Category: History & heritage

Categories
History & heritage Photography Society

[1637] Of reducing Article 160 to absurdity

Farish Noor is one of those individuals whom are able to open a door that I never thought was there in the first. At a public lecture of his which coincided with the Kuala Lumpur Alternative Book Fair today, he opened a door for me which I thought I had opened earlier. As it turned out, I did not open the door as wide as I should have.

Some rights reserved. By Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams.

Farish Noor delivering a public lecture at Central Market, Kuala Lumpur.

Over a year ago, I asked why the sanctioned history of Malaysia — practically the history of the Malays in this country — began only with the establishment of the Sultanate of Malacca, despite the fact that there were prominent states — especially Srivijaya — that existed well before Malacca. There is, in my opinion, too much stress on Malacca and too little emphasis granted to earlier history of this region. I went on to suggest that religion is the answer but the answer is long-winded.

At the public lecture which concerned itself with the beginning of racial classification in Malaya, Farish Noor declared that the constitutional definition of Malay in Malaysia is flawed. The Constitution of Malaysia, specifically Article 160, defines a Malay as a Muslim, speaks the Malay language and practices the Malay custom. From there on, he derived a conclusion with the intention of proving the absurdity of Article 160. Based on the Article, by right, he said, there was no Malay prior to the coming of Islam to the Malay Peninsula in the 13th and the 14th century.

The reductio ad absurdum by Farish Noor provides a more direct path to the answer than what I had managed previously.

Categories
Books, essays and others Economics History & heritage

[1473] Of a farewell to alms, and 2007

This is the last book for the year 2007 for me.

Fair use. Princeton University Press.

This book created quite a buzz in the economic realm. I have actually cheated my way through and read its reviews. Still, that fails to satisfy my curiosity. Thus, the purchase.

The odd thing is, an almost the same point that is central to this book is touched by Beinhocker briefly in The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics. And I think, this book should be read together with Douglass North’s Understanding the Process of Economic Change. I have yet to read North myself but I have read enough reviews to suspect that the two authors may be offering competing intriguing explanations to economic development. Or, in fact, complementary since no one theory typically explains everything away at ease in economics. I will invest effort to make North’s work as my first book for 2008.

Anyway, apparently, the book is quite hard to come by in Malaysia; I had to wait for a month or so for this book. Once, I asked for the book at Kinokuniya, and they gave me A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway instead. That was a “WTF?” moment there then but no matter. All is well now for I am a proud owner of the hardcover edition!

And oh, boy. There are too many books unread and most of them fall under the economics section. Maybe, just maybe, I should stop buying books for awhile.

Categories
History & heritage

[1426] Of from the Srivijayan mandala to the Malaysian federation

It strikes me as odd that the most successful federations throughout history of Southeast Asia centered around the Strait of Malacca. Those federations include Srivijaya, Negeri Sembilan, the Federated Malay States, Malaya and later Malaysia. I am unaware of any other federation that exist outside the link between Srivijaya and Malaysia. Is there something about the people of this area that prefer a federated form of government instead of unitary states?

At first glance, I think culture and other deterministic factors like tried form of governance which later reinforced local culture are the answers. I would really love to visit it soon. I find it hard to resort to coincidence; coincidence sounds like a lazy man’s answer.

In the meantime, I would appreciate if you, dear readers, could offer your thoughts on the matter.

Categories
History & heritage

[1419] Of what if the Phillipines were Malaysia?

I was surprised to find out that the people of the Philippines once contemplated to name their state as Malaysia.

Filipino politicians who dreamt of creating a Pan-Malay nation also considered adopting the name Malaysia, which had referred to the overall Malay archipelago before becoming the name of the newly independent Malaysian nation in 1963.5 The former Filipino Vice-President of the Pan-Malayan Union presented a bill in the  Senate in 1962 to change the name of the Philippines to Malaysia (Alonto 2003 p.190). While the bill was debated in the Congress, the name was adopted by Tunku Abdul Rahman, who led the Malaysian nationalist movement, and the term narrowed to refer to the country-in-waiting, consisting of the Malay Peninsula and territories of the former British colonies in Borneo. [Reviving Malay Connections in Southeast Asia. Minako Sakai]

Suddenly, the etymology of the name Malaysia sounds like a worthy subject to research into.

Categories
History & heritage Liberty

[1395] Of October 3 1932 in Iraq

The Daily Kos writes a primer on events leading to October 3 1932.

Three-quarters of a century ago today – October 3, 1932 – British imperialists who had ruled Iraq on paper since the spoils-dividing Anglo-French Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 (and in reality since their victory in Baghdad against the Ottomans in 1917) gave up everything. Except for their military bases, their imposed oil contracts and their right of future intervention.

During their 383-year reign in the region that today we call Iraq, the Ottoman autocrats established three provinces that reflected divisions reaching back 900 years to the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia: Kurdish Mosul, Sunni Baghdad, Shiite Basra. In their far briefer rule, the British first administered two provinces, Baghdad and Basra, getting Mosul from the French a few years later. [An Iraqi Anniversary Unlikely to Be Celebrated in Baghdad. Daily Kos. October 3 2007]

75 years later, English is still the language of the occupier except that that quaint spelling style is no more.

That asides, it is interesting to find out that the suggestion to internally break Iraq into 3 parts is not without precedent: the Ottoman did it once.