POINTTOTHNIK
Monday, October 30, 2006
Zainah Anwar’s Hate Ideology: Desecularization or DeIslamization, or Both?
29/10 MALAYSIA TODAY: Marzuki Mohamad
In a blow by blow narration of supposedly Islamist’s face-off with religious pluralism and modern liberalism, Zainah Anwar eloquently advances her “hate ideology” thesis. Her narrative is simple, and yet pretty convincing. She begins by highlighting the symptoms of what she believes as Malaysian Muslim’s growing intolerance toward religious pluralism and modern liberalism. The symptoms enlisted in her article, “Hate Ideology a Threat to National Unity”, appeared in her Friday column in the New Straits Times (20/10/2006), are death threats to a lawyer who champions Muslim’s right to convert, a fatwa by ulama’ advising Muslims against participating in kongsi raya celebrations, Muslims’ fierce reaction toward Article 11 initiative for freedom of, in and from religion, and a directive by Takaful’s head of Shari’ah department prohibiting the insurance company’s staff from sending out Deepavali greetings.
Assuming that such intolerant attitudes were absent in the past, she blames a host of Islamist organizations for their role in overly asserting Muslim’s religious identity, and in that process, disseminate what she calls a hate ideology. This, which she aptly argues, is a serious threat to national unity. She singles out these organizations as Badan Anti-IFC (Anti-IFC Organization, BADAI), Pertubuhan-Pertubuhan Pembela Islam (Organizations of Defenders of Islam, PEMBELA), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam, PPI), Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF), Allied Coordination Council of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad (Action Front Against Apostasy, FORKAD) and Mothers Against Apostasy. These Islamist organizations, Zainah believes, are out to create a new Shari’ah-based social contract, replacing the existing secular one, upon which the distinct cultural and religious groups within Malaysia’s plural society lay the basis for national unity. The crux of her argument is that the existing social, legal and political order is essentially secular; national unity is based on continued existence of such secular order; and the Islamist’s crusade against such an order is a serious threat to national unity.
Clive Kessler’s recent posting in Asian Analysis, an online newsletter jointly published by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University and the Asean Focus Group (http://www.aseanfocus.com/asiananalysis/latest.cfm?#a989), seems to lend credence to Zainah’s argument. Professor Kessler argues in his short article, The Long March Towards Desecularisation, that Malaysia’s progressivist political phase has now come to an end. In its place now is a new Islamist political force, which “has not merely come of age but moves towards and is now capturing the centre of Malaysian political life”. Like Zainah, Kessler also argues that the existing social, political and legal order is essentially secular, and the new Islamist force is out to desecularize it. He traces the seeds of such movement for desecularization up to the days of contentious Malay politics in the post-independence era, during which “Islamist policy auction” between the Islamist party PAS and the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO had driven the state to instituting an overarching Islamization policy. Ever since, there has been escalating contest for Islamic legitimacy between the two parties and, in that process, reversed “the implicit secularisation of Malaysian life and the state that the 1957 constitution set in train and intended implicitly to promote”.
While Kessler finally predicts “the return, at the head of the 'new generation Islamist forces', of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the centre of Malaysian politics”, however incongruent it might be, Zainah on the other hand offers a stereotype understanding of Islam and Islamist organization as heavily orthodox in orientation and totally anti-modern and anti-secular in practice. Unfortunately, by lumping Islamist organizations of all persuasions together, Zainah misses the finer points of Islamist engagement in civil society and acceptance of modern constitutionalism in her picture of the Islamists. The Islamist’s struggle for political, social and economic reform; incessant call for repeal of repressive laws and restoration of judicial independence; involvement in charity and humanitarian relief work; respect for the rights of the non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace and harmony; and acceptance of the Federal Constitution, which is neither completely secular nor fully Islamic, as the supreme law of the land are all missing in Zainah’s depiction of the Islamists.
Zainah also disregards the fact that the more moderate and progressive elements among the Islamists she demonizes have been working very closely with secular civil society actors in a number of significant civil society initiatives such as the anti-ISA movement, campaign for electoral reform, crusade against the University and University Colleges Act, and more recently, protest against the unfair terms of the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. By accusing those opposing Article 11 coalition of rejecting the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, she obviously fails to direct her mind to PEMBELA’s latest memorandum to the Council of Rulers and the Prime Minister on the special position of Islam, which states very clearly the Islamists’ commitment to the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law, while reaffirming the cultural terms of the 1957 constitutional contract which guarantees special constitutional position for Islam. Failure to consider these salient facts about Islamist’s engagement in civil society and respect for modern constitutionalism cast serious doubt to the validity of the whole of Zainah’s argument.
What Zainah’s “hate ideology” seems to be suggesting is, by highlighting the most extreme elements within the Muslim society, as well as some fringe perspectives which do not in any way reflect the mainstream views, that Malaysian Muslims are growing intolerant and extreme in their approach to religious pluralism and modern liberalism. If numbers do not fail us, recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shows that this assumption erred. 97 percent of Muslims surveyed say that living alongside people of other religions is acceptable, though 70 percent identify themselves as Muslim first rather than Malay or Malaysian first. While 98 percent believe that apostasy is wrong, 64 percent want the Shari’ah laws to remain as it is under the modern Constitution. 73 percent think that Malaysia is an Islamic state, but 74 percent reject the Iranian model of theocracy. This shows that although majority of Malaysian Muslims are assertive about their religious identity, they are at the same time tolerant to multiculturalism and modern constitutionalism.
Yet there is another mind boggling conjecture that Zainah believes is the root cause of religious extremism among Malaysian Muslims. Obviously, according to Zainah, it is Islamist organizations’ recent campaign against the so-called Liberal Islam that contributes to alarming religious extremism among Muslims as indicated by the Deepavali greetings saga. But Zainah misses one salient point that the Islamist’s campaign itself is a response to a larger socio political transformation that Zainah herself knows very well.
This socio-political transformation relates to the development in the economic and political spheres. After decades of rapid economic development, massive urbanization, upward social mobility across ethnic groups, and expanding multiracial middle classes, there has been greater valorization of the virtues of democracy and human rights among the multiracial and multi-religious Malaysian public. Up to the 1990s, it is not uncommon to find conventional secular human rights groups to form alliances with Islamic groups in their struggle for greater democratic space, repeal of repressive laws, independence of judiciary, sustainable development, etc. Both Islamic and secular human rights groups find commonality in their goal to dismantle state authoritarianism and promote social justice.
But of late, a new variant of human rights struggle has emerged. Rather than targeting state authoritarianism, this new struggle debunks a particular social construct which its proponents view as unliberating. This includes social practices and mores that lay emphasis on patriarchal traditional values, moral vigilantanism and religious strictures. It seems that this new variant of human rights struggle, perhaps, find affinity with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) libertarian struggle in the West, rather than the anti-apartheid movement for liberation in South Africa. Not surprisingly, the main targets of the new variant of human rights activists have been Islamic religious strictures and its moral code. Campaigns against Islamic and municipal moral laws, Muslim polygamous marriage, state clampdown on deviant teachings, and until recently, prohibition against Muslims to convert are manifestations of this new variant of human rights struggle.
At the heart of this new struggle is a particular notion that the Muslim society needs to be transformed into a fully secular society along the same trajectory that the Christian West had experienced in the past. They need to be able to divorce their religious and moral worldviews from public life. They must also accept the primacy of individuals over the family, the community and the state when it comes to matters of personal faith. What should be the (dis)order of the day is a complete freedom of, in and from religion. In other words, the Muslims must undergo a thorough de-Islamization process before a complete secular life can be set in motion. What appears to be a conventional human rights struggle for individual freedom is indeed a larger cause for complete “Secularization of Islamic Society”. So far, there have been alignment and realignment of positions and alliances between and among the new human rights groups, state sections, international foundations and broader civil society actors in this larger pursuit of secularization.
Looking from this angle, Kessler’s “The Long March Towards Desecularization”, on which Zainah heavily relies in advancing her “hate ideology” thesis, does not tell the complete story of the contest for moral, legal and political authority in Malaysia. It is a story half told. Alongside the long march toward desecularization, there has also been a similar march toward de-Islamization, to which various sections within the Islamist forces are now responding, some are quite moderate and some others are even more extreme in their reactions. The more extreme the de-Islamization forces attempt to bulldoze its secular worldview into the religious fabric of the assertive Muslim society, the more extreme the reaction is from within the Islamist forces. In short, the de-Islamization forces have also had an equal share in triggering religious extremism within the Muslim society.
Given the contest between the two forces has become more acute lately, and the significant impact it bears on Muslim’s as well as non-Muslim’s perspective about politics and society, the government has so far been juggling between the two poles of Islamic conservatism and modern liberalism in making policy pronouncements. While it shot down the liberals’ proposal to form an interfaith commission, the government also reprimanded the conservative Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department for setting up a group of moral vigilantes which was tasked to hunt down moral criminals. It seems that the UMNO and PAS’s contest for Malay votes is no longer the sole determinant of the depth and breadth of government’s Islamization policies. The need to respond to the new de-Islamization forces, the attendant non-Muslim’s sentiments and the international exposes compels the government to be more cautious in dealing with its official policy on Islam. So far, the pattern of government’s responses to the contest has been like a pendulum swing - sometimes to the right (Islamic conservatism) and sometimes to the left (modern liberalism) and then back again, rather than a constant movement in any one direction.
While the divisive tendency of the current Islamic debate continues to gaining steam, it is worth the while of the actors of the debate to sit back and do some sort of soul searching. It is true that both sides of the political spectrum have moved to the far end of each side, widening the gap between the two, and leaving the middle ground seemingly out of everyone’s reach. But as we live in a deeply multi-religious society, where the divisive tendency, once unleashed, can be highly uncontrolled and potentially devastating, it is not too late for everyone to move back to the middle and try to reach out to each other again. It is high time for everyone to once again champion the middle ground.
MARZUKI MOHAMAD (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is also a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).a
¶ 8:08 PM 0 comments
In a blow by blow narration of supposedly Islamist’s face-off with religious pluralism and modern liberalism, Zainah Anwar eloquently advances her “hate ideology” thesis. Her narrative is simple, and yet pretty convincing. She begins by highlighting the symptoms of what she believes as Malaysian Muslim’s growing intolerance toward religious pluralism and modern liberalism. The symptoms enlisted in her article, “Hate Ideology a Threat to National Unity”, appeared in her Friday column in the New Straits Times (20/10/2006), are death threats to a lawyer who champions Muslim’s right to convert, a fatwa by ulama’ advising Muslims against participating in kongsi raya celebrations, Muslims’ fierce reaction toward Article 11 initiative for freedom of, in and from religion, and a directive by Takaful’s head of Shari’ah department prohibiting the insurance company’s staff from sending out Deepavali greetings.
Assuming that such intolerant attitudes were absent in the past, she blames a host of Islamist organizations for their role in overly asserting Muslim’s religious identity, and in that process, disseminate what she calls a hate ideology. This, which she aptly argues, is a serious threat to national unity. She singles out these organizations as Badan Anti-IFC (Anti-IFC Organization, BADAI), Pertubuhan-Pertubuhan Pembela Islam (Organizations of Defenders of Islam, PEMBELA), Peguam Pembela Islam (Lawyers Defending Islam, PPI), Muslim Professionals Forum (MPF), Allied Coordination Council of Islamic NGOs (ACCIN), Front Bertindak Anti-Murtad (Action Front Against Apostasy, FORKAD) and Mothers Against Apostasy. These Islamist organizations, Zainah believes, are out to create a new Shari’ah-based social contract, replacing the existing secular one, upon which the distinct cultural and religious groups within Malaysia’s plural society lay the basis for national unity. The crux of her argument is that the existing social, legal and political order is essentially secular; national unity is based on continued existence of such secular order; and the Islamist’s crusade against such an order is a serious threat to national unity.
Clive Kessler’s recent posting in Asian Analysis, an online newsletter jointly published by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University and the Asean Focus Group (http://www.aseanfocus.com/asiananalysis/latest.cfm?#a989), seems to lend credence to Zainah’s argument. Professor Kessler argues in his short article, The Long March Towards Desecularisation, that Malaysia’s progressivist political phase has now come to an end. In its place now is a new Islamist political force, which “has not merely come of age but moves towards and is now capturing the centre of Malaysian political life”. Like Zainah, Kessler also argues that the existing social, political and legal order is essentially secular, and the new Islamist force is out to desecularize it. He traces the seeds of such movement for desecularization up to the days of contentious Malay politics in the post-independence era, during which “Islamist policy auction” between the Islamist party PAS and the ruling Malay nationalist party UMNO had driven the state to instituting an overarching Islamization policy. Ever since, there has been escalating contest for Islamic legitimacy between the two parties and, in that process, reversed “the implicit secularisation of Malaysian life and the state that the 1957 constitution set in train and intended implicitly to promote”.
While Kessler finally predicts “the return, at the head of the 'new generation Islamist forces', of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the centre of Malaysian politics”, however incongruent it might be, Zainah on the other hand offers a stereotype understanding of Islam and Islamist organization as heavily orthodox in orientation and totally anti-modern and anti-secular in practice. Unfortunately, by lumping Islamist organizations of all persuasions together, Zainah misses the finer points of Islamist engagement in civil society and acceptance of modern constitutionalism in her picture of the Islamists. The Islamist’s struggle for political, social and economic reform; incessant call for repeal of repressive laws and restoration of judicial independence; involvement in charity and humanitarian relief work; respect for the rights of the non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace and harmony; and acceptance of the Federal Constitution, which is neither completely secular nor fully Islamic, as the supreme law of the land are all missing in Zainah’s depiction of the Islamists.
Zainah also disregards the fact that the more moderate and progressive elements among the Islamists she demonizes have been working very closely with secular civil society actors in a number of significant civil society initiatives such as the anti-ISA movement, campaign for electoral reform, crusade against the University and University Colleges Act, and more recently, protest against the unfair terms of the proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States. By accusing those opposing Article 11 coalition of rejecting the supremacy of the Federal Constitution, she obviously fails to direct her mind to PEMBELA’s latest memorandum to the Council of Rulers and the Prime Minister on the special position of Islam, which states very clearly the Islamists’ commitment to the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law, while reaffirming the cultural terms of the 1957 constitutional contract which guarantees special constitutional position for Islam. Failure to consider these salient facts about Islamist’s engagement in civil society and respect for modern constitutionalism cast serious doubt to the validity of the whole of Zainah’s argument.
What Zainah’s “hate ideology” seems to be suggesting is, by highlighting the most extreme elements within the Muslim society, as well as some fringe perspectives which do not in any way reflect the mainstream views, that Malaysian Muslims are growing intolerant and extreme in their approach to religious pluralism and modern liberalism. If numbers do not fail us, recent survey by the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research shows that this assumption erred. 97 percent of Muslims surveyed say that living alongside people of other religions is acceptable, though 70 percent identify themselves as Muslim first rather than Malay or Malaysian first. While 98 percent believe that apostasy is wrong, 64 percent want the Shari’ah laws to remain as it is under the modern Constitution. 73 percent think that Malaysia is an Islamic state, but 74 percent reject the Iranian model of theocracy. This shows that although majority of Malaysian Muslims are assertive about their religious identity, they are at the same time tolerant to multiculturalism and modern constitutionalism.
Yet there is another mind boggling conjecture that Zainah believes is the root cause of religious extremism among Malaysian Muslims. Obviously, according to Zainah, it is Islamist organizations’ recent campaign against the so-called Liberal Islam that contributes to alarming religious extremism among Muslims as indicated by the Deepavali greetings saga. But Zainah misses one salient point that the Islamist’s campaign itself is a response to a larger socio political transformation that Zainah herself knows very well.
This socio-political transformation relates to the development in the economic and political spheres. After decades of rapid economic development, massive urbanization, upward social mobility across ethnic groups, and expanding multiracial middle classes, there has been greater valorization of the virtues of democracy and human rights among the multiracial and multi-religious Malaysian public. Up to the 1990s, it is not uncommon to find conventional secular human rights groups to form alliances with Islamic groups in their struggle for greater democratic space, repeal of repressive laws, independence of judiciary, sustainable development, etc. Both Islamic and secular human rights groups find commonality in their goal to dismantle state authoritarianism and promote social justice.
But of late, a new variant of human rights struggle has emerged. Rather than targeting state authoritarianism, this new struggle debunks a particular social construct which its proponents view as unliberating. This includes social practices and mores that lay emphasis on patriarchal traditional values, moral vigilantanism and religious strictures. It seems that this new variant of human rights struggle, perhaps, find affinity with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) libertarian struggle in the West, rather than the anti-apartheid movement for liberation in South Africa. Not surprisingly, the main targets of the new variant of human rights activists have been Islamic religious strictures and its moral code. Campaigns against Islamic and municipal moral laws, Muslim polygamous marriage, state clampdown on deviant teachings, and until recently, prohibition against Muslims to convert are manifestations of this new variant of human rights struggle.
At the heart of this new struggle is a particular notion that the Muslim society needs to be transformed into a fully secular society along the same trajectory that the Christian West had experienced in the past. They need to be able to divorce their religious and moral worldviews from public life. They must also accept the primacy of individuals over the family, the community and the state when it comes to matters of personal faith. What should be the (dis)order of the day is a complete freedom of, in and from religion. In other words, the Muslims must undergo a thorough de-Islamization process before a complete secular life can be set in motion. What appears to be a conventional human rights struggle for individual freedom is indeed a larger cause for complete “Secularization of Islamic Society”. So far, there have been alignment and realignment of positions and alliances between and among the new human rights groups, state sections, international foundations and broader civil society actors in this larger pursuit of secularization.
Looking from this angle, Kessler’s “The Long March Towards Desecularization”, on which Zainah heavily relies in advancing her “hate ideology” thesis, does not tell the complete story of the contest for moral, legal and political authority in Malaysia. It is a story half told. Alongside the long march toward desecularization, there has also been a similar march toward de-Islamization, to which various sections within the Islamist forces are now responding, some are quite moderate and some others are even more extreme in their reactions. The more extreme the de-Islamization forces attempt to bulldoze its secular worldview into the religious fabric of the assertive Muslim society, the more extreme the reaction is from within the Islamist forces. In short, the de-Islamization forces have also had an equal share in triggering religious extremism within the Muslim society.
Given the contest between the two forces has become more acute lately, and the significant impact it bears on Muslim’s as well as non-Muslim’s perspective about politics and society, the government has so far been juggling between the two poles of Islamic conservatism and modern liberalism in making policy pronouncements. While it shot down the liberals’ proposal to form an interfaith commission, the government also reprimanded the conservative Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department for setting up a group of moral vigilantes which was tasked to hunt down moral criminals. It seems that the UMNO and PAS’s contest for Malay votes is no longer the sole determinant of the depth and breadth of government’s Islamization policies. The need to respond to the new de-Islamization forces, the attendant non-Muslim’s sentiments and the international exposes compels the government to be more cautious in dealing with its official policy on Islam. So far, the pattern of government’s responses to the contest has been like a pendulum swing - sometimes to the right (Islamic conservatism) and sometimes to the left (modern liberalism) and then back again, rather than a constant movement in any one direction.
While the divisive tendency of the current Islamic debate continues to gaining steam, it is worth the while of the actors of the debate to sit back and do some sort of soul searching. It is true that both sides of the political spectrum have moved to the far end of each side, widening the gap between the two, and leaving the middle ground seemingly out of everyone’s reach. But as we live in a deeply multi-religious society, where the divisive tendency, once unleashed, can be highly uncontrolled and potentially devastating, it is not too late for everyone to move back to the middle and try to reach out to each other again. It is high time for everyone to once again champion the middle ground.
MARZUKI MOHAMAD (marzuki.mohamad@anu.edu.au) is a Research Scholar of Political Science at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. He is also a member of Central Executive Committee of Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM).a
Sunday, October 29, 2006
A Brief Overview of the Meaning of Love (Part 1)
Love can be either the most powerful motivation for growth or the most destructive force in your life -- it all depends on the kind of love you have embraced.
According to Rubin (1970), love has three components: (1) an affiliative and dependent need, (2) a predisposition to help, and (3) exclusiveness and absorption. Liking is more closely akin to friendship. In his research, Wong has found that liking can be negatively related to passionate love ; in other words, you may be madly in love with someone you dislike, because you mind tells you that he or she is "bad news", but your heart is still lovesick.
According to Tennov (1979), love is different from limerence. Love is mutual, and is characterized as a great affection and concern for the welfare of the beloved. Limerence, on the other hand, is passionate love gone wild. It begins with a spark of interest, and under appropriate conditions, can grow into enormous intensity. Limerence is a state of cognitive obsession, an unrealistic hope of reciprocation. Almost every trivial utterance or behavior on the part of the limerent object is misconstrued as a sign of love, which keeps the hope of reciprocation alive. A tiny bit of reciprocation, whether motivated by pity of vanity, will result in feelings of euphoria, which inevitably turn to despair and misery. However, limerence can grow into love, when it is completed fulfilled.
Peele and Brodsky (1975) also differentiate between addictive love and genuine love. Addictive love occurs when a person is totally absorbed in the love object in order to escape from an otherwise meaningless and unhappy existence. Such obsession distracts from a person's ability to pay attention to important aspects of his or her life. Prolonged separation or termination of the relationship can cause "withdrawal symptoms" similar to those of a drug addict.
Lee (1973) has developed a typology consisting of six types of love: (1) Eros, where the lovers search for someone with specific physical characteristics; (2) pragma, where potential love-objects are rationally considered; (3) agape, where the person loves without expectation of reciprocation; (4) ludus, where love is treated as agape; (5) storage, which is similar to compassionate love, and (6) mania, which is similar to addiction love, characterized by cognitive obsession as well as emotional peaks and valleys.
Lee (1973) describes manic lovers as extremely possessive and needy. Unless they become involved with another manic lover, they are likely to be very dissatisfied in their relationships, since no other style can tolerate their excessive possessiveness and intense insecurity.
Sternberg (1986) views love as a triangular structure, consisting of three components: intimacy, passion and decision/commitment. Various combinations of these components result in eight kinds of love: (1) nonlove (absence of the three components),(2) liking (intimacy in isolation), (3) infatuation (passion), (4) empty love (decision/commitment), (5) romantic love (passion and intimacy), (6) compassionate love (intimacy and decision/commitment), (7) fatuous love (passion and decision/commitment), and (8) consummate love (which includes all three components.)
"The above review of the literature indicates that researchers have not come to grips with the prevalence and important implications of unrequited love, which remains an under-researched area. The present conceptual and empirical analysis of unrequited love is part of a larger research program on its process and consequences. It remains a challenge for psychologists to incorporate the construct of unrequited love within the broader framework of intimate relationships.
The literature, music and films are replete with themes of forlorn love. Judging from newspaper advice columns, magazine articles and self-help books (i.e., Halpern, 1983; Phillips & Judd, 1978), the problem of unrequited love seems both serious and widespread. It is not surprising that popular interest in unrequited love has remained unabated, because more often than not people are not able to win the affection of the man or woman of their dream and suffer much as a result.
When one's love is not reciprocated, a host of negative reactions might follow. In extreme cases, a person may be driven to attempt suicide in order to escape the pain. However, even in milder cases unrequited love causes pain and may interfere with a person's daily functioning. Unfortunately, such an important and common human experience has not been subjected to theoretical or empirical analysis. Part of the reason for this glaring gap in the absence of a valid instrument to quantity this experience. The present paper will introduce such an instrument after a conceptual analysis of the different kinds of unrequited love.
Unrequited love, as it is commonly known, involves situations in which one person passionately loves an unresponsive object. Tennov (1979) has provided numerous examples of forlorn love. Lee's (1973) manic lover and Hazan & Shaver's (1987) anxious ambivalent lover also fall into this category. Each of these describes an intense craving for intimacy, an irresistible cognitive obsession with the love object, and prolonged sufferings caused by rejection and jealousy. The driving force is not sexual gratification, but reciprocation of romantic interest and devotion. We refer to this type of obsessive love as the Classic unrequited love.
There is a second major type of unrequited love which involves a different kind of dynamics. Norwood (1985) wrote a book on women who 'love too much.' While she admits that this experience is not solely restricted to women, she believes it is more common in this sex, and therefore confines her analysis to females. These women constantly seek out unhappy relationships with men who are moody, bad-tempered, uncaring and abusive. The interesting finding is that in some cases once the man becomes reformed and begins to show love and kindness, the woman may 'dump' this man in favour of another destructive relationship. Apparently, these women are not interested in reciprocation.
Norwood believes that these women deliberately seek out unloving and self-destructive relationships, because their highly negative early family experiences have made them uncomfortable with any real intimacy. Such family situations include those in which at least one of the parents was uncaring, abusive and alcoholic. These women may attempt to relive these relationships in order to 'fix' whatever that was wrong in their early family life and to gain the love that was once denied them. Another driving force that operates in these women is their need to be needed. The feeling of being needed gives them a sense of self-worth. Therefore, they prefer unequal relationships in which they play the role of willing martyrs. This type of unrequited love is referred to as co-dependent unrequited love, because it has many of the same characteristics of co-dependency in the field of alcoholic addiction (Cermak, 1986; Schaef, 1986).
Co-dependency is a term used to describe those people whose lives are completely intertwined with a drug/alcohol addict, such as a spouse or lover. The co-dependent identifies with their love object to the extent of losing his/her own identity. The needs and problems of the addict are taken on by the co-dependents as their own. The co-dependents choose to get stuck in a painful relationship, because of their neurotic need to be needed and their own insecurity. Thus, unlike classic unrequited love where the ultimate goal is union, the goal of the co-dependent is the fulfillment of a need to be needed, no matter how unloving and painful the relationship is.
The third kind of unrequited love is less intense, and more common—hence the term minor unrequited love. This type is characterized by one's perception that one's partner does not reciprocate one's love to a similar degree. Minor unrequited love may be only a distorted perception or it may be an accurate portrayal of the situation. In either case, it may result in feelings of dissatisfaction and upset.
The practical implications of studying unrequited love are many. Because it is a negative and potentially destructive experience, psychopathology may develop. Even minor unrequited love may cause marital breakdown and may adversely affect other areas of the person's life. In any event, research on unrequited love will provide a better understanding of a major source of personal relationship difficulties and emotional distress."
¶ 11:20 PM 0 comments
According to Rubin (1970), love has three components: (1) an affiliative and dependent need, (2) a predisposition to help, and (3) exclusiveness and absorption. Liking is more closely akin to friendship. In his research, Wong has found that liking can be negatively related to passionate love ; in other words, you may be madly in love with someone you dislike, because you mind tells you that he or she is "bad news", but your heart is still lovesick.
According to Tennov (1979), love is different from limerence. Love is mutual, and is characterized as a great affection and concern for the welfare of the beloved. Limerence, on the other hand, is passionate love gone wild. It begins with a spark of interest, and under appropriate conditions, can grow into enormous intensity. Limerence is a state of cognitive obsession, an unrealistic hope of reciprocation. Almost every trivial utterance or behavior on the part of the limerent object is misconstrued as a sign of love, which keeps the hope of reciprocation alive. A tiny bit of reciprocation, whether motivated by pity of vanity, will result in feelings of euphoria, which inevitably turn to despair and misery. However, limerence can grow into love, when it is completed fulfilled.
Peele and Brodsky (1975) also differentiate between addictive love and genuine love. Addictive love occurs when a person is totally absorbed in the love object in order to escape from an otherwise meaningless and unhappy existence. Such obsession distracts from a person's ability to pay attention to important aspects of his or her life. Prolonged separation or termination of the relationship can cause "withdrawal symptoms" similar to those of a drug addict.
Lee (1973) has developed a typology consisting of six types of love: (1) Eros, where the lovers search for someone with specific physical characteristics; (2) pragma, where potential love-objects are rationally considered; (3) agape, where the person loves without expectation of reciprocation; (4) ludus, where love is treated as agape; (5) storage, which is similar to compassionate love, and (6) mania, which is similar to addiction love, characterized by cognitive obsession as well as emotional peaks and valleys.
Lee (1973) describes manic lovers as extremely possessive and needy. Unless they become involved with another manic lover, they are likely to be very dissatisfied in their relationships, since no other style can tolerate their excessive possessiveness and intense insecurity.
Sternberg (1986) views love as a triangular structure, consisting of three components: intimacy, passion and decision/commitment. Various combinations of these components result in eight kinds of love: (1) nonlove (absence of the three components),(2) liking (intimacy in isolation), (3) infatuation (passion), (4) empty love (decision/commitment), (5) romantic love (passion and intimacy), (6) compassionate love (intimacy and decision/commitment), (7) fatuous love (passion and decision/commitment), and (8) consummate love (which includes all three components.)
"The above review of the literature indicates that researchers have not come to grips with the prevalence and important implications of unrequited love, which remains an under-researched area. The present conceptual and empirical analysis of unrequited love is part of a larger research program on its process and consequences. It remains a challenge for psychologists to incorporate the construct of unrequited love within the broader framework of intimate relationships.
The literature, music and films are replete with themes of forlorn love. Judging from newspaper advice columns, magazine articles and self-help books (i.e., Halpern, 1983; Phillips & Judd, 1978), the problem of unrequited love seems both serious and widespread. It is not surprising that popular interest in unrequited love has remained unabated, because more often than not people are not able to win the affection of the man or woman of their dream and suffer much as a result.
When one's love is not reciprocated, a host of negative reactions might follow. In extreme cases, a person may be driven to attempt suicide in order to escape the pain. However, even in milder cases unrequited love causes pain and may interfere with a person's daily functioning. Unfortunately, such an important and common human experience has not been subjected to theoretical or empirical analysis. Part of the reason for this glaring gap in the absence of a valid instrument to quantity this experience. The present paper will introduce such an instrument after a conceptual analysis of the different kinds of unrequited love.
Unrequited love, as it is commonly known, involves situations in which one person passionately loves an unresponsive object. Tennov (1979) has provided numerous examples of forlorn love. Lee's (1973) manic lover and Hazan & Shaver's (1987) anxious ambivalent lover also fall into this category. Each of these describes an intense craving for intimacy, an irresistible cognitive obsession with the love object, and prolonged sufferings caused by rejection and jealousy. The driving force is not sexual gratification, but reciprocation of romantic interest and devotion. We refer to this type of obsessive love as the Classic unrequited love.
There is a second major type of unrequited love which involves a different kind of dynamics. Norwood (1985) wrote a book on women who 'love too much.' While she admits that this experience is not solely restricted to women, she believes it is more common in this sex, and therefore confines her analysis to females. These women constantly seek out unhappy relationships with men who are moody, bad-tempered, uncaring and abusive. The interesting finding is that in some cases once the man becomes reformed and begins to show love and kindness, the woman may 'dump' this man in favour of another destructive relationship. Apparently, these women are not interested in reciprocation.
Norwood believes that these women deliberately seek out unloving and self-destructive relationships, because their highly negative early family experiences have made them uncomfortable with any real intimacy. Such family situations include those in which at least one of the parents was uncaring, abusive and alcoholic. These women may attempt to relive these relationships in order to 'fix' whatever that was wrong in their early family life and to gain the love that was once denied them. Another driving force that operates in these women is their need to be needed. The feeling of being needed gives them a sense of self-worth. Therefore, they prefer unequal relationships in which they play the role of willing martyrs. This type of unrequited love is referred to as co-dependent unrequited love, because it has many of the same characteristics of co-dependency in the field of alcoholic addiction (Cermak, 1986; Schaef, 1986).
Co-dependency is a term used to describe those people whose lives are completely intertwined with a drug/alcohol addict, such as a spouse or lover. The co-dependent identifies with their love object to the extent of losing his/her own identity. The needs and problems of the addict are taken on by the co-dependents as their own. The co-dependents choose to get stuck in a painful relationship, because of their neurotic need to be needed and their own insecurity. Thus, unlike classic unrequited love where the ultimate goal is union, the goal of the co-dependent is the fulfillment of a need to be needed, no matter how unloving and painful the relationship is.
The third kind of unrequited love is less intense, and more common—hence the term minor unrequited love. This type is characterized by one's perception that one's partner does not reciprocate one's love to a similar degree. Minor unrequited love may be only a distorted perception or it may be an accurate portrayal of the situation. In either case, it may result in feelings of dissatisfaction and upset.
The practical implications of studying unrequited love are many. Because it is a negative and potentially destructive experience, psychopathology may develop. Even minor unrequited love may cause marital breakdown and may adversely affect other areas of the person's life. In any event, research on unrequited love will provide a better understanding of a major source of personal relationship difficulties and emotional distress."
Thursday, October 19, 2006
The Charade Of Meritocracy
Scholars not only lead the Administrative Service, but also the military�s officer corps, as well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software for the entity commonly known as �Singapore Inc.��a labyrinth of GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60% of Singapore�s economy.
The basis of the scholars� mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but also the integrity of the process that selected them. The educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore�s schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3 and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools and junior colleges, before vying for government and government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious universities around the world.
These scholarships typically require several years of government service after graduation, and the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role, if they are acknowledged as factors at all.
On the point of race, the Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese majority.
But this system conceals several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi� and I present evidence that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore�s system of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore�s administrative and its political elites�especially the younger ones who have come through school in the last 20 or so years�are not the cream of Singapore�s talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration based on gender, class and race.
At the peak of the system is the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since independence in 1965, the technique of using government scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out of 14 members of Singapore�s cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.
By 1994, however, the situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14 cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh. By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these, five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.
The government scholarship system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve�the just reward for young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, �We are a multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. � And you must have meritocracy � so everybody feels it is fair�.� His father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in 1989, he told Singapore�s Malay community that they �must learn to compete with everyone else� in the education system.
Yet if Singapore�s meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert, then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the 1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early 2000s):
• Of the top 30 GLCs only two ( 6.7%) were chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 38 people who were represented on the most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 78 �core people� on statutory boards and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
A similar outcome is revealed in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore�s most prestigious scholarship, the President�s Scholarship, from 1966-2005 only 14 ( 6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President�s Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from 1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%. Since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been awarded to only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese President�s Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College), and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity, we find that since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).
If we consider Singapore�s second-ranked scholarship�the Ministry of Defence�s Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)�we find a comparable pattern. The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.
Although only indicative, this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes: 98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese). Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71 ( 25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%) Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese�though there was a Malay recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there have been others.
The position of the non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at least compared to the non-Chinese.
Yet the selection of scholars does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as recorded in one�s school record), �character� and performance in an interview are also considered. This makes the selection process much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.
Is there evidence that such biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is �yes.� Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement in the country�s main newspaper used to recruit applicants for scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a lowly �local� scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can be racially identified by their photographs or their names without any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.
¶ 8:27 PM 0 comments
By Michael D. Barr October 2006
The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies, leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite members of this hierarchy are �scholars,� which in Singapore parlance means they won competitive, bonded government scholarships�the established route into the country�s elite.
The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies, leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite members of this hierarchy are �scholars,� which in Singapore parlance means they won competitive, bonded government scholarships�the established route into the country�s elite.
Scholars not only lead the Administrative Service, but also the military�s officer corps, as well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software for the entity commonly known as �Singapore Inc.��a labyrinth of GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60% of Singapore�s economy.
The basis of the scholars� mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but also the integrity of the process that selected them. The educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore�s schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3 and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools and junior colleges, before vying for government and government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious universities around the world.
These scholarships typically require several years of government service after graduation, and the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role, if they are acknowledged as factors at all.
On the point of race, the Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese majority.
But this system conceals several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi� and I present evidence that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore�s system of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore�s administrative and its political elites�especially the younger ones who have come through school in the last 20 or so years�are not the cream of Singapore�s talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration based on gender, class and race.
At the peak of the system is the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since independence in 1965, the technique of using government scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out of 14 members of Singapore�s cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.
By 1994, however, the situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14 cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh. By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these, five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.
The government scholarship system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve�the just reward for young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, �We are a multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. � And you must have meritocracy � so everybody feels it is fair�.� His father, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in 1989, he told Singapore�s Malay community that they �must learn to compete with everyone else� in the education system.
Yet if Singapore�s meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert, then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the 1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early 2000s):
• Of the top 30 GLCs only two ( 6.7%) were chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 38 people who were represented on the most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
� Of the 78 �core people� on statutory boards and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
A similar outcome is revealed in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore�s most prestigious scholarship, the President�s Scholarship, from 1966-2005 only 14 ( 6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President�s Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from 1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%. Since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been awarded to only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese President�s Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College), and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity, we find that since independence, the President�s Scholarship has been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).
If we consider Singapore�s second-ranked scholarship�the Ministry of Defence�s Singapore Armed Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)�we find a comparable pattern. The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.
Although only indicative, this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes: 98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese). Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71 ( 25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%) Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese�though there was a Malay recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there have been others.
The position of the non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at least compared to the non-Chinese.
Yet the selection of scholars does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as recorded in one�s school record), �character� and performance in an interview are also considered. This makes the selection process much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.
Is there evidence that such biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is �yes.� Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement in the country�s main newspaper used to recruit applicants for scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a lowly �local� scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can be racially identified by their photographs or their names without any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Singapore’s Founding Myths vs. Freedom October 2006
The Singapore government hoped for significant returns when it invested approximately $85 million to host the September 2006 meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. And this seemed like a reasonable expectation. After all, the 16,000 delegates represented a captive audience to promote the Singapore’s finance and tourism industries.
What transpired, however, was a public-relations disaster for the ruling People’s Action Party. Singapore’s extensive curbs on political expression were to consume much of the international media attention before and during the meetings.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng warned that public protests may “attract severe punishment, including caning and imprisonment.” Under Singapore’s Public Entertainment and Meetings Act, a security permit from police is required for more than four people to gather in a public place. Authorities claimed that outdoor protests would disrupt local residents and could be exploited by terrorists.
Far from winning new admirers by hosting the meetings, Singapore’s authorities managed to alienate existing ones. Leading American neocon Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, slammed immigration restrictions on activists as “authoritarian.” Mr. Wolfowitz accused Singapore authorities of reneging on a 2003 agreement to allow attendance of accredited activists, adding: “Enormous damage has been done and a lot of that damage has been done to Singapore, and it’s self-inflicted.” Belated approvals for 22 of the 27 banned activists to enter Singapore limited—but didn’t undo—the damage.
Many international NGOs conducted their activities from the nearby Indonesian island of Batam. Meanwhile, international media attention turned to the attempted illegal march and rally by Singapore Democratic Party leader, Chee Soon Juan, and six others to highlight curbs on freedom of speech, association and assembly. Encircled by 30 police, the protesters were physically prevented from even beginning their march from a city park. Without taking a single step they had proven their point and the government’s contempt for voices of protest was vividly projected to the world.
Additional limits to political expression in Singapore are imposed through stringent media regulation and frequent litigation by government leaders. None of this is abating. Indeed, this publication was recently banned in Singapore, as editor Hugo Restall explains in this edition. But why does the ruling PAP persist with such tight controls over expression given that it enjoys widespread political support inside and outside Singapore? How can we understand the sorts of pr disasters described above?
Any attempt to answer these questions needs to grasp that suppression of dissent in Singapore is discriminating. The PAP has over the last four decades displayed special anxiety toward certain criticisms and scrutiny, while it is less severe in its reactions to others. In particular, it reacts robustly to questioning of the PAP’s governance virtues and the integrity of the political, legal and bureaucratic institutions it has crafted. It is especially protective of two foundational myths of the PAP, which provide the rationale for the ruling party’s monopoly of power.
The first myth is that public institutions are autonomous, efficient and administered by a meritocracy. In this construction, the integrity of any institution is directly linked to the character of its officials and vice versa. The second posits that unless all politics is channeled through clearly defined and regulated formal political institutions then Singapore’s social and political stability will be at risk. This concept of politics is a compartmentalized and highly regulated one.
However, the veracity of such defining stories about the essence of the regime’s character and purpose are impossible to fully ascertain given the constraints on inquiry and debate into them. This is not by accident, since if these myths could not hold up to scrutiny then the rationale of the de facto one-party state would be undermined. Insulating these myths from scrutiny may reflect a lack of confidence in the ability of Singaporeans to assess competing claims about key institutions. It might also reflect a lack of confidence in the ability of the institutions to withstand critical scrutiny. Whatever the case, reinforcing foundational myths involves continual vigilance in monitoring and restricting public debate on PAP governance and institutions.
Paradoxically, dissent itself can actually be functional for the promotion and reinforcement of these myths. For instance, the high-profile defamation suits against critics not only impair or punish government opponents. These trials also avail the ruling party of opportunities to articulate the proclaimed attributes and qualities of the governance system. This explains what otherwise appears to be an inordinate scale of resources and political investment devoted by the PAP to such trials.
Similarly, the extensive system of licenses and regulations pertaining to any form of political expression enables authorities to do more than just limit such activities. It provides opportunities for authorities to echo political leaders’ notions about threats to social and political order posed by civil society activism, public rallies, Internet Web blogs and other independent political expressions.
PAP sensitivity to scrutiny of key state institutions goes a long way toward explaining why J.B. Jeyaretnam and Mr. Chee have encountered more difficulties than most opposition politicians. They are depicted as engaging in “gutter politics,” periodically contrasted for the worse with Singapore’s two opposition members of parliament—Mr. Jeyaretnam’s successor at the helm of the Workers’ Party, Low Thia Khiang, and the leader of the Singapore People’s Party, Chiam See Tong.
In recent decades, Messrs. Jeyaretnam and Chee have consistently probed, questioned and criticized various aspects of the governance system, honing in on the processes accompanying bureaucratic, administrative and political decisions. They have each endured a raft of problems with authorities in trying to conduct political organization and communication—including a string of defamation cases awarding massive damages to PAP leaders. These ultimately resulted in the bankruptcy of the opposition politicians and hence their ineligibility to contest elections.
The most recent demonstration of the difficulties in scrutinizing the PAP’s governance claims without being open to defamation allegations by PAP leaders was provided in the run up to the May 2006 general elections. Mr. Chee led an SDP campaign questioning the response time of the government to problems over disclosures and uses of public funds by the multimillion dollar charitable organization, the National Kidney Foundation. Any chance of a robust debate about the performance of the government and state regulatory institutions was blunted following legal suits by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
Questioning the associated meritocracy myth has proved especially hazardous for the international media. Examples of this include responses to articles by the International Herald Tribune in August 1994 and Bloomberg in August 2002, respectively seen to imply nepotism in the political rise of Lee Hsien Loong and in the appointment of Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Ho Ching, to the executive directorship of the government-linked holding company, Temasek Holdings. The IHT was ordered to pay over $604,000 in total damages, while Bloomberg settled out of court for around $380,000.
Observations about how the governance system treats PAP leaders was at issue in a $555,000 defamation suit against the Hong Kong-based Yazhou Zhoukan for publishing comments in September 1996 by Singapore lawyer Tang Liang Hong. These related to a controversy over a prelaunch discount sale offer of condominium units by Housing Properties Limited taken up by Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong and various other members of the Lee family. One of the directors of HPL was Lee Suan Yew, the elder brother of Lee Kuan Yew.
Then Prime Minister Goh’s instigation of an investigation into the propriety of the offer and the timing of disclosures by HPL to the Stock Exchange of Singapore, conducted by the finance minister and the head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, cleared the Lees of any impropriety. However, Mr. Tang maintained that an inquiry conducted by either the Commercial Affairs Department or the Corrupt Practice Investigation Bureau would be more convincing since they were more detached from government. Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong sued Yazhou Zhoukan for approximately $555,000 for defamation and extracted an apology from the magazine.
Given the frequency with which Singapore’s courts have been deployed to quell criticism of key institutions, it’s not surprising that questioning the judiciary’s independence is treated most seriously. There is no better illustration of this than in the case against the IHT for a 1994 op-ed article in which Christopher Lingle didn’t even mention Singapore or its courts by name. He referred to the use in the region by some authoritarian regimes of “a compliant judiciary to bankrupt opposition politicians.” Lee Kuan Yew insisted this was an oblique reference to Singapore and sued the IHT and Mr. Lingle. In the prosecution’s determination to prove this point, it documented 76 separate articles from the Straits Times between 1972-94 to establish that government critics had in fact been regularly prosecuted in Singapore’s courts. Likewise, in Annex A of the Aug. 22 court filing against the review, the plaintiffs’ lawyers enumerated 22 of the defamation actions previously taken by Mr. Lee since 1965.
Mr. Lee’s eagerness to draw the world’s attention to such a history and to volunteer that Singapore’s legal system was the premier candidate for Mr. Lingle’s description might appear puzzling. However, the trial provided a stage for Mr. Lee to assert the independence of the judiciary, to sound a stern warning to others who might want to question this, and to reinforce claims important to Singapore’s economic brand, namely that the integrity of the city-state’s governance regimes distinguish it within the region.
Yet this strategy is not without contradictions and it faces challenges from political and economic forces. Ironically, one challenge emanates from the increasing use of the courts by Singapore’s political opponents to question, counter and challenge the PAP’s foundational myths. Mr. Chee used his February Bankruptcy Petition Hearing, for example, to circulate his court documents to the international media, and he outlined how and why he didn’t believe Singapore’s judicial system was independent when dealing with opposition politicians. He was also able to remind the international media of the criticisms leveled at the Singapore judicial system by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the New York Bar Association. Mr. Chee was not intimidated by the prospect, and subsequent reality, of a suit for contempt of court.
Lee Kuan Yew has since secured a summary judgment for his defamation case against Mr. Chee and his sister and SDP colleague, Chee Siok Chin, arising out of the last election campaign. However, while the Chees were thus denied their request for a public hearing, their detailed defense of what they regard as fair comment on a matter of public interest was posted on various Web sites. Moreover, they are challenging the decision to award a summary trial as unconstitutional. In effect, the Chees are taking a foundational PAP myth seriously to see where it leads.
Meanwhile, economic globalization is contributing to a growing scrutiny of, and challenge to, Singapore’s governance system. Currently a request for review by the Toronto-based oil and natural gas company, EnerNorth Industries, is pending before the Canadian Supreme Court. It is seeking to overturn a decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to abide by a Singapore High Court ruling. This went against EnerNorth in its dispute with Singaporean company Oakwell Engineering and it faces the prospect of having its assets seized under Canadian law to pay for that judgment. However, EnerNorth’s appeal centers round the contention that: “Singapore is ruled by a small oligarchy who control all facets of the Singapore state, including the judiciary, which is utterly politicized.”
There is also increasing international scrutiny of the governance rules and regulations pertaining to Singapore’s domestic market. Already this includes critical attention by the International Monetary Fund and U.S. negotiators involved in the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. Concerns have been raised about levels of transparency, possible conflicts of interest pertaining to appointments within the state and the advantages open to government-linked companies by virtue of political networks to which they belong.
The second foundational PAP myth about the threat to political and social order posed by political pluralism has also manifested itself in a range of measures curbing political expression. The most explicit symbol of this myth is to be found in the Societies Act, which bars political activity by groups not specifically registered for this purpose. In effect, this outlaws civil society—both as an alternative to formal politics or as a complement to it.
Whereas in a liberal democracy widespread political engagement by social groups is viewed as functional for the political system, the PAP worries that this opens the door to “hidden agendas” and special interest politics. As Lee Hsien Loong stated in 2001: “It will be very tragic if Singaporeans are divided into many special interest groups and each one asserts its demands, and you’re unable to form a consensus.”
Attempts by political parties to engage with the general public, particularly by the SDP, have been frustrated by administrative and other impediments. Such were the difficulties experienced by the SDP in obtaining permits for public meetings that they have on occasions deliberately violated the Public Entertainment and Meetings Act. This resulted in prosecutions of SDP members and two prison terms in 1999 for Mr. Chee. The SDP has generally been deploying nonviolent civil disobedience to highlight administrative impediments to free speech and collective action.
One of the contemporary challenges for the PAP in the control of political expression has been the Internet. The essence of the government’s response has been to superimpose the spirit of the Societies Act on cyberspace. This includes the requirement for registration with the Singapore Broadcasting Authority of political Web sites and the barring of nonparty political associations from political promotion, advertising or campaigning during elections. As Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan explained: “In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debate could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse, flush with rumors and distortions to mislead and confuse the public.”
These controls have proved remarkably effective. However, during the May election, individuals defied the government edict barring political blogging and podcasting. There were around 50 Web sites and blogs producing political or semipolitical content during the election, according to the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore. Among other things, this provided venues for critical analysis and views to be aired by individuals and it enabled videos of sizeable opposition rallies, blanketed in the state-controlled media, to be made available. This is an important development, since it challenges the PAP preference for all forms of political expression to be channeled through state-controlled institutions and the idea that the alternative is dangerous. A more serious challenge, though, would involve the technology’s facilitation of collective political action or mobilization. The PAP’s priority will be to prevent this.
Clearly the PAP’s determination to insulate its foundational myths remains resolute and attempts to challenge these continue to attract a harsh response from Singapore’s authorities. However, because of economic globalization and the use of new technologies, that exercise is likely to require continued refinement and creative energy.
Mr. Rodan is director of the Asia Research Centre and professor of politics at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. ¶ 8:29 PM 0 comments
What transpired, however, was a public-relations disaster for the ruling People’s Action Party. Singapore’s extensive curbs on political expression were to consume much of the international media attention before and during the meetings.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng warned that public protests may “attract severe punishment, including caning and imprisonment.” Under Singapore’s Public Entertainment and Meetings Act, a security permit from police is required for more than four people to gather in a public place. Authorities claimed that outdoor protests would disrupt local residents and could be exploited by terrorists.
Far from winning new admirers by hosting the meetings, Singapore’s authorities managed to alienate existing ones. Leading American neocon Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, slammed immigration restrictions on activists as “authoritarian.” Mr. Wolfowitz accused Singapore authorities of reneging on a 2003 agreement to allow attendance of accredited activists, adding: “Enormous damage has been done and a lot of that damage has been done to Singapore, and it’s self-inflicted.” Belated approvals for 22 of the 27 banned activists to enter Singapore limited—but didn’t undo—the damage.
Many international NGOs conducted their activities from the nearby Indonesian island of Batam. Meanwhile, international media attention turned to the attempted illegal march and rally by Singapore Democratic Party leader, Chee Soon Juan, and six others to highlight curbs on freedom of speech, association and assembly. Encircled by 30 police, the protesters were physically prevented from even beginning their march from a city park. Without taking a single step they had proven their point and the government’s contempt for voices of protest was vividly projected to the world.
Additional limits to political expression in Singapore are imposed through stringent media regulation and frequent litigation by government leaders. None of this is abating. Indeed, this publication was recently banned in Singapore, as editor Hugo Restall explains in this edition. But why does the ruling PAP persist with such tight controls over expression given that it enjoys widespread political support inside and outside Singapore? How can we understand the sorts of pr disasters described above?
Any attempt to answer these questions needs to grasp that suppression of dissent in Singapore is discriminating. The PAP has over the last four decades displayed special anxiety toward certain criticisms and scrutiny, while it is less severe in its reactions to others. In particular, it reacts robustly to questioning of the PAP’s governance virtues and the integrity of the political, legal and bureaucratic institutions it has crafted. It is especially protective of two foundational myths of the PAP, which provide the rationale for the ruling party’s monopoly of power.
The first myth is that public institutions are autonomous, efficient and administered by a meritocracy. In this construction, the integrity of any institution is directly linked to the character of its officials and vice versa. The second posits that unless all politics is channeled through clearly defined and regulated formal political institutions then Singapore’s social and political stability will be at risk. This concept of politics is a compartmentalized and highly regulated one.
However, the veracity of such defining stories about the essence of the regime’s character and purpose are impossible to fully ascertain given the constraints on inquiry and debate into them. This is not by accident, since if these myths could not hold up to scrutiny then the rationale of the de facto one-party state would be undermined. Insulating these myths from scrutiny may reflect a lack of confidence in the ability of Singaporeans to assess competing claims about key institutions. It might also reflect a lack of confidence in the ability of the institutions to withstand critical scrutiny. Whatever the case, reinforcing foundational myths involves continual vigilance in monitoring and restricting public debate on PAP governance and institutions.
Paradoxically, dissent itself can actually be functional for the promotion and reinforcement of these myths. For instance, the high-profile defamation suits against critics not only impair or punish government opponents. These trials also avail the ruling party of opportunities to articulate the proclaimed attributes and qualities of the governance system. This explains what otherwise appears to be an inordinate scale of resources and political investment devoted by the PAP to such trials.
Similarly, the extensive system of licenses and regulations pertaining to any form of political expression enables authorities to do more than just limit such activities. It provides opportunities for authorities to echo political leaders’ notions about threats to social and political order posed by civil society activism, public rallies, Internet Web blogs and other independent political expressions.
PAP sensitivity to scrutiny of key state institutions goes a long way toward explaining why J.B. Jeyaretnam and Mr. Chee have encountered more difficulties than most opposition politicians. They are depicted as engaging in “gutter politics,” periodically contrasted for the worse with Singapore’s two opposition members of parliament—Mr. Jeyaretnam’s successor at the helm of the Workers’ Party, Low Thia Khiang, and the leader of the Singapore People’s Party, Chiam See Tong.
In recent decades, Messrs. Jeyaretnam and Chee have consistently probed, questioned and criticized various aspects of the governance system, honing in on the processes accompanying bureaucratic, administrative and political decisions. They have each endured a raft of problems with authorities in trying to conduct political organization and communication—including a string of defamation cases awarding massive damages to PAP leaders. These ultimately resulted in the bankruptcy of the opposition politicians and hence their ineligibility to contest elections.
The most recent demonstration of the difficulties in scrutinizing the PAP’s governance claims without being open to defamation allegations by PAP leaders was provided in the run up to the May 2006 general elections. Mr. Chee led an SDP campaign questioning the response time of the government to problems over disclosures and uses of public funds by the multimillion dollar charitable organization, the National Kidney Foundation. Any chance of a robust debate about the performance of the government and state regulatory institutions was blunted following legal suits by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
Questioning the associated meritocracy myth has proved especially hazardous for the international media. Examples of this include responses to articles by the International Herald Tribune in August 1994 and Bloomberg in August 2002, respectively seen to imply nepotism in the political rise of Lee Hsien Loong and in the appointment of Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Ho Ching, to the executive directorship of the government-linked holding company, Temasek Holdings. The IHT was ordered to pay over $604,000 in total damages, while Bloomberg settled out of court for around $380,000.
Observations about how the governance system treats PAP leaders was at issue in a $555,000 defamation suit against the Hong Kong-based Yazhou Zhoukan for publishing comments in September 1996 by Singapore lawyer Tang Liang Hong. These related to a controversy over a prelaunch discount sale offer of condominium units by Housing Properties Limited taken up by Lee Kuan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong and various other members of the Lee family. One of the directors of HPL was Lee Suan Yew, the elder brother of Lee Kuan Yew.
Then Prime Minister Goh’s instigation of an investigation into the propriety of the offer and the timing of disclosures by HPL to the Stock Exchange of Singapore, conducted by the finance minister and the head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, cleared the Lees of any impropriety. However, Mr. Tang maintained that an inquiry conducted by either the Commercial Affairs Department or the Corrupt Practice Investigation Bureau would be more convincing since they were more detached from government. Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong sued Yazhou Zhoukan for approximately $555,000 for defamation and extracted an apology from the magazine.
Given the frequency with which Singapore’s courts have been deployed to quell criticism of key institutions, it’s not surprising that questioning the judiciary’s independence is treated most seriously. There is no better illustration of this than in the case against the IHT for a 1994 op-ed article in which Christopher Lingle didn’t even mention Singapore or its courts by name. He referred to the use in the region by some authoritarian regimes of “a compliant judiciary to bankrupt opposition politicians.” Lee Kuan Yew insisted this was an oblique reference to Singapore and sued the IHT and Mr. Lingle. In the prosecution’s determination to prove this point, it documented 76 separate articles from the Straits Times between 1972-94 to establish that government critics had in fact been regularly prosecuted in Singapore’s courts. Likewise, in Annex A of the Aug. 22 court filing against the review, the plaintiffs’ lawyers enumerated 22 of the defamation actions previously taken by Mr. Lee since 1965.
Mr. Lee’s eagerness to draw the world’s attention to such a history and to volunteer that Singapore’s legal system was the premier candidate for Mr. Lingle’s description might appear puzzling. However, the trial provided a stage for Mr. Lee to assert the independence of the judiciary, to sound a stern warning to others who might want to question this, and to reinforce claims important to Singapore’s economic brand, namely that the integrity of the city-state’s governance regimes distinguish it within the region.
Yet this strategy is not without contradictions and it faces challenges from political and economic forces. Ironically, one challenge emanates from the increasing use of the courts by Singapore’s political opponents to question, counter and challenge the PAP’s foundational myths. Mr. Chee used his February Bankruptcy Petition Hearing, for example, to circulate his court documents to the international media, and he outlined how and why he didn’t believe Singapore’s judicial system was independent when dealing with opposition politicians. He was also able to remind the international media of the criticisms leveled at the Singapore judicial system by Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists and the New York Bar Association. Mr. Chee was not intimidated by the prospect, and subsequent reality, of a suit for contempt of court.
Lee Kuan Yew has since secured a summary judgment for his defamation case against Mr. Chee and his sister and SDP colleague, Chee Siok Chin, arising out of the last election campaign. However, while the Chees were thus denied their request for a public hearing, their detailed defense of what they regard as fair comment on a matter of public interest was posted on various Web sites. Moreover, they are challenging the decision to award a summary trial as unconstitutional. In effect, the Chees are taking a foundational PAP myth seriously to see where it leads.
Meanwhile, economic globalization is contributing to a growing scrutiny of, and challenge to, Singapore’s governance system. Currently a request for review by the Toronto-based oil and natural gas company, EnerNorth Industries, is pending before the Canadian Supreme Court. It is seeking to overturn a decision by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to abide by a Singapore High Court ruling. This went against EnerNorth in its dispute with Singaporean company Oakwell Engineering and it faces the prospect of having its assets seized under Canadian law to pay for that judgment. However, EnerNorth’s appeal centers round the contention that: “Singapore is ruled by a small oligarchy who control all facets of the Singapore state, including the judiciary, which is utterly politicized.”
There is also increasing international scrutiny of the governance rules and regulations pertaining to Singapore’s domestic market. Already this includes critical attention by the International Monetary Fund and U.S. negotiators involved in the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. Concerns have been raised about levels of transparency, possible conflicts of interest pertaining to appointments within the state and the advantages open to government-linked companies by virtue of political networks to which they belong.
The second foundational PAP myth about the threat to political and social order posed by political pluralism has also manifested itself in a range of measures curbing political expression. The most explicit symbol of this myth is to be found in the Societies Act, which bars political activity by groups not specifically registered for this purpose. In effect, this outlaws civil society—both as an alternative to formal politics or as a complement to it.
Whereas in a liberal democracy widespread political engagement by social groups is viewed as functional for the political system, the PAP worries that this opens the door to “hidden agendas” and special interest politics. As Lee Hsien Loong stated in 2001: “It will be very tragic if Singaporeans are divided into many special interest groups and each one asserts its demands, and you’re unable to form a consensus.”
Attempts by political parties to engage with the general public, particularly by the SDP, have been frustrated by administrative and other impediments. Such were the difficulties experienced by the SDP in obtaining permits for public meetings that they have on occasions deliberately violated the Public Entertainment and Meetings Act. This resulted in prosecutions of SDP members and two prison terms in 1999 for Mr. Chee. The SDP has generally been deploying nonviolent civil disobedience to highlight administrative impediments to free speech and collective action.
One of the contemporary challenges for the PAP in the control of political expression has been the Internet. The essence of the government’s response has been to superimpose the spirit of the Societies Act on cyberspace. This includes the requirement for registration with the Singapore Broadcasting Authority of political Web sites and the barring of nonparty political associations from political promotion, advertising or campaigning during elections. As Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan explained: “In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debate could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse, flush with rumors and distortions to mislead and confuse the public.”
These controls have proved remarkably effective. However, during the May election, individuals defied the government edict barring political blogging and podcasting. There were around 50 Web sites and blogs producing political or semipolitical content during the election, according to the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore. Among other things, this provided venues for critical analysis and views to be aired by individuals and it enabled videos of sizeable opposition rallies, blanketed in the state-controlled media, to be made available. This is an important development, since it challenges the PAP preference for all forms of political expression to be channeled through state-controlled institutions and the idea that the alternative is dangerous. A more serious challenge, though, would involve the technology’s facilitation of collective political action or mobilization. The PAP’s priority will be to prevent this.
Clearly the PAP’s determination to insulate its foundational myths remains resolute and attempts to challenge these continue to attract a harsh response from Singapore’s authorities. However, because of economic globalization and the use of new technologies, that exercise is likely to require continued refinement and creative energy.
Mr. Rodan is director of the Asia Research Centre and professor of politics at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia. ¶ 8:29 PM 0 comments
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Opinion: Unveiling the truth about the sword
By CHANDRA MUZAFFAR29 September, 2006
By CHANDRA MUZAFFAR29 September, 2006
In many instances, it was only after political authority had been securely established that the masses voluntarily adopted the religion of their new rulers. This is something that has happened in almost every religion. After the emperor Asoka became a Buddhist there was a huge influx of his subjects to his new religion.In the case of Islam, trade also played an important role in the spread of the faith, especially between the 8th and 15th centuries. Traders assumed the mantle of missionaries. In Southeast Asia, as in East and West Africa, trade was perhaps the most effective channel for the propagation of the religion.An even more influential factor in the spread of Islam in the early centuries was, of course, Islamic mysticism or Sufism. Across North Africa and Central Asia, in various parts of the Indian sub-continent and most parts of Southeast Asia, the gentle persuasiveness of Sufi preachers with their message of virtue and compassion culled from the Quran made a huge impact upon culturally diverse communities.Perhaps more than any of these influences, it is the socio-political and socio-economic environment that prevailed in various parts of the world in the centuries immediately after the advent of Islam that explains its rapid and dramatic growth. In settings dominated by hierarchical and often oppressive structures, the egalitarian justice offered by Islam came as a breath of fresh air.It was partly because of what it offered humankind that even when Muslims were conquered, their conquerors eventually adopted the religion of the conquered.What all this shows is that the allegation that "Islam had spread by the sword" is a scurrilous lie perpetrated and perpetuated for a vile purpose.
Before we examine the motive, it should be emphasised that the Quran is, perhaps, the only religious text that explicitly prohibits coercion in matters of faith (Chapter 2:256). It also acknowledges religious plurality in the oft quoted verse, "To you your religion; to me, mine" (Chapter 109:6). This is why for a period of time in the Ottoman empire, if a Muslim coerced a Christian or a Jew to convert to Islam, he was put to death.If this is the Islamic position on forced conversion in theory and in practice, why has the lie about the sword and violence persisted for so long?The elites in the West who for the last few centuries have exercised overwhelming influence on the thinking of the rest of humankind have succeeded in transferring their terrible guilt about perpetrating unspeakable violence upon people everywhere through perpetual wars, conquests and persecutions on to their adversaries. Thus their enemies have become the epitome and the embodiment of their own violence. Islam and Muslims — the perennial nemesis of the West — have borne the brunt of this transference of guilt.There is no better example of this than the crusades blessed by the popes. When the crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they massacred 30,000 Muslims and Jews. Contrast this with the compassion and magnanimity of the illustrious Saladin when he recaptured Jerusalem in 1187. He not only protected the Christian community — along with the Jews — but also their places of worship.And yet in medieval Christian literature it was the Muslim who was portrayed as a bloodthirsty warrior eager to embark upon "holy wars". The truth is the term "holy war" does not even belong to Islam.
As the Austrian Catholic philosopher Hans Koechler points out, "Literally, ‘holy war’ is the translation of the Latin term bellum sanctum which was used to describe a "crusade" against the "Saracens" in the Middle Ages; thus, this notion was part of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church over many centuries."The crusades are but one gory entry in the long and sordid catalogue of violent wars and conquests associated with elites in the West. There was the merciless slaughter of perhaps 30 million indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia; there was Western colonialism which claimed at least 40 million lives; there was the slave trade which robbed 25 million souls of their freedom; and there was the cruel violence of apartheid in South Africa, which stripped generations of human beings of their basic dignity.It is sad that in each and every one of these colossal catastrophes the Church had some role or other. At the same time however there were some notable Christian figures who spoke out against the monumental crimes committed in their name.If the truth about the violence committed by Western elites in the past is not widely known, neither is the general populace today sufficiently cognisant of the terror unleashed by the contemporary centres of power in the West.
The brutal violence perpetrated by the American war machine in Iraq or the heinous crimes committed against the defenceless people of Palestine or Lebanon by that haughty Western outpost in the Arab world called Israel seldom evoke as much condemnation in the mainstream media as some desperate attack by a suicide bomber.The violence of the Muslim victim of US occupation of Iraq or of Israeli occupation of Palestine is more often than not reactive. It is this reactive violence that is often presented as proof of the "inherent Muslim tendency to resort to violence". It is unjust and immoral to equate the violence of the victim with the violence of the victimiser.Nonetheless, in the course of reacting to oppression and subjugation, it is undeniably true that a fringe within the Muslim community has also indulged in horrendous acts of violence. They have murdered innocent people in total violation of unambiguously lucid Islamic principles. Their dastardly deeds have only helped to reinforce prejudiced stereotypes about Muslim violence.
There is also violence within Muslim society, in the past as in the present, which is in no way related to Western hegemony or to Western injustices in general.Sunni-Shia killings in Pakistan would be a case in point. Sectarian violence of this sort is by no means confined to the Muslim world. Intra-community tensions leading sometimes to bloody conflicts have occurred in almost every religious community at some point or other. When such violence erupts within the Muslim community, religious leaders of every shade should not only condemn it but also mobilise public opinion against the unpardonable crime of killing innocent lives. If Muslim religious elites are prepared to do this, they may help to reduce even if it is only by a tiny fraction the deep-seated prejudice about Muslim violence.
¶ 7:06 PM 0 comments
