World AIDS Day 2009: Still A Long Way To Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's Be Civilised and Just Stop Violence Against Women

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

Confusing the 'Confusers'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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



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

A Tale of Two Launches

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So we shall see where the Charter goes in Malaysia.

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

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

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



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

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

Compassion and Constitution - the Concerns of Our Times

Hi folks, two important events are taking place these next two days.

The first event will take place tomorrow November 12 all over the world including here in Malaysia. The Charter for Compassion is the brainchild of the writer and scholar Karen Armstrong who you may remember spoke here in KL last year. She articulated her vision for this Charter at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference last year and since then, she and various people round the world have worked to make it happen.




In KL, it will take place at the PJ Hilton at 10.30am and will be officiated by YAB Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. In the afternoon there will be a youth panel followed by an interfaith panel. All open to the public.

Here's some info from the website:

The Charter for Compassion is the result of Karen Armstrong’s 2008 TED Prize wish and made possible by the generous support of the Fetzer Institute. It will be unveiled to the world on November 12, 2009.

Why a Charter for Compassion?

The Charter of Compassion is a cooperative effort to restore not only compassionate thinking but, more importantly, compassionate action to the center of religious, moral and political life. Compassion is the principled determination to put ourselves in the shoes of the other, and lies at the heart of all religious and ethical systems. One of the most urgent tasks of our generation is to build a global community where men and women of all races, nations and ideologies can live together in peace. In our globalized world, everybody has become our neighbor, and the Golden Rule has become an urgent necessity.

The Charter, crafted by people all over the world and drafted by a multi-fath, multi-national council of thinkers and leaders, seeks to change the conversation so that compassion becomes a key word in public and private discourse, making it clear that any ideology that breeds hatred or contempt ~ be it religious or secular ~ has failed the test of our time. It is not simply a statement of principle; it is above all a summons to creative, practical and sustained action to meet the political, moral, religious, social and cultural problems of our time.

We invite each of you to adopt the charter as your own, to make a lifelong commitment to live with compassion..

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The other event is the MyConstitution Campaign by the Bar Council, aimed at educating Malaysians about that "document of destiny" as Constitutional expert Dr Shad Faruqi calls it. It's aimed to get us all to be familiar with what is in the Federal Constitution and what are our rights in it.

It's probably not surprising that most Malaysians have no idea what's in their Constitution. Even though most schoolchildren can recite the Rukunegara and know that one of the rukuns is 'Keluhuran Perlembagaan', most probably can't explain what exactly that means. So the MyConstitution campaign aims to redress this. Hopefully every citizen , from schoolchildren to adults, will become aware of this document which basically governs the way our entire country behaves.

Considering its importance, it's amazing that we don't study it in school. I did British Constitution for my A Levels so at that age, I knew more about the (unwritten) British Constitution than ours. That's not something to be proud of.

The campaign will be launched on Friday at 3pm at the Bar Council  by Deputy Minister in the PM's in charge of law, Datuk Liew Vui Keong, followed by a public forum called 'Conversations on the Constitution' where five speakers, National Human Rights Society (Hakam) president Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, veteran lawyer Sulaiman Abdullah, and academics Professor Shad Faruqi, Abdul Aziz Bari and Azmi Sharom, will give their thoughts on the Constitution. The website will also be launched that day.

So come one, come all and learn about this very important document.

Weighing the Waffle on Wahabis

Many of you may be wondering why, in the accusations against Dr. Asri Zainal Abidin, the word 'Wahabi' has become a derogatory term. After all, the Saudis, on whose hospitality we Muslims depend on to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Madina, are Wahabis. As are, for that matter, almost everyone in Perlis (including the Raja of Perlis) and some in Penang. It seems to be the latest 'insult' to be put on people who may differ from the religious establishment, just like 'liberal', 'secular' and, my current favourite, as people 'obsessed with justice'.

Well, if anyone wants to understand what this is really all about, do read Farish Noor's article which I'm reproducing with his permission here.

Revisiting the 'Wahabi scare' of Past and Present

By Farish Noor

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It would appear that there are some in Malaysia who are fearful of the influence of Wahabis in the country, and what this might entail in the future. But before I continue this writer would like to congratulate Abdar Rahman Koya for his article ‘Asri’s Arrest Born of Ignorance and Fear‘, where he correctly notes that the term ‘Wahabi’ is often taken out of context and sometimes incorrectly or indiscriminately applied.

From that premise, allow me to write about the use (and abuse) of the term Wahabi in the history of Malaysia and the Southeast Asian region, which ultimately has brought us to the present state of affairs in Malaysia where the former Mufti of the state of Perlis, Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, was recently taken to task for preaching in public without a permit issued by the religious authorities of Selangor.

The former Mufti has become the target of much speculation and slander, and among the accusations leveled at him is the claim that he is a Wahabi, or has allowed himself to be influenced by the school of Wahabi thought.


That such a charge can be made today in Malaysia is interesting for the precedent has been set from the turn of the century at precisely the moment when modernist-reformist Islam was in the ascendant in the former colony of British Malaya. During the early 1900s, a number of progressive Ulama and Islamist educational activists gathered in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore and came to be known as the ‘Kaum Muda’ generation. They were made up of prominent Ulama like Syed Sheikh Al-Hady, Sheikh Tahir Jalaluddin and others. Many of them were deeply influenced by the writings of the Egyptian reformist thinkers like Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida, and were themselves persuaded that the time had come for Muslims to free themselves from the shackles of superstition, chauvinism, bigotry and outdated traditional practices that were neither Islamic nor rational.

To this end men like Syed Sheikh Al-Hady and Sheikh Tahir Jalaluddin formed the nucleus of what would become the nascent modernist Muslim movement in Malaya. They launched journals, magazines and set up modern madrasahs that were different from the pondok schools of the past that were still teaching a mode of traditionalist Islam based on the kitab kuning texts. Syed Sheikh Al-Hady was himself responsible for the launching of many educational initiatives in order to teach Muslims to think and act rationally, as he was convinced that Islam was a religion of reason and the intellect. His fear was that the state of Muslim thinking among many traditionalist Ulama had crippled the Muslims of Malaya to such an extent that they were reduced to the status of slave-subjects to the colonial order, and unable to improve their economic and political condition themselves. Reason, he argued, was at the heart of Islam and rational agency was the universal quality that equalizes all human beings. To this end he even wrote the first feminist novel in Malay literature - the Hikayat Faridah Hanum - where the heroine was a woman who rationally chooses to determine her own future and place in society.

For their efforts, men like Syed Sheikh Al-Hady and Sheikh Tahir Jalaluddin were condemned by traditional Ulama as being ‘Wahabis’ and Syed Al-Hady was even called the ‘Khalifah Wahabi’ in Malaya. They were banned from the Malay states, their journals stopped and they were not allowed to teach and preach anywhere except the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore.

At the same time, the Kaum Muda movement in Indonesia was also growing strong and being led by the Muhamadiyah movement that likewise pioneered modern Islamic education through new modern schools that taught Islam as well as the hard sciences and social sciences. In Indonesia the modernist movement was likewise accused of being ‘Wahabi’, but this did not stop them from spreading the message of a rational Islam that was founded on reason and will. Among the greatest modernist intellectuals that emerged from this movement were men like Hamka and Mohammad Natsir, who later led the Islamist challenge to Dutch colonialism while also battling against the forces of neo-feudalism and blind traditionalism in their own society.

Today the Muhamadiyah movement remains as one of the biggest Islamist movements in Indonesia and the world, and it still leads the way in the struggle for intellectual emancipation through universal education for all. Those who have seen the film ‘Laskar Pelangi’ will note that it is the tale of a school boy who managed against the odds to get a decent education that eventually led him to pursue his studies in France, all thanks to the effort of the school teachers in a small Muhamadiyah school in Banka-Belitung.

With these efforts behind them, why is it that modernist and rationalist Muslim thinkers in Malaysia still have to face the constant accusation of being Wahabis? The term here is taken out of context to apply to any Muslim intellectual who insists that faith cannot be blind and that reason is also one of the paths to God. If the former Mufti has been criticised by some, it may be due to the fact that he has constantly spoken out against outdated traditional practices that are illogical, irrational and possibly even Bid’ah from a theological point of view. In this respect, the modernists of today are no different from the modernists of the Kaum Muda generation, who likewise condemned the practices of the Muslims of Malaya as outdated and superstitious: The belief in bomohs, witches, witch-doctors, shamans, practices such as saint-worship and praying at graveyards were all regarded as un-Islamic then and now.

Such a standpoint may not sit comfortably with some of the more traditionalist-conservative Muslims who may not take kindly to being told that their traditional practices are outdated and un-Islamic, and perhaps the charge of ‘Wahabism’ lies in the apparently puritanical approach and stand taken by some of the reformers. But to conflate all attempts at rational reform with Wahabism, and to claim that Wahabism is a ‘threat’ may be stretching the point a little.

All in all, it remains unclear as to how or why the former Mufti has been targeted like this. But if Asri Zainul Abidin is disliked by some on the grounds that he has spoken up against traditional practices that he regards as Bid’ah and shirk, then all that can be said is that the man is more of a modernist and rationalist than anything else. In this respect at least, he is another figure of a long line of ‘Kaum Muda’ progressives whose struggle to liberate Muslims from the shackles of traditionalism is going on, still.

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And if modernists and progressives are described as 'Wahabi', you have to wonder how one would describe Saudis who still think women should not be allowed to drive or go anywhere without the permission of their fathers/husbands/brothers, etc? It's an interesting exercise in using a term few people understand to label people even though its meaning can be totally opposite to what reality is.

And Zainah Anwar makes that point very clearly in her column here.

What message do we want to give our young then: close your eyes and just follow but for God's sake, don't think?

Some Interesting Issues Raised by the Asri case

My blogbro Rapera has brought up some very interesting issues related to the Asri case here. Indeed, it affects more than just Dr. Asri.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Professionals Forum/Islamic Renaissance Front have come out with this statement which I happen to think is an excellent one:

2009-11-05

The arrest of former Perlis Mufti, Dr Asri Zainul Abidin by officials of the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (JAIS) at a private function in a residential area on November 1 brings into question again the intellectual freedom in Malaysia, vis-à-vis Islam.

The excuse given by JAIS that Dr Asri did not have the religious credentials from JAIS to teach Islam runs counter to the spirit of intellectual freedom in the history of Islam. It also gives ammunition to JAIS’s detractors and critics over the years that the Department is nothing more than a tool of a small group of religious scholars who are bent on imposing their views on others.  By raiding a religious talk by someone who was once a government Mufti, and who, to say the least, has the necessary academic qualifications to explain Islamic beliefs, JAIS has only shown that it is ill-equipped to take on its critics on an intellectual platform, and has to resort to high-handed tactics.

We also regret that certain quarters have been too liberal in labeling and branding Muslim scholars on the basis of their opinions, with a view to disparage the person instead of countering their opinions with proofs and arguments based on the Qur’an and Sunnah. By invoking the age-old argument of protecting the Muslim community in Malaysia from confusion, these groups have exposed their inability to grasp the spirit of Islam and have only created a hole for them to hide into every time they are intellectually challenged.

If one were to look back into history, the reason the Islamic world flourished during the earlier period was an early emphasis on “freedom of speech”, as summarized by al-Hashimi (a cousin of Caliph al-Ma’mun) in the following letter to one of the religious opponents he was attempting to convert through reason:

"Bring forward all the arguments you wish and say whatever you please and speak your mind freely. Now that you are safe and free to say whatever you please, appoint some arbitrator who will impartially judge between us and lean only towards the truth and be free from the slyness of passion and that arbitrator shall be Reason, whereby God makes us responsible for our own rewards and punishments. Herein I have dealt justly with you and have given you full security and am ready to accept whatever decision Reason may give for me or against me. For "There shall be no coercion in matters of faith" [2: 256] and I have only invited you to accept our faith willingly and of your own accord and have pointed out the hideousness of your present belief. Peace be with you and the blessings of God!"

Every person has the right, guaranteed by the Qur’an, to freely follow and express his convictions, irrespective of whether he is right or wrong. By emphasizing people’s right to follow their conviction, the Qur’an reiterates a long standing position, which it traces back to one of the earliest known Prophets, Noah: “Said [Noah]: O my people! What do you think? If [it be true that] I am taking my stand on a clear evidence from my Sustainer, who has vouched safe unto me grace from himself – [a revelation] to which you have remained blind – [if this be true] can we force it on you even though it be hateful to you? [11:28]

Muslim Professionals Forum and Islamic Renaissance Front call upon JAIS to be sincere in discharging their duties as protectors of faith. Otherwise, JAIS will be just another among a long list of official institutions that need to be thoroughly revamped in order for Islam to reclaim its rightful status as a religion of reason and knowledge. We also call upon Muslim groups to respect the right to dissent and to uphold freedom of expression, and to argue based on wisdom and not on hearsay or personal attacks, as it is the only Islamic way of dealing with issues affecting the Ummah.

Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa

Dr Sheik Johari Bux

Manan Razali

Dr Mazeni Alwi

Dr Musa Nordin

Dr Jeffrey Hassan

Ali Ghazali

I congratulate MPF for this statement.

Meanwhile, Sisters in Islam issued this statement yesterday:

Media Statement

SIS assisting police investigation on the Kartika issue

Two representatives from Sisters in Islam (SIS) gave their statement to Bukit Aman today in respect of a police report lodged against SIS in Kuantan on the Kartika issue.
SIS Executive Director Hamidah Marican and SIS board member Zainah Anwar were called in to give their statements for an investigation under Section 4(i)(a) of the Sedition Act (1948) by the Criminal Investigation Department at 10.35am.
The two, accompanied by lawyers Amer Hamzah Arshad, Edmund Bon Tai Soon and Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, spent almost two hours giving their statement at CID's Legal Prosecution Division (D5), Bukit Aman.
The police have also asked that SIS programme manager Mas Elati Samani give her statement at later date.
According to media reports, 14 non-governmental organisations in Pahang, in referring to a Sinar Harian report of a press conference held on Sept 30, 2009, urged the authorities to punish those who questioned Kartika's caning sentence.
SIS hopes that after recording these statements, the police will recommend that no further action be taken against the organisation.
We would like to reiterate that within the framework of a democratic society, there must be an open, responsible, rational and respectful dialogue on Islam and its impact on our lives, both private and public.
SIS believes that freedom of expression is a universal value guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and upheld by the teachings of Islam.




Sisters in Islam
Nov 4, 2009

I sure hope that, since both SIS and MPF stand for the same principles and given that the NGOs that issued a memo against Dr Asri are the same ones who have lodged police reports against SIS, MPF will also issue a statement of support for SIS.