By Farish A. Noor
This week marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadhan and the celebration of Eid’ul Fitri the world over. For more than a billion Muslims all over the planet the month of Ramadhan has been a time of personal reflection, contemplation and deliberation over their deeds and achievements over the year; [...]

By Farish A Noor
Recently I found myself in an open discussion with some of my students in the university I am based at in Indonesia. At the tender age of 18, this first-year student demonstrated both the intellectual acumen and political commitment I have come to expect from those twice his age, yet he was [...]

By Farish A. Noor
It is not often that I sermonise in my articles, and it has been a month since the OtherMalaysia.org research project was brought to a close. Yet despite everything the tone and tenor of Malaysia’s convoluted politics and the country’s slide into decline forces us to take stock of how far Malaysia [...]

By Farish A. Noor
I have just read the reports on the internet about the goings-on that led to the disruption and early closure of the public forum organised by the Bar Council on Conversion in Malaysia over the weekend. Apart from the other rather offensive remarks that were featured in the various reports that I [...]

By Farish A. Noor
Now that the cat is out of the bag and the whole of Malaysia knows that there have been secret backroom dealings between UMNO and PAS; ostensibly to bring the two parties together in the name of Malay-Muslim communal solidarity, we need to pause a while and look at the political factors [...]

By Farish A. Noor
For two weeks now, this political scientist has been sidetracked from his work on transnational religio-political movements by the controversy that has erupted in Malaysia as a result of the accusations of sodomy levelled against former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. This is not the first time I have been way-laid in [...]

By Farish A. Noor
The trials and tribulations of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim continue, and history seems to be repeating itself time and again in the country. Ten years after the infamous trial where he was accused of sexual misconduct and abuse of power, Anwar Ibrahim is once again being investigated for charges [...]

By Farish A. Noor
Civil society, and the actors who occupy that public domain, exists for a number of reasons and one of the reasons is to keep all politicians and political parties in check. It would appear that the work of civil society actors in Malaysia today has been cut out thanks to the murky [...]

By Farish A. Noor
There are ideas, and there can be stupid ideas; but to ban an idea simply because of its stupidity seems to be a rather stupid thing to do in itself.
Among the ideas that circulate in the congested bowels of Malaysia’s public domain is the somewhat nebulous idea of ‘Islam Hadari’; loosely [...]