Last October I attended the ASEAN-Canada Dialogue on Interfaith Initiatives held in Surabaya. The delegates were from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Lao PDR, Myanmar and the Ambassador and officials from the Canadian Embassy in Jakarta. The Dialogue’s aims were to review concrete activities and initiatives in order to minimize social…
Esther Dyson, who wrote A Design for Living in the Digital Age, specializes in analyzing the impact of emerging digital technologies and of digital markets on societies. However, even this most powerful woman of the computing sciences (as some have called her) was uncomfortably overwhelmed by the present-day information explosion, as there are just too…
We often hear, from time to time, political leaders reminding the public not to discuss certain issues because they are regarded as ‘sensitive issues’. This reminder usually comes with a warning that, in order to maintain peace and security, stern action would be taken against those who this regard that warning. Still, it does not…
Should it be tadbir urus or urus tadbir? Those of us who have been reading some recent writings in Malay on “governance” or, more specifically, “good governance,” would have encountered the aforementioned two compound words, although not many of us may have thought it worthwhile to investigate which of the two usages is correct. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka…
Regarding the information explosion in the contemporary epoch of, the late Fazlur Rahman, Muslim scholar and scientist, remarked: “Physical avenues of information may improve vastly but the heart, the instrument of perception and discernment, is dulled.” Written in the late 1980’s, his Major Themes of the Qur’an noted that “The inputs and outputs of computers become ever…
Every year, on the 21st of September, the world celebrates peace day. This day was initiated by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981 in which a resolution declaring an international day of peace was adopted. The resolution declared that the International Day of Peace shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire…
By now, I strongly believe, we Malaysians are no stranger to calls for reform of our educational system. So often have such calls been made that they cannot but leave some general impressions. One such impression is that the system as well as its stake-holders is obsessed with examinations at the various levels of the…
In his profound analysis on the progressive weakening of the Muslim world for the past one thousand years, Prof Dr Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas identified its primary cause with internal elements that created a condition referred to as the loss of adab. In particular, he makes reference to the false ‘ulama’ and the false umara’.…
In about another week Muslims worldwide will celebrate the coming of the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, Ramadan, the month of obligatory fasting which is one of the five pillars of Islam. Deriving from the Holy Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions, it has been an established practice among Muslims to remind themselves of…
In the middle of July, I attended a dialogue session on human’s civil and political rights held at the office of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM). I have some observations to share. It is no exaggeration to say it would appear that the current discourse on human rights has been regarded by certain…
