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KUALA LUMPUR: It is only during the holy month of Ramadan that you can see city folk and tourists breaking fast together, next to the historical backdrop of Sultan Abdul Samad building, Royal Selangor Club and Dataran Merdeka.

The Iftar@KL programme, held for the fifth consecutive year, has become a major attraction not just for Muslims but also Non-Muslims and foreigners alike.

Sitting side-by-side on a mat, everyone was served with popular ‘buka puasa’ dishes such as ‘bubur lambuk’ (spiced rice porridge), dates and cakes distributed by Tourism, Art and Culture Ministry.

For Mohd Rossi Yusof and his family, Iftar@KL has become somewhat of an annual event.

The 45-year-old father of one said he would make it a point to be at Dataran Merdeka at least once during Ramadan to break fast.

“I will come with my wife, Nor Meme Ahmat, 44 and son Adam Haikal, 15. I will also invite my siblings who are from different parts of Klang Valley to join us. It’s like an annual family gathering for us.

“This year, I am here only with my wife and son as my other siblings are busy. I look forward to this mass breaking of fast event organised by the Ministry,” he said when met here, today.

Rossi, from Puchong, said he started the tradition because he wanted to create something unique for the family.

“Every year, rain or shine I will make sure I will be at Dataran Merdeka.

Pic by STR/OWEE AH CHUN

“This year, the bazaar was relocated to Jalan Raja, which I think is good. People can do their Raya shopping at the bazaar after the mass buka puasa event,” he said.

Noor Shamimi Iskandar, 24, from Ampang said she was excited to be able to break fast in the huge crowd, with the iconic Sultan Abdul Samad building in the background.

Like Rossi, she too has made it into an annual event with her friends from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM).

“It’s just our way of catching up with one another, especially since some of them are working in the city centre.

“Besides, this is more strategic (in terms of location) and cost effective rather meeting up at a high-end eateries,” she said while waiting for the arrival of her three friends.

Fauzieha Wan Kamaruddin, 38, said this was her first time breaking fast at Dataran Merdeka since she started working in KL more than 10 years.

“I went to the bazaar searching for Raya clothes for my 3-year-old daughter.

“Since I am already here, I thought why not experience the mass buka ouasa event with other people here,” she said.

Meanwhile, Kanae Mizuno, 31, from Japan, said this was her second time taking part in Iftar@KL.

“My friend invited me to join them last year, so I came.

By Kalbana Perimbanayagam and Teoh Pei Ying.

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2019/05/491396/mass-buka-puasa-dataran-merdeka-draws-crowd

WILL the Bill to amend Article 1(2) of the Federal Constitution, expected to be tabled this coming week, pass in Parliament?

Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds majority in Parliament, something the current Pakatan Harapan (PH) national government does not have.

It either needs the support of the 19 Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) members of parliament or the official parliamentary opposition to carry the amendment.

The proposed amendment came about after an earlier amendment in 1976 which purportedly reduced Sabah and Sarawak to merely two states instead of being two administratively distinct territories which together with Malaya and Singapore, formed the expanded Malaysian federation in 1963 as “equal partners”.

What is closer to the truth may be that the 1976 amendment only regularised the accepted fact

It will be noted that back then, the amendment passed with the support of Sabah and Sarawak MPs who were mostly with the Barisan Nasional administration.

If there had been disquiet among them (the then incumbent MP for Bintulu, Ting Ling Kiew, now says he was one who objected and absented himself when the vote came up), it was muted and barely spilled into public discourse.

So what changed between 1976 and now is that the popular disquiet in the two Borneo states has led to the current national government seeking to restore the constitutional order to status quo.

The best guess will be that Putrajaya today realises the popular disquiet across the South China Sea is quite real, for any number of reasons – some perhaps conflicting or contradictory and therefore perhaps a bit unrealistic

But something must be done, goes this line of thinking, and since there is this clamour to restore the constitution pertaining to the status of Sabah and Sarawak to that prior to 1976, that clamour will be acceded to.

But if, as the Sarawak state administration seems to have belatedly realised, such an exercise brings little practical effect, why clamour for it in the first place?

I think it speaks to a general confusion on the part of some state leaders.

The public is ill-served by a profusion of conflicting demands placed by such leaders and a somewhat haphazard and perhaps premature announcements on new state initiatives with far-reaching implications such as the formation of Petros, the new state-owned oil-and-gas entity, and a sales tax on the same industry.

What seems clear in spite of all the conflicting pronouncements though is a general public sense in both Sabah and Sarawak that the people in both states have not gotten a fair deal out of federation.

It will be a challenge for all concerned to find ways to address such a perception.

Putrajaya, despite the confusion and some duplicity emanating out of Sabah and Sarawak, will be well-advised not to attempt moves that will be interpreted as cynical and thereby stirring perhaps even greater troubles further down the road.

But what exactly can the federal administration do? It needs, above all, to recognise that a general clamour for both these states to fully run their own affairs is a legitimate and reasonable desire.

It therefore has to find meaningful ways to further devolve powers currently exercised by the federal government to both states, where possible and feasible

This will naturally mean that expenditures usually disbursed by federal departments and ministries will now be channelled directly to the Sabah and Sarawak governments instead of via block grants, bearing in mind that a frustration given voice by the late Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem about the state being merely one of 12 other supplicants for federal funds resonates far and wide, even today.

Although it is quite impossible for Putrajaya to accede to demands that development funds be apportioned on the basis that Sabah and Sarawak are two of three “territories” within federation without considering that population-wise, both states together constitute not even a third of the entire national population, creative ways can surely be found to give emphasis for these two states to catch up with developments in the peninsula.

Both states deserve a “new deal” within the federation.

The federal government needs to go on the offensive in educating the people in Sabah and Sarawak about the “hidden” costs borne entirely by Putrajaya in defending the territorial integrity of the two states with their long land and maritime international boundaries – not just in military personnel and hardware terms but through international diplomacy.

By John Teo.

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/04/476267/equal-rights-and-mutual-respect

OF all places on earth, peaceful Christchurch in New Zealand has just become the scene of a cold blooded massacre of innocent people in two mosques there. With 49 dead so far and dozens wounded, it is one of the worst terror attacks in the world, this time carried out by white right-wing extremists. Three male and one female suspects are in custody.

In an immediate reaction, the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Yousef Ahmad Al-Othaimeen, said: “The brutal crime had shocked and hurt the feelings of all Muslims around the world, and served as a further warning on the obvious dangers of hate, intolerance, and Islamophobia.”

Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad called on the governments of the world to understand why such terror attacks took place and their modus operandi, which is different from a conventional warfare.

Many people may not understand what right-wing extremism or the far right is all about and its recent resurgence in the West. In simplistic terms, right-wing politics is about preserving certain often oppressive social orders and hierarchies as inevitable and even desirable. Right-wing people tend to react to progress and change, hence they are also called “reactionaries”.

Extreme right-wing politics is associated with ultra-nationalism, fascism and racism or race supremacy, which is often used as justification to oppress and repress others. The most classic example of right-wing extremism is Nazism (oppressing Jews and others) and more recently, Zionism (oppressing Palestinian people) and the extreme right-wing politics used by President Donald Trump in many instances to secure and stay in power.

The far right has also been sweeping Europe, mostly singling out innocent Muslim refugees there, who are merely escaping from the horrors of wars in Syria and the region. These vulnerable refugees become easy targets for xenophobia, hate and outright racism.

Donald Trump used right-wing politics to get himself elected in 2016 and he is also playing the same right-wing politics to stay in power. Many of the Far Right in the West today are inspired by and see President Trump as their poster child. He has certainly done a lot to instill Islamophobia and hatred against the Muslims by his various actions such as his anti-Muslim statements, very pro-Zionist stance and the ban on Muslims from at least seven countries to visit the USA.

President Trump may have sent his “condolences and warmest sympathy” to the people of New Zealand on the terror incident. But he is seen by many to be culpable or at least partially responsible for creating an atmosphere of hatred and racism against

Muslims and promoting xenophobia with his Border Wall idea with Mexico.

The purpose of Trump’s Islamophobia or racism is to distract, confuse and divide & rule in order to stave off serious challenges to his presidency including allegations on his abuse of power, obstruction to justice and on the possible outcome of Russia investigation which may include impeachment.

I have written many press articles on why we should not take peace for granted, the importance of mutual-racial respect and the need to recognise the cultural diversity of Asia, with Malaysia as a mini-Asia, as a strength for our survival and progress and never as a weakness or liability. We must never allow our cultural diversity to be exploited by extremists of any shades to create conflict, wars and terror like what has happened in New Zealand.

Most people take peace for granted. We were shaken and shocked when our own MH17 was cruelly shot down in 2014 in a war fought more than 8,000 kilometres away.

There have also been numerous terror attacks in our neighbouring countries recently. Recent police arrests of suspected terrorists in Malaysia should send alarm bells ringing to the authorities concerned. We must never sit back and assume our multi-racial country is immune from such acts of terror.

There is hardly any populated place on earth that is safe from the extremists of all

shades who are motivated to be mass-murderers based on their extreme right-wing political or religious ideologies which would include the misinterpretations of religious teachings.

More needs to be done to analyse and understand the real causes of extremism and to promote sustainable peace and multi-cultural understanding.

By K.K.Tan .

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/03/470152/understanding-right-wing-extremism

INTERRACIAL couples. A guide dog for blind people. A person using a wheelchair. These were among the new emojis announced last week by Unicode Consortium, the non-profit that provides standards for text on the Internet and oversees emojis.

The list — which includes 59 new emojis, as well as variants for a total of 230 options — emphasises inclusivity. People will soon be able to create a “holding hands” emoji to reflect their own relationship, selecting for the skin colour and gender identity of each individual. Other options include emojis showing a hearing aid, prosthetic limbs, sign language, a cane or a wheelchair.

A host of other new symbols include an otter, a sloth, a waffle, falafel, a yawning face, a white heart, a sari and a contentious one-piece bathing suit.

In a world where people use emojis to represent everything from weddings to poop, the announcement naturally led to much discussion, with an image of a drop of blood becoming a new way to talk about menstruation and a pinching symbol leading to jokes about a certain
male body part being very, very small

But don’t expect to see the latest offering on your keyboard just yet. That will most likely happen later this year.

The Unicode Consortium sets the standards for emoji compatibility, allowing the symbols to translate across the Internet. Then companies like Apple and Google have to design emojis and incorporate the code into their operating systems, Greg Welch, a board member for Unicode, said. New emojis typically come to cellphones in September or October, Unicode said in the announcement.

Last Wednesday, a representative for Apple pointed to its proposal for Unicode to create accessibility emojis, which said that the new emojis would “foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability” and help people express themselves, as well as show support for loved ones.

A representative for Google said that it hoped to release the new emoji designs soon.

The latest update continues a trend toward greater emoji diversity, which began in earnest a few years ago when a range of skin tones was introduced. In 2017, a hijab emoji was introduced.

“You see people are asking for curly hair or skin tone and bald and hijab,” said Jennifer Lee, who serves on Unicode’s emoji subcommittee and helped found Emojination, a grassroots effort to make emojis more inclusive.

Tinder, the online dating app, had campaigned for Unicode to better represent couples of different races and genders in the “universal language of the digital age”.

“Love is universal,” Tinder said on its website. “And it’s time for interracial couples to be represented in our universal language.”

“It’s huge and historic,” said Ken Tanabe, the founder of Loving Day, an organisation that encourages people to celebrate the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalised interracial marriage.

“You are talking about marriages and starting families,” he said, adding that he had heard from people who could not find a wedding cake topper that reflected their relationship and chose to use black and white chess pieces instead.

“Having an emoji that’s already there, it feels like, hey, we are part of the conversation,” he said. “We are part of the community. We are represented in the most personal part of our lives.”

Apple had advocated adding emojis to represent people with disabilities. In a statement, Howard A. Rosenblum, the chief executive of the National Association of the Deaf, a civil rights organisation for the deaf and hard of hearing people, said it worked with Apple to help create the deaf emoji and hoped it would help “raise awareness throughout the world about deaf culture and the many sign languages that exist”.

One of the new emojis — a guide dog for people who are blind and visually impaired — offers a fun way for people to represent their identity and honour their dogs in texts and emails, said Becky Davidson, who works at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, an organisation that provides trained dogs for people who are blind or visually impaired.

By Sarah Mervosh.

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/02/458761/new-emojis-are-coming

THE Lunar New Year kicked off on Tuesday as one of the most important holidays in Vietnam, South Korea, China and other Asian countries. Typically, it starts on the second new moon after winter solstice.

On the Gregorian calendar, the civil calendar used in most countries, including the United States, the Lunar New Year changes every year, as do the dates of holidays like Rosh Hashana, Deepavali and Ramadan.

It can be easy to think of a calendar as a scientific given, or a reflection of the laws of the universe. In fact, as these holidays remind us, there are as many ways to track time as there are cultures and languages. Each calendar reveals something about how the people who created it relate to the world around them while also preserving rich cultural identities and memories.

Most timekeeping traditions track the movement of the sun, moon and stars. Others consider seasonal events, like the autumnal swarming of sea worms, used to orient each year in the Trobriand Islands off New Guinea, or the flowering of immortelle trees into hundreds of tiny vermilion flames, which marks the start of the dry season in Trinidad.

With any calendar, the basic question is which of thousands, if not millions, of cycles in the world to follow, says Kevin Birth, an anthropology professor at Queens College. Calendars “always come down to this cultural choice”, he says, so using one system over another is ultimately a social contract, regardless of how scientifically accurate or sophisticated a calendar is.

A solar year — the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun — lasts around 365 days, while a lunar year, or 12 full cycles of the moon, is roughly 354 days. Because of this discrepancy, a purely lunar calendar — like the Islamic, or Hijri, calendar — doesn’t stay aligned with the seasons. Islam’s holy month of Ramadan may fall in summer one year, and winter a number of years later.

To correct for seasonal drift, the Chinese, Hindu, Jewish and many other calendars are lunisolar. In these calendars, a month is still defined by the moon, but an extra month is added periodically to stay close to the solar year.

A solar calendar is useful for farming, fishing and foraging societies that need to plan ahead for particular times of the year. But a purely solar calendar, like the Gregorian, tells you nothing about the phases of the moon.

The traditional Hijri calendar requires an observation of the early crescent moon to start a new month, and thus encourages paying attention to the cosmos. The Gregorian calendar can’t be tracked in the sky, which might be why many Westerners have less awareness of the moon and other natural phenomena.

Holidays also structure personal and historical narratives. Some secular holidays in the United States centre on legacies of war, which fits “when you think that the United States also has the largest military budget in the world”, Birth says.

Chinese holidays usually emphasise family union and honouring ancestors, Yuan said, which aligns with the importance of filial piety.

Many ancient calendars, like the Chinese and Mesoamerican ones, build in fortunetelling, with prescriptions for when to build a house, get married, have a funeral and other life events. Similar calendars provide structure and comfort to people today.

Britt Hart, an astrologer based in Philadelphia, says she thinks people can be drawn to horoscope-based calendars because they’re seeking a grander sense of time and order in the universe.

In the context of history, staying connected to an alternative calendar can also be a form of resisting the mainstream, or maintaining an identity outside of it. When a calendar is imposed on a society, it usually has to do with politics and power. The ability “to say when the year will start, or decide that a religious festival should be celebrated at a particular time, can be quite useful for a politician,” Stern said.

The Gregorian calendar has only been used as a global standard for about a century, and is “very much a reflection of European commerce and colonialism,” Birth said. It has now been built into computer architecture, but that doesn’t mean another calendar couldn’t one day become dominant.

By STEPH YIN.

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2019/02/457894/celebrating-lunar-new-year-and-diversity-worlds-calendars

SOCIETAL security in a plural state is the most delicate sector to manage. Before, this vulnerability was only politicised internally. Today, it is also internationalised, both by domestic and external actors.

European scholars conducted extensive studies on national identity and societal security since the beginning of the post-Cold War era, after the horrific ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia. But national identity and societal issues have always been regarded as one of the major causes of ethnic and religious conflicts in many plural states.

For example, the “Hindu-Muslim riots in India in 1947 killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people and generated about 10 million refugees” (Stuart J. Kaufman [2008] in Ethnic Conflict).

The most recent threat to Malaysia’s societal security was the incident at a Hindu temple in Seafield, Selangor. Fortunately, our police were very efficient. Otherwise, unscrupulous elements might exploit it to become an identity crisis. This incident gained an international dimension when a Hindu politician in India submitted a memorandum to the Malaysian consulate in Chennai, alleging that the Malaysian government “was biased against Hindus in Malaysia”.

Internationalisation of Malaysia’s societal and national identity issues also took place in 2007, when a group of activists sent a memorandum pertaining to alleged discrimination against Malaysian Indians to the British prime minister. They also filed a petition at the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice in London, and launched an e-petition whose “main demand is for Putrajaya to repeal Article 153 of the Federal Constitution, which an activist claimed was the ‘mother’ of all Malaysian racist policies for the past 54 years”.

It is the reality. “Societal security concerns the sustainability of traditional patterns of language, culture, religion, national identity and customs” (Barry Buzan [1991] in People, State & Fear). It is also the truth. “State security concerns are about threats to its sovereignty, whilst societal security is about the threats to a society’s identity” (Waever, Buzan, Kelstrup & Lemaitre [1993] in Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe).

The fact is such because societal security is about threats to the national identity of a state. Malaysia’s national identity components on religion, language and socioeconomic matters are incorporated in the Federal Constitution. The incorporation of these components is not to portray the supremacy of the Malays/Bumiputeras. These components already existed in several agreements and treaties between Malay rulers and the British government.

For example, Article 153. “The special position of the Malays was recognised in the original treaties made by His Majesty in previous years, and Her Majesty Queen Victoria and others with the Malay States” (Alan Lennox-Boyd, Secretary of State for the Colonies, in British Parliamentary Hansard, Volume 573,12 July 1957).

“It was reaffirmed when these treaties were revised. It was confirmed in the 1948 Agreement, and reference was expressly made to it in the terms of reference of the Reid Commission.”

The incorporation of components of Malaysia’s national identity into the Federal Constitution was also carried out with careful balancing to protect the legitimate rights of all Malaysian citizens. Hence contents of the Federal Constitution were extracted from the results of 31 town-hall meetings conducted by the Reid Commission.

Additionally, they were derived from 131 proposals submitted to the commission by various ethnic, religious, political and business groups representing the Malays, Chinese, Indians and others.

The draft constitution was vetted by Umno, MCA, MIC and representatives of the Alliance, Malay rulers, Malayan Legislative Council, state assemblies, British government and British parliament.

One particular point to be noted here, are statements by Lord Ogmore who debated the Malaya Independence Bill in the House of Lords on July 29, 1957:

“We must remember that in this Constitution the Malays are making far greater concessions to people of other races than is normally the practice in other countries — I personally appeal to all the races and to all the peoples in the Federation of Malaya, to help wholeheartedly in the working of the Constitution.”

The concessions were granted to the other races after Tunku Abdul Rahman as Umno leader, made a gentle request to leaders of MCA and MIC. Tan Cheng Lock of MCA and V.T. Sambanthan of MIC agreed to the request. Hence, a social contract was sealed.

As such, there is nothing sinister about Malaysia’s social contract. “It refers to the painstaking compromises between the ethnic Malays, Chinese and Indians on their bargains with the Malay Rulers for the creation of a democratic, monarchical, federal and non-theocratic systems of government” (Shad Saleem Faruqi [2012] in the Bedrock of Our Nation: Our Constitution.

By Datuk Dr Ruhanie Ahmad.

Read more @ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/letters/2018/12/437009/nothing-sinister-about-malaysias-social-contract