About two weeks ago, the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry and the National Archives jointly organized the “Prime Struggles Towards Independence Exhibition” at the Tun Razak Memorial in Kuala Lumpur. When opening the exhibition on August 17, 2006, Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak, ticked off the young post-independence generation who were…
Having a multi-cultural society does not mean that every Malaysian must subscribe to an ideology referred to as multiculturalism. With reference to Malaysia, having a multicultural society is a fact, but to subscribe to multiculturalism is to interpret that fact in a certain way. Multiculturalism is an alien ideology which came into being out of…
It is now over two weeks since Israel’s aggressive intrusion into Lebanon on the pretext of neutralizing Hizbollah militia accused of kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack. Compared to the common practice of kidnapping and arresting Palestinian freedom fighters and subsequently throwing them into Israeli prison’s in Beer Sheba, which include some 300…
On the 12th of July, 2006, almost all the local newspapers ran the story of the proposed amendments to the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) Act 1959 to give the agency more bite in punishing those who trivialise Article 152 of the Federal Constitution which makes it clear that Malay is the country’s national language.…
For the Eighth Malaysia Plan, efforts with regard to science and technology (S&T) were focused on strengthening science capability and capacity to support productivity and improve competitiveness. In this regard, considering the increasingly challenging and competitive global environment, the Ninth Plan was designed to harness science, technology and innovation (STI) as a key driver in raising national capacity…
Some people believe that religion, like fashion, sport, music, and food, is “a matter of taste”; everybody must be allowed to freely adopt any religion of his/her choice, and be free to switch to another religion, or to renounce religion altogether if he/she so desires, because there is no truth or falsehood involved when it…
“Ulama cannot be allowed to decide”, writes Zainon Ahmad (The Sun, 15/6/2006). The term ‘ulama’ (the plural form of ‘alim) is an Islamic term which means ‘erudite scholars’. Now, if we take the statement above literally, it means “the erudite scholars cannot be allowed to decide”, which is another way of suggesting “let the ignorant…
One can survive for days without clothing, shelter, weapons or the like but few can survive without food, much less without water. What is clear is that no organism can survive without air. It is also common knowledge that the supply of our food comes almost entirely from agriculture, such activity many scholars of cultural…
This apparent human rights related issue is highly sensitive to the multiracial and multi-religious character of Malaysia. It turns to be problematic, untenable to some, especially when it deals with conversion into and out of Islam. It’s true, the whole question involves certain legal and social implications. At times, its repercussions appear to rattle the…
The doctrine of human rights basically concerns the so-called ‘fundamental rights’ of every person to justice, equality and freedom. As adopted by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), it proclaims that all men and women, regardless of their social, economic or political background and status, are “born free and equal in…
