By Farish A. Noor
These days we often hear the accusation that someone or another is doing something nasty by interpreting a book or text out of context. The common refrain that follows goes something like this: “Who are you to interpret our holy book on your own without the guidance of our supreme [...]

By Farish A. Noor
If I were to tell someone that I don’t like Satay, loathe batik shirts and cant stand keroncong music, does it follow from that that I hate Malay culture in toto? Now one would have to be deliberately and consciously paralysingly stupid to believe that, by assuming that the rejection of some [...]

By Farish A. Noor
“You are not qualified to talk about Islam”. How many times have I heard and read that same line, again and again? And more often than not, the same sentence is uttered or written by precisely the sort of self-trained autodidact whose own knowledge of Islam came from whatever he or [...]

“Kit Siang ‘misled community’” – New Straits Times
“What’s your stand, Kit Siang asked” – The Star
Screaming headlines attacking me are back in the Barisan Nasional-controlled mainstream media.
Suddenly the MCA President, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat himself has led a ferocious political charge against me, challenging me to state my stand on the resolutions [...]

By Farish A. Noor
The recent general assembly of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS has left us with a rather mixed serving of results and outcomes, some of which will linger for a while and some of which may prove harder to digest than others. Despite the re-iteration of PAS’s stand vis a vis the [...]

The IQ of the Health Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, who is MCA Vice President and Penang MCA State chief, is highly suspect when he could not understand simple English.
In Georgetown yesterday, Liow challenged me to clearly state my stand on the Cabinet’s recent decision that minors follow the common religion of [...]

MCA and Gerakan leaders have not learned the message of the March 8 “political tsunami” last year, when both parties were thrashed in the parliamentary and state general elections.
In the past 11 months, MCA and Gerakan have lost even more public confidence, which was why, according to the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, [...]