By Farish A. Noor

Now that the level of euphoria over the victory of Barack Obama has settled somewhat, it would pay to consider some of the ramifications of his recent victory as the latest occupant of the White House and by extension the most powerful man in the world.

In the lead-up to Obama’s victory, much was said and written about the man’s promise and hope of a new America; an America that would be proud of itself, confident in the world and able to address the challenges of today. There was much talk about the restoration of American pride and prestige and to regain the moral credibility that was squandered away after two terms of Bush junior in office.

But before the dust had settled and the last piece of confetti touched the earth, there were already disturbing revelations about the man and what he might or might not do as the President of the United States. Obama’s appointment of Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff did not bode well with many who know of Emanuel’s strong ties with Israel and the pro-Zionist lobby in the USA. It is also well known that Emanuel’s father, Benjamin Emanuel, was a member of the Irjun gang in the 1940s and in an interview with the press had bluntly stated that his son would try his best to ensure that American foreign policy under Obama would be pro-Israel and seek to secure the safety and security of Israel at all costs.

Perhaps those who were supportive of Obama were themselves glued to the TV screens and mesmerised by the image that he had created for himself, as the embodiment of hope and a new future for America and the world. But there precisely lies the problem: that living as we do in this unequal unipolar world where the power relations between the developed North and the developing South are so stark, the future of the United States as the sole hegemon in the world today is intimately linked to the future of the developing world as well. If America coughs, the whole world is affected, but never vice-versa. Read the rest of this entry »

By Farish A. Noor

The electoral victory of Barack Obama as the new President of the United States of America is long overdue, and many of us are thankful for it. No, its not because the rest of us are racists who hate white men; and no, its not because we are captive to the essentialised idea that black Americans are all victims and are necessarily good and innocent, in toto. Its simply because change is refreshing and we believe that change is good and healthy for the nation and humanity in general.

I recall taking a flight from Frankfurt to Kuala Lumpur once, when the pilot spoke to the passengers before take off. Suddenly there was a collective gasp of surprise when we realised that our pilot was a woman! I was suddenly gripped by an overwhelming sense of relief and curious pride, for somewhere in my settled conscience the idea had been sedimented that all pilots (like all doctors, scientists and Presidents) had to be male. Throughout the flight I had to resist the temptation of bursting into the cockpit to congratulate her, and to tell her how proud I was to be flying in a plane piloted by a woman for a change. (Though of course because I am Muslim I would have been arrested immediately and handcuffed for fear of being a terrorist!)

That’s how change happens. It takes us by surprise and in a second its over and the historical moment has passed. But it requires that one vital element that makes change possible in the first place: human agency. There would not have been a woman pilot on my flight if this woman had not pursued her ambition to become a pilot relentlessly, never giving up on her dream despite the obstacles she may or may not have faced.

I am only raising this point now as I have noticed a rather disturbing, and potentially dangerous, narrative that has and is being spun in the wake of Obama’s victory. This is the narrative that the change that has come to the United States is due to the long historically determined and linear process of evolution; that we are told takes time, time and more time. We are fed the line that “Of course America has finally changed because it took four hundred years for black Americans to rise to where they are today.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Farish A. Noor

I recently had a conversation with an Indonesian political analyst in Singapore, where I am currently based. In the course of our discussion about the state of Indonesian politics, he let slip a statement that I felt terribly uncomfortable with. While lamenting the state of Indonesia’s convoluted politics, he opined thus: “I wonder if Indonesia’s problems could be solved if we allowed a foreign government to run our country?”

Now, talk like this usually sends shivers up my spine. We will recall that up to the late 1990s, it even became fashionable to talk about the necessity for the re-colonisation of Africa. This sort of nonsense was all the rage in some American political magazines and journals, and of course this neo-colonial bile was dressed up in the discourse of altruism and universal humanism, as if the colonisation of any country was an altruistic act between fellow human concerned about the fate of others. Never mind the fact that the ones doing the colonising would be the same Western powers and the ones being colonised would be the same hapless denizens of the Third World. Read the rest of this entry »

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; a time of restraint and introspection; a time of reckoning. One only hopes that the leaders of the Muslim world have also taken this time off to do some serious soul-searching as well, and in particular to reflect on their deeds and misdeeds in the course of running the respective countries they have been elected to govern. (That is assuming that they were elected in the first place, for the quaint peculiarity of the Muslim world today is that quite a number of Muslim leaders have never been elected, and many of them regard the position of high office as if it was a God-given right to them and their families.)

During this month of Ramadhan quite a number of peculiar events have taken place all over the Muslim world. In Malaysia, the fasting month began with a right-wing leader of the conservative UMNO party making some rather repugnant remarks about the Malaysian Chinese community, referring to them as foreigners who can go back to China if they dont like things as they are in the country. Odd that such a remark could mark the start of the month of Ramadhan, when Muslims are meant to be controlling their emotions rather than letting them run riot in public. Odder still that a leader of the UMNO party can even make such a historically inaccurate and unqualified remark, oblivious to the simple fact that not only have the Chinese in Malaysia – and the rest of Southeast Asia – been in the region for more than five hundred years, it was also thanks to the missionary efforts of Chinese Muslim scholars that Islam came to some parts of the region like Java for instance.

The month of Ramadhan also witnessed a string of rather uncharitable actions being performed in the glare of the public eye: Teresa Kok, a member of Parliament and one of the leaders of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) of Malaysia, was arrested and detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) on the grounds that she had made some inflammatory remarks concerning the volume of the azan, or call to prayer, emanating from the mosques in her constituency. Read the rest of this entry »

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 the line of duty; for scandals, controversies and conspiracy theories have the rather nasty habit of popping up when you least expect it in the Asian region.

Now this comes as an unwelcome change for me as I have spent half my life in Europe and the last seven years in Germany. Allow me to make a very simple (and admittedly general) comparison here: Politics in Germany, like much of Western Europe, tends to be dull, dull, dull. Politicians have less colourful lives than their Asian counterparts and it would be the event of the century if a senior German politician was caught with his pants down or accused of sodomy of all things.

Indeed, one of the outstanding features of German politics – particularly on the level of local governance – is how dreadfully boring it is. It also happens to be painfully serious, and as someone who has seen local government at work in Germany I can tell you that it can put even the most imaginative among us to sleep in nary a second. Read the rest of this entry »

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 translated at times as ‘civilisational Islam’ or ‘societal Islam’. Others of a less charitable bent have dubbed it ‘theme park Islam’, ‘Crystal mosque Islam’ and even ‘Badawi’s brand of Islam’. Branding aside, it would appear that this brand of Islam has come under close scrutiny and admonition of late. In May the Pakatan-led state government of Selangor announced that henceforth the state would no longer promote Islam Hadari and this was later followed up by a similar move on the part of the Pakatan-led state government of Penang.

The rationale behind this prohibition leaves us with some unanswered questions that might as well be raised at this point. Who called for the prohibition of Islam Hadari and on what grounds? And if Islam Hadari is to be banned by the Pakatan-led state governments, what does this entail for the Muslims and non-Muslims of Malaysia? What, in the final analysis, was the objective of this ban? Read the rest of this entry »

By Farish A. Noor

Dialogue is a funny business, particularly when it happens to be dialogue of the inter-civilisational and inter-religious kind. Having just attended yet another Dialogue between Islam and the West in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I find myself compelled to pen these thoughts before my blood pressure rises any further and I risk doing serious damage to myself and the furniture in my office…

The theme of the dialogue conference I attended was ‘Islam and the West: Bridging the Gap’. Now, allow me to state some rather commonsensical yet important observations at this point. If we were to begin the dialogue process by stating that there exists a gap between the Western and Muslim worlds, then in a sense we have introduced the very same problem that we wish to rectify in the first place. How and why has such a gap emerged between the West and Islam; what are the historical and more importantly, political, processes and mechanisms that contributed to this gap; and do Muslims and Westerners perceive there to be a gap in the first place?

It is important to emphasise again and again that the Western and Muslim worlds have been among the oldest civilisational neighbours in the history of humanity. After all, the Muslim world has lived side-by-side next to Western Europe for more than 1,400 years; and if after such a long period we still do not understand each other then we really must be the worst of neighbours. History, however, is replete with examples and instances of genuine dialogue and interaction in all forms and all registers: from the cultural-intellectual borrowing and cross-fertilisation that took place in both communities leading to the renaissance of both the European and Muslim worlds to the enduring traces of cross-cultural contact and appreciation that exists in the hybrid pop culture of both societies until today. Read the rest of this entry »

By Farish A Noor

A quick look at the troubles in the predominantly Muslim-Malay provinces of Southern Thailand – which has been a troubled spot for the past four years at least – would point to a fundamental flaw in the line of thinking of the powers-that-be in Bangkok. Having disregarded the historical factors that make the four provinces of Patani, Jala, Satun and Narathiwat unique compared to the rest of the country, successive governments in Thailand have tried to make the Malay-Muslims of the south think of themselves as Thais, who are an ethnically different people with a language, culture, religion and history of their own.

Since the late 19th century following the conquest of Patani, Jala, Satun and Narathiwat by the Thais, and compounded by the Anglo-Siamese treaty of 1909, the four provinces have experienced what can only be described as a policy of cultural assimilation. During the 1930s and 40s Thai leaders like Phibun Songkram have tried to force Thai culture and cultural norms on the Malays by any means possible: From forcing them to speak Thai to adapting Thai dress and manners as their own.

Needless to say, this has alienated the Malay-Muslims even further, and has only helped to fuel the resentment they feel against the Thai political elite. Over the past four years this resentment has boiled over to the point of violence, leading to the needless and senseless slaughter of innocent Malays and Thais all over the south. Read the rest of this entry »