I found myself at the Tugu Negara yesterday.
The names are on the monolith, the Cenotaph, close to the main entrance of the Tugu Negara complex. Other photos shot within the complex posted on this blog are the Tugu Negara itself and the Pavilion that acts as an elaborate gate to the statue.
Something to start off the day (via):
WASHINGTON—In an unexpected reversal that environmentalists and scientists worldwide are calling groundbreaking, President George W. Bush, for the first time in his political career, openly admitted to the existence of carbon dioxide following the release of the new U.N. Global Environment Outlook this October.
[…]
Because carbon dioxide, which was first described by 17th-century Flemish physician Jan Baptista van Helmont as a gas he referred to as “spiritus silvestre,” has long been denied by the Bush administration, the president’s speech was widely hailed as a victory for advocates of empirically established scientific fact.
[…]
Many of those whom Bush has long considered to be his most loyal followers, however, have expressed disappointment with the development.
“There is nothing about any ‘carbon dioxide’ in the Bible,” said Rev. Luke Hatfield of Christchurch Ministries in Topeka, KS. “What’s next? Claims that so-called ‘fossil’ fuels come from mythical creatures like dinosaurs? This has been a sad step backward for our nation.” [Bush Acknowledges Existence Of Carbon Dioxide. The Onion. December 21 2007]
I froze for a moment when I saw a short article on Tony Pua today:
KUALA LUMPUR: In February, 35-year-old self-made Internet millionaire Tony Pua made news when he sold his Singapore Stock Exchange listed company for a full-time career in opposition politics.
Pua is a well-known name in the e-commerce industry, where his string of credentials include his being the youngest founder-CEO to have listed a company in Singapore.
But a 2005 Ernst and Young audit report recently revealed that the company, Cyber Village Sdn Bhd, may be running into difficulties, and Pua’s reputation as a corporate whizz kid, which resulted in the DAP appointing him economic adviser to secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, has been called into question. [Doubts over DAP’s economic adviser. New Straits Times. December 22 2007]
There is a little storm going on and I had somewhat contributed to it by making a comment somewhere over the internet of which Jed has taken the liberty to reproduce to support her points. The comment is about how Tony Pua is not an economist. I stand by that statement but I need make myself clear: I wrote it in a matter of fact manner. It does not in whatsoever way indicate my opinion on his management or entrepreneurship skill. Or even his ability to advise on economic matters. Indeed, anybody with a good understanding of economics would be able to advise a layperson. On top of that, a good economist may not be a good businessman, vice versa. A businessman or entrepreneur need not be a economist either, vice versa. Economics after all, is larger than the realm of business.
Regardless, he is not an economist. He qualification does not merit such honor and I have not heard him claiming to be as such either. So, I do not understand why people are insisting that Mr. Pua is an economist, or why the fact that Mr. Pua is not an economist is an issue at all.
Now, who is an economist? What does one need to do to become an economist?
To answer that, I leave you with an entry at the Free Exchange, a blog at The Economist:
WHAT exactly qualifies someone to refer to himself or herself as an economist? Having suffered through many years of graduate school, I, like many others with my training, consider someone an economist only if they too have received a PhD in the subject. I can rationalise this by believing I received special and select training; privy to the secrets of the trade imparted to me by my advisor who, in turn, also learned from the great masters. My take on the economy reeks of the university I attended and the professors with whom I worked. But then, someone, like former colleague Megan McArdle, comes along with no graduate economics work, but a terrific understanding of the field.
To refer to oneself as a medical doctor or be a member of the American Medical Association there exists clear education requirements. This prevents people from taking medical advice from someone unqualified and inflicting harm upon them. No such conditions are required to be called an economist or join the American Economic Association. This results in people who enjoy thinking about the economy, but may lack even undergraduate understanding of the field, representing themselves as experts on issues pertaining to the labour market, trade, and development. Often you have to do some digging to find out they are actually … sociologists.
The years of graduate-school seminars and rigorous mathematical training empowers PhD economists to converse with each other in a language all our own. This allows us to continue to believe that our years of education were worthwhile because we can recognize each other and sneer at the impostors. In the mean time, the rest of the world takes thoughtful advice and opinions from people who sometimes, while not having our illustrious pedigree, also have some very good ideas—and sometimes better ones. [What makes an economist? Free Exchange. October 2 2007]
Personally, unless someone is a practicing economist, I would only recognize someone as an economist if he has at least a Master’s in the field. A mere undergraduate degree does not qualify one as an economist. But to call someone with an unfocused degree such as PPE as an economist, to me, is an insult to those that have actually worked their way through the field.
By extension of free speech, I am quite indifferent to the usage of the noun “Allah” by Christian groups[1] and I frown at threats issued by the government partial to conservative Muslims to the Christian groups to desist from using the noun “Allah” in local Christian literature. This issue is not new and has been popping now and then. Yet, it has not been resolved and I think it is because the local Christians do not completely comprehend the typical conservative Muslim Malaysians’ objection to the usage of the noun “Allah” by Christian groups. I believe a review of basic grammar would significantly clear the air surrounding this issue and explain why there is a conflict in the first place.
Language may not be my forte but at least I know enough of the differences between proper and common nouns. In my humble opinion, at the center of the controversy is an unstated confusion or assumption over Malay proper and common nouns regarding god.
Before I move on, I would like readers to give special attention to capitalization. I use it to differentiate between proper and common nouns. Now that that is clear, let us move on at a measured pace.
In Arabic, at least as I understand it, “allah” comes in form of proper or common noun, depending on usage. Because of the noun ability to become a common noun in Arabic, everybody could use the noun “allah” to refer to any kind of god.
In Malay however, “Allah” is a proper noun with specific reference to Islamic God and not a common noun. The Malay noun ”Allah” enjoys a sense of exclusiveness; it refers to the Islamic god as it has been, to the best of my knowledge, until recently.
At the same time, the Arabic noun “allah” is not quite similar to the Malay noun “Allah“. This is a crucial point, at least, again, from what I understand through the reaction of conservative Muslims, or those that sympathize with that groups. The noun underwent an evolution during its importation from the Arabic to the Malay language centuries ago; it lost its ability to become a common noun in Malay during the process. That however does not mean the Malay language does not have a word to describe whatever the Arabic noun “allah” tries to describe. The Malay language has the noun “tuhan“; its usage is exactly similar to the Arabic noun “allah” within the context we are interested in. “Tuhan” unambiguously means god in both proper and common forms.
From conservative Muslims’ point of view, the Christian groups in Malaysia might be mistranslating the word “God” into “Allah” instead of “Tuhan“, by accident or on purpose. In fact, I may even sympathize with the Muslim groups since I am in the opinion that there is a confusion between the Arabic noun “allah” and Malay noun “Allah“.
In Indonesian, such translation may be acceptable but it has to be noted that Malay and Indonesian languages have gone through different paths from a common origin. Whatever true in the Indonesian language is not necessarily true in the Malay language spoken in Malaysia, and vice versa.
On the surface, this situation is silly and I really do not know why I care to make clarification on behalf of religious believers to another. Well, maybe, probably because it is annoying to see how both types of individuals — both Christians and Muslims — that care to raise their voices on the matter refuse to least comprehend what the conflict is all about before jumping into the fight, indulging in polemics rather than understanding. This tendency is affecting other people that simply wish to watch the days pass by peacefully without shouting matches and flying vases.
Underneath these layers of nouns, however is not something so superficial.
There seems to be an evangelical competition between Christianity and Islam for Malay-speaking non-Christians or non-Muslims. Like it or not, Arabic terms with Islamic connotations have been absorbed into Malay with ease. For Christian preachers, it may be easier for them to use these Arabic terms to convert Malay-speaking non-Christians into Christianity. It is easier to deliver a message in terms familiar to somebody. Muslims preachers however would like to have exclusive use of these words which have been traditionally utilized locally to refer to Islamic ideas. On top of that, there are Muslims would like to keep Islam clearly separated and differentiated from any other religion.
[1] — KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: A Catholic weekly newspaper in Malaysia has been told to drop the use of the word “Allah” in its Malay language section if it wants to renew its publishing permit, a senior government official said Friday.
The Herald, the organ of Malaysia’s Catholic Church, has translated the word God as “Allah” but it is erroneous because Allah refers to the Muslim God, said Che Din Yusoff, a senior official at the Internal Security Ministry’s publications control unit. [Malaysian Catholic weekly told to drop use of ‘Allah’ in order to renew publishing permit. AP via IHT. December 21 2007]
A Chinese law that came into force in September[1] states that the Chinese government has “exclusive rights to the selection of all future reincarnations of Tibetan lamas and have ordained that the Dalai Lama must be a citizen of China.”[2] Eager to cement its control over Tibet, the Chinese government ventures into the business of religion. If it were not for its underlying motive, the law would be too silly to imagine; satirists would have a field day at the Chinese government. Government interference in religion however is not hard to imagine in many parts of the world throughout various times and the idea is not foreign at all in Malaysia. We have an Islamic authority at various levels to regulate the Islam and its willing and unwilling adherents. As some liberals fights to contain expansion or even existence of the religious authority, a horror strikes in the most horrid manner: there are non-governmental organizations in response to issues surrounding Hindraf that seek the formation of a non-Muslim affairs department. If it is ever formed, it would enlarge the state’s influence over religion, further providing it with opportunity to make individual liberty irrelevant.
Already the state has considerable apparatus to disrespect religious freedom. The fact that the Sharia court will prevail over the civil court on any overlap — by virtue that the civil court refuses to rule in case of overlaps — is enough to direly demonstrate on much influence religion has over us. Needless to say, the Sharia court places religious laws above individual liberty. While non-Muslims complain how Islamic laws play a role in their lives, there are many Muslims themselves that are uncomfortable with the influence of religious authority over public and private spheres. Muslims do not enjoy religious freedom unlike other Malaysians, on top of other liberty equally deprived from all Malaysians by the state.
Apart from the Sharia court, restrictions over religious freedom and liberty in general through, for instance, moral policing, are made possible through various agencies that make Islam their business. By claiming authority over Islam in Malaysia through official sanction of the state, these agencies regulate Islam; they define Islam as they see fit. For proof, seek no further than the creation of Islam Hadhari. They even have the power to declare who is a Muslim and who is not, regardless of the opinion or decision of the individual. Almost by fiat, to some extent, it rules the Muslim community, as if the community itself is monolithic in nature.
The definition used to describe the Malays in the Constitution of Malaysia further enlarges the power of these religious authorities over Malays in Malaysia.
In short, in one way or another, the BN-led, UMNO-dominated government secures it power over Malaysia by cowing the Malays into relative obedience. The BN-led government through abuse of state devices censors those that disagree with them while promoting its own opinion unfairly through unfree widely distributed mainstream media. Criticisms by outsiders are deemed as threats to national harmony, strengthening siege mentality. Hindraf through sheer stupidity played into BN’s tactics. This further solidifies the BN-led government control over the Malays.
With a non-Muslim department, the state and really the BN-government would have an avenue to control the others as it is controlling the Malays. Suddenly, instead of just Islamic jurists working to subdue individual liberty of the Malays, now we would have clergymen from various religions, issuing religious laws. Instead of a set of secular civil laws, we would have countless religious contradicting laws governing the society. I could not imagine what would the ramification be when conflicts of authority occur between these laws.
There is no reason to believe these non-Muslim affairs would respect liberty. Already we know that there are Christians that moan when their liberty suffered transgression but are undisturbed by their own action to disrespect others’ liberty.
For those that seek to create a more egalitarian society, the formation of non-Muslim affair department only could only strengthen the polarization of Malaysian society. Through this polarization, it would hard to see each other as Malaysians.
To be fair, it is unclear what this non-Muslim affairs department would specifically do, if it would ever to be established. From a libertarian point of view, assuming the department would hold the same authority as its Islamic counterpart, its establishment would be an ominous development to liberty. It would only give the state a monopoly to religion, like what the Chinese government seeks over Tibetan Buddhism. Or, closer to home, how the state has the power to define Islam.
This however is not to ignore the grouse brought forward by the non-Muslims. Their complaints must be fairly looked into but the answer is not the establishment of a non-Muslim affairs department. The better solution is secularism, coupled with liberalism, where religious freedom for all, where liberty for all, is upheld without fear or favor. Let religion be your personal affair.
When the Prime Minister dismisses the idea of setting up such department[3], I gave out a sigh of relief. His reasoning maybe different to mine — he has no respect for liberty[4] — but that is okay for now.
[1] — THE Chinese government’s web portal has an odd-looking entry on its page listing laws that came into force in September. Buried among new regulations on issues ranging from registering sailors to monitoring pollution is one on how to manage the reincarnations of living Buddhas. Violators are threatened with prosecution. China’s Communist Party—though avowedly atheist—does not hesitate to pontificate on religious matters that it sees as having a political dimension. Living Buddhas make up the senior clergy of Tibet’s religion. They are traditionally selected from among boys considered to be reincarnations of deceased office-holders. Controlling the selection process, in the party’s view, is crucial to controlling Tibet. [Heresy! The Economist. November 29 2007]
[2] — It explains why over the past few months, the two sides have fought a public row over the selection of the next Dalai Lama. In August, the Chinese claimed exclusive rights to the selection of all future reincarnations of Tibetan lamas and have ordained that the Dalai Lama must be a citizen of China. [Reincarnation Rift. Phillip Delves Broughton. Wall Street Journal. December 4 2007]
[3] — SEPANG, Dec 18 (Bernama) — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said today it was not necessary to set up a Non-Muslim Affairs Department now because an existing special committee was playing an effective role in the matter. [Not Necessary For Non-Muslim Affairs Dept Now, Says PM. Bernama. December 18 2007]
[4] — PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia: Malaysia’s leader said Monday he is willing to sacrifice public freedoms for the sake of national stability, a day after police arrested 21 opposition members and lawyers who took part in street protests. [Malaysia’s leader says public freedoms can be sacrificed for stability’s sake. AP via IHT. December 10 2007]