Category: Society

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Politics & government Society

[2831] Corrupt patriotism will eat us all

It is September 15, the eve of Malaysia Day. As I walk out of the train station into the atrium of KL Sentral, I see rows of the Malaysian flags draping down from the ceiling. Those red and white stripes are unmistakable.

The flag-flying fervor has not been as strong as it had been in the previous years. Perhaps all those third-world corruption controversies have dampened that patriotic sentiment. As it should be. Corruption the scale of 1MDB and Najib Razak should worry many, raise questions and stop us from engaging in petty excitement.

Even in its weakened form however, displays of patriotism disturb me. Here we live in an age where patriotism all around the world is increasingly provincial in nature, and that its jingoist version functions as a vehicle for racists. These racists would be fascists the moment they are given power, democratically or otherwise.

I dream of a cosmopolitan liberal society. I have never stopped believing so even as the idea gets bashed and its weaknesses get revealed by the receding tides. And that liberal ideal does not sit well with unmitigated patriotism.

The usual kind of patriotism that goes against cosmopolitan values typically targets outsiders.

But another version eats the society inside out, whenever it is unclear who the outsiders are. And in this cosmopolitan country we live in, it is never easy to differentiate between the insiders and the outsiders cleanly. It is a mixture of everything. An attempt at nativism would divide our society.

I fear, that is what Malaysian patriotism is turning into, especially when used by the corrupt in power. It turns patriotism onto us Malaysians. Anxious to preserve power despite their wrongdoings, the corrupt are trying to distract us the population from personal crime and justify their hold to power by claiming outsiders are interfering in our affairs. And increasingly, those Malaysians who disagree with the corruption of those in power are being labelled as traitors, working in cahoot with outsiders.

Near Kerinchi in Kuala Lumpur as well as other places, I have noticed yellow and black posters pasted on walls deriding those protesting against Najib Razak’s corruption as “talibarut Amerika.” It is a strong Malay term translating into spies, saboteur, stooges and anything similar. All invested in them the connotation of betrayal.

And to be a patriot is not to work with outsiders, as the narrative goes. Outsiders are out to destroy “us”, they say, as if it is “us” Malaysians whom benefited from the multibillion dollar corruption by the men and women sitting in the desolate distant Putrajaya.

The fact domestically, the corrupt are trying to save their skin and bring everything else down, is forgotten conveniently. Purposefully distraction, digression and misdirection happen to shift attention from 1MDB and Najib Razak’s corruption. Words are being inverted and subverted the way Orwell had imagined.

And so I look at the show of patriotism warily. I wonder when it would turn to people like me who would like to see the corrupt in prison instead of in Putrajaya.

I know on the other side of that corrupt patriotic wall is fascism. I will not worship that wall. Without a chisel, I will stay away.

Categories
Society

[2824] The good, the bad and the ugly of the LRT extension line

Kuala Lumpur opened the extension to its light rail transit lines late last month and I was pretty excited about it. After years of delay, the system is finally here.

I am excited because I can now hop on a train to Subang with ease. Previously, I would either have to drive, get on a cab or take the KTM Commuter trains. The Commuters are not as convenient as the LRT. Frequency is low and it connects places which I have little reasons to go to. In contrast, the LRT extension also means I now have easy access to the Subang airport too.

Another reason for my excitement is that I really love trains. I try to ride on the train everywhere I go to observe the city and the people. Even in Jakarta when the city rail system is not as mature as those in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok. I also regularly read on the read, that is to say I have time for myself in contrast to, for instance, driving.

I rode on the train yesterday and made a loop from the Masjid Jamek Station to the new Putra Heights Station via Kelana Jaya, and back through the Sri Petaling Line. That took me close to 5 hours and I started at about 5PM, running for 40km-50km. The total extension length itself is about 35km.[1][2]

I could not see the outside half of the ride as it was getting dark by the time I reached Putra Heights. I think I will have to make another loop and this time, probably earlier in the day during the weekends to fully appreciate the view.

So, this is a review by a regular LRT user (yes, I am a libertarian who loves public transport. Sue me).

Bad finishing

While the trains themselves are great, so far, I feel the construction of the stations has not been done properly. I got off at several stations and I noticed mediocre finishing. There is a feeling the stations were completed in haste despite long construction delays.

I remember two particular stations with noticeable defects. The escalator at the Lembah Subang Station was creaking, making a loud noise of grinding metals. Mind you, this is a new system and it is already showing sign of stress. With all the escalator incidents elsewhere — some of it deadly — I was not fully sure it was entirely safe.

The escalator at SS15 station was also creaking albeit less loudly. I could feel it straining as I rode down. The descent speed was less than optimum and uneven at times, which possibly has something to do with the straining.

More disappointingly are the washrooms and I am writing specifically about the SS15 station. The faucets open too close to the wall of the basin, making it awkward for me and for anybody with non-midget sized hands to wash up. My fingers would hit the wall easily. I feel the pipes should have extended farther to the center of the sink instead of stopping at the edge, barely.

Several faucets were leaking too, leaving a pool of water on the floor, which turned the whole place disgusting. The dryer also did not work. This might be just a teething problem, but the history of KLIA2 (and the East Coast Highway too?) for instance, it does not inspire confidence. The extension just opened for heaven’s sake. These problems should not exist.

I did not get out of the stations because I did not want to spend too much money. It cost me less than three ringgit to make the ride, because the stations I entered and exited were close by. Neither did I get off at every station. That would the time consuming for a layperson. If I had, I am sure I could find more defects. After all, I randomly got off two stations and the hit rate of finding noticeable defects is 100%. There is a prima facie case to suspect there is a systemic problem with the line.

Who were the contractors of these stations? Given the previous controversies involving contract awards, that question will be important in running a post-mortem on the project. An audit should be carried out and its findings be made public. These contractors should be forced and fined to remedy those defects.

Interchange done right, and wrong

But there is nice stuff to say about the overall system.

The interchange at Putra Heights is done marvelously. If there is an ideal interchange in the whole wide world, this is it. It reminds me of the MRT interchange to Changi Airport in Singapore. You would just have to get out of the train, stay on the same island platform and wait from the next train to arrive on the other side, possibly 10 meters away only. No unnecessary 5 minutes walking is through a mall like in KL Sentral is required.

But I also have to comment about the interchange at Sri Petaling. I do not like it. I had to switch trains and platforms. Sri Petaling has side platforms, which means I had to get on a crossing to get to the other side. More annoyingly, the Putra Heights-Sri Petaling segment is not integrated seamlessly with the Sri Petaling Line, unlike the whole Gombak-Kelana Jaya-Putra Heights segment. I understand why I need to switch trains Putra Heights (Mahathir’s legacy), but less so at Sri Petaling.

Refreshing station designs

I short, I like the design. It feels sleek just like the Kelana Jaya trains.

More importantly, the platforms are huge compared to the old ones. It is just less claustrophobic during rush hour. The situation at stations like KLCC and Masjid Jamek can be extremely unpleasantly and packed with people. Worse, they are underground although air-conditioned stations. But things are not that much better at above ground stations like Setiawangsa, Jelatek, Pasar Seni and even KL Sentral. There just is not much platform space to accommodate massive crowd.

The large platform space at the new stations comes with large envelope cover, which is essential to a rail system in a tropical country like Malaysia. At the old above ground stations, rainstorm would make everything wet and since the flooring are marble-like, dangerously slippery too. The new stations, with the way the platforms are designed and covered, are unlikely to have the same problem, although I would think it would get hot and humid quick. I do not remember whether there was an air-conditioning system moderating the temperature but for the old above ground platforms, a simple cheap fan would work.

But the cover also means the glorious view of KL as seen from Wangsa Maju, Setiawangsa, Jelatek, Keramat, Damai, Pasar Seni, Asia Jaya and Universiti among others is not available at the new stations. That is a downer for me.

But I suppose the envelope cover is a blessing for Puchong stations, which are surrounded with ugly landscape.

Perhaps, if the LRT lines are to be improved further in the future, it should involve the expansion of platform space at popular stations.

Politics of credit and blame

With respect to the old station design, I do not blame the old architects and engineers. The earlier LRT system was put in place at a time when KL population was smaller. Najib Razak when launching the LRT extension line blamed Mahathir Mohamad for not investing more in public transport.[3]

This is off the mark by a mile because Najib ignored the reality of the 1990s when Subang was just expanding and Puchong was a wilderness instead of the industrial town it is now. The Klang Valley population size just did not warrant a further train investment then.

It is arguably only now that we have such population to justify further investment into the city rail system, with suburbs sprawling to the west and the south.

Najib happily takes the credits for the completion of the LRT extension project and further expansion of the KL rail network. But of course, what he did not mention is the fact that the project was supposed to be completed in 2014. Furthermore, Najib takes credits more than the completion of the project. He bashed Mahathir for not providing a comprehensive public transport system but the closer integration of the system really happened during Abdullah Badawi’s time. Indeed, the reorganization of the line management occurred post-1997 crisis under Mahathir. These integrations were the foundation Najib built on.

For a system that takes more than a generation to mature, it is hard to take credit and assign blame cleanly. Politicians should realize that.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — The Kelana Jaya Line Extension will begin from Kelana Jaya station and pass through 13 new stations, including Ara Damansara, Subang Jaya and USJ before ending at Putra Heights Integrated Station, covering a distance of 17.4km. Total length of the Kelana Jaya Line upon completion of the LRT will be 46.4km. [MyRapid. Kelana Jaya Line. Accessed July 12 2016.

[2] — The Ampang Line Extension starts from Sri Petaling Station and passes through Kinrara, Puchong, and ends at Putra Heights. The extension is 17.4km long with 12 new stations. Combined with the existing line, the total length of Ampang Line after the completion of the LRT Line Extension Project will be 45.1km. [MyRapid. Ampang Line. Accessed July 12 2016.

[3] — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak took a swipe at Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today, blaming him for the underdeveloped state of the country’s public transportation network. At the launch of the Kelana Jaya and Ampang LRT Line Extension today, Najib said he made improving public transportation a priority when he became prime minister as the issue had become “increasingly serious.”

“This is because my predecessor who ruled for 22 years did not pay much attention to public transportation,” he said at the launch ceremony here.

“Therefore it created a vacuum, it caused underinvestment, it created a poorly integrated system owned by multiple people that cannot accommodate the needs of a modern city, and the traffic congestion has gotten more serious.” [Aizyl Azlee. Malay Mail Online. Najib blames ”˜predecessor’ for current public transport woes. June 30 2016.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — I have also read that there is a problem of access for all the new stations. Pedestrians face barriers to entry either in the form of fence, road or unrealistic walkway. One criticism I have frequently so far is that the stations are designed for cars to drop off passengers. Sigh…

The old stations do not suffer too much of this problem and I think they are quite pedestrian-friendly in terms of access, except, maybe the Abdullah Hukum station. For the longest time and still is, that particular station stops in the middle of nowhere. Hardly anybody uses it. One hopes that would change when the KL Eco City development is completed, linking the station to the Garden and Mid Valley.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — MP Ong Kian Ming has a wider review of the train system in KL.

Categories
Conflict & disaster Society

[2823] It is wrong to say ISIS has nothing to do with Islam

As an individualist, I do not condemn a whole community for wrongs of the few. I do not subscribe to collective blaming for individual crimes. Each person is responsible for his or her action. In the context of terror acts frequently committed by Islamic extremists these days, I would not ask a random Muslim to apologize for killings done by his coreligionists located thousands of miles away. To make such demand is just dumb.

It is dumb because Islam as practiced all over is diverse and its interpretation varies from group to group. The interpretations range from puritan to liberal, from medieval to modern, from mystical to logical. One interpretation can even be hostile to the other, making the act of blaming one side for the other’s violence as nonsensical.

The same diversity makes it wrong to claim ISIS and all of its terror acts done in the name of the Islamic god has nothing to do with the religion. As if there is one true Islam and only those Muslims subscribe to it. On the contrary, ISIS has everything to do with the religion.

There is no one Islam anymore. However strongly many Muslims would want to stress on the unity of the religion, the truth is that the successful proliferation of Islam beyond Arabia is due to its ability to absorb local beliefs, among other things. Its syncretic nature gives rise to its diversity.

All Muslims share several core tenets but that does not make all Islams as the same. The nature, the nuance, the outlook and the way of life of a Malaysian Muslim is very different from that living in the Middle East. Even within Malaysia, the general Islam experienced in Kuala Lumpur is very different from that in Kota Bahru.

War did advance Islam but war alone could not guarantee lasting belief. The religion had to be tolerant of some local practices to entice and keep people to its side. You could observe the result of the syncretism among the Malays in Malaysia. Traditional Malay wedding ceremony for instance has hints of Hindu influence. The Malays after all, were largely Hindus, Buddhists and animists before the arrival of Islam in the 1100s-1400s to Southeast Asia. Archipelagic Islam developed based on that old Malay (and others like the Javanese) foundation. Post-independence nation state context further influences the interpretation and practice of Islam in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region, that the state used religion to promote nationalism. Brunei is the other example where religion is a subservient tool of nationalism.

The idea that there is one Islam is not only untrue across geography. It is also untrue across time. Karen Armstrong in her book A History of God shows that early Muslims believed they were part of the Christian community. While mainstream Muslims today accept all of the Christian prophets, they do not consider themselves as Christians. Early Muslims did not share such a strong distinction. A separate Islamic identity developed only after the hijra. Indeed, before meeting the Medina Jews, Muhammad thought Christians and Jews were of the same belief and Islam was merely renewing the two religions that came from the same god. The conflation between Christianity and Judaism would not have been a mistake if Muhammad had lived centuries earlier when Jesus was preaching. Armstrong demonstrated that early Christians thought they were Jewish in religious terms and that they themselves thought they were renewing the religion of Moses.

Gerard Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms chronicling the old communities of the Middle East shows how minor religions like the Mandaenism sprung out of the Abrahamic beliefs by holding on to dogmas modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam now reject. Apart from the rejected beliefs, these minor religions are or were similar in so many ways to the major three faiths. These minorities are fossils from the days when the three world’s religions were rapidly evaluating their creeds and figuring out what worked and what did not. They are the living proofs that religion evolves over time, just as dinosaur fossils are proof that the Earth is older than 4,000 years.

All religions evolve and adapt to time, geography and culture and whatever other secular forces.

The one Islam may exist as a Platonic idealism but that model is irrelevant to the material world. The Islam that matters are the practical ones: the interpreted ones.

And so I do disagree with the claim that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. ISIS’s is a disagreeable brand of Islam but it is a brand of Islam nonetheless. It is a brutal brand as a reaction to the disastrous 2000s war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

There is a parallel to this. A harsh puritan form of Islam appeared after the massacre and the razing of Baghdad in the 1200s-1300s by the Mongols. That Islam sought to return the religion to the early Meccan and Medinan days, rejecting intellectual progress achieved in the previous 700 years that made Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus the great capitals of the world during its times.

There is a Muslim tradition that leads to ISIS. That post-Mongol puritan Islam as rationalized by Ibn Taymiyyah informed modern day wahabbism and the salafism, which in turned influenced ISIS.

We should go further and explain why ISIS’s interpretation is so problematic. Their interpretation is that theirs is the true form and everybody else’s is false. ISIS believes theirs is the one true Islam while rejecting the diversity that exists in the religion.

That similarity, between ISIS and those who claim ISIS has nothing to do with Islam, amuses me. Both sides build their argument that their version is the one true Islam.

That logic shared by the two parties is not merely a source of amusing coincidence unfortunately. There is something more sinister about it.

Because there is only one true interpretation, then there is only one way of doing things and everything else is wrong. The religious diversity is rejected altogether. The magic word here is puralism. The corrupt Malaysian state is also guilty of this by politicizing Islam to legitimize its increasingly undemocratic hold to power, that the state is the guardian of the supposedly Platonic Islam. To add to the sense that the religion is being manipulated, I should write, the guardian of Platonic Malaysian Islam.

From where I stand, I feel the difference between the two sides is only a matter of degrees of intolerance and coercive force. I would not be shocked if it really about the ability to exert coercion for a large minority in Malaysia. After all, did a survey last year not show 11% of Malaysian Muslims sympathize with ISIS?[1]

And this is a problem. When you want to fight ISIS yet you share the same intolerance however different the degree is, your fight is logically unconvincing and turns out into choosing the lesser of the two evils.

Sometimes, we can reject all evils.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — See In nations with significant Muslim populations, much disdain for ISIS. November 17 2015.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reservedMohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — Tolerance to diversity itself does not make ISIS okay. There are other values more important that blind diversity, like individual rights.

Categories
Society

[2820] A god to justify us

Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or seems even desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel. A facile belief that a disaster is the will of God can make us accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable. The very fact that, as a person, God has a gender is also limiting: it means that the sexuality of half the human race is sacralized at the expense of the female and can lead to a neurotic and inadequate imbalance in the human sexual mores. A personal God can be dangerous, therefore. Instead of pulling us beyond our limitations, “he” can encourage us to remain complacently within them; “he” can make us as cruel, callous, self-satisfied and partial as “he” seems to be. Instead of inspiring the compassion that should characterize all advanced religion, “he” can encourage us to judge, condemn and marginalize. It seems, therefore, that the idea of a personal God can only be a stage in our religious development. The world religions all seem to have recognized this danger and have sought to transcend the personal conception of supreme reality. [Page 209-210. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Karen Armstrong. 1993]

Categories
Society

[2818] God in the marketplace

There are times when books of different focus and field would run parallel with each other and reveal new insight on a specific idea, making that particular idea richer.

I recently finished Jürgen Kocka’s Capitalism where he touched on, among others, the shift of power from feudal lords to the merchant class. I am currently reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God and this is what she has to say on the (somewhat) same subject:

The story of Elijah contains the last mythical account of the past in the Jewish scriptures. Change was in the air throughout the Oikumene. The period 800-200 BCE has been termed the Axial Age. In all the main regions of the civilized world, people created new ideologies that have continued to be crucial and formative. The new religious systems reflected the changed economic and social conditions. For reasons that we do not entirely understand, all the chief civilizations developed along parallel lines, even when there was no commercial contact (as between China and the European area). There was a new prosperity that led to the rise of a merchant class. Power was shifting from king and priest, temple and palace, to the marketplace. The new wealth led to intellectual and cultural florescence and also to the development of the individual conscience. Inequality and exploitation became more apparent as the pace of change accelerated in the cities and people began to realize that their own behavior could affect the fate of future generations. Each region developed a distinctive ideology to address these problems and concerns: Taoism and Confucianism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India and philosophical rationalism in Europe. The Middle East did not produce a uniform solution, but in Iran and Israel, Zoroaster and the Hebrew prophets respectively evolved different versions of monotheism. Strange as it may seem, the idea of “God,” like the other great religious insights of the period, developed in the market economy in a spirit of aggressive capitalism. [Page 27. A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Karen Armstrong. 1993]

Heh.