Zainah Anwar: Islam & Women in Malaysia

Posted on July 8, 2007. Filed under: articles, malaysia, syariat |

http://www.sistersinislam.org.my/zainahcolumns.htm

Biodata of Zainah Anwar
Zainah Anwar is the Executive Director of Sisters in Islam (SIS), a non-governmental organisation working on the rights of Muslim women within the framework of Islam. She is also a former member of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia.

Zainah Anwar is key to the high public profile of Sisters in Islam. She has been the public face of SIS and gives public talks on Islam and women’s rights, politics and fundamental liberties, nationally and internationally.

Her other work experience includes: Chief Programme Officer, Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, London; Freelance Writer; Senior Analyst, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Kuala Lumpur; and Political and Diplomatic Writer, New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur. Her book, Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia: Dakwah Among the Students, has become a standard reference in the study of Islam in Malaysia.

Zainah was educated at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston University and the MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia, in the fields of international relations and journalism.

It’s deeds that will test religion; New Straits Times, Friday, June 29, 2007

LIKE so many others, I had thought that Karen Armstrong’s public lecture in mid-June would focus on the unsettling relationship between religion and politics in the 21st century. The religious historian and former nun did give an account on how religion has been implicated in the catastrophes of the 20th and 21st centuries and how the growth of militant piety in all the major religions as a response to the challenge of modernity has led to a distortion of faith.

Mediation the wiser path to take; New Straits Times, Friday, June 15, 2007

IN August 1998, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar University caused a stir in Malaysia when he publicly declared that Islam recognises freedom of religion and Muslims are free to leave Islam as long as they do not harm the religion. Dr Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi believes that there can be no compulsion in Islam. He asked what was the point in forcing those who wanted to leave Islam “to stay as this will only make them hypocrites”.

So, whose voice is City Hall listening to?; New Straits Times, Friday, May 25, 2007

I OFTEN wonder how much it takes for those in authority to listen to the voice of the rakyat.
I watch the TV news and see one story after another of illegal or legal logging and its environmental impact, of toxic emissions and waste products that pollute our rivers and affect the health and livelihoods of those living downstream, of landslides that result in death and destruction.

Move fast to close gender gap; New Straits Times, Friday, May 11, 2007

Don’t let his ideas die with him; New Straits Times, Friday, April 27, 2007

LAST week, I attended a memorial event for the late Professor Syed Hussein Alatas organised jointly by the Malay World and Civilisation Institute (Atma) and the Malaysian Social Science Association (PSSM) at Universiti Kebangsaan in Bangi, Selangor.

Stop the moral panic about sex; New Straits Times, Friday, 16 March 2007

OH dear, here we go again. Another moral panic attack. This time over a report that only one out 887 “high risk” girls surveyed had not had sex.

Give our kids a little love, guidance; New Straits Times, Feb 16, 2007

MANY years ago, I attended a dialogue between the Pas leadership and non-governmental organsations over the party’s controversial hudud provisions, which discriminated against women and violated human rights principles.

Don’t curb students’ enthusiasm; New Straits Times, Friday, Feb. 9, 2007

OUR students in the UK are, oh, so shy, so unassertive, they keep to themselves, they don’t mix? I am surprised that the Minister of Higher Education is surprised. This is not a new problem.

New York has done it, can’t we?; New Straits Times, Friday, Jan 26, 2007

IN one second, I can think of at least nine friends and family members whose homes have been broken into these past few years.

A refreshing chorus of voices; New Straits Times, Friday, Jan 12, 2007

IS this for real, friends ask me. There is not one, not two, but three religious leaders from within the establishment speaking the language of justice, freedom, reason and rights? What an auspicious beginning to the 50th year of Merdeka!

Keep pupils thirsty for knowledge; New Straits Times, Friday, Dec 29, 2006

IF there is one major area of reform that is so needed in this country, it is the education system. Enough has been said on everything that is wrong with the system, from primary to higher education.

Women wise up to their rights; New Straits Times, Friday, Dec 15, 2006

IN 1838, 180 women, black and white, met in Philadelphia, condemning the evils of slavery and calling for its abolition. The motive was simple.

Listen to cries of the silent majority; New Straits Times, Friday, Dec 1 2006

NOW that the silent majority is speaking out in indignation at the racial and religious oratory at the Umno general assembly, political leaders on all sides of the Barisan Nasional are scrambling for damage control.

Building an equal world for women; New Straits Times, Friday, Nov 17 2007

Islam Hadhari champions needed; New Straits Times, Friday, Nov 3 2006

Many Malaysians I meet at open house in this festive month of DeepaRaya celebrations are feeling anxious…

Hate ideology a threat to unity; New Straits Times, Friday, Oct 20 2006

THE uproar of protest generated by Fauzi Mustaffa’s directive to the staff of Takaful Malaysia forbidding them, from extending festive greetings to their Hindu clients…

Stemming the ‘I divorce you’ trend; New Straits Times, Friday, Oct 6 2006

“HE wished her ‘Happy Birthday’, then he pronounced ‘I divorce you’! Can you imagine such cruelty, such heartlessness,”…

Women will not be deprived of praying in the vicinity of the Ka’abah, the holiest sanctum in Islam; New Straits Times, Friday, Sept 22 2006

ON Aug 25, Saudi newspapers reported that the haj authorities were considering plans to ban women from praying in the vicinity of the Ka’abah…

I’ve rediscovered the Rukun Negara; New Straits Times, Friday, Sept 8 2006

THIRTY-SIX years ago, our national ideology, the Rukun Negara, was proclaimed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong at the launch of the Merdeka Day celebrations in 1970…

How much I love thee, Malaysia; New Straits Times, Friday, August 25, 2006

To mark our 49th year of Independence, let me share how much I love being Malaysian and living in Malaysia. I love that as we chase wealth and success, family still matters…

Nuggets of wisdom from Hussein; New Straits Times, Friday, August 11, 2006

I am completing a pictorial biography of three generations of political leadership in one of Malaysia’s most illustrious families…

Lessons from India on peace and violence; New Straits Times, Friday, July 28, 2006

BETWEEN 1950 and 1995, 1,600 Hindu-Muslim riots were reported in India. Some 7,500 people were killed. Only four per cent of the deaths took place in rural India…

Our freedom makes us appealing; New Straits Times, Friday, July 14, 2006

LAST week, a friend from Saudi Arabia whom I have not seen for 20 years, visited me with his wife and two precocious sons…

Treat rape issue with respect, decorum; New Straits Times, Friday, June 30, 2006

THE statements by the Bar Council criminal law sub-committee chairman V. Sithambaram that women lie about rape is a warning to society about the boulders…

Making taboo a cherished tradition; New Straits Times, Friday, June 16, 2006

WHAT next on the laundry list of the forbidden? On Tuesday, it was pluralism and liberalism that posed a danger to the faith of Muslims. On Wednesday it was kongsi raya and open house…

It’s men who are the surplus goods; New Straits Times, Friday, June 2, 2006

FOR every 100 women who are not married in Malaysia, there are 130 unmarried men. It is men who are surplus goods on the marriage market in this country, not women…

Changing the Muslim mindset; New Straits Times, Friday, May 19, 2006

IN a seminal speech on Islam Hadhari and women’s rights at the Women’s Institute of Management last year, the Prime Minister said the biggest stumbling block to women’s progress and development in the area of rights and equality relates to mindsets and attitudes towards women…

Datuk Onn Jaafar’s rich legacy; New Straits Times, Friday, May 5, 2006

AS thousands of Umno members gather in Johor Baru next week to celebrate the party’s 60th anniversary, I recall those days when as a young girl I followed my father on his daily visit to see Datuk Onn Jaafar, the founder and first president of Umno, who was dying in his hospital room…

Matter of conscience, not policing; New Straits Times, Friday, April 21, 2006

WE all agree that having sex in public is indecent and should be punishable by law. I am sure our lawmakers had precisely this in mind when they drafted by-laws governing indecent behaviour in parks.

Seeking justice for Muslim women; New Straits Times, Friday, April 7, 2006

MALAYSIA once had the most progressive family law in the Muslim world. But now countries like Morocco, Turkey and Tunisia are way ahead of us…

Let there be public debate on laws; New Straits Times, Friday, March 24, 2006

THE fact that three daughters of current and past Prime Ministers in Malaysia were moved enough to share the same stage, the same passion and the same commitment to speak out their convictions in public on the imperative of justice for women in Islam…

New Straits Times, Friday, March 24, 2006

Zainah Anwar
Let there be public debate on laws

Last Saturday was a moment in history in Malaysia when we saw Hanis Hussein, Marina Mahathir and Nori Abdullah join hands to open the Sisters in Islam International Consultation on Trends in Family Law Reform in Muslim Countries. It is also a source of hope that change in the Muslim world is inevitable.

All three felt compelled to lend their voice to the growing force of Muslim women throughout the world who now speak out publicly to demand justice and equality and a stop to the use of Islam to justify continuing discrimination against women.

In much of the Muslim world today,it is women who are at the forefront in challenging governments, religous authorities and Islamist groupswho hide behind the infallibility of the divine word to perpetuate patriarchy and to silence dissent.

In Iran, women, including daughters of mullahs and conservative families, are forced into the public space to confront the realities of an Islamic revolution driven by a punitive and legalistic Islam. The Islamic utopia promised where everything would be perfect because God’s law is perfect was anything but.

The women woke up to a reality that Islam, as Imam Feisal Rauf of New York said, was not a pronoun. Islam does not speak. It is human beings who speak in God’s name. It is human beings who use the authoritative text for authoritarian purposes. The justice of God is an ideal at the textual level. At the reality level, so much injustice is perpetrated in the name of God.

For me and my group, Sisters in Islam, it is an article of faith that Islam is just and God is just. If justice is intrinsic to Islam, then how could injustice and discrimination result in the codification and implementation of laws and policies made in the name of Islam?

It is at this level that Muslim women all over the world have begun to organise and demand reform of laws and policies to uphold the principles of justice, equality, freedom and dignity in Islam.

For most Muslim women, rejecting religion is not an option. We are believers, and as believers we want to find liberation, truth and justice from within our own faith. We feel strongly that we have a right to reclaim our religion, to redefine it, to participate and contribute to an understanding of Islam, how it is codified and implemented — in ways that take into consideration the realities and experience of women’s lives today.

For many women today, our lives are at a collision course with patriarchy’s construction of the “ideal” Muslim woman. For too long, men have defined for us what it is to be a woman, how to be a woman and then used religion and tradition to confine us to these socially constructed limitations that reduce us to being the inferior half of the human race. For too long, we submitted, seeking their approval and applause because the power of reward and punishment lay in their hands.

But not anymore. Women today are educated and economically independent. They will not be cowed into silence in the face of injustice. If the injustice is committed in the name of religion, then today’s women will go back to the original source of the religion to find out for themselves whether it is the revealed text that perpetrates injustice or is it an act of interpretation by human beings.

For those of us in civil society, as feminists, as believers and as activists living within a democratic constitutional framework, it is important that we assert and claim our right to have our voice heard in the public sphere and to intervene in the decision-making process on matters of religion.

The fundamental question needs to be asked: Who decides which interpretation, which juristic opinion, which traditional practice would prevail and be the source of codified law to govern our private and public lives and punish us if we fail to abide? Which opinion from the rich corpus of our heritage would fall by the wayside, forgotten? On what basis is that choice made? What are the guiding principles used in choosing one juristic opinion over another? Whose interests are protected and whose interests are denied?

This process of deriving “the right” opinion to codify into positive law is a human construct. The product of this very human engagement with the divine text is not the divine law of God.

It is human knowledge and underaili standing, limited by human experience, human frailties and the context of time, place and circumstance.

The Islamic Family Law recently passed by Parliament, the Hudud passed by Kelantan and Terengganu and the Syariah Criminal Offences Law are all a product of this process. They are not divine law just because they bear the name Islam or Syariah. It is human beings who codified and drafted the laws, it is human beings who passed them through the legislative assemblies.

Thus, when Islam is a part of public law and public policy as in Malaysia, then by necessity such laws and policies must be opened to public debate and public feedback. This is how governments are held accountable in a democracy.

New Straits Times, Friday, 8 Sept 2006

Zainah Anwar
I’ve rediscovered the Rukun Negara

THIRTY-SIX years ago, our national ideology, the Rukun Negara, was proclaimed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong at the launch of the Merdeka Day celebrations in 1970.

Most of us know what its five principles are. It was the mantra we mouthed every week at the school assembly: belief in God, loyalty to King and country, upholding the Constitution, rule of law, and good behaviour and morality.

But do we know wh the Rukun Negara really means and what it is for? I have just rediscovered the objectives of the Rukun Negara and I am excited by them.

Those five principles do not stand in a vacuum. They are to be applied to guide our nation towards five key outcomes:

• Achieving a greater unity of all her peoples;

• Maintaining a democratic way of life;

• Creating a just society in which the wealth of the nation shall be equitably shared;

• Ensuring a liberal approach to her rich and diverse cultural traditions; and,

• Building a progressive society which shall be oriented to modern science and technology.

Wow, I thought, how could any right-minded Malaysian who loves this country dispute these objectives? Why can’t these values and objectives continue to shape our future?

We do not need to reinvent the wheel as we twist ourselves into knots, mired in despondency because of fear and anxiety about recent trends dictated by belligerent supremacists who seek to disempower, dominate or destroy those who do not share their world view and their self-righteous claim to perfection.

Our journey towards the objectives of the Rukun Negara has been outstanding in some areas and over some periods, and perilous in others. Right now there is a foreboding sense of the fragility of what it means to be Malaysian.

Let’s go back to the Rukun Negara and the wisdom of its values. The Rukun Negara was an inter-communal national consensus on principles and objectives built from the ashes of the race riots of 1969.

The Independence inter-communal contract had broken down and a more explicit set of rules was forged to build a stable consensus for political and civil order in Malaysia. All the major political parties sitting in the National Consultative Council (NCC) in 1970 approved it, including Parti Islam SeMalaysia, Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia and the People’s Progressive Party.

In true Malaysian muhibbah style, nation-building can never be a zero-sum game. Even though the Democratic Action Party was the one major political party that did not take part in the NCC, Lim Kit Siang still wrote in the Rocket that the Rukun Negara, though obvious, was laudable, and very few people would disagree with its principles.

In fact, reading further on the Rukun Negara, I discovered the official documentation which accompanied its proclamation further explained the meaning and implications of the five principles. They basically entrenched, in no uncertain terms, key unique articles in the Constitution which were the result of ethnic bargaining at the time of Independence that:

1. Islam is the official religion of the Federation. Other religions and beliefs may be practised in peace and harmony. There shall be no discrimination against any citizen on the ground of religion.

2. The loyalty expected of every citizen is to be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the Yang di-Pertuan Agong.

3. It is the duty of a citizen to respect and appreciate the letter, the spirit and the historical background of the Constitution. This historical background led to such provisions as those regarding the position of the Rulers, the position of Islam as the official religion, the position of Malay as the national and official language, the special position of the Malays and other natives, the legitimate interests of the other communities, and the conferment of citizenship. It is the sacred duty of a citizen to defend and uphold the Constitution.

4. Justice is founded upon the rule of law. Every citizen is equal before the law. Fundamental liberties are guaranteed to all citizens. These include liberty of the person, equal protection of the law, freedom of religion, rights of property and protection against banishment. The Constitution confers on a citizen the right of free speech, assembly and association and this right may be enjoyed freely subject only to limitations imposed by law.

5. Individuals and groups shall conduct their affairs in such a manner as not to violate any of the accepted canons of behaviour which are arrogant or offensive to the sensitivities of any other group. No citizen should question the loyalty of another citizen on the ground that he belongs to a particular community.

“These ends and these principles, acceptable to all and applicable to all, will serve as the nexus which will bind us together,” said the Malaysian government document on the aspirations of the Rukun Negara.

I believe that the overwhelming majority of Malaysians still believe in these principles and their ends remain valid, and even more urgent today to address the sparks ignited and manipulated by polarising politicians and religious zealots.

It behoves the ruling party to remind itself that its landslide victory in 2004 was for its promise of a democratic, clean, transparent and accountable government led by a progressive Prime Minister who promised to be the leader of all Malaysians. It was a potent message that raised hopes.

While Islamists were winning elections at national and local levels in other Muslim countries, the extremist theocratic politics of Pas were resoundingly rejected by the Malaysian electorate in 2004, both at the national and state levels.

But the recent turn towards mob intimidation, threats of violence and rioting, the death threat against a leading human rights lawyer, the police report against a Federal Court judge for a progressive judgment, the inflammatory language and belligerent strategies, including names given to the new outcrop of Islamist civil society groups, clearly appear to be tactics imported from the manuals of militant Islamists in Indonesia. This is casting a pall of corrosive pessimism in the body politic of Malaysia.

How do the different arms of government work with the community to nip such inflammatory and threatening agitation in order to reduce tensions before they break out into open conflict and possibly violence?

This dangerous ideology of absolutist extremism must stop before it becomes the new dominant ideology of Malaysian politics and civic life. The Prime Minister and the Inspector- General of Police must be kept abreast of these dangerous trends on the ground.

It is amidst this threat to everything that has made Malaysia a success story, unique in the Muslim and developing world, that the call for a return to the core values and objectives embedded in the Rukun Negara is made. What we need is a renewed commitment to our national consensus on citizenship and pluralism.

I have recently noticed Rukun Negara billboards put up by the government on street corners in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya.

But the proof of the pudding must be in the eating. Promoting the Rukun Negara cannot be at the level of exhortation and sloganeering only, certainly not at this critical stage of our national journey.

The Government must take immediate effective steps to convince the rakyat that we have not lost our way; that the national consensus in the values articulated by the Rukun Negara, though challenged and pummelled, remain strongly in place.

Since 1957, writers of gloom and doom have predicted that this ethnically and religiously divided nation cannot survive. But from the dark days of 1969, we have proven them wrong again and again. Let us not prove them right this time.

New Straits Times, Friday, October 20, 2006

Zainah Anwar
Hate ideology a threat to unity

THE uproar of protest generated by Fauzi Mustaffa’s directive to the staff of Takaful Malaysia forbidding them, in the name of Islam, from extending festive greetings to their Hindu clients provided us some assurance that public opinion in Malaysia will not accept this hostile and aggressive propagation of such understanding of one’s faith.

As a Malaysian, the bigger question remains: What made Fauzi Mustaffa, as head of the Syariah division of Takaful Malaysia, issue such a directive? How could an educated person, working in a global industry such as insurance, hold such a view?

I assume he must be a graduate of Islamic law to head such a department and be the secretary of the company’s Syariah Supervisory Council. He must have learnt the many verses in the Quran that talk about pluralism and differences: How God made us into nations and tribes, so that we may know one another; that if Allah had so willed, He could surely have made us all one single community…. We Muslims repeat such verses again and again, and with pride, to show the world what a tolerant and peaceful religion Islam is.

Perhaps Fauzi’s position and his action are symptomatic of where we have gone with our understanding of Islam, our education system, our socialisation process, our politicisation, and our sense of citizenship within a multi-ethnic and multi-religious society, that he today not only shows no love nor respect for fellow citizens of a different race and religion, but also feels he has the right to turn his dogmatic personal piety into an office directive for all to obey.

Would he have issued such a directive a year ago? What has changed that emboldened Fauzi to take his hostile ideological viewpoint towards the other from the narrow confines of only those who share his religious fervour to a public space, and then to demand obedience or repentance from those who transgress his orders?

Could it be the company policy that its staff must all mengamalkan Syariah sebagai budaya korporat Takaful Malaysia (put Islamic law into practice as the corporate culture) that provided the opportunity for him to transform his personal belief into a company policy for all staff to follow in Malaysia?

Could it have been the legitimacy provided by the public pronouncement by the conference of ulama that met in Ipoh in June to pronounce liberalism, pluralism, kongsi raya and open house as dangerous to the faith of Muslims?

Or could it have been that Wahhabi fatwa circulating worldwide for years which declared that celebrating the religious festivities of others is tantamount to approving their religious faith, thus constituting syirik (associating partners to God)?

I remember the former Mingguan Malaysia columnist Astora Jabat, now editor of Al-Islam, drawing our attention to this many years ago. But we never paid much attention to it in Malaysia, dismissing it as ridiculous, and feeling sorry for our Saudi Arabian friends. Given our history and our context, we never thought that any Malaysian would abide by such a fatwa.

But we have been mistaken, of course.

Or is it that Fauzi senses a certain shift in the mood on the ground and the demonising in neighbourhood mosques and surau of Malaysians who do not share the Islamist ideological viewpoint, that gave him the impetus to turn from private to public his prejudices and throw it into the boiling pot of the don’ts, the forbidden, the haram, the kafir, the anti-Islam, the anti-God, the syirik, the murtad?

In today’s climate where the ideology of hate and intolerance trump the spirituality and compassion of Islam, is it any wonder that death threats have been issued?

The mood out there is very clear. It is this hate ideology that poses a “clear and present danger” to the Malaysia that we know and love. It comes not from those who believe in upholding the Federal Constitution and the rule of law, but those bent on forcing a rewriting of the Constitution and shifting the consensus for civil and political order in Malaysia.

The tactical sprouting of new Islamist NGOs with names like BADAI (Badan Anti-IFC), ACCIN (Allied Coordinating Committee of Islamic NGOs), Muslim Professional Association, Mothers Against Apostasy, Pembela Islam (Defenders of Islam), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam), FORKAD (Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad — Action Front Against Apostasy) etc, and their alliance with the more established Islamist group, are intended to mobilise Muslim public opinion to halt any further democratisation and liberalising of this country.

In a prescient analysis of the current political climate in Malaysia, the long-time commentator on Malaysian politics and Islam, Professor Clive Kessler, wrote in Asian Analysis on the long march towards “desecularisation” of Malaysian life and state-driven by the pious new Malay Muslim middle-class activists, that is now culminating in moving Malaysia into a post-liberal or post-progressivist political era.

Given the progressive education, lifestyle and values of the current Malaysian political elite, the political will, courage and confidence needed to face off this assault from the Islamist front that claims to speak in God’s name seems frighteningly scarce. The one person with the knowledge and confidence to do this is the Prime Minister himself.

But the clampdown on the public education programme to promote respect for the Federal Constitution by the Article 11 coalition sent the wrong signal. The Islamist supremacists saw it as evidence that their use of mob intimidation and threat of violence worked in coercing the government to silence those committed to upholding the Malaysian Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Now their attention is focused on the judiciary as it deliberates on a number of freedom of religion cases.

Ironically, those who succeeded in their intimidation are the very people who want to throw out the Barisan Nasional Government and draw up a new Constitution and a new social contract — this time unequivocally with Syariah as the supreme law of the land.

The politics of ethnic identity remains the dominant discourse in Malaysia and the lens through which many of us react to public policy. This is further complicated by the merging of Islam with Malay identity. The current provocation finds Umno and its partners in the Barisan Nasional walking a political tightrope.

The government can choose to retreat in the face of this dogmatic ideological fervour and counter-mobilisation, as many failed reformists have done in other countries. Or place its faith and confidence in the millions of citizens who voted for a new Prime Minister who promised to be the leader of all Malaysians.

In the spirit of DeepaRaya, can we please stop shaking our fists at our fellow citizens?

Let’s make a conscious decision to deepen our friendship and understanding and realise that we owe our prosperity and stability to the richness of our diversity.

New Straits Times, Friday, 3 Nov 2006

Zainah Anwar
Islam Hadhari champions needed

MANY Malaysians I meet at open house in this festive month of DeepaRaya celebrations are feeling anxious.

It is not the slug fest between the former and the current prime ministers that is the main topic of conversation among friends, acquaintances and other guests, but rather the continuing deterioration in race relations and the growing Islamic extremism and intolerant behaviour in this country.

The latest report of abuse by the moral police against an elderly American couple on holiday in Langkawi just serves to fuel these concerns.

Two months ago, two incidents occurred within a few days of each other that made me realise how serious the undercurrents of fear and anxiety are.

A friend sent out an SMS inviting his friends for a Merdeka eve barbeque. One reply came from an unknown person: “If this party is about IFC, we are going to burn it N kill them all. Beware.”

The young man was shocked how an invitation to celebrate independence day could elicit such a violent response from an unknown person about an Inter-Faith Commission that does not even exist.

Then a few days after, a colleague at Sisters in Islam said her friend’s brother was beaten up by three neighbourhood boys in Ampang because they were angry that he believed in freedom of religion and Lina Joy’s right to convert. The boy received several stitches for his wounds and made a police report.

Another colleague came back from her Raya holidays in Johor, recounting heated debates between family members and two nephews, one a 17-year-old studying in a religious secondary school and the other a 30-year-old running his own business in Kuala Lumpur, who unequivocally pronounced that Muslims who leave Islam should be killed.

These heightened tensions and bouts of inflammatory SMSes over the past few months are the result of over a year’s concerted and deliberate campaign to create alarm and anxiety among Muslims in Malaysia under the banner “Islam under siege”.

The intent is to build support for the Islamist political project of turning Malaysia into an Islamic state with Syariah as the supreme law of the land.

The Islamic state ideologues know they cannot win power through the ballot box as most Malaysians, including Muslims, will not support the kind of intolerant, punitive, bigoted, misogynistic and joyless Islam they stand for.

The strategy then has been to penetrate the academic institutions, the bureaucracy, the Islamic institutions and take over the instruments of governance through the backdoor. Cloak yourself in the mantle of God, intimidate your opponents by declaring them kafir or anti-Islam, eliminate anyone with a differing view by declaring war on pluralism and liberalism, take over the drafting of laws, create further institutions to expand your influence and jurisdiction, pronounce one fatwa after another to further limit the scope of differences and diversity, so that in the end only the Islamist ideological conception of Islam prevails. And you could do all this from within the government apparatus. We do not even have to wait for Pas to come into power.

The threat is real and the trend must not be allowed to prevail.

The 2004 election results were a shock to them, especially after their unprecedented performance of 1999 when Pas emerged as leader of the Opposition in Parliament.

The Islamists know the biggest threat against the success of its project comes from human rights and women’s rights groups and ordinary citizens who have been vocal in protesting the injustices that occur in the name of Islam.

Thus, Pas and its Islamist allies in government and in civil society launched a nationwide campaign last year against two perceived threats: An external one called the “Danger of Islam Liberal”, an Indonesian ideology that they claim is penetrating Malaysia; and the other internal, the threat of murtad in Malaysia, precipitated by court cases on freedom of religion and rights of non-Muslims in cases such as Shamala, Kaliamal, Lina Joy – all women who went to court because they feel their rights guaranteed under the Federal Constitution have been violated.

The aim is to discredit progressive Muslims and women and human rights groups in Malaysia who believe in upholding the Constitution and rule of law, and in an Islam that upholds the principles of justice, equality, freedom and dignity. They are portrayed as “liberals” intent on “making Islam subservient to prevailing secular notions of rights, freedoms and gender equality”.

The construction of an anti-Islam ideology against those who do not support the transformation of Malaysia into a theocratic state is a deliberate and effective strategy to conflate this dispute and criticism of abuses and injustice done in the name of Islam with Islam itself.

The Bahaya Islam Liberal roadshow sees a Pas Youth leader in Penang calling on the audience to menanam perasaan benci (inculcate hatred) against groups like Sisters in Islam which he accused of using women’s issues to denigrate Islam; a government minister using inflammatory language about “enemies wearing the mask of Islam” who threaten national stability and security at a conference on Konspirasi Luar dalam Penyelewengan Agama, in a reference to the dangers of liberal scholarship among the mainstream Islamic scholars and activists in Indonesia spreading to Malaysia.

In Indonesia, it is these scholars and activists from the madrassahs and Islamic universities, trained in Islamic theology, philosophy and law, who spearhead a progressive Islamic movement opposed to the creation of an Islamic state and imposition of Syariah.

My concern for Malaysia is how fast this Islamist supremacist thinking has seeped into the body politic. Human rights and women’s rights groups that campaign against moral policing, discriminatory amendments to the Islamic Family Law, and citizens who go to court to exercise their constitutional rights, the lawyers who represent them and civil society groups that support them are all labelled as anti-Islam, and their actions deemed an insult to Islam, Syariah, the authority of the sultans, the ulama and religious institutions.

When the exercise of rights by citizens under the law is construed as insults to Islam, to Muslims and the religious authorities, then Malaysia is in danger of sliding down the slippery slope of de facto theocratic rule.

As a journalist in the early 1980s, I witnessed first hand the impact of the kafir-mengkafir conflict between Pas and Umno in the Malay heartland of Terengganu, Kelantan and Kedah.

In the deep rural villages, Pas supporters pronounced this government as a government of infidels for co-operating with non-Muslims, the Constitution as un-Islamic as it was formulated by non-Muslims, and this Umno-led government as un-Islamic and illegitimate for not creating an Islamic state with Syariah rule.

I spoke with scores of men and women in the kampungs riven by this extremist ideology of hate. It ultimately led to separate mosques, separate suraus and separate burial grounds for Pas and Umno supporters. It led to family break-ups, incidents of Pas supporters refusing to eat meat slaughtered by the “infidel” Umno man, of marriages that needed to be solemnised twice, first by the government imam for the official marriage certificate and second by the Pas imam “to be accepted in the eyes of God”.

But instead of fear, Umno wakil rakyat then were confident and energised in dealing with the extremism of Pas. They listened to cassette recordings of Pas ceramah in their cars as they criss-crossed their constituencies, absorbing the rhetoric against Umno and the Barisan Nasional government to enable them to go back to the drawing board to redraw their strategy to counter the Pas denunciations of this “un-Islamic” government led by an “infidel” party.

The party battle lines were clear in 1982. How things have changed 24 years on!

The government’s decision to embark on an Islamisation policy has blurred the lines between Pas and Umno and their Islamic agenda. The eventual outcome is a civic and political order in Malaysia that is decidedly more Islamist in orientation.

Concerned over the potential for extremism and violence, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi introduced Islam Hadhari “to enable Muslims in Malaysia to become the vanguard of a new civilisation that can bring about progressive and comprehensive change”.

But without champions within the system to deliver on his vision, and a civil society facing the threat of silence, I fear that Islam Hadhari, like Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Islamisation project, will yet again be hijacked and redefined in implementation by the Maududi and Syed Qutb ideologues and the traditionalist ulama that still dominate the Islamic political landscape in Malaysia.

New Straits Times, Friday, 16 Mar 2007

Zainah Anwar
Stop the moral panic about sex

OH dear, here we go again. Another moral panic attack. This time over a report that only one out 887 “high risk” girls surveyed had not had sex.

If I were to do a survey of 1,000 youths at the various rehabilitation homes, I would probably find similar findings: that the overwhelming majority would have taken drugs, been exposed to pornography, involved in secret societies, gambling, vandalism and truancy, and, of course, had experienced sex.

These are troubled teenagers who were pre-selected by school counsellors for the survey to find out the nature and extent of their problems in order to help the Selangor government draw up a programme “to promote high moral values” among girls.

The public furore that initially greeted the survey report raises several issues of concern in the way we regard teenage sexuality and delinquency, sex education, research methodology and the larger issues of gender, hierarchy and equality.

The first obvious question is: Why the focus only on girls? I wonder whether those who commissioned the survey felt that boys have inherently high moral values that their behaviour needs no further study nor education. I wonder then, with whom were these girls having sex?

Second, this was a study that focused on girls already with delinquency problems in school. What did it expect to find but a confirmation of the whole gamut of problems that beset such youth? The findings are no different from similar surveys in other countries.

One, therefore, cannot extrapolate findings on a focused study of delinquents to the behaviour of the whole youth population of Ma- laysia and start pointing fingers!

If the counsellors had given the names of the top 20 model students of each school, perhaps a different set of findings would result. But that was not the objective of the study, the Selangor menteri besar and his officials seem to be in need of reminding.

Now, Institut Perkembangan Minda, which commissioned the study, says there was a mistake in data entry, that actually only three per cent of the students had had sex.

After all the public fault-finding, more explanations would be needed to convince us that this represents the truth.

If Dr Khaidzir Ismail’s questions were not specific enough in defining what sex meant and the girls might have defined kissing and fondling as sex, only he should have gone back to the respondents for further clarification. Not the state authorities!

Third, the public hysteria over the survey results really had more to do with adult politics than with troubled teens. Is it any wonder that the teenagers I meet are telling adults to get real?

Teenagers, whether Asians or Westerners, have the same raging hormones in their bodies. Many are curious about sex and many experiment. Many teenage girls are coerced into sex by their boyfriends.

We like to think that bad things are only done by others in the West. Not us Asians with our Asian values. But surveys in many countries, both in the developed and developing world, show that the majority of teenagers have experienced vaginal sex. That is the reality.

If the objective of the Selangor survey is to design training modules to deal with the delinquent behaviour of teenagers, then get on with the job, instead of pointing fingers and driving ourselves into a moral panic by overstatements and misinterpreted statistics. Because we do know that all the problems identified by the survey do exist.

The larger challenge remains: How do we tackle these problems? Research shows that the family plays the most important role in the prevention of juvenile delinquency.

So what kind of effective parenting skills and family therapy does the Selangor government have in place to prevent the onset of delinquency and to prevent repeat offences among those involved in juvenile crime?

Studies also show the introduction of highly effective comprehensive sex education and HIV/STI prevention programmes in schools have had positive behavioural and health impact.

These evaluations show that such programmes have delayed the initiation of sex, reduced the frequency of sex, the number of new partners and the incidence of unprotected sex, and do not increase the rates of sexual initiation. Which means the introduction of sexual health education in schools does not actually lead to promiscuity, as so many adults are wont to believe. Its long-term impact includes reduced rates of sexually transmitted infections and/or pregnancy.

We have been grappling with introducing sex education into schools for years now and there seems to be further delay even though the modules are supposedly ready to be tested. Why?

I remember the only rudimentary introduction to sex education in school I had was my biology teacher in Form Three running through the pages on the male and female sexual and reproductive organs in one 40-minute class with absolutely no class discussion, but just lots of giggles from the girls and a teacher red in his face, fidgeting in discomfort and incompetence for all of us to laugh at.

When experts talk about sex education, they talk in terms of highly effective sex education and ineffective sex education.

For example, there has been much writing on why the teenage pregnancy rate in Britain remains the highest in Western Europe in spite of years of sex education.

Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate is 10 times higher than the Netherlands, despite similar content in both countries’ sex education curriculum.

Research shows that community attitudes towards sex shape the framework in which sex education programmes are delivered. Their delivery and effectiveness is directly related to the cultural milieu that surrounds them.

Thus, in Britain, where legislation requires teachers to inform parents if pupils ask questions about contraception or if they are sexually active, the young are deprived of trained adult guidance in frank discussions on sexuality and their need for information to make decisions about their sexual health and behaviour.

One survey of nearly 700 pupils between 14 and 15 in Britain revealed a deep-seated anger about sex education in their schools.

In the US, where right-wing religious politics redefined sex-education policy to mean “abstinence until marriage” programmes, studies now show that virginity-pledge programmes increase pledge-takers’ risk to STI and pregnancy, and that the majority actually initiated sex prior to marriage, even though some might have delayed sex for a while.

Teaching teenagers the wonders of waiting actually costs money and time, but conveys little information that could change behaviour.

Multiple factors influence teenage sexual behaviour, besides sex education. The way parents bring up children influences their sexual behaviour.

One 2001 report stated that the more parents spend time with their children, are supportive of them, or keep a check on what they are doing, the less likely their children are to take sexual risks.

Social deprivation and low educational aspirations are strongly associated with teenage pregnancy. Local and peer culture and pressure also have an influence.

Teenagers who think their peers are having sex and doing it without protection are likely to behave in the same manner.

Moral panic about sex really ignores the underlying causes of social problems among the young.

If we adults are concerned about teenage sexual health and sexually-risky behaviour, can we please put aside the politics and piety, and get on with the real world of seriously understanding the nature of the problem, and then design evidence-based intervention programmes?

New Straits Times, Friday, 29 August 2007

ZAINAH ANWAR: It’s deeds that will test religion

LIKE so many others, I had thought that Karen Armstrong’s public lecture in mid-June would focus on the unsettling relationship between religion and politics in the 21st century.
The religious historian and former nun did give an account on how religion has been implicated in the catastrophes of the 20th and 21st centuries and how the growth of militant piety in all the major religions as a response to the challenge of modernity has led to a distortion of faith.

But for me, it was her focus on how to find common ground among all religions and what constitutes good and bad religion that made the biggest impact.

As someone constantly battling suffocating patriarchy justified in the name of religion, I was moved by the strength and utter simplicity of her spiritual message.

She feels many people have turned away from religion because it is made so complicated in its emphasis on doctrine rather than practice. We are so obsessed with being right in our doctrine instead of being just in our practice, she says. Thus, her emphasis is on practical compassion as a way to be religious, to attain enlightenment.
She believes the most important virtue in religion is compassion — this does not mean feeling sorry for the others; it means feeling with them, displacing our own ego at the centre of our lives and putting others there. It means to look into our inner self, find out what distresses us and refuse to inflict this upon others.

And it’s not good enough if we confine our compassion only to our own group. We must extend it to others as well. She strongly believes in the golden rule of not doing unto others what you don’t want done to yourself.

Since preoccupation with compassion is common to all religions, she believes this can establish one common ground that enables us to live together and respect each other.

We didn’t need Armstrong to come to Malaysia to tell us this, of course. But the standing room-only audience of all religions and races was a telling sign that we wanted to hear a voice of reason, wisdom and compassion that could help us make sense of a world that has become so polarised and unjust, and how we can make religion a source of solutions, rather than a source of problems.

As I listened to her, I wondered how many of us in the audience would really be thinking through what she was saying and applying it in our lives. It did not take long for reality to hit home. The second person to ask a question began by giving his salam only to the Muslim brothers in the room and a good morning to others.

I cringed as I felt the murmur in the hall. A Christian friend behind me muttered that she was being excluded in this man’s greeting of peace, and a Muslim woman next to her remarked that even Muslim sisters were excluded. I felt compelled at the end of the talk to approach the older man to try to understand why he started his comment about the need to be considerate of others by excluding and “othering” so many in the hall.

I have been thinking about all that has gone wrong with the practice of my religion where too many of us are obsessed with what we believe is doctrine, rather than practise what reflects the justice of God.

On Wednesday, a Chinese Muslim friend came for advice on how she could make sure that her property, her Employees’ Provident Fund and insurance benefits would go to her Buddhist parents and siblings should she die. She is a convert and is divorced. She has no children, and under Muslim inheritance laws, non-Muslims cannot inherit from a Muslim. But she wants all her hard-earned assets to go to her parents and siblings, and not to Baitulmal.

Just the other night, a friend emailed from California, saying her grandmother had died, leaving a house to her mother and her two aunts. They are in the midst of selling the house, but Baitulmal is demanding its share because the three daughters are entitled to only two-thirds of the property. In the absence of residual male heirs, one-third should go to Baitulmal under our Shafie school of law.

But under the Hanafi and Hanbali schools, daughters can inherit all. Needless to say, the three sisters, all in their sixties and seventies, are very upset about this.

For me, it is public deeds that will test the place of Islam in the 21st century. We all know what theory says — that Islam is a just and peaceful religion. That more than any other religion, it recognises pluralism, differences and disputation. It was revolutionary in granting women rights unheard of in the 7th century, the right to inherit, own and dispose of property, the right to enter a contract and the right to be treated as an equal.

In fact, according to Armstrong, the Crusaders were shocked at how well women were treated in Muslim land, and the scholar monks in Europe criticised Islam for being too egalitarian and giving too much respect to ordinary people, especially women.

Where and how it went wrong remain the subject of books and articles, even as I write this. But as I told a group of young women at the Feminista Fiesta two weekends ago, we can begin to make it right by doing little things to make a difference, to make someone’s life better, to show compassion not just to those who share our faith but to others as well.

Yesterday, even though it was my day off, I visited two Indian restaurants in Bangsar which were raided by a team of enforcement officers from the Department of Islamic Development (Jakim), Federal Territory Islamic Department (Jawi) and Kuala Lumpur City Hall over their halal certification.

I went because my niece’s young Chinese friend who was eating in one of the restaurants was so distressed by the show of power and intimidation by the religious officials (10 inside the restaurant and more milling outside) that she says she cannot bring herself to speak up for this country any more when it is unfavourably compared to others.

I wanted to join my niece in assuring her that the action of those little Napoleons does not represent the belief or have the support of most other Muslims.

Armstrong says any belief that makes you compassionate, kind and respectful of others is a good religion. If your beliefs make you intolerant, unkind and belligerent, this is bad religion, no matter how orthodox it is.

Aha … could this be why her celebrated books on Prophet Muhammad, the Battle for God and the History of God are banned in Malaysia?

Thank God that although one arm of the government, the Internal Security Ministry on the recommendation of Jakim, banned the books, another arm of the government, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Institute for Diplomatic and Foreign Relations saw the wisdom in inviting the author to give a keynote address on “Bridging the gap between Islam and the West” and a public lecture on religion in the 21st century. These days, we should be grateful for little mercies that confusion brings.

New Straits Times, Friday, 15 June 2007

ZAINAH ANWAR
Mediation the wiser path to take

“It’s probably Allah’s will to save us from worse harm which these people could have caused if they had remained in Islam,” he said.

His opinion was supported by many others, including the then minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Dr Abdul Hamid Othman who reiterated that the government had no plans to take any punitive action against those who peacefully changed their religion.

As could be expected, the Pas mursyidul am, Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat, expressed disbelief. He questioned the accuracy of the translation of the Sheikh’s Arabic speech.

He did not believe that a scholar of Tantawi’s stature could believe that apostasy was not a crime in Islam.

If indeed Tantawi believed in freedom of religion, then Nik Aziz cautioned Muslims not to believe in any Islamic ruling based only on a person’s status and authority.

Many foreigners are surprised at the depth of confusion on freedom of religion in Malaysia.

To many Muslims living in other parts of the Muslim world, Tantawi’s position is a given. Freedom of religion is explicit in the Quran.

They don’t understand how Muslims could force someone to remain a Muslim if he does not believe in the religion anymore.

What good does it do to Islam and to Muslims to force someone against his will to believe when he does not believe?

“How does that serve the interest of Islam and the Muslim world?” they ask, puzzled at the seeming insistence by many Malaysian Muslims to use force in matters of faith.

Faith cannot be faith when it is adduced through coercion seems fundamental to others, but not, it seems, to many of us in Malaysia.

In 1999 and for a few years afterwards, Pas tried to introduce a private member’s bill in parliament demanding the death penalty for apostasy. Of course, in a parliament dominated by Barisan Nasional, the bill got nowhere.

In 2000, Perlis adopted a model statute drafted by the federal Islamic authorities called the Islamic Aqidah Protection Bill, which provided for one-year mandatory detention without trial in a faith rehabilitation centre for those who attempted to change their faith.

The bill, which was to be introduced in parliament, was withdrawn because of public opposition.

This still-born effort by the government to deal with demands that apostates be punished led to another round of consultation when a team from Islamic Development Department (Jakim) visited several Arab countries.

The late Justice Tan Sri Harun Hashim told me how surprised the Malaysian delegation was to meet scholar after scholar who believed in freedom of religion in all the countries visited.

He was shocked, he said, to find that the Arab ulama who were reputed to be conservative were far more enlightened than the Malaysian ulama.

In my years as Suhakam commissioner, freedom of religion cases were raised persistently in our visits to the states.

It is no wonder that these cases are now reaching the judiciary as the state apparatus insists on an exit certificate from a religious authority that is unwilling to co-operate.

The cases range from those born Muslim who want to renounce Islam; those born Muslim but brought up as non-Muslims; those who converted to Islam in order to marry but now want to renounce the faith because of the collapse of the marriage; those who challenge the alleged conversion of their dead children or spouse to Islam, claiming that their loved ones had all along led the life of a non-Muslim; and in the latest case, a young man accidentally switched at birth and brought up by Muslim parents and who now wants to go back to the religion of his biological parents.

All these cases involve heart-wrenching stories of lives and relationships damaged, put in limbo, and the right to family, marriage, children, even the right to domicile in your home country denied because of state intervention in the right to freedom of conscience.

Given the public divide over this most fundamental of rights, no amount of court judgment, swaying from one side to the other, over the past years has resolved the matter.

What is needed now is political will, guided by clarity in thinking, compassion for the lives of those affected by this indeterminate state of affairs, and wisdom in reconciling the conflicting interests of different stakeholders. Let us go through some of the key questions, one by one.

Is there freedom of religion in Islam? The government has on its side some 20 verses in the Quran on belief and disbelief that do not prescribe any form of temporal punishment for apostasy.

It has Article 11 in the Federal Constitution and Article 18 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It has a whole range of juristic opinions from the earliest period of Islam to the contemporary period to support freedom of religion.

The one hadith that proclaims “Kill whoever changes his religion” is regarded by many scholars as a weak hadith that cannot validate capital punishment.

Nor is there any Tradition where the Prophet Muhammad sentenced anyone to death solely for renunciation of faith.

Except for Pas and its diehard supporters, few rational-minded Malaysian Muslims would support death to apostates or mandatory detention without trial to those who attempt to leave Islam.

The second and more tricky question, then, is should this freedom be absolute or should it be regulated?

Constitutional lawyers and many liberals would argue that freedom of religion is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution and human rights principles.

Faith is a private matter between the believer and his God and the state has no role to play in intervening to determine whether a citizen is a good, bad or non-believer.

A free conscience is fundamental to being human.

However, there are also many Muslims who believe in freedom of religion, but given the particular context of an ethnically divided Malaysia where the status of being Malay is constitutionally linked to being Muslim, any attempt to leave Islam should, they believe, be regulated.

This effort at establishing official procedure for Muslims who wish to leave Islam is not meant to thwart freedom of religion, but to mitigate the deep concerns and sensitivity of certain segments of the Muslim community about one of their own wanting to leave that community.

This procedure is only to establish that the person wants to leave Islam out of his own free will and choice, and not out of coercion, and he has considered all the legal, social and economic implications of that change of faith.

Negri Sembilan is the only state which provides for a procedure for a person to leave Islam. And it has not opened the floodgates to thousands wanting to leave the religion.

Between 1994 and 2003, it was reported that only 84 applications were submitted to leave Islam.

The procedure requires the person to apply to the Syariah High Court judge and specify the grounds on which he intends to renounce the religion.

Any hearing will be adjourned for 90 days, during which the judge requires the applicant to undergo a counselling session for the purpose of advising him to reconsider Islam as his religion.

A report will be submitted to the judge at the end of the 90 days and should the judge feel there is hope for repentance, the person can be directed to undergo further counselling up to a maximum period of one year.

Should there be no repentance, then the court declares that the person has renounced Islam.

While for some, the time period for counselling is too long, this Negri Sembilan provision nevertheless sets a time frame for some certainty in outcome.

It could form a basis for the government, faith groups, the Bar Council and human and women’s rights organisations, to begin to work out an acceptable compromise which will respect a citizen’s right to freedom of conscience, and at the same time assure the Muslim community that all effort has been taken to verify that this was a genuine change of faith.

If there could be agreement on procedure for a way out, then the third question arises over the contentious issue of jurisdiction.

Given the divided opinions over civil or syariah jurisdiction, and the lack of confidence in a judicial process, it could be decided that a more neutral civil institution like Suhakam could be the platform for mediation, negotiation or conciliation for applications for a change of religion.

In the interest of peaceful co-existence in a plural society, dispute resolution on matters of faith should go to an adversarial open court process only in the last resort.

Given the continuing controversy, many more Muslims are beginning to feel that mediation is the wiser path to take to find a peaceful and just resolution to enable those personally affected to get on with their lives.

New Straits Times,Friday, 25 May 2007

Zainah Anwar
So, whose voice is City Hall listening to?

Someone fancied creating a mini Manhattan right in the backyard of Damansara, and City Hall has given its approval.

Fingers are pointed, investigations are carried out, promises are made to improve enforcement and tighten laws, and yet, the violations continue.

Ever so often, I meet clients at the Sisters in Islam legal clinic carrying fat files of their endless court proceedings to get a divorce, maintenance and custody. They tell me of the many telephone calls made and show me their letters to the court registrar, to the exco member in charge of religion, to their wakil rakyat, to the menteri besar, to the Syariah Judicial Department, to the minister of women, family and community development and to the minister in charge of religion. Yet, still nothing happens.

Last Sunday, I attended a neighbourhood protest against a massive development in Pusat Bandar Damansara. Five skyscrapers and a shopping complex are coming up in this residential zone, now turned into a city within a city. And we knew nothing about it until it was reported in the newspapers.
I have never rubbed shoulders with so many Tan Sris and Puan Sris, Datuks and Datins, retired top civil servants, Umno, MCA and Gerakan members, professionals and academics — basically members of the establishment and, as they kept emphasising, loyal citizens and loyal supporters of the Barisan Nasional government — at a protest rally.

It takes a lot to get such people to gather in a public space to hold banners and placards, sign petitions, to cheer, jeer and wave their fists in anger against the powers that be.

They have had enough trying to talk reasonably to the combined might of local government and developers. It is, they have found out once too often, a dead end.

They met City Hall officials who could not answer the questions they raised about traffic congestion and dispersal, water supply, sewage pipes and the environmental impact of this massive development. What kind of planners are these, they asked? Promises of more details in future meetings came to nought.

They then wrote an official protest to the datuk bandar, met our member of parliament, wrote to the minister of federal territories, collected signatures and submitted them, held a press conference, were interviewed on television, were written about in newspapers and still nothing happened.

Meanwhile, the cranes, lorries and diggers have moved in to carve out monstrous holes to build the foundations for two 30-storey blocks of service apartments, two office towers (one 30 storeys and the other, 19 storeys), one 20-storey hotel and one four-storey retail block — in the midst of a residential zone in a land area no bigger than 3.2ha.

What was designated to be the green lung for the neighbourhood, with a park and children’s playground, was converted into a commercial area. First, it was the Damansara town centre, now it is the Damansara city!

More skyscrapers, we are told, are being planned in the adjoining plot. Across the road, the petrol station is gone and an old two-storey shophouse that houses the neighbourhood’s favourite supermarket and bookstore is to be demolished, to make way for yet more skyscrapers.

Someone fancied creating a mini Manhattan right in the backyard of Damansara, and City Hall has given its approval, while we, the thousands of law-abiding, civic conscious, tax-paying residents, have absolutely no say in the development of the neighbourhood we love.

Leading the protest that Sunday was no less an establishment figure than Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman, the former MAS chairman and president of the Bukit Daman- sara Houseowners’ Association — certainly not your idea of a rabble rouser.

What else would it take for our voices to be considered? Bring together all residents’ associations in Petaling Jaya, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Daman- sara Jaya and beyond, as they will suffer an even worse traffic congestion at rush hour along Jalan Damansara and Jalan Semantan?

Campaign to get the planners in City Hall to resign because they don’t seem to know the basics of planning for development in a neighbourhood?

Or, as a former Gerakan MP suggested, campaign for the political parties to vacate the seat since the voice of our MP has no currency in City Hall?

For the residents, the big question remains: How was power exercised in making the decision to turn a low-density residential zone into a high-density city within a city?

The residents now demand that City Hall revoke the planning order and investigate how approval was given in the first place without any consultation with local residents.

Many speakers decried the fact that Kuala Lumpur is governed by bad laws.

The Federal Capital Act 1960 vests both the executive and administrative functions in one person, the datuk bandar. The Federal Territory Planning Act 1982 gives wide discretionary powers to the datuk bandar to override any development plans agreed upon.

The residents demand that these laws be amended. For even if there is a local plan that sets the density and land usage of a plot of land, the datuk bandar can still unilaterally change that without consultation and agreement from the residents in the neighbourhood.

That’s how old bungalow lots turn into land for high-rise condominiums and green lungs turn into commercial centres. The residents find out about changes to their neighbourhood in the newspapers or when the signboards go up and cranes and tractors roar in.

Derek Fernandez, who spearheads the “Save Bukit Gasing” campaign and advises numerous residents’ associations in Petaling Jaya, gave no comfort when he said Kuala Lumpur has the worst planning laws in the country because of the overriding powers vested in one person.

The absence of a detailed local plan that locks in density and land usage and that allows for changes only with agreement from residents, means little transparency and accountability can be expected from City Hall.

So, who are these “little Napoleans” in authority accountable to, then? Who has power over the government servants sitting in City Hall and other local authorities?

Whose interests are being served, and what laws, regulations, policies and election promises were violated when approval was given for all those high-rise buildings, and with more to come, in the middle of a low-density residential area?

Where is the public participation in local development? So whose voices are being heard?

New Straits Times,Friday, 11 May 2007

Zainah Anwar
Move fast to close gender gap

MALAYSIA’S Gender Gap Index launched on Monday highlighted the stark reality that Malaysian women’s considerable progress in two fundamental areas of basic rights — education and health — has not led to significant shifts in economic participation and political empowerment.
This means the government’s investment in human capital development in health and education, which increased from 8.9 per cent of total development expenditure in 1970 to a hefty 23.1 per cent in 2004, has not shown the returns as expected in terms of female labour force participation (FLFP) and participation in decision-making processes.

In fact, Malaysia’s FLFP has declined from 47.8 per cent in 1990 to 47.3 per cent in 2004 and a further decline to 45.9 per cent in 2006. Compare this to consistently over 80 per cent of Malaysian males in the labour force since 1980.

It is this huge gender gap — between men and women’s achievements in fundamental categories of rights — that places Malaysia in the bottom half of the economic participation and opportunity index, in the 2006 Global Gender Gap Report produced by the World Economic Forum.

Malaysia is ranked 68 out of 115 countries. (FLFP measures the percentage of women in the working age population, 15-64 years, who are either employed, whether full-time or part-time, or are unemployed).
In terms of political empowerment, Malaysia is ranked at 90. Only 25 countries are worse than Malaysia in the disparity between men and women in this index.

This is not surprising when only 9.6 per cent of our members of parliament are women, and only 6.9 per cent of state assembly members are women. It is only among appointed senators that the figures rise to a respectable 33.3 per cent.

The obvious question that comes to mind is what is happening to all those thousands of girls who are outperforming boys in schools and universities for the past several years?

Very often, when feminists complain about gender discrimination, men point to women outnumbering men in the universities to dismiss our complaints — as if this one area where women do better translates into women’s dominance in society.

That we have progressed far since independence is laudable. But the challenge now is to close the gender gap as this discrimination against women means lost talent, productivity, and individual and family wellbeing.

The 2007 Economic and Social Survey by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) estimated that the Asia Pacific region is losing US$42-47 billion (RM142-RM159 billion) a year because of restrictions on women’s access to employment opportunities.

If we were to add the uncalculated social and personal costs to this economic cost, we could imagine the huge loss of potential for growth and wellbeing caused by continuing gender discrimination.

In fact, the Escap survey did a simulation study which showed that if Malaysia’s FLFP rate were increased to the United States’ level of 86 per cent (the highest among OECD countries), then Malaysia’s GDP would grow by 2.88 per cent and its growth rate would rise by 0.77 per cent.

The Malaysian report produced by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), recognises that action needs to be taken to reduce these inequalities between men and women.

Some policy instruments identified in the Ninth Malaysia Plan include more flexible working arrangements, community childcare and nursery centres, and retraining opportunities to boost women’s labour force participation.

The Cabinet Committee on Gender Equality has agreed to fulfil its international obligations to appoint 30 per cent women in decision-making positions. The Ministry of Women, Community and Family Development and the UNDP have recruited a team of researchers to work out the plan of action and timeline.

A major reason why Malaysian women’s labour force participation and political empowerment remain so low compared to their level of health survival and educational attainment is because neither government nor society has dealt effectively or adequately with the changing roles of women today.

When work and family conflict, more often than not, it is women who leave the labour pool as they feel more pressured to conform to the traditional gender role as the home-maker and principal care giver. This affects not just married women with young children, but may also affect single women who are expected to take care of ageing and sick parents.

So women opt out of the labour force, decline promotions, refuse overtime, choose less demanding career paths, feel anxious, guilty or depressed for perceived failures in fulfilling their traditional gender roles, thus perpetuating those roles even further and disadvantaging themselves in the marketplace.

They are marginalised, taken less seriously by their employers and discriminated against in terms of employment and promotions because of their “mummy-track”.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the Malaysian Gender Gap Index report pointed out that out of five levels of education, female marginal gross returns on income for three levels, i.e. from no certificate to lower secondary, from lower secondary to upper secondary, and from upper secondary to pre-university, are higher than those for males; but female marginal returns from the highest level of education — from pre-university to tertiary — are lower than male, even though the gender gap there favours women.

If Malaysia intends to achieve its developed country status by 2020, then government and society must move fast to deal with changing gender roles to harness the full potential of its human resources.

In her book, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It, Joan Williams calls for the deconstruction of the “ideal worker norm”. She says good jobs typically assume an ideal worker is willing and able to work for 40 years straight, taking no time off for childbearing or childrearing.

This ideal, she says, is framed around men’s bodies — for they need no time off for childbirth — and men’s life patterns, for American women still do 80 per cent of the childcare.

Most women simply cannot fulfil this role of the ideal worker as it conflicts with society’s expectations of the ideal mother.

Something’s got to give because it is no longer sustainable that “an ideal worker is defined as someone who takes no time off for care giving, discriminates against women and creates a system that hurts men and children as well”, states Professor Williams who is co-director of the Gender, Work & Family Project at American University, in Washington DC.

She suggests proportional pay, proportional benefits and proportional advancement for part-time work. But too often, “family friendly” policies adopted by companies offer flexibility at the price of marginalisation. Staff who choose such policies tend to lose out on benefits and promotions.

Numerous other studies have been done on the role of social support in reducing work-family conflict for men and women, with specific emphasis on spousal and organisational support. This research shows the higher the level of support, the higher the satisfaction with marital, parental and work relationships.

Spousal support includes both emotional support (emphatic understanding, listening, affection, advice, and genuine concern for the welfare of the partner) and instrumental support where the partner provides tangible help in household chores and childcare.

In cultures with low gender egalitarianism, spousal support is even more important to reduce levels of work-family conflict for the woman who is perpetually guilt-ridden and frazzled in trying to balance the competing demands of work and family.

So where do we find these gender sensitive men who will pull up their sleeves and cook dinner, scrub the bathroom, bathe the kids and listen to your complaints about your boss and your slacker colleagues and do not make you feel like you should just quit your job so that you could at least be happy in one sphere of life … or so you think. You tell me.

And how many Malaysian bosses, companies and government agencies are instituting polices to help the employee to balance work and family responsibilities?

Most think it is not their responsibility, as they believe work life is separate from family life. Well, in the global competition for talent, they’d better begin to think otherwise.

The literature on organisational support to balance work and family includes the importance of supervisory support, policies and practices to reduce work-family conflict, and organisational time expectations that may interfere with family responsibilities.

Thus, managers who are sympathetic to women’s needs to take care of family members, organisations that provide services and allowances such as flexitime, job sharing, and childcare facilities designed to help employees to make arrangements to balance their work and family responsibilities go a long way in keeping women in the labour force.

When men do not have to choose between family and work and women must make that choice, then that is a society that discriminates.

What we need to do is to find ways to enable both men and women to enjoy a rewarding career as well as a rewarding family life.

New Straits Times, Friday, 27 April 2007

Zainah Anwar on Friday
Don’t let his ideas die with him

His friends, colleagues, former students and his son spoke on the contributions of this towering intellectual in his writings on colonialism, modernisation, development, corruption, religion, the role of intellectuals, leadership and the elite.

It was the measure of the man that among those who spoke about what he meant to them were some of the most prominent social and political commentators on Malaysia.

There was Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, the former director of Atma, Professor Clive Kessler, the Australian expert on Malaysian politics and Islam and Emeritus Professor at University of New South Wales, Dr Chandra Muzafar, the country’s leading public intellectual, Dr Syed Husin Ali, the professor turned indefatigable politician, and of course Dr Syed Farid, the son who followed his father’s footsteps into academia, teaching sociology at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

For Shamsul, Syed Hussein was the scholar who introduced analytical tools to deconstruct dominant ideas and myths which enabled colonial exploitation of Third World societies.
He gave us basic concepts such as the “captive mind”, the “myth of the lazy native” and “psychological feudalism”.

For Chandra, Syed Hussein was instrumental in his journey to Islam.

It was the professor who exposed his student at NUS to an intellectual dimension of Islam that represented what he was looking for — a worldview of tauhid (divine unity of God) and commitment to social justice that transcended ethnic, cultural and religious boundaries.

The works of Ibn Sina, Ibn Khaldun, al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Muhammad Iqbal opened a new world of Islam that he felt comfortable with and drew him to a decision to become a Muslim.

For Syed Farid, what was important were the principles and the vision that his father stood for.

His deep concerns about the absence of a visible, vocal intelligentsia in Malaysia that would provide intellectual leadership in the public square, the impact of religious extremism, blind imitation, lack of autonomy and depth in thinking, corruption, and leadership in politics, bureaucracy and academia that is devoid of character, decency and morality (akhlak dan kesusilaan) continued to occupy him to the end of his life.

For Kessler, it was bebalisma, yet another concept that Syed Hussein introduced, that he so deplored and pilloried, that remains magnificently resonant today.

To Syed Hussein, bebalisma meant not just stupidity, but implied narrow-mindedness, mindlessness and stubbornness. It is not stupidity of the natural kind, but wilful stupidity that is cultivated, rewarded and socially reproduced.

It is the bebalisma of those who reach positions of leadership in developing societies, due to anything but intellect, wisdom, ability and character.

This, to Syed Hussein, represented the tragedy of the distorted social and economic development of Southeast Asia and the developing world.

Syed Farid spoke of his father’s worries on the dangers of a developing society like ours where the worlds of bureaucracy, politics and aca-demia are permeated by bebalisma, controlled by orang bebal, fools who can neither think, analyse nor solve problems and, worse still, who will not admit their ignorance and, worst, surrounded and applauded by those who perpetuate their ignorance.

For me, it was overwhelming to listen to all the speeches that day as I realised how much we as a society have ignored Syed Hussein’s insights that would have enabled us to understand better what is wrong with our society today and what and how it needs to be put right.

My last conversation with him was over a year ago when we had lengthy telephone discussions over the discriminatory amendments to the Islamic Family Law.

In 1979, he lamented in his little known book, Kita Dengan Islam, Tumbuh Tiada Berbuah, of “old-style Muslims who simply cannot and will not accept the intellectual advances of our times, who refuse to open the gates of ijtihad and remove the barriers to independent critical thought and reasoning, who cannot or choose not to offer clear and precise explanations of the things they discuss, who adamantly resist freeing themselves from the shackles of archaic thinking and outmoded forms of thought.

“What do they do, what are they ready to undertake? Only to wail as loudly as they can, until they are drenched in their own tears, that we must all go back to the Quran and Hadith, that we must implement the syariah, that we must all intensify our faith — and that we must honour and defer to the opinions of bygone times.

“What these kind of people don’t understand is that these are the objectives of all of us, not just theirs alone. Every historically conscious Muslim today is aware of this urgent need for genuinely deep thinking, a new “mindset” based upon modern knowledge and sensitive to the demands of contemporary life.

“A return to the Quran? No problem; we can all agree on that, but by what route?

“To the Hadith? Again, no quarrel here, but which hadith?

“Implementing the syariah? Yes, but what do we mean by syariah, and by means of what kinds of laws, on what formal legal basis?”

The questions that he asked, and the answers that he provided, were his means to counter, fight and overcome bebalisma.

It is, as Kessler said, Syed Hussein’s unceasing recourse to intellectual clarity, independence and openness that we need to emulate today, to develop a culture of thinking and analysing to enable us to understand the problems and challenges of our times and find the solutions.

As I listened to Kessler read this extract from Syed Hussein’s book, I was reminded of the similarly scathing writings of Syed Shaykh al-Hady and the kaum muda in the 1920s and 1930s who believed in the necessity of reform in Islamic thinking, that brought them into conflict with the kaum tua, the official religious authority and the ulama of rural Malaya.

In articles in the kaum muda journal, al-Ikhwan, Syed Shaykh al-Hady wrote derisively of the ignorance and stupidity that surrounds the “hawkers of religion” that has kept Muslims, men and women, defeated in the battle of life.

To the ulama, “to study the words of Allah and His Prophet is to commit a wrong for it would indicate a lack of trust in the words of the ulama and thus would we have strayed beyond the pale of Islam!” lamented Syed Shaykh in a 1930 article on the dispute between the kaum muda and kaum tua.

For the members of kaum muda, a prerequisite to reform in Islamic thinking to end the backwardness of the Malays and Muslims must be man’s use of his God-given reason (aql) to arrive at the truth and to abandon the traditional belief in blind imitation (taqlid) of the words of the ulama and their old law books as if those texts constituted the Quran.

Syed Shaykh feared that the young would equate Islam with backwardness and turn their backs on the religion (as did happen in post-colonial Muslim states).

But Syed Hussein, some 50 years later, predicted that the failure of the kaum tua style of archaic thinking, and later a politicised, punitive and misogynistic resurgent Islam, would lead to a new generation of modern Muslims capable of giving direction to Islam in modern times only by grounding their thinking in modern ideas and knowledge.

For me, as a Muslim feminist living in the 21st century, Syed Hussein’s message on the need to ground our understanding of Islam today in contemporary realities and ideas, gives me hope.

For Islam to remain meaningful for us in the modern world, equality between men and women as a dominant ethical principle must be inherent in the meaning of justice in Islam today.

If Islamism as an alternative to Western isms is to provide hope for something better, then the proof of the pudding must be in the eating.

But this can only happen if the culture of bebalisma that permeates our society unravels fast.

For Malaysians, Syed Hussein’s life’s work was actually a journey that he wished for us to take with him to understand ourselves better and improve ourselves.

But alas, so few of us have taken that path. The legacy of this towering man cannot be forgotten with his death. We will all be the loser if we allow his ideas to die with him.