Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

For more about me, please read this.

Categories
Society

[1009] Of Perlis: from Indera Kayangan to Darul Sunnah

I patrol Wikipedia rather religiously. I used to make countless edits on it but lately, I haven’t had much time to spend on it. Nevertheless, because of the frequency of my visits, it’s relatively easy for me to spot vandalism on pages that I maintain watch on. While most acts of vandalism are easy to catch, some aren’t. Sometimes, legitimate edits could be mistaken as vandalism. One of such edition concerns the page Perlis. On that page, it’s easy to find anonymous editors changing the noun Perlis Indera Kayangan to Perlis Darul Sunnah.

At first, I thought the switch was purely vandalism or some newbies were having fun on Wikipedia. Later however, the changes were becoming above average in frequency and more importantly, consistent. Given that, I toyed with the possibility of me being wrong and the anonymous editors being right. To ascertain it, I ran a little research on the net and surprisingly, I found countless hits containing “Perlis Darul Sunnah”. One of those hits is an article from Harakah:

KANGAR, 26 Sep (Hrkh) – Pesuruhjaya PAS Perlis, Ustaz Hashim Jasin menyeru agar gelaran Indera Kayangan bagi negeri Perlis ditukar kepada Darul Sunnah secara rasminya.

That roughly translates into:

KANGAR, 26 Sept (Hrkh) – Perlis PAS commissioner Ustaz Hashim Jasin urged to officially change Perlis’ title from Indera Kayangan to Darul Sunnah.

The Department of Environment, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment also used Perlis Darul Sunnah instead of Perlis Indera Kayangan. The Department however isn’t consistent in its usage.

Indera Kayangan, by the way could be rendered to English as “land of dreams”. Dream as in when a person sleeps, the person dreams. As a person in the comment section has commeted and after consulting a dictionary, “land of gods” is the accurate intepretation.

Further search brought me to a forum which it’s stated that the Chief Minister of Perlis declared the name switch on July 2 2006. The forum might not be credible and so, handle this information with a healthy dose of skepticism.

What is wrong with Indera Kayangan anyway? Is it too unislamic?

If it is so, then I hope people of whom are making effort to change the state title realize that being a Muslim isn’t about being an Arab.

Categories
Sports

[1008] Of hail Curbishley

Oh yeah!

Nigel Reo-Coker answered Alan Curbishley’s call to do his talking on the pitch by grabbing the winner in the West Ham manager’s first game in charge as they beat Manchester United 1-0.

A great way to start the week.

Categories
Environment

[1007] Of Kiunga-Aiambak road project in Papua New Guinea

I was at the Malaysian Nature Society HQ today for the Great Green Promotion and I think it was pretty cool. Especially when I found out that one of my branch’s committee members is a fellow Wolverine! Go Blue baby!

I particularly enjoyed “An Inconvenient Truth” since I had been anticipating the documentary since May 2006. The most enlightening documentary however was “Paradise Bus”, produced by a Malaysian named Chi Too. It’s about how a community of aborigines in Papua New Guinea handles the devastation brought upon them by illegal logging activities. Within the documentary itself, a segment on Kiunga-Aiambak road project caught my attention.

Kiunga is located in the mid-western area of Papua New Guinea. It’s the red dot; the blue dot is Aiambak:

Fair use. Google Maps.

This map is taken from Google Maps. The exact location of Kiunga could be seen at Welt-Atlas.de. Barcelona Field Study Center might have a more accurate representation of the location of the road project on map. For the location of Aiambak, a map is accessible here; taken from the University of Taxes Libraries. Public domain.

At first, the aborigines thought the project was an innocent road project crossing their land. After all, it was presented to them by the government and a firm called Concord Pacific — a subsidiary of Samling group of companies which during that time was controlled by Malaysian Yaw Teck Seng — as a road project. The aborigines soon realize that the project is a proxy for logging activities. The road — earth road by the way — wasn’t designed to be straight. Instead, it was planned to be curvy from the start so the road would pass through areas with the best and the most timbers. Suffice to say, the whole project was a big fat lie perpetrated by Samling.

A person interviewed in the documentary, Galeva Sep, reserved some harsh comments for Malaysian logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea. He said that the companies, Rimbunan Hijau in particular, have corrupted the government of Papua New Guinea from the top to the bottom. His allegation is hard to ignore since reports as such one published in The Age, are common:

The Government’s review team is ringing alarm bells after visiting earlier this year, suggesting Rimbunan Hijau has transformed a local police taskforce into a private army to suppress opponents. The police must be immediately replaced by “trustworthy” officers “so that the Government of PNG regains control of law and order”, its report states.

If it means anything at all, the current chairman of Rimbunan Hijau, Hiew King Tiong has nearly 45% equity stake in Nanyang Press. He bought 20% stake back in October this year from MCA. In the same The Age article:

The multinational company has a net worth of nearly $2 billion and sits at the apex of political influence in PNG, branching out into restaurants, supermarkets, even one of the nation’s two daily newspapers.

Talking about the companies, you could read more about them here, though information there might be outdated.

The aborigines along with Greenpeace worked hard enough to fight off the Malaysian company. In July 2003, the company managing the Kiunga-Aiambak road project was served an injuction:

LMROA filed an injunction against Concord Pacific in July 2003, with the help of Celcor, an NGO which provides legal support to landowners. At the same time Association members protested by boarding the last barge to transport the illegally logged timber from the region.

The injuction stopped the whole operation, and earnings from the log sales were put into a national court trust account — a total of three shipments of logs worth about 1.7 million kina. That money is still there now.

If you are interested in watching the documentary, the Malaysian Nature Society will be screening it again for free on January 28 2007.

Categories
Education Society

[1006] Of a suggestion to increase the appeal of national schools

The Malaysian government is committed towards the national school system. From time to time, the current government reminds us of that; today, the Prime Minister reiterates his support for the system:

KUALA LUMPUR: National schools will become the schools of choice again, according to the Prime Minister.

Lamenting their decline yesterday, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said: “Everything is being done to make the schools attractive to all the races.”

Abdullah said the government had realised that national schools played an important role in nation building and bringing the various races together.

I have a suggestion, out of few, on how to make it a system of choice of many Malaysians.

Bring religion, in most cases Islam as far as national schools are concerned, to where to belong — as equal among many other courses.

When I was a students within the national school system, I loathe the very idea that religion was being forced upon me. I dislike that fact that because I’m a Muslim, I had to do things that are deemed as Islamic by my religious teachers. I’m sure some girls disagree to being forced to wear headscarf at school, just because they’re Muslims.

For me personally, the reason I attend school is to learn arts, humanities and sciences, not to have my personal life and belief dictated upon by strangers.

Further, I believe all the stress on Islam makes believers of other religions, atheists, agnostics and even Muslims that are uninterested in religious conservatives’ wet dream alike feel alienated. Surely, that doesn’t increase the appeal of national schools to many.

Categories
History & heritage Poetry

[1005] Mengenai Rumah Bok

Jalan-jalan Jalan Ampang,
ada ternampak rumah besar,
rumah agam di tanah lapang,
di mata kasar, masa kasar.

Jalan-jalan Jalan Ampang,
tiada lagi rumah besar,
tiang tidur di tanah lapang,
di mata kasar, manusia gasar.

Fair use. Copyrights by The Sun, Malaysia.

Menurut The Sun, Rumah Bok sudah tiada:

KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 15, 2006): The legacy of Bok House or Le Coq D’Or on Jalan Ampang came to an end Thursday, with it crushing all hopes and fervour of heritage activists.

Burning questions now await the authorities that be for allowing something so beautiful and beloved to be forever erased.

The building’s roof tiles were the first to be taken down on Thursday morning and hoarding on the Jalan Ampang frontage was put up from 6pm that day. Friday saw the destruction of sturdy pillars which held up the house.

Walau apapun, Rumah Bok adalah harta peribadi. Pemilik berhak menentukan masa hadapan hartanya, walaupun tindakan pemilik itu sungguh menjijikkan.

Saya telah menyumbangkan satu rencana pendek tentang Rumah Bok kepada Wikipedia Inggeris, takut-takutkan saya terlupa sejarah bandar ini di suatu masa.