‘The world is laughing' is the title I put on my blog in Japanese (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily/20131019). (Lily)
New York Times （http://www.nytimes.com）
The Right to Say ‘God’ Divides a Diverse Nation , 3 November 2014
by Thomas Fuller
KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — As the students knelt in a circle at a Christian kindergarten near the shores of the South China Sea, a 6-year-old girl in pigtails read out a chapter from a children’s Bible: “Sepuluh hukum dari Allah” — God’s Ten Commandments.
Technically, she broke the law.
According to a series of government orders and rulings by Malaysia’s Islamic councils, the word for God in the Malay language — “Allah” — is reserved for Muslims. Malay-language Bibles are banned everywhere except inside churches. State regulations ban a list of words, including Allah, in any non-Muslim context.
Malaysia, with its collage of ethnic groups and religions, has a long history of tensions over issues ranging from dietary differences to the economic preferences enshrined in Malaysian law for the Malay Muslim majority.
But there is probably no dispute more fundamental and more emotionally charged than who owns the word God.
For Malaysia’s religious minorities, the government’s ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah, and the repeated seizures by government officials of Malay-language Bibles, is enough to make a smiling and cheery kindergarten teacher snap in anger.
“Honestly I think it’s nonsense,” said Belinda Buntot, the teacher in the kindergarten here on the northern tip of the island of Borneo. “Of course we use Allah. We can’t teach the kids without it.”
The government’s National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs deliberated on the issue of whether non-Muslims have the right to use the word Allah and issued a fatwa. “The conference decided that the word Allah is a sacred word specific only to the religion and followers of Islam and it cannot be used or made to be similar with religions other than Islam,” said the fatwa, which was posted on the government’s “e-fatwa” website.
Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, and Muslims are governed by Shariah, though Christians, Hindus and Buddhists make up sizable minorities. Outside the country, the government has sought to cultivate an image of a modern, moderate Islamic state, where 60 percent of the population is Muslim, and minorities live harmoniously.
But Christians, who make up 10 percent of the population, say the Allah ban is one of many signs that a conservative Islamic movement is steering an increasingly intolerant government policy.
In recent weeks, the religious authorities have barred Muslims from taking part in Halloween and scolded them for petting dogs, which the state Islamic authorities view as unclean.
The government’s Department of Islamic Development did not respond to a request to explain the official position on the Allah ban, but over the years the government has offered a number of reasons.
When the government first prohibited the “printing, publication, sale, issue, circulation or possession” of Malay-language Bibles in 1981, it said the books were “prejudicial to the national interest and security” of the country.
Islamic authorities have warned that Malay-language Bibles could be used for proselytizing Muslims, which is illegal in Malaysia.
The Department of Islamic Development argues that Allah is not a generic name for God but signifies “the religion of the person who uses it.”
“That is the reason why the usage needs to be monitored and preserved by the government in order to ensure that no one will be confused with the most exalted name,” the department says on its website.
Perhaps more than at any time in recent decades, Malaysia’s moderate voices are sounding an alarm.
Zainah Anwar, the founder of Sisters in Islam, a women’s rights group, describes a “headlong descent into a puritanical, extremist, intolerant brand of Islam in this country.”
“Malaysia’s moderate Islam is only touted for Western consumption,” she wrote in The Star newspaper on Sunday.
Ms. Zainah also wrote, “For too long this government has given almost a carte blanche to the religious authorities and the belligerent supremacists to take the lead and define what Islam is and is not.”
Enforcement is patchy for the Allah rule, which has been promulgated in different forms and by different government and religious authorities over the past three decades. But the rule has been upheld by the country’s highest courts.
Islamic scholars say banning non-Muslims from using “Allah” is unique to Malaysia.
“You can’t find this idea in any previous Islamic discourse,” said Yahya Cholil Staquf, a senior cleric at Nahdlatul Ulama, the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia, Malaysia’s neighbor and the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. “Every language has its own word for God. Allah is just a word to acknowledge God. It’s not a word for only Muslims.”
The Christian minority in Indonesia, where the lingua franca is similar to Malaysia’s, refers to God as Allah without any controversy; Indonesian Bibles are often imported into Malaysia, when they are not seized by the authorities.
On Tuesday, a court in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, is scheduled to begin deliberations in a long-running case over the seizure in 2007 of a box of Sunday school materials, including coloring books and Bible story books, that used the word Allah.
The books were eventually returned, but their owner, a large evangelical Christian denomination, Sidang Injil Borneo, is challenging the constitutionality of the seizure because such confiscations continue. Malaysian customs agents seized compact discs and books destined for a Borneo church in late October.
Minorities need clarity on freedom of religion in the country, said the Rev. Jerry Dusing, the church president.
“No law can prohibit anyone from the reasonable practice of their faith,” he said in an interview. “Why on earth are they banning words?”
The Roman Catholic Church has also been embroiled in a court case challenging Malaysia’s Allah ban after the government ordered that its newsletter, The Herald, stop using Allah.
When a judge ruled in the church’s favor in 2009, 10 churches were vandalized, one gutted by fire. An appeals court overturned the ruling last year.
“It is our common finding that the name Allah was not an integral part of the Christian faith and practice,” the lead judge, Mohamed Apandi Ali, said.
An appeal was rejected, but church leaders are trying to get the decision reviewed.
Like Christianity, Islam was introduced here by foreigners. Arab traders spread Islam and Arab culture here, infusing the Malay language with words like Allah. Christianity came centuries later, with the arrival of missionaries from the West and European colonialism.
Liberal Muslims, who like many Christians say they are concerned with what they see as the growing power of conservative forces, see reasons other than theology behind the ban.
In Malaysia’s ethnic-based politics, it is in the interest of politicians from the governing coalition to play up perceived threats to Islam, says Wan Saiful Wan Jan, the executive director of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, a research organization in Kuala Lumpur that promotes liberal democracy and free markets.
The United Malays National Organization, or UMNO, has been the dominant party of the coalition in power for 57 years, but the group was nearly toppled by a multiethnic coalition of parties last year.
“The more Muslims feel they are under threat, the more UMNO can maintain its political hegemony,” Mr. Wan Saiful said.
Mr. Wan Saiful says Malaysia’s conservative Muslims are disconnected from the wider Islamic world. Arabic-language Bibles used by Christians in countries such as Egypt and Lebanon use the word Allah for God.
He was attending a conference overseas this year when the court affirmed the ban on the Catholic Church using Allah in its newsletter.
“This Palestinian guy came up to me and said: ‘The world is laughing at you. I’m from an Arab country and everyone uses the word, every day.’ ”
・Joe Cochrane contributed reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia.
2.Investigative Project（http://www.investigativeproject.org）
Guest Column: Going Dutch - The Psychometric Tool Against Jihadism in the West, 3 November 2014
by Esam Sohail
Special to IPT News
The famed laissez faire liberalism of the Dutch is only matched by their flinty commonsense. Two years after the brutal 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh at the hand of Islamist jihadists in Amsterdam, the Dutch government quietly introduced a form of personality testing for immigrants from certain backgrounds who wished to make the Netherlands their permanent abode. By showing a set of short video clips highlighting the culture of diversity, secularism, free speech, and gender equality to potential migrants from very different cultures and then allowing responsible officers to evaluate reactions of the audience, the Dutch government made a very business-like decision to ensure a proper fit for a person to his/her new home. The government of the Netherlands continues to monitor this new screening tool which went into effect as a pilot project in 2006 and will likely be rolled out on a larger scale in the years ahead.
Immigration, especially of people with high education and in their prime working years, remains vital to the economic prowess and social welfare systems of most developed countries. That said, that necessity is better coupled with wisdom. With tens of thousands of people from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia moving to the Anglophone countries every year, the United States, Canada, Britain, and Australia do not have the luxury of waiting to institute large scale and focused immigrant testing that small Holland does. While security safeguards have been heightened in all of these desired immigration destinations, the common flaw remains the same across the board in the English speaking democracies: all potential immigrants are treated to the same battery of standardized screening procedures which often evaluate the Christian fleeing victimization in Bangladesh and Pakistan along the same lines as an Islamist engineer wishing to plant the flag of Islam for himself and his children in Canada. Neither the standard questions of the type "have you ever been part of a terror group" nor the routine check of law enforcement agency reports is going to do much diagnostic good in this regard. The Dutch figured this out finally and, instead, decided to tentatively use the science of psychometrics to detect potential trouble before it becomes actual trouble.
Let us be brutally honest about immigration from countries where Muslims are in big majorities. Almost all of these countries have cultures where Salafi Islamism is ascendant, where free speech and gender equality are increasingly dismissed as parts of some Western plot, and anti-Semitism is a staple for the most popular conspiracy theories. Not all immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Malaysia, or the Arab world adhere to such Islamist tendencies. But many, including quite a few professional and educated types, do. And these are the ones that can quickly become the transmitters, organizers, sympathizers, funders, and even purveyors of jihadism in the civilized world (remember Palestinian Islamic Jihad board member Sami Al-Arian and would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad?). In the age of shadowy ISIS sympathizers in Chicago, jihadist murderers on London streets, and Muslims converts on rampage in Ottawa, it only make sense to quarantine the Islamist virus at the entry point whether it is dormant, passive, or active. The Dutch have shown the path to do so; the rest of the civilized world should improvise.
Psychometrics is not an exact science and no psychological evaluation or personality test is fool proof. On top of such uncertainty, these things cost time and money which are realistic constraints for visa evaluators and Customs agents. Yet, these tools are increasingly sophisticated and used in human resourcing decisions by growing number of major businesses and public entities; at the disposal of well-trained immigration professionals who have the flexibility of discretion and a relatively narrow focus, such psychometric instruments can be vital weapons against potential jihadist terror.
Potential long term immigrants from certain areas should be instructed – even provocatively so – on the fundamental importance of free speech, dissent, apostasy, equality before the law regardless of religion or gender, and basic personal liberties. They should be evaluated on their reactions through well developed and professionally benchmarked tests and such evaluations should be allowed to inform an immigration official's decision to about a residency application. Indeed this kind of approach could lead to the penalization of certain beliefs; but if such beliefs include the rectitude of killing apostates and punishing women for wearing short skirts, should we be shedding too many tears? And even if we were to shed some tears at such scrutiny of those desiring to live in a pluralist society, isn't it better than the shedding of blood that could happen otherwise?
・Esam Sohail is an educational research analyst and college lecturer of social sciences. He writes from Kansas, USA
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