Odd how sensitive some people can be at times. Reading the reports about the debacle that passed during the Bar Council’s public forum on Religious Conversion in Malaysia, one gets the distinct impression that there are still many Malaysians among us who cannot and do not understand the meaning of respectful, intelligent dialogue between equal [...]
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 read, I also [...]
The Last Temptation of Arjuna:
Why Nation-States Need to Embrace Complexity
Modern nation-states are rather clumsy, careless things that blunder along the path of history until they eventually get to their appointed destinations. Along the way, modern nation-states tend to tread rather heavily on the conscience of marginalised minorities and liminal, subaltern groupings who do not quite [...]
Today there is much talk, accompanied by some degree of unnecessary speculation and fear-mongering, about the claims and ambitions of Islamists who seek to create a global Caliphate as the panacea for the ills of Muslim society worldwide. That such talk of a pan-Islamic global project would spook the spooks of the international anti-terror industry [...]
