Sajakkini

Salbiah Ahmad

Most of us would like to believe the recent foreign press commentaries, that PAS has found its winning formula by the election of “reformist leaders to top posts, shunning hard-line clerics” in its 51st muktamar ( Washington Post, Jun 8 ). Or that the election of “Western-educated” Nasharuddin Mat Isa, as No 2 brings a promise of change.

As an aside, the foreign coverage is stereotypical. “Reformist” is equated with “Western”. “Hard-line clerics” are “fundamentalists”, as in not pro-reform or perhaps not pro-democracy.

But “hard-line cleric” Abdul Hadi Awang asserts that he is pro-democracy, “PAS akan memulihkan semula demokrasi di Negara ini yang semakin usang dan hampir lumpuh” (Harakahdaily.net, June 9).

The PAS president also reiterated that the party will not abandon among others, its Islamic state objective. He defended the leadership by ulama policy as the ulama are there “to criticize the party’s administration and to implement the party constitution which is based on the Quran and Hadith”. (malaysiakini, June 9) (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

June 8 is Hari Hak Asasi Mahasiswa (Undergraduates’ Rights Day).

I had nearly forgotten about June 8 until I went to the magistrates’ courts in Jalan Raja to have the bail sum released for one of the ‘ISA 7’.

The date stamped on the savings account for the bail sum of RM2,500 (per accused) was July 19, 2001. This was the date when the seven students were charged under the Police Act for illegal assembly. Under this law, the state may deem a group of three as an illegal assembly.

Magistrate Mohd Khairi Haron acquitted the students of the charge on April 22 this year. While they were charged in 2001, the hearings only began from 2003. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

Too much time had elapsed since my column, Let’s be civil about religion, for me to pick up where I left off there. There are also bits of arguments and analyses not covered in my last two columns and I am of two minds to pick these up as well.

But May, a friend, had recently called and that got me going again. She asked among other things, if the campaign on moral policing was also championed by the 100 or so Muslim ‘victims’ in the Jawi raid on Jan 20. We both laughed at the poser. I did not ask May why she laughed. My laughter was prompted by memories of our trial and error engagements with the public.

May’s query is part and parcel of a rule concerning agency. As activists, we share common induction courses. In several of these courses or sharing of experiences, locally and regionally, we learn to acknowledge, respect, build and support the agency of beneficiaries, the marginalised, the victims and the survivors. Beneficiaries are to be first empowered and consequently, as partners with activists, equally participate in mapping out the direction for change.

Thus our training in the field, the turun kepadang (going to the ground) experience, places much weight on consultation, public education or awareness-raising, only then mobilisation of the public including the victims/survivors in change for social transformation. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

Islah (reform) as sulh signifies peaceful action which leads to reconciliation and accord. Sulh is sometimes rendered as consensus, a democratic precept by any other name.

If we are guided by sulh in all the critical questions that affect our Malaysian society, then we should be prepared to listen to the multiplicity of voices of our entire population. The more important consideration of sulh to my mind is the assurance that the negotiation process or debate is fair, open and fully inclusive of all segments of the population.

Abdulaziz Sachedina in his spiritually-affirming thesis The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism, (2001) proposes that Muslims identify with the growth of a religious consciousness that points beyond particular religious traditions to embrace pluralism. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

One of the more important outcomes to the Inter-Faith Commission conference (IFC) and the Jan 20 Jawi (Federal Territory Religious Department) raid is the rise of civil society voices. Another significant point which is worth noting is the restraint of the use of accusations of blasphemy, unbelief or of insulting Islam by civil society groups including the ulama (religious scholars) associations.

Most activists, writers and human rights defenders clearly remember when these unfortunate accusations used to inundate engagements and kill the public discourse. The discourse by civil society actors, to my mind has spiraled with new actors and arguments have become more sophisticated or least more argumentative.

Sim Kwang Yang, a fellow columnist is right, we have malaysiakini to thank, for fair reporting of views and exchanges.

Reform may sometimes be seen and taken to mean opposition, but reform is also a multiplicity of ideas which complicates the debate. It is this multiplicity and complication which interest me. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

In 1991, Beatrice Fernandez was dismissed from her job as an air stewardess because she was pregnant. She inter alia claimed a pregnancy-based discrimination and filed a case in the High Court, citing Article 8 (equality before the law and equal protection of the law) of the Federal Constitution.

Last year the Court of Appeal did not find the dismissal wrong. On March 11, three days after International Women’s Day, Beatrice was refused leave to appeal to the Federal Court.

This case is the indelible smear to Malaysia’s proclaimed achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG), more specifically MDG 3: the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women. The Malaysian Millennium Development Goals Report was launched by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Jan 28 this year.

According to this report, which was in part developed by the Economic Planning Unit and the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, “Achieving gender equality and empowering women are necessary to achieve social, economic and political development.”
(more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

Being away for most of last month, I was spared the predictable commotion to the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department (Jawi) raid on Zouk in Kuala Lumpur. I read the reports and responses online last week and then hopped on to the Inter Faith Commission (IFC) conference last week. This is a civil society initiative facilitated by the Bar Council.

On the morning of Feb 27, a SMS alerted me to a New Sunday Times front-page report that Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is opposed to the setting up of the IFC. I am most surprised at this reaction. But Pak Lah was not there to appreciate the professionalism of the facilitators and experience the fellowship that the conference generated.

The Star Online offered another angle. It reported that the premier at a launch of a Proton plant spoke to reporters that IFC idea be placed on hold to study the “objections against the formation of the commission”. That report was more redeeming of the premier.

It would be most unfortunate for the premier to be perceived as pre-empting the civil society initiative. I doubt that the steering committee of the IFC, chaired by lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, had the chance to meet the premier to convey the aspirations of the IFC participants, the conference having ended last Friday. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

It was the right thing to do, to put off the end of amnesty for undocumented migrants on Dec 31 last year after the Dec 26 tsunami tragedy.

Thus it seemed odd that Najib Razak tagged the initial postponement to a specific request from the Indonesian government. He was acceding to that request to “show that we sympathise with the calamity the Indonesian people and government face.”

Surely nobody would question Malaysia for that decision. Malaysia herself suffered casualties and devastation in her northern states. It would have appeared more gracious as the right thing to do without prompting from any quarter. Najib’s approach implies that, if not for the request, Malaysia has no qualms whatsoever to arrest, detain and punish the “illegals”.

Najib’s sympathy for the people and government of Indonesia (and other tsunami-hit countries in the region) however has run dry after barely a month. He postponed the end of amnesty on Dec 30. On Jan 22, he announced the end of amnesty on Feb 1. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

By early morning on Jan 14, a small crowd of children and male elders had gathered at the T-junction at Kampong Kepala Jalan, one of the village hit by the Dec 26 tsunami in Kuala Sungai Muda, Kedah.

The day before a truck had unceremoniously dumped about some 50 boxes of used clothes at this junction. It was difficult to miss the pile as this junction leads to the main road out of the several villages of Kuala Sungai Muda to Kota Sungai Muda.

Eleven people perished here including an 11-year-old child. The dead were “kept” (“simpan” was the word used by villagers) in the cemetery in Kota Sungai Muda which is on higher ground, not in the village cemetery.

Some boxes had been opened, clothes strewn carelessly adding color against the grey 5-7 metre high wall of rubbish bull-dosed from the streets and compounds which lined the beach blocking the view to the sea. The wall was a pile of earth, broken houses, mortar, bricks and furniture. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

There were musings if Rais Yatim had a fall from grace when he became the arts, culture and heritage minister in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s government.

Whatever the untold reasons for this move, his quick response to douse the flames to a fiasco over the exclusion of particular Christmas carols signaled that perhaps there is some real hope in our multicultural project.

It was quite unthinkable for a lot of Malaysians to have Christmas sans its traditional carols, where Jesus Christ is mentioned. There is no cause for the celebration of Christmas by this exclusion. (more…)