfettered hubris. This is also an era where few have the neither the desire nor the stomach for religious wars. Where the role of religion in society has been radically rolled back, both the Islamic and Christian orthodoxies should be sharing a common vision of restoring spirituality to moderate the rampant individualism, materialism as well as other less edifying aspects of modernity. This is at least the general view point of ordinary Muslims, given the position as the Christian faithful as “People of the Book” and the reverence with which Jesus (AS) is held by Muslims.

Therefore, to Muslim eyes, what the Pope said in his address at his old university about the Prophet and Islam is totally uncharacteristic for someone holding the office of Head of the Catholic Church. That Pope Benedict was the Vatican’s foremost theologian before his appointment, for His Holiness to have descended to the language and rhetorics of American televangelists pressed into the service of President Bush’s war on terror is a great disappointment and utterly shocking to Muslims.

One can’t help comparing him to his predecessor, whom Muslims regarded as someone who had served his faith with utmost sincerity, and at the same time a genuine builder of bridges. At his death Muslim religious leaders praised Pope John Paul as having contributed greatly to his religion and humanity, as a unique example in spreading peace and tolerance among peoples. When the Muslim world felt anguished and humiliated, he stood firmly against the US-led occupation of Iraq and the Israeli separation wall, pointing out that US Middle East policies were not helping the cause of peace.

Not only did Pope Benedict’s attack on Islam and the Prophet followed by a half-hearted apology grudgingly given evoked strong reaction in the Muslim world, a number of western commentators took him to task for his low-brow critique of Islam that appeared more like common-place prejudice and questioned his possible motives, juxtaposing his well known position on Turkey with regards to its EU membership bid for greater effect. One notable piece that has been in wide circulation among Muslims was written by the veteran Israeli journalist and peace activist Uri Avneri. Drawing many examples mainly from the Ottoman era and Andalusian golden age to debunk the Pope’s thesis, he gave an insightful account of Muslim society’s tolerance of Christians and Jews in their midst, some flourishing as scholars while some others rose to the ranks of ministers.

It has to be admitted that wars are part of Islamic history from very early on, but perhaps not more or not less than in the history of other religions that have built civilizations. Wars were simply an instrument of politics for much of the history of human civilization up to the recent era when the massive destruction and colossal loss of lives wrought by modern warfare in World War II made us shudder, and diplomacy and international law became established as the framework for settling the affairs of nations. The battles led by the Prophet at Badr and Uhud was a defence against the idolators of Mecca who mustered a superior force to annihilate the nascent Muslim community. In the classical Islamic period there were many wars fought between Muslim political entities vying from power within the larger body-politics of the Islamic Caliphate – wars that were motivated primarily by worldly ambitions. The biography of Ibn Khaldun tells of his fortunes and reversals as he switched political loyalties from one court to another in the mini kingdoms of North Africa of the 1300’s. It was during one of his low periods that he spent 3 years in isolation to write his “History of the Maghreb” whose introductory volume, “the Muqaddimah” became a celebrated text today a pioneering work in sociology/historiography. In the early Islamic period violent strife stirred up by extremist elements like the Kharijites had been the cause of costly internecine battles that took the lives of some eminent companions of the Prophet (SAW). The war that the first Caliph Abu Bakr (RA) waged on the rejecters of the zakat was perhaps the rare instance where religion rather than realpolitik had been the basis.

It is understandable that in the context of the politics times, the prophet and his companions took part in battles and wars. Even in the era of the primacy of international law, however undesirable and destructive wars are, they may be inevitable and legitimate. Just as “just war” is an accepted concept in international law and diplomacy, jihad in its specific military sense is part of the Islamic lexicon. What Islam laid down should war becomes inevitable is ethical limitations and chivalrous conduct, that the humanity of the adversary must be respected, that non combatants, women, children, the aged and religious leaders must not be harmed and that public buildings, dwellings, crops and water sources must not be destroyed. The books of fiqh of the classical Islamic period would customarily have a chapter on Jihad to remind Muslims of their religious duty to act within the limits.

Needless to say, how Muslim armies conducted themselves throughout Islamic history or what their motives were for going to war may not necessarily accord with what have been laid down in the books of Fiqh anymore than the conduct of crusader Reginald of Chatillon or the Serbian militia’s murder and rape of Bosnian Muslims in the name of defending Christendom represent Christian teachings.

Had Pope Benedict questioned why the Muslim armies crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and went on to conquer Spain for Islam or why the Moors pushed north as far as Poitiers and Tours in the French heartland to support his argument, we may have some difficulty in giving a convincing answer, never mind that conquest of Spain gave birth to civilization that became a conduit for Europe’s recovery of the Greek intellectual legacy though the works of Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina and Al Faraby that was to pave the way for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. But Pope Benedict chose to attribute to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) himself the violence and the sword to perpetuate the western prejudice on Islam. Thanks to early Muslim scholars for their scrupulousness who have recorded in meticulous detail the prophet’s life, his companions and Islam’s early history, it is not difficult to respond to misconceptions and deliberate distortions. One such example from Al Tabari is the “Covenant of Umar” the second Caliph of Islam, a document addressed to the people of Jerusalem after the conquest of the city in 638 CE, 5 years after the prophet’s death, narrated in the introductory passage above. Not only did Umar (RA) act in a just manner that is a reflection of his deep piety, being one of the Prophet’s closest companions, he also exhibited the austere simplicity (zuhd) that was exceptional for the age when conquering emperors would ride in triumphantly with pomp and splendor. The Caliph took turns to ride the one camel he shared with his attendant from Medina to Jerusalem. Al-Tabari also wrote in detail of similar treaties made by the Prophet’s companions with the inhabitants of other conquered cities in Syria-Palestine and Egypt. It is clear that the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem and other cities in the region was not to seek conversion of the Christians. It was an imperative of realpolitik of the age and the Muslims sought to put Islamic political order in place of the Byzantines who happened to be Christians.

In Baladhuri’s account of the early jihad (Futuh al Buldan – the openings of the nations), there is clear evidence of the importance Muslims attached to the idea of “no compulsion in religion”, as demonstrated by a text written by the Prophet to the Christian community of Najran in Southern Arabia guaranteeing them certain social and religious rights under Islamic rule,

“Najran and their followers are entitled to the protection of Allah and to the security of Muhammad the Prophet, the Messenger of Allah, which security shall involve their persons, religion, lands and possession, their camels, messages and images (a reference to crosses and icons) … No attempt shall be made to turn a bishop, a monk from his office as a monk, nor the sexton of a church from his office”

The other controversial point raised by Pope Benedict commented on the verse “There is no compulsion in religion (2:256)”, was the charge that the Prophet was the author of the verse which he later abrogated. He noted that the “experts” say that this was composed early on when “Muhammad was powerless and still under threat” but later he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Was the Pope implying that the Quran was authored by the Prophet? While this is perfectly understandable for a non muslim to hold as a personal opinion, to insist so publicly in such a manner while holding the highest office in the Catholic Church is insensitive and does great damage to good faith between Muslims and Christians.

The decline of religion and religious culture in the west, the catholic countries like Spain, France, Italy and Ireland included, is not about to let up. Known for his doctrinal conservativeness, this must be one of Pope Benedict’s major area of concern. In the attempt to conflate Christianity with post-modern, post-Christian west and doing its bidding by recycling the old European myths about Islam and its Prophet – is this a sign of desperation in a struggle against the relentless decline of religion? In the modern European context Islam is not in competition with Christianity. Muslim readily recognize Europe’s Christian heritage and its immense contribution to western civilization from art and architecture to the development of academic disciplines and the university, to providing the ethical foundations in liberal thought, even if many have decried religion as an obstacle to human progress. The idea of re-asserting Christian values, culture and identity in highly secular Europe is going to be tough and one can only view it with resigned pessimism. However it is something that many Muslims could identify with if the vision is to leaven secular modernity with a moral and ethical compass that is expansive and accommodative. However the Pope started on the wrong footing by reviving the old prejudices against Islam.

Today it is the Muslims who continue to fiercely hold on to the notion of the Sacred Transcendent, Divine Guidance and Grace through prophethood, of unambiguous immutable moral precepts and values, and of the Sacred Law without having to apologize to secular materialism. If the Catholic Church needs friends in these lean times, they can find them in the Muslims.

Opinion: Thumbs up to living in Malaysian diversity
10 Aug 2006
Patricia Martinez
Original Article Link

In a telephone survey across Peninsular Malaysia, over 1,000 randomly selected Muslims were asked what they thought about identity, Syariah, Malaysian diversity and the West. The answers were eye-openers, writes PATRICIA MARTINEZ.

IT is a fact of life that even in exemplary democracies, elites or those in leadership roles speak on behalf of the citizenry. Whether from government or civil society, or either side of the political divide, speaking on behalf of people in terms such as “Malaysians should…”, “women need…”, “Muslims want…” are often based on assumptions and generalisations about what ordinary people think, want and need.

However, assumptions are also simply presumptions based on conversations or one’s personal observation, without a method to gauge proportions or the intensity of such needs and wants. These assumptions can then be described as an appropriation of the voices of those on whose behalf one speaks.

Surveys – the technology of asking a numerically representative group of people questions in order to elicit information – are a useful tool for revealing the “voice” of a large group of people. There are obvious limitations to this technology.

For example, there is an inherent bias in all questions, and surveys too are premised on projecting for the group from a representative sample. Despite these limitations, surveys can be fairly accurate indicators of what a large group of people feel, want and think about themselves.

Between Dec 15 and 18, 2005 a survey of over 1,000 randomly selected Muslims was conducted across Peninsular Malaysia. The telephone survey sought to obtain information about identity, issues and concerns, as well as what Muslims thought about suicide bombing and the countries that are often described as constituting “the West”, namely the United States, Europe and Australia.

The survey questionnaire, in Bahasa Malaysia, was devised through three focus groups in consultation with academics, policy-makers and civil society.

The survey was pre-tested before being administered by the Merdeka Centre.

The Merdeka Centre sampled respondents on the basis of the proportions of the Muslim population (by state and by gender) as indicated in the updated census published in 2003 by the Department of Statistics.

The results of the survey indicate that the majority of Muslims in Peninsular Malaysia are defined primarily by Islam rather than by their national identity as Malaysians, but are comfortable with living alongside people of other faiths.

The results also confirm what has been described as growing orthodoxy. For example, the majority feel that Syariah in Malaysia is not strict enough, and 57.3 per cent want the hudud to be implemented.

However, a majority, 63.3 per cent, also opted for the Syariah to remain under the Constitution in Malaysia (the other answer-option given to the question was, “the Syariah to replace the Constitution in Malaysia”).

In terms of identity, when asked to choose which defined them most, being Malay, Muslim or Malaysian, 72.7 per cent chose being Muslim as their primary identity. As their second choice of identity, more respondents chose being Malaysian (14.4 per cent) than being Malay (12.5 per cent).

When asked if they felt all three identities, 99.4 per cent replied “yes”. In an effort to verify the answer to the question about which identity defined them the most, respondents were asked in a subsequent question to rank the components “Malay”, “Muslim” and “Malaysian” in importance. Seventy-nine per cent again ranked being Muslim first.

One interpretation of this result is a heightened self-consciousness about being Muslim, since Islam dominates public discourse.

Another interpretation is that after 49 years of nationhood, Malaysians have adopted many aspects of Malay culture – food, dress and language – thus blurring the boundaries that differentiate Malays from the rest of the population. Islam then becomes the defining element of Malay identity.

Therefore, since racial differentiation is politics, policy and fact of life in Malaysia, perhaps the mostly Malay respondents of the survey chose being Muslim as indicating the boundaries of their identity.

Another reason could also be the intense emotion that a love for one’s religion evokes, hence identifying oneself primarily by that religion rather than by nationality or ethnicity.

Whatever the reasons, most of our policies and programmes on nation-building and unity focus largely on overcoming the schisms of ethnicity. Perhaps we should note that it is not just race which differentiates us as Malaysians; religion is clearly confirmed as also a key factor.

However, this does not mean that Muslim respondents choose to be defined as Muslims rather than as Malaysians in order to be exclusive or separate.

In response to the question “Is it acceptable for Malaysian Muslims to live alongside people of other religions?”, a resounding 97.1 per cent said “yes”.

In response to other questions, 79.5 per cent said that Muslims should learn about other religions in Malaysia and 83.8 per cent responded that Muslims could participate in dialogues with people of other faiths.

These findings indicate a greater level of acceptance of the reality of Malaysia’s diversity than appears in current public discourse. The responses can also be interpreted as the security and confidence that Muslims have regarding their religious identity, and the innate tolerance and justice of Islam.

These results indicate also an outcome of the daily interaction of ordinary Malaysians who are not coccooned in their chauffeured cars but who travel, study, shop and work alongside each other.

In other words, Muslims are able to come to terms with what it actually means to live in a multi-religious nation, without detracting from their strong sense of identity as Muslims.

This is how Malaysia is unique among Muslim nations, and why Malaysian Muslims are often described as moderate because of their successful negotiation of the racial and religious diversity that is their context.

It is a diversity that reflects the reality of an increasingly globalised world with no nation able to claim that its population only comprises one racial or religious group, and with all of humanity having to find the skills and will to live together.

Other responses in the survey indicate that the strongest influence on them as Muslims are their parents (73 per cent), with religious teachers coming in a far second at 9.4 per cent, and religious lectures and sermons at 3.2 per cent.

Ninety-three per cent had heard about Islam Hadhari, but only 53.3 per cent were able to state that they understood it.

A slim majority of only 53.7 per cent correctly identified the Rulers as the heads of Islam in Malaysia, with over 40 per cent describing either the mufti, the director of a State department for Islam or the Prime Minister as the head of Islam.

A total of 77.3 per cent want stricter Syariah laws in Malaysia, and 44.1 per cent feel that the authority to monitor and punish the immoral behaviour of Muslims should be with the State religious authorities, with the family coming second at 33.3 per cent.

However, if these results depict conservative attitudes, it should be noted that that 76.6 per cent answered “yes” to the question “In Islam, do men and women have equal rights?”

More men than women answered in the affirmative. But only a slim majority, 55.5 per cent, stated that women can be Syariah court judges.

Finally, as for suicide bombing, 62.1 per cent chose the option that it was the “wrong action for Muslims”, 11.6 per cent chose syahid or martyr, and a high percentage – 24.8 per cent – chose “don’t know” (which, because of its significant size, can be interpreted as respondents not being willing to state their point of view).

In terms of their feelings regarding the US, Europe and Australia, options “like”, “OK”, “dislike” and “hate” were provided.

Thirty-nine per cent chose “hate” to describe their feelings towards the US, with 44.5 per cent choosing “dislike”. In other words, 83.5 per cent of Muslims in Peninsular Malaysia have a negative attitude towards America.

For Europe, 18.8 per cent chose “hate” to describe their feelings, with 38.2 per cent choosing “dislike”, so over 50 per cent have a negative attitude towards the continent.

However, 34.3 per cent chose the option “OK”, more than double the number (13.4 per cent) who did so to describe their feelings towards the United States.

For Australia, 18.3 per cent chose “hate”, 36.6 per cent chose “dislike” and 35.1 per cent chose “OK”.

It is significant that negativity defines Malaysian Muslim attitudes towards what constitutes “the West”, and this finding is in consonance with other global surveys on Muslim attitudes, such as those conducted by the Pew Research Centre (which does not poll Malaysians although it has studies on Indonesia).

The survey results show the complexity of Muslim attitudes in Peninsular Malaysia, and how this complexity reflects their real engagement with various aspects of national life.

The results also discredit some of the assumptions and generalisations about Malaysian Muslims.

As such, claims writ large about who Muslims in Malaysia are and what they want, feel and need, are sometimes exaggerations if not generalisations.

The results are mixed, neither confirming only moderation nor indicating overwhelming orthodoxy. But what the survey results do confirm, hearteningly, is that Muslims are able to live with the diversity that is Malaysia, and the reality that is our world.

* The writer is an associate professor at the Asia-Europe Institute of the University of Malaya. For a booklet on the results of the survey.

A just peace or no peace
by Ismail Haniyeh

Israeli unilateralism is a recipe for conflict – as is the west’s racist refusal to treat Palestinians as equals

Ismail Haniyeh
Friday March 31, 2006
The Guardian

Do policymakers in Washington and Europe ever feel ashamed of their scandalous double standards? Before and since the Palestinian elections in January, they have continually insisted that Hamas comply with certain demands. They want us to recognise Israel, call off our resistance, and commit ourselves to whatever deals Israel and the Palestinian leadership reached in the past.

But we have not heard a single demand of the Israeli parties that took part in this week’s elections, though some advocate the complete removal of the Palestinians from their lands. Even Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party, whose Likud forebears frustrated every effort by the PLO to negotiate a peace settlement, campaigned on a programme that defies UN security council resolutions. His unilateralism is a violation of international law. Nevertheless no one, not even the Quartet – whose proposals for a settlement he continues to disregard, as his predecessor Ariel Sharon did – has dared ask anything of him.

Olmert’s unilateralism is a recipe for conflict. It is a plan to impose a permanent situation in which the Palestinians end up with a homeland cut into pieces made inaccessible because of massive Jewish settlements built in contravention of international law on land seized illegally from the Palestinians. No plan will ever work without a guarantee, in exchange for an end to hostilities by both sides, of a total Israeli withdrawal from all the land occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; the release of all our prisoners; the removal of all settlers from all settlements; and recognition of the right of all refugees to return.

On this, all Palestinian factions and people agree, including the PLO, whose revival is essential so that it can resume its role in speaking for the Palestinians and presenting their case to the world.

The problem is not with any particular Palestinian group but with the denial of our basic rights by Israel. We in Hamas are for peace and want to put an end to bloodshed. We have been observing a unilateral truce for more than a year without reciprocity from the Israeli side. The message from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to the world powers is this: talk to us no more about recognising Israel’s “right to exist” or ending resistance until you obtain a commitment from the Israelis to withdraw from our land and recognise our rights.

Little will change for the Palestinians under Olmert’s plan. Our land will still be occupied and our people enslaved and oppressed by the occupying power. So we will remain committed to our struggle to get back our lands and our freedom. Peaceful means will do if the world is willing to engage in a constructive and fair process in which we and the Israelis are treated as equals. We are sick and tired of the west’s racist approach to the conflict, in which the Palestinians are regarded as inferior. Though we are the victims, we offer our hands in peace, but only a peace that is based on justice. However, if the Israelis continue to attack and kill our people and destroy their homes, impose sanctions, collectively punish us, and imprison men and women for exercising the right to self-defence, we have every right to respond with all available means.

Hamas has been freely elected. Our people have given us their confidence and we pledge to defend their rights and do our best to run their affairs through good governance. If we are boycotted in spite of this democratic choice – as we have been by the US and some of its allies – we will persist, and our friends have pledged to fill the gap. We have confidence in the peoples of the world, record numbers of whom identify with our struggle. This is a good time for peace-making – if the world wants peace.

· Ismail Haniyeh is the new Palestinian prime minister and a Hamas leader. Email: ihaniyyeh@hotmail.com

Another brick in the wall
by Robert Fisk

While journalists continue to perpetuate the Potemkin-like landscape of the Middle East, the truth is, as long as Israel continues to steal Palestinian territory, it cannot expect Hamas to recognise it as a state, writes Robert Fisk
April 3, 2006

By Robert Fisk

We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of “Greater Israel” has finally been abandoned.

West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away.

Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima Party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres.

This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, “analysts” and “commentators”. But it is a lie.

Only in paragraph two – or three or four – of the grovelling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert’s not very impressive election victory will allow him to “redraw” the “frontiers” of Israel, a decision described as “controversial” – the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel.

The wall
Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned – stand by for more of the grief and tears that we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest – the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example – will not be depopulated.

Let’s start with the wall. It will soon run from top to bottom of the occupied Palestinian West Bank – and it is going to stay.

It is higher in the long sectors where it has been completed (east of Jerusalem, for example) than the Berlin Wall. Yet journalists go on calling it a “security barrier” or a “fence” – because the as-yet-uncompleted sectors of the wall are still coils of barbed wire.

This is part of the dream world that editors and reporters have constructed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It exists in the same Potemkin landscape that allows journalists to call the occupied Palestinian territory “disputed territory” – after former US secretary of state Colin Powell ordered his diplomats in the region to use this mendacious phrase – and to call Jewish colonies illegally built on Arab land “settlements” or, my favourites now, “Jewish neighbourhoods” or “outposts”.

It is the same stage on which Israelis are killed by Palestinians, which they are, but on which Palestinians die in anonymous “clashes”. (With whom – and killed by whom – exactly?)

And each of these little lies, of course, contains a kernel of truth. The occupied territories are “disputed” between Israelis and Palestinians, the first claiming that God gave them the land, the second producing land deeds to prove that the law entitles them to their own property.

If illegal colonies such as Maale Adumim are built adjacent to Jerusalem – itself illegally annexed by Israel – then of course they are “neighbourhoods”. And since the wall – which has gobbled up 10% more Palestinian land for the Israelis – is to prevent suicide bombers (and has been fairly successful in doing so), it is a “security barrier”.

I seem to recall that the East Germans called the Berlin Wall – or “Berlin Fence” as I suppose we would have to call it if built by the Israelis – a “security barrier”.

Forget the illegality of occupation, then, and the illegality of stealing someone else’s home and land, and the illegality of building a wall that thieves yet more property from the 22% of mandate Palestine that the Palestinians are supposed to negotiate for.

Let me be frank. If I were an Israeli I, too, would have built a wall to prevent the suicide executioners of Islamic Jihad and, earlier, of Hamas.

But I would have built it along the international frontier of Israel – not used the wall as a cheap method of stealing more land.

Illegal

Indeed, under UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is meant to be the foundation of any peace, the acquisition of land through war is stated to be illegal. The wall itself is illegal. The International Court also ruled it to be illegal. And Israel ignored this ruling. So, of course, did the US.

But now the burden of all this post-election theft is to be placed upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

This colourless, helpless man, who presided over the Palestinian Authority’s continuing corruption, is supposed to persuade the new Hamas government to accept all of Israel’s land-grabs, to pick up where the Oslo process left off (which still left Jerusalem exclusively in Israeli hands), and to abandon all violence – which means to surrender whenever Israeli troops raid refugee camps or cities in the West Bank.

The point is that Hamas members have been as assuredly elected representatives of the Palestinians as Olmert and his forthcoming allies in government are representatives of Israelis.

But this does not allow them to make any “controversial” plans to redraw their “border” with Israel, not even to insist that Israel withdraws – or redeploys – to its internationally recognised borders. (I’m talking about the pre-1967 frontier, not the 1948 one.)

They cannot demand fulfilment of UN Resolution 242 because President George W Bush has already made it clear that the vast Jewish colonies east of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself, will remain in Israeli hands.

Sure, 14 of the 24 Hamas ministers have been in Israeli prisons. But what are Palestinians supposed to think when they realise that 15 Israeli generals have been elected to the new Knesset, along with six secret service agents?

Yet even this is not the point. If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers – not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert.

We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon – an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres – was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem.

Certainly, Olmert is not going to do that.

He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal – let’s call a spade a spade – more Arab land in doing so.

The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the European Union? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will Tony Blair?

Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But “new” and expanded “controversial” Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either. – The Independent

Feminist movement akin to separatist movement
by Dr Azly Rahman
Mar 23, 06 4:39pm

Letter writer JS Shaari presented an interesting and thought-provoking opinion defending the idea that “feminism is not about male-bashing”.

However, I must caution that it must not be taken as representing that of all females. The Malaysian feminist movement itself is presenting itself like a separatist movement struggling for self-determinism. Besides this, they must decide what kind of feminism they are going to be defined as.

In the West, we see so many variants of feminism, from struggling for universal suffrage to the rights to same sex marriage. This doctrine has evolved like products in the American shopping mall – there is feminism for a variety of causes. Each one has its own shelf life. Each one can be transported globally, as convenient as the American Empire wants to transplant “liberal democracy” the world over.

All most often assume that females are the oppressed sex, without taking into consideration the pattern of kinship, the pattern of social reproduction, and the complex social structure as it pertains to the development of changing roles in society. The writer misunderstood my intention due to the lack of careful reading.

It is clear in my article that Malaysian feminism is developing into such a doctrine of male-bashing and I think males are beginning to be increasingly uncomfortable with such an accusation. Herein lies the growing fascination of the Malaysian feminist movement – to take the excesses of what Western feminism has to offer and to use confusingly as a platform for their struggle.

What is even worse is that the argument that men are shackling women is beginning to be spread to girls growing up amongst feminist parents. The girls will grow up confused – as their feminist parents have been – of what constitutes a family life. This is going to be a dangerous trend that will retard the development of an ethical civilization. One need not be a feminist to be a champion of universal human rights, if feminism is itself a misunderstood idea amongst Malaysian feminists themselves.

Let there be no mistake in my propositions enshrined in my article. I applaud what some enlightened peacemakers, males and females, are trying to do with the Islamic Family Law. It need not be a “female” struggle exclusively.

The work of Malaysian feminists is admirable in the area of protecting the rights of women that are abused and unfairly treated in relationships. In fact we should teach girls to continue to continue their struggle against “digressive forces in society” that are pushing humanity backwards. In Africa it is a about genital mutilation, in Malaysia it is about something less clear.

The problem though is that Malaysian feminism is an elitist movement and trapped in its gender-specific shackle that looks merely at a limited number of issues without looking at the structural violence governing those issues. Because its members are mainly from elites of the upper and upper-middle class predominantly, their view may be limited to looked at “bourgeois-type” of issues that mirror the “struggles” of their Western counterpart.

Whatever that is fashionable in the West becomes transplanted as ideology of the Malaysian feminist movement. Feminism of this sort does not have its originality and it cultural-specificity, not to mention it being devoid of the understanding of class issue within the context of political economy.

The Malaysian feminist’s understanding of feminism itself lacks depth. It lacks the understanding of the metaphysical depth of the relationship between man and woman in the complex yet harmonious relationship between Man, Woman, and Human Nature.

Why would Islam say that “paradise is at the mother’s feet” if Islam does not value the role of women? Why would the mother be regarded metaphysically higher in status than the father in the scheme of relationship between Man and Woman? Isn’t this notion of the metaphysical and mystical nature of women enough for feminism to be debunked and cease to exist as yet another irrelevant “isms”? Why do we call this planet Mother Earth if there is more philosophical worth in the “feminine” aspect of natural evolution of this universe?

Even in the legend of Si Tenggang, human beings get turned to stone for being ungrateful to the mother. Read the legend of Batu Belah Batu Bertangkup. In it, children gets swallowed by a “cave” merely for the crime of not saving/reserving the “telor tembakul” for the mother enslaved by the economic condition she was in (perhaps in a society in which the Sultans get to eat caviar for breakfast). Such powerful examples of the power of the female which the Malaysian feminists have to start reading up on. Such an elevated status women were accorded even in times of pre-Tun Teja.

Malaysian feminists, in order not to be trapped by the ideology of “myopic feminism” must read the excesses of feminism as embodied in the characters of individuals I call “historical feminists” such as Mumtaz Mahal who made Shah Jahan insane, Cleopatra (who was actually a Greek) who brought the downfall of Mark Anthony, and Marie Antoinette who brought the separation of King Louis XVI’s head from his body through Dr Guillotine’s invention.

What makes this exclusive club of feminists think that the majority of Malaysian women are oppressed? Who are the ones not happy with the self they inhabit – the Malaysian feminist, or the females the feminists are “fighting the rights” for? This is a classic postmodernist/ post- structuralist example of the process of “Othering” – who speaks for the “other females”?

There is so much one, especially the self-professed Malaysian feminist, needs to learn of the genealogy, historicity, and post-structurality of feminism before one embraces it blindly as yet another transplanted Malaysian bourgeoisie country-club movement. Is it not a movement of the privileged few who are merely armchair human right activists cheered by international media interested in seeing how much a nation can be fragmented through subtle neo-colonialist strategies?

Again it not merely gender but class and caste that is the issue. I suggest Malaysian feminists deconstruct themselves and refocus their struggle to question the fundamental nature of our social ills – the prolonged existence of the system of corporate crony capitalism that is privileging the children of those in power.

There is no need for the Malaysian feminist to exist only to become yet another smokescreen to a larger issue.

The writer can be contacted at: aar26@columbia.edu.

Marina sparks debate with ‘Apartheid’ remarks
Patrick Goodenough
International Editor

(CNSNews.com) – Malaysia is considered one of the most moderate nations in the Muslim world, but the daughter of a former prime minister has sparked a row by comparing discrimination against Muslim women in her country with the treatment of black South Africans under apartheid.

“As non-Muslim women catch up with women in the rest of the world, Muslim women here are only going backwards,” Marina Mahathir wrote in a newspaper column.

Marina, a women’s rights and HIV/AIDS campaigner, was referring to new family laws that will make it easier for Muslim men in Malaysia to take multiple wives and claim property after divorce.

Under Islamic law (shari’a), Malaysian Muslim men already are allowed up to four wives. But the new legislation will give them more rights to claim assets after divorcing a wife, to seize property belonging to existing wives, and lessen their obligation to pay maintenance.

Organizations that came out against the proposals were attacked for promoting “western”-style gender equality, and parliament passed the legislation at the end of last year.

In multi-ethnic Malaysia, where Muslims comprise about 60 percent of the population, the proposed new laws will only apply to Muslims.

Marina wrote that, more than a decade after apartheid had ended in South Africa, an “insidious” form of discrimination was developing in Malaysia, between Muslim and non-Muslim women.

“Non-Muslim Malaysian women have benefited from more progressive laws over the years while the opposite has happened for Muslim women,” she said.

The article was due for publication last Wednesday, International Women’s Day, but The Star newspaper – for which she has long been a regular columnist – held it because of the controversial content.

Marina then published it on the Internet, with a note saying: “For the first time in some 17 years, The Star is refusing to publish my column … they said that the powers-that-be there think it’s too tough on the government and it’s not the right platform etc.”

The column eventually was published on Friday.

Marina’s “apartheid” accusation stung in a country which as a leader in the developing world saw itself at the forefront of the international campaign against racial segregation in South Africa.

The Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF) accused her of doing “a great disservice to a country praised by many as a model Muslim nation.”

“Her prejudiced views and assumptions smack of ignorance of the objectives and methodology of the shari’a, and a slavish capitulation to western feminism’s notions of women’s rights, gender equality and sexuality,” two female founding members of the forum, Farah Pang Abdullah and Siti Jamilah Sheikh Abdullah, said in a response.

The MPF statement itself sparked further discussion on Internet websites.

“Nowhere in the Koran does it say that we must suspend our intellect or reason in matters religious,” wrote one contributor to the debate. “On the contrary, we are told to exert ourselves fully (meaning use our brain) to fully understand our Holy Book.”

Some of Marina’s critics noted that in Malaysia, women play a relatively prominent role in the public and business sectors.

In an earlier column, Marina challenged that perception, saying that although 60 percent of undergraduates are female, only 23 percent of administrators and managers in the Malaysian workplace are women, and women are paid 47 percent of what men earn for the same job.

“Despite what looks like progress for women in our country, the participation of women in the workplace has not changed in 30 years.”

Her column also drew attention further afield. An editorial in the Khaleej Times, a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates argued that any discrimination faced by women in Muslim countries has nothing to do with Islam but with “pre-Islamic customs and traditions.”

“At a time when there are already enough misconceptions about Islam and Muslims, such an irresponsible remark by a Muslim woman can send a wrong message to the world,” it said.

“It’s unfortunate that a great faith that actually granted and recognized the just status of woman recognizing her rights and which transformed her status in Arabian society should be blamed for something that has nothing to do with it.”

Some critics of Marina said it was ironic that she was speaking against discrimination when her father, veteran former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, oversaw racial policies aimed at benefiting Malays, the majority Muslim ethnic group.

The “bumiputra” policies were introduced in the early 1970s following race riots, and were designed to give the ethnic majority a greater share of the country’s wealth, disproportionately controlled by ethnic Chinese.

The affirmative action policies include quotas for government jobs, admission to educational institutions and ownership in business. Stock exchange listing requirements also benefit Malays.

One Flu Over The Human Nest
by Lee Tse Ling

The Star Online > Health
Sunday March 5, 2006
One flu over the human nest

Vaccination is one of the greatest achievements of medicine and has spared millions of people the effects of devastating diseases. It’s clear it has a vital role to play in the ongoing concerns over the bird flu.

THAT the next influenza pandemic is on its way is not mere hyperbole. It’s a very real risk, with serious implications.

“We had three pandemics in the last century, and there is no reason to believe there won’t be one in this century,” Nature quoted Klaus Stohr, chief influenza expert of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in May 2005.

We are in our 39th year since the last pandemic outbreak, the longest period the world has gone between pandemics. And nobody can predict how long this window will last.

What sort of numbers are involved when we use the word “pandemic”? In a normal year, the WHO estimates between 5% and 15% of the world’s population is affected by influenza. That’s between 300 million and nearly a billion people. Out of this, up to one million die from influenza-associated complications.

According to Stohr, a severe pandemic-level attack (infection rate: 35%) could result in up to a billion people becoming ill, 28 million hospitalisations, and seven million deaths worldwide. Again, these figures are not hyperbole – the 1918 Spanish Flu attack rate approached 40% at its worst, claiming at least 20 million lives. The 1957 Asian Influenza and 1968 Hong Kong Influenza claimed another four million each.

The crucial difference between 1918 and 1957/1968, and indeed between what happened then and what may happen now, was and still is pandemic preparedness as individuals, as a nation and as a global community. And a crucial element of any preparedness plan will be an effective vaccination policy.

Flu virus 101

There are three types of influenza viruses: A, B and C. All three can infect humans.

While type B viruses have been known to cause epidemics, they have never caused pandemics. (Terminology/Definitions: If a disease is endemic, it is restricted or peculiar to a locality or region. An epidemic affects an abnormally large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time. A pandemic occurs over an even wider geographic area [i.e. globally] and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.)

Type C viruses only cause mild illness in humans.

The high-pathogenic influenza A H5N1 infection on the other hand has a mortality rate of almost 100% in poultry, and 50% in humans. That is, it has killed almost every infected bird, and one in two infected humans.

Only type A viruses are classified into subtypes by the unique haemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteins found on their surfaces. These proteins are given identification numbers e.g. H1 and N5 and are used in combination to identify type A subtypes e.g. H1N1, H1N2 and H3N2 – the A subtypes in common circulation amongst humans.

All are further classified into strains. Strains develop due to gradual genetic changes. This process is known as antigenic drift – where many small changes accumulate over time e.g. random mutations that occur in a virus particle’s RNA, making its surface proteins less recognisable to the immune system.

Think of it this way: it’s as if a friend of yours gradually grew a moustache and beard. They haven’t changed that much, but you might not recognise them initially over time. And what the immune system can’t recognise quickly, it can’t kill quickly.

Sudden change generates new subtypes through a process known as antigenic shift – where the virus particle acquires a surface protein combination that has not been seen in humans before, or not been seen for a long time.

Because our immune systems have never encountered such a foe, everyone – not just people with young or compromised immune systems – will be susceptible to infection. Think of it this way: it’s as if your friend has gone for drastic plastic surgery now. They’ve changed completely and you can’t recognise them at all. And what the immune system can’t recognise at all, it can’t kill, period. This is what a high-pathogenic H5N1 virus capable of infecting humans will be like.

Several facts make it difficult to eradicate type A viruses. To begin with, they are naturally resident in wild bird populations, which spread them across the globe during their annual migrations. Not only are they persistent in the environment, they are also capable of lying “silent” and can therefore spread undetected in domestic ducks. Lastly, they undergo both shift and drift – producing a source of new and infectious strains and subtypes.

For the moment, the virus does not spread easily from birds to humans. This becomes obvious when you compare the very large number of domestic birds exposed to H5N1 (more than 150 million culled so far), their close proximity to humans, especially in village communities with backyard flocks, to the small number of humans who have contracted the disease from them (approximately 100). Furthermore, the outbreaks of H5N1 have only occurred in small clusters, indicating that it is not easily transmitted from human to human.

Vaccines

In the face of this, vaccines will play a two-fold role in keeping a pandemic in check. The obvious solution is a vaccine that confers protection against human H5N1. However, it will be some time before this new vaccine will make it from the producers to the rest of the world.

In the first place, until H5N1 begins infecting humans in earnest, it is unlikely a highly effective formulation can be developed. That’s because in order to get past our immune systems, the virus will have to evolve a completely novel trait, one our current vaccines have not forewarned our systems about and primed them against.

In the second, vaccine distribution will be limited by production capacity and locality. The vaccine industry is one that never manages to meet demand. World production capacity is currently 300 million doses per annum. That is, enough doses to vaccinate just 5% of the world’s population. Compare that with the postulated attack rate of 35%.

Furthermore, most of the world supply of influenza vaccine is produced in Europe and the US. A small amount is manufactured in Japan. Asia is almost exclusively dependent on Europe for its vaccine supply. It is a tricky situation US vaccination and public policy expert Dr David Fedson brought up in an interview with the Asia-Pacific Advisory Committee on Influenza (APACI).

“We still need to deal with the political implications of distributing pandemic vaccine to countries that do not have production companies of their own. It is likely that the political leaders of countries in which vaccine companies are located will nationalise the production of pandemic vaccine, preventing export until all of their citizens have been vaccinated,” he said.

According to the National Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plan (NIPPP), it is unlikely Malaysia will receive the H5N1 vaccine until at least six months after large-scale production begins. What can be done in the meantime?

The rationale for vaccination

The best thing we can do to slow the pandemic is to limit the chances of antigenic shift happening. The chances of this happening are high when two influenza viruses – e.g. the high-pathogenic H5N1 bird flu and any human flu virus – infect a human at the same time.

Once in this “mixing vessel”, the viruses can genetically re-assort. That is, they can trade packets of genetic information. What you don’t want the human flu virus to pass on to the H5N1 bird flu virus is a manual titled How to Infect Humans. So first things first – vaccinate the normal hosts: poultry. Second, vaccinate the mixing vessels: humans.

“A strategy to bar the meeting of the viruses in the human body would go a long way towards preventing the emergence of a deadly new virus. It would reduce the opportunities for simultaneous infection of humans with the avian and human flu viruses, decreasing opportunities for reassortment. I believe this can be achieved with higher immunisation rates with the influenza vaccine,” says consultant paediatrician and neonatologist Dr Musa Mohd Nordin.

Besides slowing the evolution of such a virus, increased vaccination will encourage the growth of vaccine production capacity and vaccination infrastructure.

“Perhaps the best we can hope for is to develop the global capacity to produce as many doses as possible, so that they can be supplied to non-producer countries sooner rather than later,” said Fedson in the same APACI interview.

“Too much attention has been focused on curative strategies. My back-to-basics virology and vaccinology would suggest that during this inter-pandemic period, influenza immunisation would be the best option for protection against influenza and would help to mitigate the emergence of a pandemic virus. This investment would prove to be a cost-saving policy. It would undoubtedly decrease the health burden of annual influenza flu epidemics and prevent influenza morbidities and mortalities,” says Dr Musa.

He adds: “Quite evidently, the pandemic clock is ticking; we just do not know what time it is!”

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A guide to vaccination

CHILDREN

Consultant paediatrician and neonatologist Dr Musa Mohd Nordin recommends the influenza vaccination for all children, in particular those above the age of six months and below nine years.

Past six months, the immune system is mature enough to make protective antibodies. But at that young age, the child is still vulnerable to infection, as his/her immune system may not be experienced enough to cope with an attack.

High priority groups include those with:

# Pulmonary conditions e.g. asthma, chronic lung disease of immaturity

# Heart conditions e.g. congenital heart disease

# Kidney dysfunction

# Blood disorders e.g. thalassaemia

# Metabolic disease e.g. diabetes

# Compromised immune systems, including those with HIV infections

The vaccine should not be administered if the child:

# Is under six months of age

# Has a known allergy to eggs, chicken proteins, neomycin (an antibiotic) and other active substances in the vaccine e.g. formaldehyde

# Has had an adverse reaction to the vaccine in the past

# Has a fever or is experiencing an acute illness (in which case, simply postpone the vaccination)

Dosages

# Children aged between six months and 35 months should receive a half-dose (0.25ml)

# Children aged three years and above should receive a full-dose (0.5ml)

# Children below nine years who have not previously received the vaccination should be given a second booster dose one month after the first

# Children above nine years should receive an annual dose

ADULTS

In general, anyone who wants to reduce their chances of contracting influenza should get vaccinated annually. However, high-priority groups include:

# People living in nursing homes and long-term care facilities

# People with the chronic conditions listed under high-priority for children

# People with impaired respiratory function (those conditions that make it difficult to breath or swallow e.g. brain or spinal cord injuries; seizure disorders; and nerve or muscle disorders)

# Women who will be pregnant during the influenza season

# Anyone who can transmit influenza to others in high-priority groups e.g. healthcare workers and caregivers

THE ELDERLY

The elderly typically have weaker immune systems and may experience chronic diseases that render them more susceptible to infection and complications following infection. Consultant geriatrician Dr. Rajbans Singh recommends annual influenza vaccination for all persons above 60.

“Patients who have taken their influenza and pneumococcal vaccines have less incidence of chest infections. I also find the vaccine safe with no side effects,” he says.

The vaccine should not be administered if the elderly persons in question:

# Has a known allergy to eggs, chicken proteins, neomycin (an antibiotic) and other active substances in the vaccine e.g. formaldehyde

# Has had an adverse reaction to the vaccine in the past

# Is febrile

# Is immunocompromised

Note: Information compiled from the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), vaccine manufacturer Sanofi-Pasteur and local specialists.

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Dispelling myths about influenza vaccination

Myth #1: The common cold is the same as influenza

According to consultant paediatrician and neonatologist Dr Musa Mohd Nordin, influenza is often erroneously equated with the common cold.

“Hence the myth that it is a relatively mild illness which improves rapidly over two to three days, and that lots of rest, fluids, vitamin C and aspirin are all that is required. On the contrary, they have strikingly different pathologies (i.e. collection of abnormalities). Influenza is often associated with high-grade fever lasting three to four days; severe muscle aches, chest discomfort, early and severe physical weakness and generalised fatigue, which could last up to three weeks,” he says.

The two are both respiratory illnesses caused by different viruses. Anyone who has experienced a bad attack of viral influenza will know the difference. If you haven’t, have a look at the accompanying table, Flu or cold?

Myth #2: The current influenza vaccine will protect you from bird flu

When medical practitioners recommend vaccination as the primary means of preventing influenza, they’re referring to the normal influenza vaccine – meaning, the influenza you are being vaccinated against is not the H5N1 subtype, but the endemic subtypes that normally circulate and cause the seasonal epidemics we are familiar with.

It is unlikely the current vaccine formulation will confer any cross-protection against a virulent H5N1 subtype. By definition, a pandemic can only occur when a new subtype emerges or when a subtype has disappeared over many generations re-emerges.

Myth #3: The influenza vaccine only protects me

Herd immunity, or community immunity arises when enough individuals in a population are protected from a given infection. Since nobody catches the infection, nobody spreads it, so the infectious agent never has a chance to get a foothold. While a few vaccinations may protect individuals, widespread vaccination protects everyone. This is how smallpox was eradicated completely by 1980.

Myth #4: The influenza vaccination is only for travel

Current data shows the influenza vaccine is an effective, vital and common pre-travel protective measure. Vaccination rates among Malaysians as a whole are low – about one in every four hundred people (0.3%).

On the other hand, vaccination rates among travellers are high – a 2000 study on vaccine effectiveness in Malaysian Haj pilgrims showed a rate of up to 88%. That’s nearly every nine out of 10 people, thanks to the constant recommendations made by the Haj Authority.

The study also showed that the influenza vaccine was 78% effective in protecting recipients from clinic visits for influenza-like-illness. Why stop there? School environments, offices, and public transport all are environments in which influenza can be transmitted too.

Miracle of Stem Cell Therapy
by Dr. Musa Mohd. Nordin

There is universal interest in discovering and developing a permanent source of cells which would be capable of generating any cell type and which would avoid the problem of transplant rejection. These cells called human stem cells have the unlimited capability to divide and the potential ability to develop into most of the specialized cells or tissues of the human body.

Human stem cells can give rise to many different type of cells, such as muscle cells, nerve cells, heart cells and blood cells. They could therefore be potentially useful to generate replacement cells and tissues to treat many conditions including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, leukaemia, stroke, heart attack, diabetes multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and spinal cord injury.

There are 2 major sources of stem cells.

a. Adult stem cells. They are derived from aborted fetuses, umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, blood and brain. They are less plastic (less able to differentiate into specialized cells compared to embryonic stem cells); scarce and sometimes inaccessible (in brain, retina of eyes).
b. Embryonic stem cells. They are derived from embryos as a result of in-vitro fertilization (surplus or created embryos) or from embryos created by somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning technology). There is an unceasing moral and ethical debate on the use of embryos for research.

Cord blood is a relatively rich source of haemopoietic stem cells (HSC). About 100 mls can reconstitute the haemopoietic system in small patients; usually children.

The first successful related cord blood transplant was undertaken 16 year ago. Since then, over 3,000 transplants have been done worldwide. There are a few reports of successful transplantations of adults.

The advantages of cord blood over bone marrow or peripheral blood transplantation are:

1. The donor does not have to be admitted to undergo collection procedures which may involve mobilisation of stem cells using drugs eg cyclophosphamide and G-CSF ( in case of peripheral blood donor) and anaesthesia ( in bone marrow donor)
2. Unlike the other two sources, cord blood has a reduced risk of graft versus host disease.

There are currently no clear guidelines locally to address the issue of cord blood collection and cord blood banking for future transplantation.

The National Blood Bank has already been collecting and banking cord blood as part of their non-profitable National Cord Blood Bank. The National Cord Blood Bank would be available to doctors to search the public registry for possible unrelated but matched samples as an alternative source for stem cell transplantation.

The issue is clouded further by the sales pitching and often non-evidence based medicine claims of private cord banks. The American Academy of Paediatrics warns that families may be vulnerable to “emotional marketing” at the time of birth of their child. Professor Nick Fisk, Chairman of the Royal College of Obstetrics & Gynaecology Scientific Advisor Committee said “We are concerned that commercial companies are targeting pregnant women with such emotive literature when the scientific evidence is not yet there to back up their claims”.

The risks of a child developing a disease which may require cord blood transplantation is not known. There are no accurate estimates on the likelihood of children requiring their own stored cells. The best guess of this ever happening ranges from 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 200,000. There is therefore only a tiny and remote chance of children ever requiring to utilize their own stored cells.

Scientific indications for collection and banking of cord blood are far and few in between. In families where there is a known genetic disease that can be treated by HSC transplantation, cord blood collection and storage are recommended for siblings born into these families. Cord blood collection is also recommended in specific settings eg

1. A sibling who is suffering from leukemia, just in case he relapses and may require HSC transplant
2. A sibling in whom HSC transplant is indicated but has no match related donor available.

The storing of cord blood privately by private cord banks is based on the premise that the sample is stored specifically for use within the family concerned and more specifically the child’s own future use (autologous transplant).

Autologous transplantation itself maybe problematic because the use of one’s own stem cells may not cure the underlying pathology. In the case of leukaemia and other congenital disorders eg Thalassaemia and Fanconi’s Anaemia; transplanting ones own stem cells with the defective genetic and immune structure (thus causing the disease) would only be returning the disease to oneself.

The 80-100ml of umbilical cord blood collected at birth may not be adequate when the baby grows into an adolescent or adult. The volume of cells is insufficient if he should ever require it later in life.

Thus, the concept of a ‘biological insurance’ which is much hyped by the private cord banks is therefore actuarially unsound given the very low estimates on the likelihood of use, or the need of using one’s own cord blood for transplantation. The emotional marketing is however burgeoning the bank balances of private cord banks.

In the final analysis, public cord blood banking should be expanded for the benefit of the wider population. Collection of altruistic donations of cord blood and directed donations for families at high risk should be encouraged. The National Cord Blood Bank was set up to achieve these objectives at no cost. Rather than just to keep the cord blood banked for one’s own use, it should be made available to others who may need the cord blood in the allogenic (genetically different) setting.

Dr. Musa Mohd. Nordin
Consultant Paediatrician & Neonatologist
musamn@gmail.com