A sober thought-post Haiti

From the Atlantic:

In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity.

When the earthquake struck the impoverished island country last Tuesday afternoon, human traffickers suddenly gained access to a new population of displaced children. With parents dead, government offices demolished, and international aid organizations struggling to meet life-or-death demands, these kidnappers are in a unique position to snatch children with very little interference.

In today’s world, the twin causes of human slavery—poverty and vulnerability—increase exponentially after natural disasters. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, trafficking gangs moved quickly, seizing children and selling them as prostitutes in nearby Malaysia and Jakarta. In 2008, after floods devastated the Indian state of Bihar, groups of children were lured out of relief camps and sold to brothels across the nation.

Munshi Abdullah…a 19th c Muslim who believed in religious freedom

I was reading with amazement, the Allah judgement handed out in High Court in December last year….and I read about Munshi Abdullah who is the father of modern Malay literature…He had helped to translate the Gospels into Malay in 1852..more specifically, this is his career background from a website:

He started his career with his father, copying documents and writing petitions. He later taught Malay to Indian soldiers and British and American missionaries. Abdullah was also interpreter and scribe to Sir Stamford Raffles, for whom he had high regard. His proficiency in languages and reputation as a teacher earned him the nickname Munshi, meaning tutor. Abdullah assisted the Christian missionaries in translating and printing the gospels in Malay. He also translated Hindu folktales. However, he is best known for his autobiographical work, Hikayat Abdullah (Abdullah’s Story). It was written between 1840 and 1843 and published in 1849. It is an important source of the early history of Singapore soon after it was founded by Raffles. His other book, Kisah Pelayaran Abdullah (The Tale of Abdullah’s Voyage), describes his experiences on a trip from Singapore to Kelantan in 1838.

Wow-I find that SO hard to believe in light of our current situation…yet amazed, and hopeful…

In the Malaysia I grew up in..things were different

In response to four churches being bombed after Malaysian High Court ruled that non-Muslims could use the word Allah to refer to their own God.

When I conducted research on freedom on religion at the Pew Forum in September 2009, I was surprised to find myself coding my own country, Malaysia higher in terms of restrictions than I had expected. We were given the same questionnaire to fill out for the 120-odd countries’ reports on religious freedom that we read over a period of 3 months. And I remember arguing with my 2 fellow coders to give a lower code for one of the questions-because I remembered things being different in the Malaysia I grew up in…

At the beginning of the research, our boss, the lead researcher, Brian Grim told us that we were coding restrictions of religious freedom because freedom was impossible to measure. It was true. How do you measure the happiness of…a Malaysian schoolkid during national holidays due to the ridiculous number of school days we get to skip during our multi-religious holidays ? In the Malaysia I grew up in, we went to each other’s house for kenduri (buffet) during Hari Raya Aidilfitri (Eid), watched neighbours light up the candles in their houses during Deepavali (Diwali), invited people of all faiths to church for our Christmas plays… When I later left the country to study in the United States, yes, I grew impassioned by the incursions of religious-related restrictions in Malaysia I heard about from time to time (ban on inter-faith dialogues, imam’s ban on yoga because of the meditative aspect, etc.) but at the same time I acknowledged there were problems in the “West” too (US’ ban on morning prayers in schools, France’s curb on cult activity, US Bill forbidding NGOs to hire people based on their faith).

However, the crucial distinction that I overlooked was that Malaysia was high on government restriction, but it did not filter down to the social level. We coded the countries along these two major categories: government and social restrictions.

The results were finally published in Dec 2009, titled “Global Restrictions on Religion” and showed that Malaysia was among the top ten countries that had “very high” government restrictions index, alongside Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Myanmar, Maldives, Eritrea, Brunei. (FYI: Singapore, our next-door neighbour is on the next list one step down, of “high” government restrictions index.)

Some of the reasons why during 2007-2008 period of coding:

- the quashing of freedom of religion in the Lina Joy case in 2007

(registration of religion is compulsory in 90% or 178 countries but in 59% or 117 countries, this requirement results in problems or discrimination of faiths)

- restrictions on proselytizing (along with 75 other countries or 38%)

-reckless destruction of Hindu temples by state governments

On the other hand, Malaysia ranked a “low” on the social hostilities index, which measured acts of violence and intimidation by private individuals, organizations or social groups. Unlike other countries with sectarian strife, terrorism, and social intimidation from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads and extremist vigilantes in other Muslim-majority countries, Malaysia’s religious conflicts within society seemed small…such as, making sure your Malay friends don’t eat Bak Kut Teh (Chinese pork stew) or saying the right greeting to your friend’s parents when you collect money packets during the rare moments that Hari Raya and Chinese New Year coincide.

I am saddened to recognise in the aftermath of these church bombings that hostility and divisions between religious groups have hardened to the extent of using violent means. The effect of government hostility and restrictions have been filtering down to the social level and cultivating a you v us mentality in our society-have we become aware of this insidious effect in the way that we talk about or act towards our Malay/Indian/Chinese/orang asli/native brothers and sisters?

With the government/UMNO’s decision to appeal the High Court decision (which allowed the use of Allah by the Catholic Herald, the Malay-language Catholic newspaper), the slow destruction of mutual respect and tolerance will continue, making the Malaysia I grew up in unrecognizable. (Did you know the term, Allah have been regularly used among non-English speaking Malaysian Christians in Sabah and Sarawak as well as Christians in the Middle East for a long time now?)

We cannot idly allow the politicisation of religion to continue, but this is not a plea for tit for tat in light of the recent violence, but rather, let us be more aware of the ways we ourselves contribute to the divisions in society. From that point, we should work towards actively reaching out and understanding each other and all our differences in this cultural, religious, ethnic rojak of Malaysian society.

Links:

1)    Security tightened as politicians condemn church attacks: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/48918-security-tightened-as-politicians-condemn-church-attacks

2)    Malaysian Politics and how they employ Islam to their advantage: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704842604574641654054959272.html

3)    Prophet Muhammad’s promise to protect Christians and their faith even if they were married to Muslims:  http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/2010/01/confident-people-do-not-get-confused.html

4)    Pew Forum Report, Global Restrictions on Religion, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=491

malaysia ranking quite high on government restrictions on religion

Malaysia is ranked 9th according to the Government Restrictions Index in the latest Pew Forum report called Global Restrictions on Religion. (yours truly was excited to see this finally published after one semester of researching for it last year). It is after Eritrea and before Brunei. Even though I wrote a thesis on this, and I read the archives on Malaysia in the US State Department International Religious Freedom report, where we conducted our primary research, I am nevertheless still quite surprised, and sad about it. Anyway, go check out the summary page, if not, the actual pdf file itself available on that link.

Entering the local legal-o-sphere

The latest thing you should know about my life this summer break…is my new passion for the law, and how its being used to defend justice in this country of mine, from Teoh Beng Hock’s inquest, Port Klang scandal, to something closer to my heart, such as the story of the Jahut Christians-Malaysia’s indigenuous people-some of whom are Christians, but the government has been trying to convert them to Islam for a while now. The story below is quite hopeful..:
” The Jahut Christians from Kampung Pasu are still powerless to pray in the house of God which they built.”

And it seems the lawyers representing the Jahuts, from the firm Lee Swee Seng & Co is something to keep on my radar as well..!

midnight revelations

There’s nothing like seeing your father’s hand pierced to the IV pole, his wincing face at every swab of cotton by the nurse changing his dressings, his body clothed in the gingham patient gown that forces you, the daughter, to realize the vulnerability of the human body, and the invincibility of your relationship. Choosing between family and friends was an easier route this summer break, when the immediacy of my father’s gallbladder operation took precedence even over my dear friend’s arrival in KL for a nine day holiday. I note the way family roles coalesce into brisk efficiency as we allocate who stays with dad each night of his hospital stay. Many times this past weekend, I experience brief images of the way we three sisters would care for our parents in the future.
Patience,
empathy,
growing peace with my conflicting child and adult roles;
Thank you God for nurturing those qualities in me during these hospital overnights.

Hello KL! And hello blogging!

I haven’t blogged a single time when I was in China, resorting instead to sending pdf files on mass email list servs because not only did I have to go through many different proxy servers to access my blog,( it was super slow), I was always unsure how my critical observations of Beijing and China would be interpreted by the Great FireWall of China. 

But…..

Whew, another semester passed in a country that I breathed and lived in for several months. To quickly sum up my experiences and perspectives from inhabiting Beijing, I am now more acute to the

-Needs of the people in China-in terms of

• spiritual (religion and a dubious faith in the government as provider of all needs),
• physical (overcrowded public hospitals and frustrating long-winded bureaucracy) and
• materialistic (effect of overpopulation on public school system, hospital, legal system,etc.)

-From now on I will not merely see China as the “sleeping dragon” through the Western media perspective but it is now populated by the faces of friends (never knew so many were such ardent fans of KTVing), and memories of many “horrific” culture-shock experiences like seeing the murky pollution of the sky for the first time in April as the weather warmed up, carrying your own toilet paper everywhere in squatting toilets, navigating the heat and traffic of ever-hectic streets of Wudaokou, seeing kids in those “split-in-the-middle” pants held over trash cans and streets to do their “business”, I could go on…. but now that I’m back in Malaysia, give a shout-out if you are home as well, and I’ll provide more detailed stories!

along Yeats line..

Its been two weeks since coming back from Washington DC and I am surprised how far away my former life seems to me now. Leaving the political hub of the American capitol, I came back to Malaysia energized to replicate the important bits of my DC life in my home country: a church that seeks to be relevant in this culture, friends and acquaintances passionate for God’s heart for justice, the spirit of volunteerism and political awareness that was all around me. In the past two weeks since, I have confronted a common theme among my friends during mamak and mahjong sessions, open house and even, during clubbing events-a general resignation to the socio-political conditions back home…one of “this is how life is here in Kuala Lumpur (KL)”, and the nascent ambitions among my peers for a better life in all its different stripes. Mind you, I know I am being unfair in summing up the depth and complexity of decisions that we go through-as minorities (religious, ethnic, etc) in this country. And the idea of risk is quite frightening, particularly as well-bred middle-class inheritors (of privilege, of class, of education) that most of my friends and I are. However, as I hear the grim tones, the statistics of Malaysians wanting to leave the country, the overall pessimism by friends, family, compatriots …I am reminded of the struggles that will always accompany this faith: the inward groaning described in Romans 8:23 “as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons [and daughters], the redemption of our bodies” in the future. It is our calling to be uncomfortable amongst secularism, it is our duty to strike a balance between the increasingly blurred lines of our tenets and the values of our postmodern world, etc. But we need to remember that this “foolish” struggle–i.e. the path that makes no sense to anyone else of this world– can only succeed if we believe, wholeheartedly, that we can only find complete fulfilment in something that is not of this world. And in following the call, we have to give up many dreams that have been laid out for us..

[addendum] In a famous Yeats poem, one line said something like…”Being poor I have nothing, but I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.” I am currently gripped by that idea of willingly trading one’s previous ambitions in exchange for something more..a something that is vague and uncertain but resting at the footholds of an infinite glorious Creator.

Reactions to elections:

Amazing how emails can keep you in contact with people like the editor of Cafe Babel, an online European magazine that I became acquainted with during my semester abroad in Paris. After getting goosebumps from both McCain and Obama’s speech, I quickly jot off a couple of lines before I went to bed last night, and I attach the excerpt below, reproduced from the website itself. If you do want to share how your own night was, let me know..I had a housemate that went off to U street at midnight to join in the festivities-what a crazy night.

Washington DC

From the morning, I feel the buzz in the air as I walk past the growing line of people waiting to vote at my neighborhood’s elementary school. My office is teeming with stories being swapped of how many hours each person waited at their polling station. Every vote seems crucial, even if it is in a definite blue state like the district of Columbia. I rush back home to watch the news after work.

A little after 11:00pm – Obama wins. My housemates and I – a white American, Asian, and African-American on the couch together – shout for joy, celebrating the advent of an America that has been truly changed.

the impact of sexual restraint

I read this from an article, which was certainly thought-provoking:

All this ties in with a discovery Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin made as long ago as 1934 in his study, Sex and Culture (Oxford University Press).

Having researched more than 80 cultures past and present on this subject, Unwin discovered that societies, which do not impose some restraint on their sexual behavior, cease to develop significant social energies after only one generation.

Conversely, when social regulations forbid indiscriminate satisfaction of sexual impulses, the emotional conflict is expressed in another way. In other words, civilizations are built upon sacrifices in the gratification of innate desires.