Pope Francis commends Singapore's policies supporting the vulnerable, hopes for special attention to poor and elderly

Pope Francis also highlighted the risk of focusing solely on pragmatism or "placing merit above all things", consequently excluding the marginalised from benefiting from progress. 

Pope Francis and Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the pope’s state address on Sep 12, 2024. (Photo: CNA/Syamil Sapari)

Ang Hwee Min

12 Sep 2024 

SINGAPORE: Pope Francis has commended Singapore's policies to support the most vulnerable, adding that he hopes special attention will be paid to the poor and the elderly. 

“Heard of Abu Nuwas liquor?”: Siti Kasim shares her thoughts on the Timah controversy

By G Vinod

19 Oct 2021

WITH the Timah whiskey controversy riling up the right-wing movements in Malaysia, a lawyer-activist told the latter of how the Arab world itself has its own popular alcoholic beverage.

According to Siti Kasim, Haddad Distilleries of Jordan is selling their own alcoholic beverage called Abu Nuwas Arak.

“The name denotes Abu Nuwas, a weird drunk poet who lived during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate. He was born in Iran, in 756, but died in Iraq, in 814. He lived during the reign of Caliph Harun Al Rashid and was even mentioned in the popular Arabic tale, One Thousand and One Nights.

“The man was also said to be a hafiz (those who memorised the al-Quran),” she said in a Facebook post.

Recently, the award-winning local liquor brand Timah got embroiled in a controversy after several groups called it being disrespectful to the Malays and Muslims.

Majlis Perundingan Pertubuhan Islam Malaysia (MAPIM) president Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid said that using the name Timah for a whiskey brand was insulting Muslims, claiming Timah was short for Fatimah, who was Prophet Muhammad’s daughter.

He also argued that the image of the bearded man on the bottle resembled a Muslim man in a kopiah.

“More insolent is the liquor’s advertisement uses the image of a man in kopiah with a long beard as if showing the someone with Muslim image is promoting liquor,” Azmi was reported saying.

Surprisingly, even the Consumer Association of Penang (CAP) took offence to the whiskey brand, claiming it was insulting to Muslims.

“Apart from the alcohol content, CAP does not understand how the ministry could approve the name and image (of the product) which can cause anger,” its education officer NV Subbarow added.

However, the company shot back at its critics by saying that the man featured on the bottle was not a Muslim man but a British officer named Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy, or more popularly known as Captain Speedy.

Arab man’s face on Abu Nuwas Arak

Speedy served in British Malaya from 1861 to 1874 as an administrator to restore order during the Larut wars in Perak. He was also credited of bringing the whiskey culture in the local tin mining sector back then.

“And the word Timah is a local word meaning tin. The name ‘Timah Whiskey’ harks back to the tin mining era during British Malaya. Any interpretation of our name unrelated to Malaysian mining is false,” it mentioned.

On MAPIM’s argument that attributing the word Timah to a whiskey was offensive, Siti Kasim pointed out that the Abu Nawas liquor has Arabic script on it, complete with an Arab man’s face attached to the bottle.

“If our religious fellows read all these, they will tear off in rage their beards, the hairs from their armpits, pubic areas, nostrils and if they can reach for it, their anal hairs,” she added in jest. – Oct 19, 2021.

Exclusive: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Speaks Candidly with TIME

[Note: This is a Time interview from 2015, after the passing of Lee Kuan Yew.]

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addresses the nation about the passing of his father, Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yew, during a live broadcast on Monday, March 23, 2015, in Singapore
Terence Tan—AP

By Hannah Beech

Zoher Abdoolcarim

July 23, 2015


As Singapore gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence, the city-state once dismissed as a “little red dot” at the midpoint of regional maps now serves as the epicenter of Asian-style development. By combining Confucian values with state-sponsored capitalism, Singapore in little more than a generation moved “from third world to first,” as a memoir of founding father Lee Kuan Yew puts it.

Pig DNA found in cuttlefish and prawn balls: NUS researchers

By Janice Lim

02 November, 2019

SINGAPORE — The genetic material of pigs was found in cuttlefish and prawn balls manufactured by a particular seafood brand in Singapore, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) found.

Their discovery of arguably the most serious case of mislabelling of seafood products for a multi-religious society such as Singapore came about after they tested 105 samples of seafood products bought from six supermarkets and two seafood restaurants.

They also found that more premium seafood such as prawn roe, wild-caught Atlantic salmon and halibut have been replaced with lower-value ingredients such as fish roe, Pacific salmon and arrowtooth flounder respectively. 

S’pore has done much to forge a cohesive, multiracial society, but two challenges remain

By Han Fook Kwang

01 May, 2019

It was, fittingly, President Halimah Yacob who announced that Singapore would be holding its first international conference on social cohesion and inter-faith harmony in June this year.

It shows the high level of support from the country’s leadership on issues related to religious harmony.

Indeed, soon after making the announcement, she spoke at a remembrance ceremony organised by the Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) to honour those killed during the terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch in March.

The IRO, formed in 1949, with 10 major religions represented, has had a long history in Singapore of promoting understanding and goodwill.

Why is inter-faith harmony taken so seriously in Singapore, including at the highest level of government? There are several reasons.

In Malaysia, the battle against racial politics is in the rural areas

By Chang Lih Kang

27 September, 2019

After being the talk of the town for more than a year, Malaysian opposition parties United Malays National Organistion (Umno) and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) have finally “tied the knot”.

This does not surprise anyone, as they were “flirting” with each other since the last general election. They were working together to ensure Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) defeat in the election.

Although they did not succeed in their last attempt, the Umno-PAS political marriage has rippled the political landscape. People are concerned about the existence of this mono-ethnic, mono-religion political pact.

Many see it as a perilous development for a plural society. Some pundits anticipate a more polarised nation with more racial or religious tension, because politicians from the Umno-PAS pact are prone to only address audiences from a single race and religion.

We should not discount the possibility of some PH politicians, who wish to outdo their rivals, might resort to a hardline racial narrative too.

Number of radicalised individuals on ISA orders at highest in 7 years

04 August, 2019

TODAY


SINGAPORE — The number of radicalised individuals on orders under the Internal Security Act is at its highest in the last seven years, the Ministry of Home Affairs said, as Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam stressed the importance of the Act, describing it as the single most important tool against terrorism.

This is due largely to the spike in the number of radicalisation cases dealt with from 2015 onwards, it added in an emailed response to queries from TODAY.

Self-radicalised individuals make up the bulk of the 50 currently issued with ISA orders, the ministry said. Of these, there are 22 issued with orders of detention, 26 with restriction orders and two with suspension directions for terrorism-related conduct.

Since 2002 the MHA has dealt with over 130 individuals who were found to be involved in terrorism-related activities, it added.

S'poreans should 'brace themselves' for more issues with M'sia: Bilahari Kausikan

08 March, 2019

SINGAPORE — Air pollution, stalled rail projects and constant antagonism by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad are just some of the issues Singaporeans must continue to bear with because of the instability of Pakatan Harapan, said retired Singapore diplomat Bilahari Kausikan.

In a Facebook post on Friday (March 8), Mr Kausikan shared a TODAY report stating that the Rapid Transit System (RTS) rail system connecting Singapore with Johor would be delayed as Putrajaya had failed to meet project deadlines.

“This is just another example of the consequences of a fundamentally incoherent and thus ineffective, government across the causeway,” he wrote in a caption accompanying the report.

The "God" Question

[I drafted this post over a year ago, but did not publish it because I took a while to respond to the presumptuousness of the various "theists" and their interpretation of "atheism".

Then this letter:]

Give those with no religious beliefs a voice in efforts to promote peace

By Dharmendra Yadav

 03 October, 2017

I refer to your article, “Inter-faith group to set up youth wing to maintain religious peace” (Sept 29), where the Inter-Religious Organisation (IRO) is planning to have regular programmes for young people to involve them in building a cohesive society and educating them about issues to maintain religious harmony.

Last year, the release of the General Household Survey 2015 report showed that more Singapore residents are not identifying themselves with any religion.
Those without religious affiliation made up 18.5 per cent of the resident population, up from 17 per cent in 2010, with the numbers being higher among younger residents compared with those in 2010.
It was reported that of those aged 15 to 24, 23 per cent said that they had no religious affiliation, while the figure was 14.6 per cent among residents aged 55 and above.
There appears to be an increasing trend of young persons having no religion.
If the mandate of the IRO is to promote racial and religious harmony in Singapore and it is serious about this, surely the “faithless” that constitute such a significant part of Singapore need to have a seat at the table.
I hope the organisation will consider this suggestion.

[To be fair, perhaps this letter-writer was truly clueless. And did not warrant this response on FB:

Please identify the head of the "faithless" (which BTW is an implied insult) that will represent this group of people without religious affiliation.

The basic assumption of the "faithful" (and I use this as insultingly as I can) is that the "faithless" is s homogeneous group of anti-religious militants/bigots/zealots/fascists/ "insert your own derogatory adjective".

The "faithless" could be faithless for many reasons. Maybe their faith failed them. Maybe the dogma/doctrine of their faith made no sense. Maybe they were never raised in any kind of faith and they grew up and outgrew fantasy and magic. Maybe their faith collided with reality, and rationality won. Maybe they were betrayed by leaders of their faith. Or members of their church/temple/mosque. Maybe they were denounced by their faith. Maybe they are too rational or too proud, or too individualistic, or too disinterest, or too happy, or too depressed, or too troubled. 

Or maybe they just haven't found a faith that made sense to them.

Atheists are atheists for many reasons. The assumption that all atheists are the same, is the same thought processes that lurks beneath arrogant assumptions about gender, race, and other arbitrarily discriminatory behaviour.

Hot dog issue has made Malaysia famous for the wrong reason: The Star columnist

May 18, 2017

Wong Chun Wai


PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Looks like the monsoon season is starting soon. That is when it starts to rain cats and dogs. No, these animals will not fall from the skies, but it is best that Malaysians are well-prepared for the floods.

The authorities, we are very sure, will not let anyone be confused. Personnel from the Civil Defence Force and Fire Department are already on standby to face the wettest month of the year.

According to one report, tourists will almost certainly experience thunderstorms and floods - they have been predicted to take place on 83 per cent of the 25 days with rainfall. Light rain may also occur but is rare, being observed on only 11 per cent of those days.

This means our rescue teams can be expected to work really hard and as one will say - work like a dog.

Arabisation of Islam in Asia: A clash within civilisation

Baladas Ghoshal
For The Straits Times

JUL 19, 2016

The spate of terrorist attacks and the attendant violence witnessed in the last couple of months, including the recent attacks in Dhaka, Kishoreganj and Ektarpur in Bangladesh, and Nice in France, brings home the truth that something perverse is happening within Islam and Muslims alone can fight that scourge.

Analysts attribute the growth of Islamist radicalism to Muslim grievances about their culture and way of life not being given what they consider their rightful place in their own societies; transnational links with organisations like Al-Qaeda and now an even more dangerous phenomenon called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or Daesh; hostility towards the policies of the West, in particular the United States and its support of Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq and now intervention in Syria; and opposition to crackdowns on domestic militancy like in Bangladesh.

These factors have, undoubtedly, contributed to a sense of growing alienation and feeling of victimisation and oppression among certain Muslim groups, and to an attempt to redress their grievances and frustrations through violence and terror.

More importantly, a fundamental transformation is taking place within the Muslim community all over the world - an identity formation based on a world view taken from early Quranic precepts and a code of conduct resembling a way of life that was prevalent in the Arab world in the mediaeval period during the formative stage of Islam.

The Malaysia that could be

MAY 15, 2016

'Spirit of family and oneness' in country is now a memory as ethnic, religious harmony erodes

Michael Vatikiotis

Shortly after I arrived in Kuala Lumpur in 1991 as newly appointed bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review, I was introduced to a Malaysian journalist then working here for The Straits Times in Singapore. We worked in a country well known for its disdain for the foreign media; and we were particular targets because our publications were deemed by the government to be biased against or even hostile to Malaysia.

Partly because of the common challenges we faced, but perhaps mostly because we enjoyed eating nasi kandar and roti canai at street- side stalls in Kuala Lumpur or on the many outstation reporting trips we took together, we became good friends.

A quarter of a century later, my close friend Kalimullah Hassan is no longer a journalist - neither am I. Our beloved profession has been much affected by the decline of advertising revenues and the rise of social media. But Kali, as all his friends know him, remains as passionate and concerned about his country as he was when we drove for long hours around rural constituencies in out-of-the-way parts of Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu covering by-elections.

News Reaction: Mass Hysteria at Malaysian School (Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan)

The News:

Since Monday (April 11, 2016), about 100 students and staff of the school, SMK Pengkalan Chepa 2, Kelantan, reported seeing apparitions described as black spectres, pontianak, and pochong. Officially, this was described as "mass hysteria". However, the school has enlisted the help of more than 8 ustaz (Islamic Scholars), bomoh (traditional Malay Shaman), and Islamic traditional experts to "help chase away the spirits".

On Wed (April 13) the school was closed to allow the ustaz and bomoh to perform prayers or rituals to cleanse the school of spirits.

On Sunday (April 17) the school was re-opened, though the media was not granted access. However, from outside the school gates, journalists reported hearing screams and shouts from within the schools. So the prayers and rituals did not seem to have worked.

How do Sunni and Shia Islam differ?

January 4, 2016

NEW YORK — Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr could escalate tensions in the Muslim world even further. In the Shiite theocracy Iran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said yesterday (Jan 3) that Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, would face “divine vengeance” for the killing of the outspoken cleric, which was part of a mass execution of 47 men. Al-Nimr had advocated for greater political rights for Shiites in Saudi Arabia and surrounding countries. Saudi Arabia had accused him of inciting violence against the state.

Here is a primer on the basic differences between Sunni and Shia Islam.

Moral Dispute or Cultural Difference?

By CAROL ROVANE

NEW YORK TIMES OPINIONATOR

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

The word “relativism” tends to generate strong reactions. This is odd, given that the word is not generally used with a clear and agreed upon meaning. I want to offer a specific proposal about what it means, with a view to navigating the following “real-world” problem, discussed by Alex Rosenberg here at The Stone in July: What should we do when we face what are often described as irresolvable moral disagreements?

It’s possible for two people to live in different moral worlds, in which different moral truths hold.
In a disagreement, two parties affirm and deny the same thing; because the parties contradict each other, they cannot both be right; because they cannot both be right, there is something to be resolved between them by figuring out which of them is mistaken; a disagreement remains unresolved so long as both parties continue to think the other is mistaken; it is irresolvable when there is no method by which to resolve it.

Are there any such irresolvable disagreements?

Wahhabism to ISIS: how Saudi Arabia exported the main source of global terrorism

Although IS is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century.

27 Nov 2015

BY KAREN ARMSTRONG

As the so-called Islamic State demolishes nation states set up by the Europeans almost a century ago, IS’s obscene savagery seems to epitomise the violence that many believe to be inherent in religion in general and Islam in particular. It also suggests that the neoconservative ideology that inspired the Iraq war was delusory, since it assumed that the liberal nation state was an inevitable outcome of modernity and that, once Saddam’s dictatorship had gone, Iraq could not fail to become a western-style democracy. Instead, IS, which was born in the Iraq war and is intent on restoring the premodern autocracy of the caliphate, seems to be reverting to barbarism. On 16 November, the militants released a video showing that they had beheaded a fifth western hostage, the American aid worker Peter Kassig, as well as several captured Syrian soldiers. Some will see the group’s ferocious irredentism as proof of Islam’s chronic inability to embrace modern values.

Malaysia moving towards ‘apartheid’ tendencies, NUS academic warns

DECEMBER 6, 2015

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia is on a slippery slope towards authoritarian nationalism with “apartheid” tendencies, a professor from the National University of Singapore (NUS) said today (Dec 6).

Dr Syed Farid Alatas, a Malaysian who teaches at NUS, highlighted as examples the proposed supermarket trolleys for non-halal food, a school’s plan for separate classrooms for non-Muslim students, and a Bumiputera-only gadget mall that is set to open this month.

“The lack of a multicultural approach, whether it’s towards Shiites, Sufis, anti-Christianity...we’re on the slippery slope towards very strong authoritarian nationalism with, I would add, apartheid tendencies,” Dr Syed Farid told a forum organised by G25, a group of retired Malay senior civil servants, here on Islam and democracy.

“Next thing that will come is — some Muslims will say I feel offended seeing the non-halal section in supermarkets. ‘When I peep into the section, I can see pork and alcohol’. They’ll say, ‘let’s have separate supermarkets’,” the associate professor of sociology added.

Finding peace within the holy texts

David Brooks

Nov 18, 2015

It's easy to think that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is some sort of evil, mediaeval cancer that somehow has resurfaced in the modern world. The rest of us are pursuing happiness, and here comes this fundamentalist anachronism, spreading death.

But in his book Not In God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, the brilliant philosopher Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that ISIS is in fact typical of what we will see in the decades ahead.

The 21st century will not be a century of secularism, he writes. It will be an age of desecularisation and religious conflicts.

Part of this is demographic. Religious communities produce lots of babies and swell their ranks, while secular communities do not. The researcher Michael Blume looked back as far as ancient India and Greece and concluded that every non-religious population in history has experienced demographic decline.

Malaysia’s ‘Islam’ has negative impact on Singapore, says lecturer

MSN

From The Malaysian Insider

by Hasnoor Hussain, 

October 31, 2015. 

Malaysia’s brand of Islam has a negative impact on its neighbour across the causeway, a Singaporean academic said today.

Dr Nawab Osman, from Nanyang Technology University, said a puritanical mindset and intolerance has begun to seep into Singapore and Malaysia was one of the contributing factors.

“Singapore is where Malaysia was about 10 years ago. The impact of Malaysia’s Islam is real.

“When (well-known Malaysian preacher) Ustaz Azhar Idrus came to Singapore, 10,000 people went to his talk,” he said at the “Maqasid Shariah in a Constitutional Democracy” forum in Penang organised by G25 and think tank Penang Institute today.

Speaking on Islamic revivalism and its socio-political impact, Nawab cited incidents in the island republic such as the issue of Muslim women wearing headscarves, as an indication of the shift of Islam in Singapore.

Catholic paper on family is hailed by all sides, raising fears of disputes

ELISABETTA PROVOLEDO

OCTOBER 26, 2015

VATICAN CITY — Any good compromise allows everyone to claim victory. And that is exactly what the document on family matters approved late Saturday by 270 bishops from around the world did.

But the conflicting interpretations — witnessed in headlines and Catholic blogs in Italy and elsewhere on Sunday — underscored the contention and confusion that remains on issues like divorce, homosexuality and cohabitation for Catholics.

Both conservative and liberal commentators and news outlets, deliberately or not, seemed to interpret the passages in a way that reinforced their views, raising the question of whether what the bishops billed as a consensus document may widen divisions over critical issues, rather than bridge them.

The bishops’ final report to Pope Francis amounts to their recommendations. Deliberately uncontroversial in controversial areas, the synod “achieved consensus through ambiguity,” the Rev Thomas Reese wrote on Saturday in The National Catholic Reporter.

That ambiguity served to reassure bishops who feared change to Catholic doctrine that there would be no change at all, while giving those who wanted change the hope that the pope could act freely to liberalise the church should he want to.