Sunday, September 22, 2013

Oriental studies

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Ancient Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum. In the 19th century the placing of spectacular antiquities in the new museums brought unusual interest from the general public to Oriental Studies.

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies, although the primary focus and aims of traditional Oriental Studies in Europe is today generally focused on the discipline of academic Islamic Studies. European study of the region, formerly known as "the Orient", had primarily religious origins, which has remained an important motivation until recent times. Learning from Arabic medicine and philosophy, and the Greek translations from Hebrew and Arabic, was an important factor in the Middle Ages. Linguistic knowledge preceded a wider study of cultures and history, and as Europe began to encroach upon the region, political and economic factors encouraged growth in academic study. From the late 18th century archaeology became a link from the discipline to a wide European public, as treasures brought back filled new European museums. The modern study was influenced both by imperialist attitudes and interests, and also the sometimes naive fascination of the exotic East for Mediterranean and European writers and thinkers, captured in images by artists, that is embodied in a repeatedly-surfacing theme in the history of ideas in the West, called "Orientalism". In the last century, scholars from the region itself have participated on equal terms in the discipline.

History of Oriental studies

Pre-Islam

The Western world's original distinction between the "West" and the "East" was crystallised in the Greco-Persian Wars of the 5th century BC, when Athenian historians made a distinction between their "Athenian democracy" and that of the Persian monarchy. An institutional distinction between East and West did not exist as a defined polarity before the Oriens- and Occidens-divided administration of the Emperor Diocletian's Roman Empire at the end of the 3rd century AD, and the division of the Empire into Latin and Greek-speaking portions. The classical world had initimate knowledge of their Ancient Persian neighbours (and usually enemies), but very imprecise knowledge of most of the world further East, including the "Seres" (Chinese). However there was substantial direct Roman trade with India (unlike with China) in the Imperial period.

Middle Ages

Hayton of Corycus remitting his report on the Mongols, to Pope Clement V, in 1307.

The rise of Islam and Muslim conquests in the 7th century established a sharp opposition, or even a sense of polarity, between medieval European Christendom and the medieval Islamic world (which stretched from the Middle East and Central Asia to North Africa and Andalusia). During the Middle Ages, Muslims and Jews were considered the "alien" enemies of Christendom. Popular medieval European knowledge of cultures farther to the East was poor, dependent on the wildly fictionalized travels of Sir John Mandeville and legends of Prester John, although the equally famous, and much longer, account by Marco Polo was a good deal more accurate.
Scholarly work was initially very largely linguistic in nature, with primarily a religious focus on understanding both Biblical Hebrew and languages like Syriac with early Christian literature, but also from a wish to understand Arabic works on medicine, philosophy and science. This effort, also called the Studia Linguarum existed sporadically throughout the Middle Ages, and the "Renaissance of the 12th century" witnessed a particular growth in translations of Arabic texts into Latin, with figures like Constantine the African, who translated 37 books, mostly medical texts, from Arabic to Latin, and Herman of Carinthia, one of the translators of the Qur'an. The earliest translation of the Qur'an into Latin was completed in 1143, although little use was made of it until it was printed in 1543, after which it was translated into other European languages. Gerard of Cremona and others based themselves in Al-Andaluz to take advantage of the Arabic libraries and scholars there. Later, with the Christian Reconquista in full progress, such contacts became rarer in Spain. Chairs of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic were briefly established at Oxford, and four other universities following the Council of Vienne (1312)^[1]
There was vague but increasing knowledge of the complex civilizations in China and India, from which luxury goods (notably cotton and silk textiles as well as ceramics) were imported. Although the Crusades produced relatively little in the way of scholarly interchange, the eruption of the Mongol Empire had strategic implications for both the Crusader kingdoms and Europe itself, and led to extended diplomatic contacts. From the Age of Exploration, European interest in mapping Asia, and especially the sea-routes, became intense, though mostly pursued outside the universities.

Renaissance to 1800

Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi (徐光啟) (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements (幾何原本) published in 1607.

University Oriental studies became systematic during the Renaissance, with the linguistic and religious aspects initially continuing to dominate. There was also a political dimension, as translations for diplomatic purposes were needed, even before the West engaged actively with the East beyond the Ottoman Empire. A landmark was the publication in Spain in 1514 of the first Polyglot Bible, containing the complete existing texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, in addition to Greek and Latin. At Cambridge University there has been a Regius Professor of Hebrew since 1540 (the fifth oldest regular chair there), and the chair in Arabic was founded in about 1643. Oxford followed for Hebrew in 1546 (both chairs were established by Henry VIII). Distinguished scholars included Edmund Castell, who published his Lexicon Heptaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Samaritanum, Aethiopicum, Arabicum, et Persicum in 1669, whilst some scholars like Edward Pococke had travelled to the East and wrote also on the modern history and society of Eastern peoples. The University of Salamanca had Professors of Oriental Languages from at least the 1570s. In France, Colbert initiated a training programme for "Les Jeunes de langues", young linguists with the diplomatic service, like François Pétis de la Croix, who like his father and his son served as Arabic interpreter to the King. Study of the Far East was pioneered by missionaries, especially Matteo Ricci and others in the Jesuit China missions, and missionary motives were to remain important, at least in linguistic studies.
During the 18th century Western scholars reached a reasonable basic level of understanding of the geography and most of the history of the region, though knowledge of the areas least accessible to Western travellers, like Japan and Tibet, and their languages, remained limited. Enlightenment thinkers characterized aspects of the pagan East as superior to the Christian West, in Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes or Voltaire's ironic promotion of Zoroastrianism; others, like Edward Gibbon, praised the relative religious tolerance of the Middle East as opposed to the intolerant Christian West, and many, including Diderot and Voltaire, the high social status of scholarship in Mandarin China.
The end of the century saw the beginnings in the great increase in study of the archaeology of the period, which was to be an ever-more important aspect of the field through the next century. Egyptology led the way, and as with many other ancient cultures, provided the linguists with new material for decipherment and study.

Nineteenth century

The old building of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, founded by William Jones in 1784.

With a great increase in knowledge of Asia among Western specialists, increasing political and economic involvement in the region, and in particular the realization of the existence of close relations between Indian and European languages, by William Jones, there emerged more complex intellectual connections between the early history of Eastern and Western cultures. Some of these developments occurred in the context of Franco–British rivalry for control of India. Liberal economists, such as James Mill, denigrated Eastern civilizations as static and corrupt. Karl Marx, himself of Jewish origin, characterized the Asiatic mode of production as unchanging, because of the economic narrowness of village economies and the State's role in production. Oriental despotism was generally regarded in Europe as a major factor in the relative failure of progress of Eastern societies. The study of Islam in particular was central to the field since the majority of people living in the geographical area termed 'the Orient' were Muslims. Interest in understanding Islam was partly fueled by economic considerations of growing trade in the Mediterranean region and the changing cultural and intellectual climate of the time.^[2]
In the course of the century Western archaeology spread across the Middle East and Asia, with spectacular results. The new national museums provided a setting for the finds, most of which were in this period bought back to Europe, and put Orientalists in the public spotlight as never before.
The first, serious European studies of Buddhism and Hinduism were by scholars Eugene Burnouf and Max Müller. In that time, the academic study of Islam also developed, and, by the mid-19th century, Oriental Studies was a well-established academic discipline in most European counties, especially those with imperial interests in the region. Yet, while scholastic study expanded, so did racist attitudes and stereotypes of "inscrutable", "wily" Orientals. This frequently extended to local Jewish and Romani communities, who were also of Oriental origin and widely seen as such. Scholarship often was intertwined with prejudicial racist and religious presumptions,^[3] to which the new biological sciences tended to contribute until the middle of the following century.

Twentieth century

Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during the Second International Congress of Orientalists in London, 1874

The participation in academic studies by scholars from the newly-independent nations of the region itself inevitably changed the nature of studies considerably, with the emergence of post-colonial studies and Subaltern Studies. The influence of Orientalism (in the sense used by Edward Said in his book of the same name) in scholarship on the Middle East was seen to have re-emerged and risen in prevalence again after the end of the Cold War. It is contended that this was partly a response to "a lacuna" in identity politics in international relations generally, and within the 'West' particularly, which was brought about by the absence of Soviet communism as a global adversary.^[4] The post–Cold War era has been marked by discussions of Islamist terrorism framing views on the extent to which the culture of the Arab world and Islam is a threat to that of the West. The essence of this debate reflects a presupposition for which Orientalism has been criticized - that the 'Orient' is defined exclusively by Islam. Such considerations as these were seen to have occurred in the wider context of the way in which many Western scholars responded to international politics in the post–Cold War world; and they were arguably heightened following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.^[5]
Symbolic of this type of response to the end of the Cold War was the popularization of the 'clash of civilizations' thesis. This particular idea of a fundamental conflict between East and West was first advanced by Bernard Lewis in an article entitled "The Roots of Muslim Rage", written in 1990. Again, this was seen as a way of accounting for new forms and lines of division in post–Cold War international society. The 'clash of civilizations' approach involved another characteristic of Orientalist thought; namely, the tendency to see the region as being one, homogenous 'civilization', rather than as comprising various different and diverse cultures and strands. It was an idea that was taken on more famously by Samuel Huntington in his 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, called "The Clash of Civilizations?".^[6]

The Orient

The word “Orient” refers to east.^[7] It is a western word made to describe The east, meaning any country east of Europe.^[8] It has included countries from a wide spectrum, from Morocco to Japan, depending on the historical period in which the term was used.

"Orientalism" and Oriental studies

The Women of Algiers, 1834, by Eugène Delacroix is one of the earliest paintings from Western painters in the "Eastern world".

Main article: Orientalism

The term Orientalism has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters and is interpreted to refer to the study of the East by Westerners shaped by the attitudes of the era of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. When used in this sense, it often implies prejudiced, outsider-caricatured interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples. This viewpoint was most famously articulated and propagated by Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), a critical history of this scholarly tradition. In contrast, the term has also been used by some modern scholars to refer to writers of the Imperialist era who had pro-Eastern attitudes, as opposed to those who saw nothing of value in non-Western cultures.^[9]

From "Oriental Studies" to "Asian Studies"

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2012)

Like the term Orient, Orientalism derives from the Latin word oriens (rising) and, equally likely, from the Greek word ('he'oros', the direction of the rising sun). "Orient" is the opposite of Occident. In terms of The Old World, Europe was considered The Occident (The West), and its farthest-known extreme The Orient (The East). Dating from the Roman Empire until the Middle Ages, what is now, in the West, considered 'the Middle East' was then considered 'the Orient'. However, use of the various terms and senses derived from "Orient" has greatly declined in the 20th century, not least as trans-Pacific links between Asia and America have grown; nowadays, Asia usually arrives at the USA from the West.
In most North American universities, Oriental Studies has now been replaced by Asian Studies localised to specific regions, such as Middle Eastern or Near Eastern Studies, South Asian studies, and East Asian Studies. This reflects the fact that the Orient is not a single, monolithic region but rather a broad area encompassing multiple civilizations. The generic concept of Oriental Studies, to its opponents, has lost any use it may have once had and is perceived as obstructing changes in departmental structures to reflect actual patterns of modern scholarship. In many universities, like Chicago, the faculties and institutions have divided; the Biblical languages may be linked with theological institutes, and the study of ancient civilizations in the region may come under a different faculty to studies of modern periods.
In 2007 the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University was renamed the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, but Oxford still has its Faculty for Oriental Studies, as do Chicago, Rome, London (covering African studies also), and other universities.
Various explanations for the change to "Asian studies" are offered; a growing number of professional scholars and students of Asian Studies are themselves Asian or from groups of Asian origin (like Asian Americans). This change of labeling may be correlated in some cases to the fact that sensitivity to the term "Oriental" has been heightened in a more politically correct atmosphere, although it began earlier: Bernard Lewis' own department at Princeton University was renamed a decade before Said wrote his book, a detail that Said gets wrong.^[10] By some, the term "Oriental" has come to be thought offensive to non-Westerners. Area studies that incorporate not only philological pursuits but identity politics may also account for the hesititation to use the term "Oriental".
Supporters of "Oriental Studies" counter that the term "Asian" is just as encompassing as "Oriental," and may well have originally had the same meaning, were it derived from an Akkadian word for "East" (a more common derivation is from one or both of two Anatolian proper names). Replacing one word with another is to confuse historically objectionable opinions about the East with the concept of "the East" itself. The terms Oriental/Eastern and Occidental/Western are both inclusive concepts that usefully identify large-scale cultural differences. Such general concepts do not preclude or deny more specific ones.

References

Jump up ^ Hebrew to Latin, Latin to Hebrew: the mirroring of two cultures 2006 Page 75 Giulio Busi, Freie Universität Berlin. Institut für Judaistik - 2006 "According to the famous decision of the council of Vienne (1311-1312), Oxford was chosen as one of four universities (with Paris, Bologna and Salamanca) where Hebrew, Arabic, Greek and Aramaic were to be taught"
Jump up ^ Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004:44
Jump up ^ J Go, "'Racism' and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practice in America's Pacific Empire" in Qualitative Sociology' 27.1 (March 2004).
Jump up ^ Jochen Hippler and Andrea Lueg (eds.), 'The Next Threat: Western Perceptions of Islam' (Pluto Press/The Transnational Institute, London, 1995), p. 1.
Jump up ^ Zachary Lockman, 'Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism' (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), pp. 223/233.
Jump up ^ Zachary Lockman, 'Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism' (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004), p. 233.
Jump up ^ Cawley, Kevin. University of Notre Dame. Oriental. 2004. September 29, 2006
Jump up ^ Katz, Elizabeth. Virginia Law. Democracy in the Middle East. 2006. September 9, 2006
Jump up ^ For example Thomas R. Trautmann in Aryans and British India, 1997, ISBN 0-520-20546-4
Jump up ^ Princeton University, Near Eastern Studies department

Institutions

Resources

Ancient Indian & Iran Trust, London UK

Articles

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: China in Western Thought and Culture
John E. Hill, translation in his e-edition of Hou Hanshu
Edward Said's Splash The impact of Edward Said's book on Middle Eastern studies, by Martin Kramer.
Frontier Orientalism — an article by Austrian anthropologist Andre Gingrich
Edward Said and the Production of Knowledge
Orientalism as a tool of Colonialism
"Oriental Study and Research". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Reign of Sultan Suleyman Kanuni

Mar. 22 Featured, Ottoman History 12 comments

When the Ottomans began their meteoric rise in the early 1300s, they were a small band of warriors at the edge of the Muslim world. From humble beginnings under Ghazi Osman, the founder of the state named after him, they expanded throughout the region that serves as the border between Europe and Asia. Christian as well as Muslim populated lands came under their control as they brought stability to formerly Byzantine and Seljuk regions. Under sultans such as Bayezid I, Mehmed II, and Selim I, the Ottoman Empire grew to be one of the major world powers.
It’s peak was reached during the time of Sultan Suleyman, however. During his reign (from 1520 to 1566), the Ottomans were clearly the most powerful and influential power in Europe and the Middle East. His reign is seen as a golden age of Ottoman and Islamic history. Even non-Muslims acknowledged the glory of the Ottoman Empire as they nicknamed Suleyman “the Magnificent”, while among Muslims he was known as Kanuni – “the Lawgiver”. Although after his time, the long demise of the Ottoman Empire began, the strength and power of the Ottomans in the mid-1500s meant that it would take over 300 years of decline before the empire ended, in 1922.

Early Reign and Conquests

A map of the Ottoman Empire showing the size of the empire during the reign of Suleyman.

Sultan Suleyman’s father, Selim I, had greatly changed the landscape of the Ottoman Empire. Under his direction in the 1510s, the Ottomans expanded to include most of the Arab world, encompassing lands from North Africa in the West to the Arabian Peninsula, to the border of Persia in the East.
With the territorial acquisition came the title of caliph, khalifah, of the Muslim world. Since the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the Abbasid caliphs had lived in Cairo, under the protection of the Mamluk Sultanate, although the title itself had no power, and the caliphate was just a ceremonial position. Under Selim, the caliphate was once again had meaning and real political power.
Suleyman inherited this Islamic empire in the year 1520, at the age of 26. His first order of business as sultan of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of the Muslim world was the removal of several threats that still plagued the Ottoman realm. Doing so would ensure the might of the Ottoman Empire was recognized by all, and that no one thought to take advantage of a new, young sultan.
The main land-based threat was the fortress of Belgrade, which belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. The Hungarians had been the main northern opponent of the Ottomans since the early 1400s, and Belgrade remained a threat to Ottoman possessions in the area. Almost immediately after taking the throne, Suleyman assembled an army and set out for Belgrade in 1521. After a brief bombardment, the city came under Ottoman control and the Hungarian challenge to northern Ottoman lands was greatly diminished.
The next problem Suleyman had to deal with was the island of Rhodes, in the Mediterranean. Since the early 1300s, it had been occupied by the Knights Hospitaller, a remnant of the Crusades. Because of its vital position in the heart of the Ottoman-controlled Mediterranean Sea, the Knights of Rhodes were capable of regularly disrupting trade within the empire. Ships travelling from Egypt to Anatolia were especially vulnerable to attacks from Rhodes. This harassment led to Suleyman’s decision to dislodge the Knights Hospitaller from Rhodes in 1522.
Suleyman assembled over 100,000 troops and the massive navy he inherited from Sultan Selim for the task. He personally led the siege of Rhodes, which lasted from June to December of 1522. Eventually, the Knights were unable to hold on, despite their extensive fortifications and surrendered. Having removed the threat from Rhodes, Suleyman let the Knights relocate to Italy and added Rhodes to the Ottoman Empire.

The Viennese Setback

After the removal of the Hungarian threat from the north, the Hapsburg Dynasty of Austria decided to push its claim to the crown of Hungary. The Hapsburgs then expanded out from Vienna towards Hungary and took Buda from the Ottomans, along with control of most of the Hungarian lands Suleyman had fought so hard to get in 1521 in Belgrade. This prompted a reaction from Suleyman in 1529, when he attempted to capture Vienna.

Sultan Suleyman

The European tradition since the Middle Ages had been that armies set out in the spring, fight throughout the summer, and then retire back to their capitals before the winter begins. This meant they wouldn’t have to fight in the bitter European winters, and risk losing soldiers to the low temperatures.
Following in this practical tradition, Sultan Suleyman set out from Istanbul in May of 1529, aiming for Vienna. Unfortunately for the Ottoman army, it was an unusually rainy summer, and their march was constantly bogged down as the roads got muddier as the summer went on. Numerous artillery pieces had to be abandoned along the road because of the bad conditions.
As a result of the weather, the Ottomans arrived at the walls of Vienna in late September, near the end of the fighting season. The siege itself ended up being relatively successful. The Ottomans got very close to conquering the city, but two weeks after the beginning of the siege, the Janissaries demanded they abandon Vienna and retire to Istanbul before the cold Austrian winter could set in. Suleyman was forced to give in to their demands and the siege was lifted. His attempt to dislodge the Hapsburgs had failed. Vienna ended up marking the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire, as they were never able to expand past that. After 230 years of growth, the Ottomans had reached their high water mark.

Administrative Reforms

It may seem as though the focus of Sultan Suleyman’s reign was military expansion. However, the major military campaigns of Suleyman’s reign all occurred within his first ten years in power. After this, the focus of his reign was administrative reforms and working to strengthen the internal affairs of the empire.
Perhaps Suleyman’s greatest accomplishment and the one he is most remembered for is his reform of the legal code. The Ottoman legal code had two facets. The first was the Shari’ah, the unchanging divinely ordained laws according to Islamic tradition, which is derived from the Quran and the actions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. The second was the laws dictated by the sultan of the time, known as Kanuns. These sultanate laws covered aspect of life not explicitly covered by the Shari’ah, such as taxes, police regulation, and other day to day affairs of the empire.

The Suleymaniye Mosque as seen from the Galata Tower

During the reigns of the previous nine sultans, from Osman to Selim, hundreds of Kanuns had accumulated, and the legal code was getting to be almost impossible to use. Because of this, Suleyman set out to organize all the previously issued laws. He worked personally with the grand mufti of the empire, the Shaykh al-Islam, Ebussuud Efendi, to go through all the laws, and determine if they contradicted the Shari’ah or other Kanuns. By removing any anti-Islamic laws and laws that repeated or contradicted each other, Suleyman and Ebussuud Efendi managed to formulate an effective and simplified code of laws, known as the Kanun-i Osmani (The Ottoman Laws) that served the Ottoman Empire for the next 300 years. For this, Suleyman was given the nickname Kanuni, meaning “lawgiver”.
Taxes were also a point of interest for Suleyman. In the Kanun-i Osmani, he made sure to relieve taxes on many of his subjects, particularly Christian peasants. Much of the population of the Ottoman Empire at this time was Christian, and keeping their loyalty and happiness was a priority for Suleyman. By relieving them of some taxes, the financial status of Christian peasants in the empire greatly improved. In fact, since the taxes on Christians in the Muslim Ottoman Empire were lower than the taxes on Christians in Christian Europe, many Christian Europeans migrated into the Ottoman Empire during Sultan Suleyman’s reign, preferring to live under a Muslim leader than Christian ones.

Legacy

Sultan Suleyman is considered to be one of the most successful Ottoman sultans in history. His reign was marked by the maximum territorial size of the empire, just and orderly laws, and a cultural and educational golden age. The monuments of Suleyman’s artistic patronage dot Istanbul’s landscape today. The Şehzade Mosque and Suleymaniye Mosques were built by Mimar Sinan at the request of Sultan Suleyman in Istanbul. Today they stand as lasting legacies of his golden age reign over the largest and most powerful Muslim empire of the 16th century.

Oleh Mahdzir Ibrahim
Secara formalnya, Dasar Ekonomi Baru (DEB) yang diperkenalkan pada 1970 sudah tiada selepas tahun 1990, ketika itu Tun Mahathir Mohamad menjadi Perdana Menteri.
DEB digantikan dengan Dasar Pembangunan Nasional dan kemudian, Perdana Menteri Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak menukarnya sekali lagi setelah BN hilang majoriti dua pertiga di Parlimen pada PRU ke 12, menjadi Model Ekonomi Baru (MEB) pada tahun 2010.
Malah dizaman Najib juga, MEB disertai dengan Program Transformasi Ekonomi atau Economic Transformation Programe (ETP). Intipati kepada ketiga-tiga dasar ini tetap sama sungguhpun namanya berbeza.
Saya pernah bertanyakan perkara ini dengan rakan-rakan dari kaum Cina. Adakah mereka merasa tidak selesa dengan DEB atau DPN atau MED. Jawabnya secara umum, tidak.
Mereka sama sekali tidak merasa risau atau bimbang atau terganggu dengan agenda DEB, DPN atau MEB kerana beliau mengakui bahawa dasar tersebut punya sebab yang boleh diterima.
Realiti bahawa majoriti penduduk Malaysia, lebih dari enam puluh peratus adalah kaum Bumiputera (lebih lima puluh peratus adalah Melayu) dan kaum majoriti inilah yang paling diancam kemiskinan.
Justeru katanya, kaum Cina atau India juga, tidak pun merasa cemburu atau merasa terancam, malah mereka boleh memahami dan menerimanya.
Namun, jelasnya lagi bukan niat atau objektif dasar-dasar ini yang dipertikaikan, tetapi bagaimana dasar ini dilaksana. Inilah juga yang disepakati oleh ramai rakan-rakan Melayu yang lain.
Rekod lampau
Ratusan billion ringgit telah dibelanjakan sejak Rancangan Malaysia kedua (1970an) untuk melaksanakan semua dasar-dasar kerajaan ini.
Namun, bukan sahaja objektifnya gagal dicapai malah jika ‘Melayu masih ingat’, ada direkodkan berlakunya pelbagai skandal penyelewengan dalam kerajaan.
Ini boleh dilihat sejak dari zaman penswastaan Tun Mahathir (kes MAS/Tajudin Ramli dan krisis ekonomi 1997), zaman Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Laporan Audit Negara seperti kerugian yang ditanggung kerajaan akibat kelemahan mengurus dalam projek keretapi berkembar Ipoh-Rawang) hinggalah ke zaman Najib (kes pembelian kapal selam, peralatan tentera dan kes NFC).
Jika ‘melayu masih ingat’, pada tahun 2011, Global Financial Integrity melaporkan, sekitar RM888 billion wang haram mengalir keluar negara dari tahun 2000 hingga 2008.
Ini belum termasuk laporan Ketua Audit Negara tentang pelbagai lagi ketirisan akibat kecuaian pihak kerajaan, baik diperingkat kementerian, jabatan dan agensi-agensi kerajaan dalam pelbagai projek yang lain. Ini pun jika ‘Melayu masih ingat’.
Siri pendedahan dalam Laporan Audit Negara setiap tahun masih gagal membuahkan tindakan drastik oleh kerajaan dalam menangani rasuah dan ketirisan dalam pengurusan kerajaan.
Juga, tidak ada banyak tindakan konkrit yang diambil oleh pihak berkuasa, sebaliknya masih banyak kes dan pendakwaan yang berkaitan rasuah masih tertangguh.
Peruntukan untuk Suruhanjaya Pencegahan Rasuah Malaysia (SPRM) terus meningkat dalam bajet setiap tahun, tetapi indeks persepsi rasuah oleh CPI Transparency International (TI), telah meletakan Malaysia ditangga ke 60 pada 2011 yang mendapat peruntukan sebanyak RM203 juta berbanding RM29 juta pada tahun 1996 ditangga ke 26.
Semuanya senario ini bermula dengan dasar pelaksanaannya.
Apa jaminannya?
Ini memberi indikasi bahawa apa jua dasar dengan apa pun namanya, apa jua slogan yang indah-indah untuk apa jua tujuannya, tidak dapat menjamin tahap integriti dan akauntabiliti yang tinggi dalam aspek pengurusan dan pelaksanaannya.
Transformasi dalam agenda sahaja tidak memadai sebaliknya Malaysia memerlukan reformasi sistem.
Kelmarin, Najib telah mengumumkan langkah untuk memperkasa ekonomi Bumiputera dalam bentuk dana dan latihan yang akan disalur dan digerakan menerusi pelbagai agensi seperti TEKUN, IKBN, JPA, MARA, UiTM, Yayasan Wakaf Malaysia dan banyak lagi, yang menelan belanja ratusan juta ringgit.
Agenda Memperkasa Ekonomi Bumiputera ini dilaksana dalam suasana budaya rasuah, sikap cuai dan kronisme yang masih berleluasa, khususnya bagi mereka yang berkepentingan.
Ingin kita tegaskan lagi, apa pun dasar dan matlamatnya, rakyat tidak menolaknya secara membuta tuli. Persoalannya mudah, apakah ada jaminan dari PM bahawa kesemua dana-dana yang akan disalurkan ini akan selamat sampai ke kelompok sasaran tanpa berulangnya lagi hal ketirisan dan rasuah?
Dan, adakah jaminan bahawa kumpulan sasaran untuk mendapat latihan tambahan itu benar-benar dari golongan yang memerlukan?
Jika melihat dari reputasi kerajaan BN selama ini, pastinya kita merasa bimbang dan ragu. Lihat saja institusi seperti Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), dahulunya ditubuhkan fokus untuk membantu bumiputera luar bandar yang miskin, tetapi kini praktiknya seakan telah berubah.
Maka, jalan paling berkesan untuk ‘memperkasa’ ekonomi Bumiputera ialah dengan ‘memperkasa’ aspek ketelusan (transparency), undang-undang dan integriti demi memastikan budaya rasuah dan ketirisan dapat diperangi habis-habisan.
Masalah ketirisan dan rasuah bukan sekadar mengurus persepsi dengan slogan atau kata-kata indah tetapi ia perlu dilaksana dan dikuatkuasa dengan segera. Tidak sukar, hanya memerlukan keberanian dan kesungguhan.
“Apa guna pasang pelita, jika tidak dengan sumbunya. Apa guna bermain kata, kalau tidak dengan sungguhnya.”
Penulis ialah peminat seni dan kebudayaan serta Ahli Jawatankuasa Eksekutif Pusat, Pemuda Sosialis DAP.

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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Apabila artikel ‘Kenaikan Harga Barang Ketetapan Allah’ muncul di saat rakyat sedang merasai ancaman kenaikan harga barang akibat potongan subsidi minyak oleh pihak kerajaan, majoriti rakyat memang tidak puas hati. Saya tidak tahu, apakah hasrat sebenar penulis berkenaan. Mungkin niatnya hendak meredakan perasaan rakyat terhadap kerajaan ataupun meredhakan kerajaan terhadapnya, itu tidak pasti. Kata penulis, dia bercakap dalam konteks sabar. Mungkin itu maksudnya.
Menariknya saya terbaca satu komen yang menyebut: ‘Kalau begitu pegawai-pegawai penguatkuasa kawalan harga barang sedang menentang ketetapan Allah lah?!’ Ringkas, tapi penuh makna.

Akidah

Sebelum kita pergi kepada hadis yang diguna pakai dalam penghujah isu ini, saya suka menyebut bahawa dalam sejarah umat Islam pernah muncul aliran Jabariah yang menganggap bahawa semua perkara adalah ketetapan Tuhan, manusia sama sekali tiada pilihan. Jabariah tidak termasuk dalam kalangan Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, sebaliknya mereka termasuk dalam golongan Ahlul Hawa (pengikut hawa nafsu). Saya percaya penulis berkenaan tidak demikian.
Nabi s.a.w mengajar kita tentang takdir dan usaha dalam masa yang sama. Apabila manusia berusaha, namun gagal disebabkan aturan perjalanan alam yang membabit pelbagai pihak; iklim, manusia, masa dan lain-lain, maka manusia hendaklah akur dengan kehendak Allah dalam hal itu. Segala yang berlaku dalam alam ini dengan izin Allah. Tiada apapun yang boleh berlaku tanpa izinNYA. Namun, apa yang DIA izinkan, bukan semestinya DIA redha. Demikian, apa yang DIA redha bukan semestinya DIA izinkan. DIA tidak redha kezaliman Firaun, tetapi DIA mengizinkan kewujudan Firaun atas sistem alam yang diciptaNYA. DIA redha hamba-hambaNYA bersedekah, tapi bukan semua mereka DIA izinkan memiliki harta yang banyak, atas sistem alam ciptaanNYA. Maka, di situlah adanya pahala bagi niat yang baik. Maka, DIA juga menetapkan Hari Pembalasan selepas kematian untuk membalas kebaikan dan keburukan.

Usaha

Kita disuruh berusaha kerana keizinan Allah itu sering berkaitan dengan usaha yang menuruti sunnah ataupun tabiat ciptaan alam. DIA boleh memenangkan para nabiNYA dalam sekelip mata, namun itu tidak berlaku. Semua para nabi terpaksa berjuang dan mencari sebab musabab untuk membolehkan mereka menang. Lihat Maryam ibu Nabi Isa, ketika dia dalam keadaan lemah hendak melahirkan Nabi Isa a.s., Allah menyuruh dia menggoncang pokok tamar. Rutab (tamar masak) pun jatuh berguguran. Firman Allah: (maksudnya)

“(ketika Maryam hendak melahirkan Isa) maka sakit beranak itu memaksanya (pergi bersandar) ke pangkal sebatang pohon tamar; dia berkata alangkah baiknya kalau aku mati sebelum ini dan jadilah aku dilupakan orang dan tidak dikenang-kenang! lalu dia diseru dari sebelah bawahnya:” janganlah engkau berdukacita (wahai Maryam), sesungguhnya Tuhanmu telah menjadikan di bawahmu sebatang anak sungai. Dan goncanglah ke arahmu batang pohon tamar itu, supaya gugur ke atasmu buah tamar yang masak.” (Surah Maryam 23-25).

Lihat, padahal Allah Pemberi Rezeki, tidak bolehkah DIA gugurkan sahaja buah tanpa perlu Maryam bersusah payah menggoncangnya?! Jika pun dia goncang, sekuat mana sangat wanita yang sarat mengandung dapat menggoncang pohon tamar?! Tidakkah dia sedang mengandung dengan pilihan Allah terhadap dirinya. Ya, namun, Allah mahu hidup ini berjalan menurut tabiatnya, usaha tetap disuruh dan bantuan Allah akan mengiringnya.

Takdir

Sama halnya dengan sakit demam, walaupun segalanya ketentuan Tuhan, namun Nabi s.a.w menyebut:

“Jika kamu mendengar taun di sesuatu tempat, jangan kamu pergi kepadanya. Jika berlaku di sesuatu tempat sedangkan kamu berada di situ, jangan kamu keluar daripadanya” (Riwayat al-Bukhari dan Muslim).

Kita kena berusaha, kita tidak boleh cakap ‘ini semua takdir’ lalu membiarkan penyakit merebak. Allah itu al-Syafi (Penyembuh). Benar, tapi kita kena berusaha mengatasi penyakit. Sabda Nabi:

“Bagi setiap penyakit ada ubatnya. Apabila betul ubatnya, maka sembuhlah dengan izin Allah.” (Riwayat Muslim).

Kata Al-Imam Nawawi (meninggal 676H ketika mensyarahkan hadis ini memetik kata-kata al-Qadi ‘Iyadh yang menyebut:

Hadis-hadis ini juga menolak golongan sufi yang melampau yang membantah berubat dan berkata: “Kesemuanya dengan qada dan qadar Allah, tidak memerlukan kita berubat”. Hadis-hadis ini adalah hujah para ulama dalam menolak mereka.” (Al-Nawawi, Syarh Sahih Muslim, 359/14, Beirut: Dar al-Khair).

Jika seseorang jaga kesihatannya, namun penyakit datang juga maka bersabarlah. Anggaplah itu ketetapan Allah. Ada hikmahnya. Ada sebab musabah di luar dari kemampuan diri. Ada pahala atas kesabaran itu. Tapi jika sendiri membahayakan diri. Melakukan perkara yang merosakkan seperti mengambil dadah, ataupun rokok, ataupun apa-apa tindakan yang bahaya lalu terkena penyakit, maka sebelum dia menyerah kepada takdir, dia hendaklah menyalahkan sikapnya terlebih dahulu. Allah telah ingatkan (maksudnya)

“Jangan kamu campakkan diri kamu ke dalam kebinasaan” (Surah al-Baqarah, ayat 195).

Jika seseorang mati kerana sakit atau tanpa sebarang sakit maka kita terima sebagai takdir. Namun jika dia dibunuh, walaupun itupun takdir, pembunuh mesti dihukum. Ulama tidak boleh bagitau mahkamah ‘jangan salahkan pembunuh kerana itu takdir, Allah itulah yang menghidup dan mematikan’. Demikian jika ada yang dirompak dan dirogol, tidak boleh kita beritahu bahawa dalam Islam penyelesaiannya ‘terimalah sebagai takdir dan bersabar, jangan salah sesiapa, rezeki ketentuan Allah’. Dalam Islam ada undang-undang jenayah dan pesalah boleh dihukum. Ada sistem keadilan yang wajib ditegakkan.
Jika anda masuk ke kedai, anda dapati pekedai menaikkan harga barang dan bila anda tanya kenapa lalu dia jawab “Allah menaikkan harga barang”. Apakah anda akan berkata: ‘masyaAllah, akidah awak terlalu teguh, awak sangat beriman’. Ataupun, ‘awak menggunakan nama Tuhan untuk ketamakan awak!’.
Dalam negara ini, ada berbillion projek yang dipersoalkan. Ada istana yang dibina dengan harga berbillion ringgit. Ada projek harta awam yang tersangkut atas pelbagai alasan berbillion harganya. Apakah jawapannya: ‘semua itu takdir Allah?!’. Saya juga lebih tertarik dengan kerajaan sekarang, lebih dari pembangkang, tapi bukan itu cara berhujah yang betul untuk membela.

Maksud Hadis

Apabila anda faham teras-teras di atas, maka fahamlah maksud hadis Anas bin Malik, dia berkata:

“Harga barang telah menjadi mahal di Madinah pada suatu ketika di zaman Rasulullah s.a.w. Maka orang ramai pun berkata: “Wahai Rasulullah! Harga barang telah mahal, tetapkan harga untuk kami”. Jawab Rasulullah s.a.w: “Sesungguhnya Allah, Dialah yang menetapkan harga, yang menyempit dan melimpahkan (kurniaan), yang maha memberi rezeki. Sesungguhnya aku berharap untuk menemui Allah dalam keadaan tiada seorang pun dalam kalangan kamu yang menuntut daripadaku haknya yang dizalimi samada pada darah atau harta”. (Riwayat Ahmad, Abu Daud, al-Tirmizi, Ibn Majah, al-Darimi dll. Dinilai sahih oleh al-Albani)

Ertinya, jika kenaikan itu bukan disebabkan perancangan buruk manusia, tetapi secara semulajadi yang jika ditetapkan harga barang akan menzalimi para peniaga, maka hadis ini dipakai dalam suasana yang seperti itu. Ertinya haram menetapkan harga barang.
Namun, jika naik turun harga tidak semulajadi, ada unsur permainan harga maka seperti mana peniaga tidak boleh dizalimi, demikian pembeli juga tidak boleh dizalimi. Kerajaan menjaga keadilan untuk kedua pihak. Justeru Islam melarang monopoli yang zalim seperti ihtikar (hoarding/sorok barang). Jika kezaliman berlaku, pemerintah boleh masuk campur menetapkan harga barang. Inilah yang sarjana seperti Ibn al-‘Arabi sebut:

“Sebenarnya, harus menetapkan harga dan mengawal urusan dengan suatu undang-undang yang tidak menzalimi kedua belah pihak (peniaga dan pembeli). Apa yang disebut oleh al-Mustafa (Nabi s.a.w) adalah benar, apa yang dilakukannya adalah tepat, namun itu untuk yang betul niat dan agama mereka. Adapun kaum yang berhasrat memakan harta dan menyusahkan orang ramai, maka pintu (peraturan) Allah adalah luas dan hukum dilaksanakan”.( Al-Munawi, Faidh al-Qadir, 2/337. Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah.).

Menariknya, Lajnah Fatwa Arab Saudi (fatwa 12076) juga membolehkan menetapkan harga barang dan tidak membenarkan seseorang sewenang-wenang menaikkan harga barang yang ditetapkan penguasa.
Kesimpulannya, hadis itu sahih. Konteks ia dikemukakan di waktu ini mungkin tidak tepat. Macam kata Saidina Ali bin Abi Talib kepada Khawarij:

“Satu slogan yang benar, tetapi dengan tujuan yang batil”. (Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad, 304/10, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah).

Adapun saya, tidak tahu apakah tujuan tokoh agama parti berkenaan mengemukakannya. Saya serahkan urusannya kepada Allah.

Kategori: Dakwah

Friday, September 13, 2013

Business-school literature has long stressed the importance of taking risks and encouraging rapid failure. In the real world of quarterly numbers, though, embracing failure mostly remains a throwaway line in CEO speeches.
At PBS Digital, we went beyond corporate lip service and demanded failure from each and every employee.
The results? The transformation of a venerated but legacy brand into a digital leader.
The story of our decision to create and embrace a failure metric begins, as do many business advances, with desperation. By 2007, PBS.org audience growth had stalled and the product pipeline was dry. Worse, the digital team was paralyzed by a deeply engrained culture of caution. Its top two priorities — a redesign of PBS.org and a new video player — had churned on for two years with little to show except a thick binder of product requirements from key constituents.
It’s easy to understand why. Television production works on a different cycle from digital, with programs often greenlit two to three years in advance. Also, PBS is the opposite of a top-down company. It’s a membership organization created to serve more than 350 independently owned and operated stations, each with its own board of directors, objectives, agendas and strategies.
With hundreds of masters, any potential digital product was bound to fall short of meeting somebody’s needs. Layer on the fact that PBS stations receive a small but vital revenue stream from federal and state governments, and you had an almost ideal scenario for paralysis.
That culture had worked fine in the analog world, through nearly four decades of groundbreaking children’s television started by Sesame Street, and primetime television gems such as NOVA, Nature, Masterpiece, and FRONTLINE — each of which has been on the air for more than a quarter-century.
But that was analog. On the digital side, an organization that deliberates too long about products instead of launching them will find itself quickly gasping for survival.
So when I joined the company in December 2006, I decided to deliver a shock to the system. Soon after arriving at PBS, I called the digital team into a conference room and announced we were ripping up everyone’s annual performance goals and adding a new metric.
Failure.
With a twist: “If you don’t fail enough times during the coming year,” I told every staffer, “you’ll be downgraded.”
Because if you’re not failing enough, you’re playing it safe.
The idea was to deliver a clear message: Move fast. Iterate fast. Be entrepreneurial. Don’t be afraid that if you stretch and sprint you might break things. Executive leadership has your back.
When I talked about the failure metric and freeing the team to become more entrepreneurial, some in the larger PBS organization translated this as the digital group wanting a license to be undisciplined. So we worked to build a digital team that was left-brain, right-brain — embracing the nonlinear right-brain mojo of a startup (entrepreneurial, fast-moving, unafraid of risk) while filtering every initiative through the left-brain empirical rigor of goals, metrics, and KPIs. The KPIs also helped ensure our failures were disciplined failures, not the result of sloppiness.
In a beautifully ironic twist, the failure metric itself initially failed. We originally envisioned the metric as a formal KPI in each staffer’s annual performance review. But we soon realized we had created a contradiction: You can’t build a culture that values rapid iteration by simply changing an annual performance cycle. We needed daily reinforcement of the desirability of risk-taking and failing fast.
So instead of spending cycles working with HR to create a KPI measuring lack of failure, we focused on endlessly repeating the “must fail” message.
The change was rapid and profound. Some staff were uncomfortable with the new culture and left. Others began taking risks. The product manager working on our first augmented reality site for PBSKids.org ditched her plans for months of customer research and testing in favor of a 10-week sprint to launch. The site failed. The product manager? She received a spot bonus and her “smart failure” was listed as a top accomplishment in her glowing annual review.
Critically, the lessons learned from the augmented reality failure led to creating a suite of gesture-based games, which are now among the most popular areas of pbskids.org.
With the team taking risks and being rewarded for doing so, we set to work institutionalizing the new culture, adding the day-to-day processes of a lean startup.
Our development team went Agile. We began formally recognizing staffers who took risks, such as the design director who landed several impressive applicants by replacing a traditional job posting with an infographic about the position.
Crucially, we redefined success. When our first foray into web-original video production, a safe, TV-type series called “The Parent Show,” launched to fairly good reviews, we resisted the temptation to declare victory. Instead, the team challenged itself to risk breaking the PBS mold by creating a truly YouTube-native show.
This led to the Mr. Rogers remix, “Garden of Your Mind,” which auto-tuned old clips so Mr. Rogers bursts into song. Within 48 hours, it rose to the top of the most viewed and most shared videos charts on YouTube.
Before the failure metric, the team would have considered a Fred Rogers music video to be risky at best, sacrilege at worst. Instead, the culture change triggered by the failure metric gave the team comfort that even if this blew up in their face, they would be protected.
Every revolution eventually faces a counter-revolution. Ours was no exception. The failure metric was a get-out-of jail-free card for the digital team, but had done nothing for the larger PBS organization. Tensions began to surface between the digital group’s new lean start-up pace and the larger organization’s traditional culture.
Properly managed, it’s a healthy tension. Each culture challenges the other to grow. More often, though, the incumbent culture simply blots out any challengers. So far, PBS has avoided that fate, thanks largely to CEO Paula Kerger, who has pulled off the difficult task of nurturing and supporting the new digital culture while growing audience ratings for the legacy television business.
We learned that to make the culture change stick, we needed to be both radical and incremental.
Radical because we needed to establish audacious goals to inspire the team. Incremental because, well, we didn’t want to get fired. (And because it’s a rare organization able to swallow significant change in one gulp.)
We went radical by re-casting our team’s mission statement into two words: Reinvent PBS.
And we took baby steps by starting with one product, PBS.TV, which upended both internal and audience assumptions about what a PBS website should look like.
We suspected we had it right when AP led a story with “PBS may be cooler than you think”; the Twitter crowd started calling PBS.TV “sick nasty”; and a middle-aged woman in focus group testing announced, “I can’t believe this is PBS. It’s so … modern.”
Crucially, we delivered business results. In the five years since we delivered the failure metric jolt to our system, unique visitors to PBS.org have doubled. In each of the first seven months of 2013, PBS.org topped ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox as the most-visited network TV site, according to comScore.
In that same timeframe, video views on PBS.org and our mobile platforms have risen 11,200 percent — from 2 million a month to almost a quarter-billion last month.
The 11,200 percent growth in video views has propelled PBSkids.org to become the most popular Web site for kids video for 17 straight months, according to comScore.
In the end, the failure metric was something of a verbal stunt. Here’s what staffers said a few years later: If I had simply announced that they had permission to fail, they would have considered it corporate blather. By making failure a requirement, I had shocked them into taking the message seriously. Sometimes it takes a stunt to push people — and organizations — out of their comfort zones and on to lasting change.

More blog posts by Jason Seiken

More on: Change management, Leading teams, Organizational culture

n the synopsis to this talk I ask the question: Nowadays information on politics is everywhere, but where can wisdom be found?
So this is what it’s come to on a Wednesday afternoon at the Bar Council, huh? All of you here in this room, listening to a 25-year-old tell you about wisdom.

But what’s the difference between information and wisdom?

Well, what would happen if we were to stop watching and reading the news? What would happen if we were to retire into the jungle and live there as hermits for a year? At the end of that year, would we still know anything of value about politics, or would all our knowledge be obsolete? What if we did this for two years, five years, ten? At the end of that period, what knowledge would we have that’s still of value?
Political philosophy seeks to provide that knowledge. It provides timeless lessons on power detached from the frenzy of the 24-hour news cycle: lessons that retain their potency even as politicians come and go, and empires rise and fall.
The origin of Western philosophy is illustrated here, with Raphael’s famous painting of The School of Athens.

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Raphael’s School of Athens
The central figures are Plato and his most famous student, Aristotle. These two men weren’t just the quintessential philosophers; they also sought to guide power. Plato was once an adviser at the court of King Dionysius of Syracuse, whilst Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great, probably the greatest conqueror the world has ever known.

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Plato (logic) and Aristotle (experience)
As you can see, Plato is depicted pointing up into the air. He is the lofty thinker: knowledge for him comes from logic, from revelation, and from imagining the abstract ideal Forms of all things.
Aristotle, by contrast, is depicted with his outstretched hand seeming to motion downwards. Whoa, he says, calm down, come down. Aristotle is more down to earth: knowledge for him comes from experience, from empiricism, from gritty conflict and human interactions.
This combination of logic and experience lies at the heart of knowledge in most disciplines. We shall require both in our exploration of democracy today.

***

Democracy as a political system has seen an upsurge in the past hundred years. According to Freedom House, the number of democracies climbed from just 22 in 1950 to 115 in 2010 out of a total of about 200 countries.
Today even regimes that aren’t democratic feel obliged to justify themselves in democratic terms. At present the only four countries that don’t claim to be democratic are Brunei, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Vatican City.
Even the recent military coup in Egypt is being portrayed by its supporters as a move to safeguard Egypt’s nascent democracy against an increasingly undemocratic Mohammed Morsi.
But what do we mean when we say ‘democracy’? Because the way we use the term today isn’t very straightforward.
In a recent BBC interview our old Prime Minister Dr Mahathir said that ‘Asians like to be democratic, but they don’t really understand democracy.’.
Well, I suppose we better make sure we do understand democracy, so that next time Mahathir cannot laugh at us.

The term ‘democracy’ comes from the Greek word demokratia, which was coined from the word demos (people) and the word kratos (power). It literally meant ‘people power’. In its most basic form, democracy means a system of government in which the majority of the citizens determine what’s to be done.

It’s best to start at the beginning. Apparently there were democracies in India even before this, but in the West democracy was invented in Athens around 500 BC.

The democracy then though, was very different from the democracy we have now. First of all, the voting franchise was restricted to free adult males above the age of 20 who were Athenian citizens; women and slaves could not vote.
Most importantly, the democracy then was democracy in its most straightforward form: it was a direct democracy. This meant that citizens would regularly attend debates on every single big public issue, and then vote on them: whether to impose taxes, whether to make a treaty with another city, whether to go to war, what military strategy to use – all sorts of things. Those issues would all be decided by simple majority voting.
We don’t have that sort of system now. What we have are representative democracies. In our parliamentary system that means that citizens only typically vote once every 4 years, and that’s to select a legislature and (through that) an executive, who are then supposed to decide on almost all public issues in the intervening period. Policy decisions are supposed to be decided by those with special expertise and with access to special information.

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The Situation Room
For example, in America, economic policy is decided by the President, the Treasury Secretary, and the Chairman of the Fed. Military strategy is decided by the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For important covert operations like the one that killed Osama bin Laden, decisions would be made by the President and a close group of advisers. In Malaysia all that is probably decided by Rosmah. Okay, I’m kidding, but I think you get my point – in both countries these kinds of decisions lie outside the ambit of the ordinary citizen, and that’s the way it works in most countries around the world that call themselves democratic.

Indeed, the ancient Greeks wouldn’t have regarded modern democracies as democracies at all. As Donald Kagan, former Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale, notes, ‘the Athenians would have been astonished at the claim of modern states to [the title of democracy]’. ‘To them an essential feature of democracy was the direct and full sovereignty of the majority of citizens. Government by elected representatives…appointment to important offices, unelected bureaucracies…terms for elective office of more than one year, all of these would have seemed clear and deadly enemies of what reasonable people might understand by democracy.’.

But what’s this mean? How did the fact that ancient Athens was a direct democracy affect decisions on public issues?

What this means, first of all, is that there were few secrets. Because everything had to be openly debated and discussed in the Athenian Assembly and then openly voted on, virtually everything became public knowledge. If, for example, the Athenians decided to send a fleet against the Spartans, the Spartans would know about it because they’d have spies within the Assembly who’d report to them as soon as a decision was reached.

This also means that a lot of important decisions, including military strategy, were made by people with no special expertise and with no access to special information, people who were sometimes ignorant and uneducated, people who could be easily influenced by demagogues into making rash choices.

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This book here is the history of The Peloponnesian War. It chronicles the war between Athens (a democracy) and Sparta (an oligarchy) almost 2,500 years ago. It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian general involved in the war, and the man hailed as the father of scientific history. Though written as a history, it’s the most powerful argument against democracy I’ve ever come across and it’s helped my understanding of democracy immensely.
In this book Thucydides illustrates the weaknesses of democracy. He chronicles in excruciating detail how Athenian democracy degenerated into mobocracy. In his account of the Sicilian Expedition, he relates how the Athenian people voted in favor of invading Sicily, and forced a general who had strongly advocated against the invasion to command it. Later, when the invasion didn’t go well, they blamed the general for it even though it was their idea in the first place. When the general begged the Athenian people to let the troops come back home, the Athenians refused to listen and instead did the exact opposite: they voted to send even more troops and more ships to fight, throwing more resources into an unwinnable expedition. Finally, the Athenian army got surrounded by their enemies and was massacred, and that general was killed.
Historians of the war also relate the aftermath of the Battle of Arginusae.
In this battle, the Athenian fleet defeated the Spartan navy and won a great victory. The Athenian admirals then decided to concentrate on pursuing the retreating Spartan navy and only sent a smaller force to retrieve the survivors and the dead bodies from their ships that had been sunk in the battle. A storm came and the survivors and the dead bodies were lost. When the admirals got home, the Athenian citizens, stirred to anger by rabid politicians, sentenced all 8 of the admirals to death without due process. And so Athens lost 8 of its finest admirals. Without these admirals the Athenian fleet was crippled, and it was crushed by the Spartan navy within a year. The Spartans then captured the city of Athens and celebrated by tearing down its proud walls to the sound of flute music. Thus, Athens, the great beacon of democracy, was defeated and the Athenians were subjugated under a Spartan dictatorship.
The great lesson of the Peloponnesian War that Thucydides tries to convey is that democracy is a really bad idea. It’s not that Athens happened to be a democracy and happened to lose to oligarchic Sparta: Athens lost to Sparta because it was a democracy. It was because the Athenian people voted on every issue and no one was held accountable for their collective bad decisions. It was because the people shifted the blame to others instead of looking at themselves. It was because they ignored the counsel of generals who knew war and military strategy, choosing to substitute their own uninformed judgment. It was because they were easily riled by demagogues into persecuting their best men – the only men who could have saved them. In the end it was the people who were the architects of their own subjugation.

Thucydides wasn’t the only one who thought democracy was a terrible system. This view was shared by most of the great thinkers of that time. Many of the criticisms they made of democracy are still very valid today.

Socrates in Plato’s Republic ranked democracy as the second-worst kind of political system – just one step away from tyranny. He described democracies as anarchic cities where the people are slaves to their desires.

Indeed, Socrates would go on to personify the injustice a democracy was capable of. As the father of Western philosophy, he spent his time talking to his fellow Athenians and provoking them into questioning absolutely everything, including the gods, the way they lived their lives, and the Athenian democratic system itself. Eventually, his enemies got sick of him and had him charged with ‘corrupting the youth and disbelieving in the gods of the city’. He was found guilty by the democracy and put to death. In the process, he became history’s most famous martyr for free speech, and his death was a powerful indictment of democracy – demonstrating how it could kill people unjustly. Socrates died by drinking poison, but he held to his principles until the end, something that’s captured very vividly in this painting.

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The Death of Socrates, by Jacques Louis-David

Likewise, Cleon, an Athenian politician, denounced democracy for creating a city of people who would support whoever was the best speaker, regardless of what that person was proposing. Here’s how Cleon scolded the Athenians for what he called their ‘addiction to argument’:

‘You like to be spectators of speeches…Good speakers advocating some future course of action are all the evidence you need to judge it possible…you are in thrall to the pleasure of listening, and you sit here more like spectators at the sophists’ displays than men taking decisions for their city.’

I think Cleon hits on an important weakness here. There were lots of factors leading to the rise of people like Mussolini and Hitler. But one important factor was that both of them were said to have been very good speakers. They could make lots of people listen to them and support their policies of fascism and brutal nationalism.
Hitler was said to have been such a great orator that he could be speaking to a crowd of thousands and many people in that crowd could feel like Hitler was speaking to him alone.
A few years ago I was at a Malaysian Student Leader’s Summit at the Intercontinental Hotel. There was a panel there with Khairy Jamaluddin on it. And you know, KJ is a very eloquent speaker, probably the most eloquent speaker in the whole of BN. At one point a student asked him a question: it was something about why the standard of living in Malaysia is so much lower than in Singapore. KJ replied ‘Why do you want to compare with Singapore? We should be kicking Singapore’s ass!’, and most of the hall cheered and applauded and that was that. The student’s question, an important one, was so easily deflected by a childish appeal to a sense of national pride. This was a reminder for me of how modern societies remain vulnerable to the influence of charismatic demagogues, to people who use passion to counter reason.
Probably the most fundamental criticism of democracy though, is this. Democracy is a system that treats people as equals. Rich or poor, smart or dumb, open or bigoted, educated or uneducated, every citizen gets an equal vote, even though, in many important respects, they’re not equal. ‘How can you have a system that treats people who are grossly unequal as equals?’ the ancients would ask, ‘That’s unjust, in fact, that’s crazy.’. You don’t hear that very often nowadays because it’s not politically correct, but it’s still an important question.
At times, it seems obvious that we’re all equals. But at other times it seems very obvious just how unequal we are.
Consider this – how should I put this delicately? – some people are really really stupid. Some people are really really ignorant and bigoted. You really want a system in which their votes count for the same as yours?
You really want a system in which the votes of Ibrahim Ali and the rest of his Perkasa idiots count for the same as yours?
Anyone remember that video of that Suara Wanita 1 Malaysia president trying to bully that student at UUM that went viral a few months back?

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Well, the scary thing wasn’t that president woman, because there are always some crazy people here and there: it was the crowd of students, many of whom cheered and clapped in support even though her speech made virtually no sense at all, especially that bit about chickens and sharks also having problems. Well that wasn’t just a small group of students – there were hundreds of them. You really want a system where each of their votes counts for the same as yours?

John T. Wenders, former Professor of Economics at the University of Idaho, described democracy as ‘Two coyotes and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch’. Ultimately, a big part of whether you support democracy or not depends on the confidence you have in your fellow citizens. Confidence in their knowledge and intelligence (at least to a minimum level), and most of all, confidence in their values and their basic human decency. If you view most of your fellow citizens as coyotes, you’re unlikely to be too hot about democracy.

Well, turns out, many people throughout history were convinced by those arguments against democracy, and so after ancient Greece was conquered by Philip of Macedon (the father of Alexander the Great) in 337 BC, democracy largely disappeared from the Western world until the birth of the American republic around 1789, more than 2,000 years later. Although there are significant differences between democracy in early America and present day democracy (for example only a minority held the voting franchise), this was the prototype.

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Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, by Howard Chandler Christy

Thus began the great American experiment with democracy. After fleeing persecution and bigotry in Europe, and having to fight for their independence from the British Empire, the last thing the Americans wanted was rule by another tyrant.
But here’s the thing: America’s founding fathers were great readers of the classics. They had read Thucydides and Plato and Thomas Hobbes – all those great thinkers who wrote that democracy was unsustainable because people are too stupid, too violent, too selfish. The founding fathers didn’t ignore the weaknesses of democracy, they learned from them, and they used this knowledge to design a system that was democratic in nature, but which guarded against the weaknesses of the Athenian direct democracy.
What they created wasn’t just a democracy, it was something different: it was a republic. It was rule by the people, but it had special checks against the tyranny of the majority, because they acknowledged that the majority could sometimes be wrong. They chose a system of representative democracy, in which elected representatives (who devoted their time to understanding issues and were privy to secret information) made decisions on behalf of the people, and were accountable to them.
They drew upon the Roman and British traditions, as well as the writings of the French political philosopher Montesquieu, and stressed a separation of powers into a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary, and gave the Supreme Court great powers to check the other two branches. In the Bill of Rights, they put liberty at the heart of their law and enshrined freedom of expression, freedom of the press, due process, and private property – all these safeguarded minority rights against the majority. ‘The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few’, said President Obama in his second inaugural address, ‘or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic’.
These ideas went on to influence the development of democracy in England, and in other parts of the world, leading to the democratic systems we have now. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up in 1948, it drew on these ideas too. It’s common to think of democracy and human rights as going hand in hand, but they don’t really.
Some of you might remember an incident across the causeway 2 months ago when Zainudin Nordin, a Member of Parliament in Singapore, posted up a quote from a book by the author Terry Goodkind pointing out that ‘Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.’. He came under a lot of flak for doing that by politically-correct Singaporeans, but he was largely correct.

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The unfortunate Zainudin Nordin
If ‘democracy’ just means majority rule, well, that means that whatever the majority decides can and should be done. If the majority wants to rape someone then fine. If the majority wants to persecute someone for speaking his mind then fine. If the majority wants to ban minorities from using the word ‘Allah’, then that’s fine too.

But human rights opposes this. It draws a line in the sand. It says there are some things you cannot do. It says that some rights are so precious and so fundamental that they should be protected even if the majority decides to infringe them.

It’s no coincidence that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up in the bloody aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust, in which millions of people, many of them minorities, were massacred. It was because the drafters of the Declaration realized that, whilst democracy was important, so too were specially-protected human rights, and in modern democracies there’s a calculated tension between the two.

And so when we use the term ‘democracy’ today, it doesn’t just mean ‘majority rule’. It has become something far more complex. It means majority rule, but majority rule through representation, and with checks and protections for fundamental rights in place. It is comprised of different, and often conflicting, elements, and it is, I think, a better system of government because of this.

***

But how does democracy fare in the Malaysian context? How does it interact with political Islam? How does it function in a country as religiously and ethnically diverse (some would say ‘religiously and ethnically divided’) as Malaysia.

In this book, World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, Yale law professor Amy Chua helps to answer those questions. This is a disturbing and iconoclastic book, a work of rigorous scholarship, and it’s contributed a great deal to my understanding of democracy in the region.

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In short, the prognosis is worrying. Professor Chua observes that rapid democratization can be very dangerous in countries with market-dominant minorities.

What do you think she’s talking about here when she says ‘market-dominant minorities’?
She’s talking about the Chinese in Malaysia, who are a minority, but who control a disproportionately large portion of the wealth in the country. And this isn’t something you find only in Malaysia, you also find this with Chinese diasporas in Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and the Philippines.
Increasing democracy in these countries can be dangerous, because the majority ethnic group, the Malays in the case of Malaysia, may feel resentful at the disproportionate wealth of the Chinese minority. Their different ethnicities will make this worse, because it’s not, for example, the same as a poor white guy looking at a rich white guy in America. In that scenario, that poor white guy may think that he’s not so different from the rich white guy. He may think that maybe one day if he works hard and works smart he can be just like him. In the Malaysian context, it’s a bit harder. The poor Malay may look at the rich Chinese and think that they’re very different. They look different, their skin is a different color, they have different customs and religions, they might not even speak the same language. He may well conclude that no matter how hard or smart he works, he’ll never be just like that rich Chinese. He may view the other ethnicity as alien.
Where can this feeling of resentment lead? Sure, most of the Chinese may deserve to hold that large share of wealth: they may have worked hard and smart for it, they may have earned it with their initiative and ingenuity, and their country may have benefitted a great deal from their enterprise.
But, as we saw even from the time of Thucydides, human nature is not always fair. It can be selfish and violent and shortsighted, and when members of an ethnic majority look at the wealth of a rich minority that they feel alienated from, there can be the temptation to take it all away. They might just decide, hey, since this country is democratic and we, the ethnic majority, comprise most of the votes, why don’t we just pressure our politicians to take all that minority’s stuff and redistribute it to us instead? In this scenario, the majoritarian side of democracy becomes favored at the expense of checks and human rights. Combine this with political Islam, in which an extremist form of Islam is exploited by demagogues to justify persecuting those who are different, and you have a recipe for great atrocities.
So what’s the solution to this problem? Well, some prominent Chinese families decided to oppose democracy, developing a symbiotic relationship with local despots: the despots kept the majority at bay and in return the families provided (usually financial) support. Chinese elites in the Philippines propped-up the kleptocratic Marcos regime. Chinese tycoons like Bob Hasan and Liem Sioe Liong helped finance the despotic Suharto regime in Indonesia in exchange for special favors and government contracts.
You see something similar in Malaysia with the support the ruling party enjoys from Chinese tycoons like Francis Yeoh of YTL and Vincent Tan of Berjaya. Indeed, this can sometimes extend to direct complicity in repression. Some of you might remember that The Sun newspaper was once quite vocal and objective compared to other Malaysian papers. However, when it was bought over by Berjaya it became much more subdued and biased towards the ruling party.

Professor Amy Chua’s solution is to endorse schemes like Malaysia’s NEP, arguing that its affirmative action policies reduce resentment by leveling the wealth disparity.

To an extent I can see where they’re coming from. These solutions aim to reduce the discrepancy between political and economic power.

So are these people right? Should I, as a Chinese Malaysian, oppose democracy in Malaysia and throw my support behind the authoritarian BN government? Should I endorse the NEP? What do you think? Tough call, huh?

By the way, there are parallels between this dilemma and the Arab Spring. In December 2010, the self-immolation of a young Tunisian man triggered a wave of democratic protests across the Arab world, and revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. And the US government, which had been calling for democratization for years, suddenly had no idea what to do, as was seen from its confused reaction. The Americans were apprehensive because they had been rather deplorably propping-up those Middle Eastern dictators for decades, and now, with this rapid democratization, they were afraid of what the Arab people might vote for, and feared the rise of Islamic extremism.

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Protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square
Well my answer to the Malaysian dilemma is this. The thing about supporting authoritarianism and policies like the NEP in Malaysia is that they aren’t really solutions because they’re not sustainable; they don’t solve the problem, at most they only delay the reckoning.
The NEP may seem to ease the resentment of the Malays for a while, but what we find in Malaysia is that over time these affirmative action policies create a ‘crutch-mentality’ among many Malays; many have come to rely on the government for handouts instead of learning to compete, and so grow increasingly incapable of improving their economic status, leading to greater frustration in the long-term.
Supporting an authoritarian strong-man may seem to keep the threat of violence at bay, but it doesn’t go away: it simmers under the surface. Meanwhile, an authoritarian government finds it easier to get away with corruption and cronyism and squanders public money instead of using it to improve the country. The BN government also deliberately stokes racial and religious tension to rally support, whilst often prohibiting reasoned discussion on important issues. It severely limits civil society by restricting peaceful protests, gatherings, public forums, and independent media, such that for many years the only outlet was Islamic extremism. The long-term effect of this is that poverty and racial and religious tensions get even worse. The threat of violence may be delayed for a while, but you pay heavily for this borrowed time. The Americans tried this bargain by propping-up dictators in the Middle East, and extremism in the region rose. Some Chinese-Indonesian tycoons tried this for decades by propping-up Suharto. They thought with their money they could control Suharto, and Suharto could control the resentment of the pribumi Indonesians. When the racial riots broke out in 1998, they found out just how in control they really were.

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Indonesian pribumi rioters burn a portrait of Liem Sioe Liong and his wife pillaged from his house during the 1998 riots

I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Amy Chua when I was a student at Yale, and during our conversation I put all that to her. She said she hadn’t realized those complications. I asked her if she could think of a more sustainable solution to this problem. Professor Chua is an exceptionally careful and meticulous scholar: she said she didn’t have an answer, and that she would need to do a lot more research before she could come up with one.
I think that democracy is difficult and messy and complicated, but the alternatives, at least in Malaysia, are unsustainable. I think Winston Churchill was largely right when he said ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried’.
I think our best hope lies in a country that’s more democratic, but which also has strong protections for fundamental rights. It lies in a country where those from poorer backgrounds are given help (primarily through education) to compete with others, in a way that empowers them instead of coddling them. It lies in a country where people are free to debate and discuss the most important issues and work out solutions instead of burying them and leaving them to fester. Such a country will require the richer Chinese minority to actively engage with national problems, to realize that they have a stake in the country too, and to resist throwing money at problems to try to make them go away. There’s a Chinese saying that ‘nothing is a problem if money can solve it’. It’s sometimes true: money can certainly get you out of certain difficulties. But to take it to an extreme, and to think that money can be substituted for the hard work of dialogue and engagement and nation-building, is a grave mistake.
Aristotle wrote that if you assume a wise and benevolent government, a dictatorship is better than a democracy. I think he’s right.
Throughout history however, it seems an immutable rule that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’, that those with too much power almost always abuse it. Because of this there are very few governments that are wise and benevolent, and certainly very few that, upon attaining overwhelming power, remain wise and benevolent for very long.

Aristotle, empiricist that he was, recognized this. If you assume a wise and benevolent government, he wrote, a dictatorship is better than a democracy. But a corrupted dictatorship is worse than a corrupted democracy. And since actual governments tend towards corruption and abuse, in reality it is democracy that ends up being better. In this way Aristotle arrived at a qualified defense of democracy.

Ultimately, I support democracy in most cases because I share this deep mistrust of people who are given too much power over others, and modern democracy has the most effective checks against such power.

There are other reasons too. The ancients warned that democracy can descend into mobocracy; instigated by charismatic leaders, the people can make terrible decisions and persecute minorities. All that remains true.

However, it’s also true that, whilst Athens lost to Sparta in The Peloponnesian War, modern representative democracies have tended to win against dictatorships when they fought. It’s also true that the rights of minorities have been better protected under modern democracies than under authoritarian regimes. And it’s also true that democracies tend to be more prosperous and better at encouraging creativity and innovation.

Modern democracy is a concept perpetually in tension with itself, with its own conflicting elements. It will remain a sound system of government so long as people remember that it’s supposed to be that way.

Thank you.

(MTadmin - footnotes were left out due to formatting problems)

Persoalan sama ada orang kafir terkena hukum Islam atau tidak sebenarnya tidak pernah timbul dalam benak kaum Muslimin generasi awal mahupun generasi setelahnya. Kaum Muslimin dahulu benar-benar faham bahawa satu-satunya hukuman yang wajib ke atas manusia adalah hukum Allah.

Allah adalah Pencipta manusia dan Allah-lah Yang Maha Mengatur dan Maha Menghukum. Inilah yang difahami dan diterapkan oleh umat Islam berabad-abad lamanya. Namun, setelah kelemahan berfikir melanda umat Islam dan negeri-negeri kaum Muslimin satu per satu jatuh ke tangan penjajah kuffar, maka di negeri-negeri kaum Muslimin ini telah diterapkan sistem kufur/sekular penjajah. Setelah mereka memberi kemerdekaan kepada negeri-negeri ini, pemimpin sekular yang telah dilantik oleh kuffar penjajah ini tetap meneruskan undang-undang kufur penjajah di samping sedikit penerapan undang-undang Islam dalam hal ibadat dan kekeluargaan sahaja. Hasilnya, kaum Muslimin, termasuklah golongan ulama telah terbiasa dan ‘terbius’ dengan kefahaman bahawa undang-undang Islam hanyalah untuk orang-orang Islam sahaja, manakala orang-orang kafir dibiarkan mengamalkan undang-undang kafir.

Betapa terpesongnya pemikiran di kalangan ulama ini, sehingga ada antara mereka yang beranggapan bahawa undang-undang kufur (yang dibuat oleh negara) tetap terpakai ke atas umat Islam manakala orang kafir pula sekali-kali tidak boleh dikenakan undang-undang Islam ke atas mereka. Apatah lagi di dalam sebuah negara yang bermasyarakat majmuk, para pemimpin dan ulama yang ada terus ‘dikuasai’ oleh pemikiran kufur bahawa undang-undang Islam tidak boleh dilaksanakan ke atas orang-orang kafir, bukan setakat kerana ia tidak terpakai, malah tidak boleh dilaksanakan kerana perlu ‘menjaga hati’ orang kafir. Inilah di antara kejayaan kuffar Barat di dalam memasukkan racun sekular mereka ke dalam tubuh umat Islam.

Setelah sistem demokrasi-pilihan raya diperkenalkan oleh Barat ke atas negeri-negeri umat Islam dan setiap orang kafir diberi hak mengundi untuk memilih wakil rakyat, maka para pemimpin dan ulama Islam terjerat sekali lagi di mana untuk mereka meraih pemerintahan, mereka mesti mendapat sokongan/undi dari orang kafir, maka ‘hati’ orang kafir perlu dijaga agar menyokong/mengundi mereka. Oleh sebab sebahagian besar orang kafir (sekarang) tidak mahu atau tidak suka kepada undang-undang Islam, maka usaha-usaha dilakukan untuk memberi kefahaman kepada orang kafir bahawa undang-undang Islam tidak terkena ke atas mereka.

Jadi, tidak hairanlah jika ramai di kalangan umat Islam yang, walaupun sayangkan Islam, namun oleh kerana sudah lama hidup dalam sistem sekular di mana racun ini sudah menjadi sebati dalam diri mereka, memahami bahawa hukum Allah ini hanyalah untuk orang Islam semata-mata, manakala orang kafir tidak terkena hukum Allah, tetapi diberi alternatif. Mereka menyatakan bahawa perlaksanaan hukum hudud, qisas dan ta'zir hanya dikenakan ke atas orang Islam sahaja manakala penduduk bukan Islam diberi pilihan sama ada hendak menerima hukum tersebut atau tetap berhukum dengan hukum kufur. Untuk menyokong pendapat ini, mereka beristidlal dengan firman Allah,

“Jika mereka datang kepadamu (untuk meminta keputusan), maka putuskanlah (perkara itu) di antara mereka, atau berpalinglah dari mereka. Jika kamu berpaling dari mereka, maka mereka tidak memberi mudharat kepadamu sedikitpun. Dan jika kamu memutuskan perkara mereka, maka putuskanlah (perkara itu) di antara mereka dengan adil. Sesungguhnya Allah menyukai orang-orang yang adil” [TMQ al-Maidah (5):42].

Mereka seterusnya menafsirkan ayat ini bahawa Allah memberi pilihan kepada orang kafir sama ada untuk menerima hukum hudud, qisas dan ta'zir atau memilih untuk berhukum dengan hukum mereka (hukum kufur). Lafaz “fa in ja’uka fahkum bainahum au a’ridh anhum” (jika mereka datang kepada mu, maka putuskanlah di antara mereka atau berpaling dari mereka) mereka tafsirkan sebagai ‘pilihan’ yang diberi kepada ‘orang kafir’ sama ada untuk berhukum dengan hukum Islam atau pun hukum kufur. Oleh yang demikian, mereka telah menyatakan bahawa orang kafir yang tinggal dalam negara Islam tidak terkena hukum Islam, kecuali orang kafir itu sendiri memilih untuk berhukum dengan hukum Islam.

Mengkaji dengan teliti dari aspek mafhum, mantuq dan juga asbabunuzul ayat di atas, maka kita dapati bahawa tafsiran yang dibuat adalah amat salah dan mengelirukan. Dari segi lafaz itu sendiri, kita memahami bahawa:

(i) Allah memberi pilihan kepada Rasulullah (sebagai Ketua Negara) bukannya kepada orang kafir; dan

(ii) Pilihan yang diberi itu adalah sama ada untuk menghukum orang kafir (fahkum) dengan hukum Islam atau berpaling dari mereka (a’ridh), bukannya pilihan untuk berhukum dengan hukum Islam atau berhukum dengan hukum kufur. ‘Berpaling’ maksudnya tidak menghukum (membiarkan) mereka.

Secara ringkasnya dapat kita simpulkan bahawa ayat ini ditujukan kepada Rasulullah (sebagai Ketua Negara) dan Allah memberi dua alternatif kepada Rasul sama ada ingin menghukum kesalahan mereka dengan hukuman Allah atau membiarkan mereka tanpa dihukum. Untuk menjelaskan lagi perkara ini, kita boleh melihat pandangan beberapa ulama muktabar berkenaan dengan hukum fiqh yang mereka istinbat dari ayat ini:-

Ibnu Kathir menyatakan:

Jika mereka (orang kafir) datang kepada kamu (iaitu) untuk meminta pengadilan dari kamu, maka hakimilah antara mereka, atau biarkan mereka. Jika kamu berpaling daripada mereka, maka mereka tidak akan dapat membahayakanmu sedikit pun. Maka tidak mengapa untuk kamu tidak mengadili persengketaan di antara mereka kerana sebenarnya mereka tidak berniat untuk berhukum kepada kamu berdasarkan hak, tetapi mereka inginkan apa yang sesuai dengan hawa nafsu mereka [Ibnu Kathir, Tafsir Al-Quran Al-Azhim]. Qusairy menyatakan: Tidak wajib ke atas kita untuk mengadili di antara mereka bila mereka bukan kafir zimmi tetapi kita boleh mengadili mereka jika kita mahu [Imam Al-Qurthubi, Al-Jami’li Akhamil Quran]. Sa'id bin Jubair menjelaskan: Jika mereka (orang Yahudi) datang kepadamu (untuk meminta keputusan), maka putuskanlah (perkara itu) di antara mereka atau berpalinglah dari mereka. Dalam ayat ini Allah memberikan keluasan bagi seorang hakim untuk memilih antara memutuskan perkara mereka atau tidak menghukum, dan membiarkannya terkontang-kanting [Ibnu Jawzi, Nawasikhul Qur’an].

Dari aspek asbabun nuzul ayat di atas, kita akan lebih memahami maksud ayat tersebut dengan benar apabila melihat kepada sebab penurunan ayat ini di tambah dengan memahami kedudukan/aspek geo-politik orang kafir (Yahudi) yang disebutkan di dalam ayat tersebut. Imam Sayuthi menjelaskan,

“Seorang lelaki dari suku Yahudi di Fadak telah berzina, lalu orang-orang Fadak menulis surat kepada Yahudi di Madinah supaya bertanya kepada Muhammad Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam tentang hukum orang yang berzina itu. Jika Muhammad memerintah untuk disebat, maka terimalah, tetapi jika Muhammad memerintah untuk direjam, maka tolaklah. Orang Yahudi bertanya dan Rasulullah Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam pun menjawab akan mereka, lalu sebagaimana dinyatakan di dalam hadis, turunlah ayat “Jika mereka datang kepadamu, maka hukumlah mereka atau berpaling dari mereka” [Imam Sayuthi, Tafsir Jalalain & Kitab Lubabunuqul Fi Asbabinuzul].

Kita perlu memahami bahawa Fadak adalah sebuah kota di utara Hijaz, tidak jauh dari Khaibar dan berada di luar dari Daulah Islam Madinah. Jauhnya 2-3 hari perjalanan menaiki unta dari Madinah. Kota ini sekarang telah ditukar namanya kepada Kampung Huwayyit (berkedudukan di luar Madinah). Jarak sebenar antara Madinah (24°27’U, 39°37’T) dan Huwayyit (25°35’U, 40°22’T) lebih kurang 150 km dengan pengukuran secara rentas. Berdasarkan hal ini, kita perlu faham bahawa Yahudi yang dimaksudkan dalam ayat di atas bukan Yahudi dari kafir zimmi (kafir yang tinggal dalam Daulah Islam) tetapi mereka adalah dari kelompok Yahudi yang tinggal di luar Madinah (bukan warganegara Daulah). Dengan kata lain, ayat di atas adalah khusus untuk kes kafir warga asing yang ingin berhukum dengan hukum Islam, bukannya ayat berkenaan kafir warganegara Daulah (kafir zimmi).

Di sini satu lagi kesalahan pihak yang menafsirkan ayat di atas apabila mereka tidak melihat akan fakta ini. Hukum ke atas kafir zimmi (kafir warganegara Daulah) berbeza dengan hukum ke atas kafir yang bukan warganegara Daulah. Oleh itu, adalah satu kesalahan fatal apabila menjadikan ayat ini sebagai dalil untuk menunjukkan bahawa kafir yang tinggal dalam negara (zimmi) tidak terkena hukum Allah.

Kafir zimmi, sebagaimana yang akan diterangkan nanti, adalah terikat dengan hukum Islam, tidak sebagaimana kafir yang bukan warganegara. Bagi kafir yang tinggal di luar Daulah Islam, tetapi mereka ingin berhukum dengan hukum Daulah (hukum Allah), maka Ketua Negara boleh memilih untuk menghukum mereka (dengan hukum Allah), atau membiarkan mereka (tidak menghukum). Tetapi Ketua Negara sekali-kali tidak dibenarkan menghukum mereka mengikut hukum mereka/kufur. Jika kita menghukum mereka mengikut hukum kufur, maka ini adalah satu dosa dan keharaman kerana kita telah berhukum bukan dengan apa yang telah diturunkan oleh Allah. Seseorang itu boleh menjadi kafir, zalim atau fasik sekiranya tidak memutuskan hukum dengan apa yang Allah telah turunkan (lihat Surah al-Maidah [5]:44, 45 & 47).

Dalam banyak ayat lain lagi, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala menjelaskan bahawa haram bagi orang Islam untuk memutuskan hukum selain dengan Kitabullah. FirmanNya,

“Maka putuskanlah perkara atas mereka menurut apa yang Allah turunkan (hukum Islam), dan janganlah kamu mengikuti hawa nafsu mereka dengan meninggalkan kebenaran (hukum Islam) yang telah datang kepadamu” [TMQ al-Maidah (5):48].

Allah juga berfirman,

“Sesungguhnya Kami telah menurunkan Kitab kepadamu dengan membawa kebenaran, supaya kamu menghukum antara manusia dengan apa yang telah Allah wahyukan kepadamu” [TMQ an-Nisa (4):105].

Ayat-ayat ini berbentuk umum dan ada ayat yang mana Allah menggunakan lafaz “manusia” yang menerangkan kepada kita bahawa, dalam keadaan kita mengadili sesuatu kes atau ingin menghukum, maka hukum Allah-lah satu-satunya hukum yang wajib dilaksanakan ke atas semua manusia (bukannya ke atas orang Islam sahaja) dan langsung tidak ada kebenaran/perintah dari Allah untuk kita (orang Islam) berhukum atau menghukum manusia dengan hukum selain hukum Allah.

Kafir Zimmi Terikat Dengan Hukum Islam

Kewajiban melaksanakan hukum Islam ke atas kafir zimmi merupakan satu perkara yang teramat jelas di dalam Islam.

Tidak ada khilaf di kalangan ulama tentangnya dan kafir zimmi yang telah hidup di dalam Daulah Islam selama lebih 13 abad pun mematuhi hal ini. Kita perlu memahami bahawa hukum Islam adalah hukum Negara, bukannya hukum ke atas individu Muslim sahaja. Contoh yang mudah sahaja seperti hukum potong tangan untuk si pencuri – ini adalah hukum negara di mana tidak kiralah sama ada pencuri itu Muslim atau kafir, maka wajib dipotong tangannya. Begitu jugalah dengan hukum rompak, bunuh, judi, riba, rogol, zina dan sebagainya. Hukum Islam adalah hukum yang wajib diterapkan oleh pemerintah ke atas setiap warganegara.

Di dalam kehidupan Daulah Islamiyyah, orang-orang kafir zimmi (sesuai dengan akad zimmah dengan Negara Daulah) hanya dibolehkan menjalankan hukum-hakam yang berhubungan dengan akidah, ibadah, makanan, perkahwinan, kematian dan sejenisnya menurut hukum-hakam agama mereka, asalkan tidak menam¬pakkan syi'ar-syi'ar agama mereka di hadapan kaum Muslim. Namun, dalam perkara yang menyangkut hukum-hakam umum iaitu mua’malat dan uqubat (hudud, qisas, ta’zir dan mukhalafat), maka atas mereka (orang-orang kafir zimmi) diterapkan hukum¬-hakam Islam sepenuhnya.

Sebenarnya kedudukan mereka sebagai warganegara Daulah Islamiyah adalah sama dengan kaum Muslimin dari aspek hak dan tanggungjawab sebagai warganegara. Surah al-Maidah (5):48 dan juga an-Nisa (4):105 di atas sudah cukup menunjukkan bahawa hukum-hukum Islam itu wajib dilaksanakan ke atas seluruh warga negara, sama ada Muslim mahupun kafir zimmi.

Teramat salahlah pandangan yang menyatakan bahawa kafir zimmi tidak terikat dengan hukum Islam. Sungguh jauh dari kebenaran pandangan ini dan teramat ganjil sekali. Apa tidaknya, istilah dan pengertian ‘zimmi’ itu sendiri bermaksud “perlindungan yang diberikan kepada mereka kerana ketundukan mereka kepada hukum-hakam Daulah (hukum Islam)”. Status ‘zimmi’ (perlindungan) diberikan kepada mereka sebagai balasan dari ‘jizyah’ yang mereka bayar kepada Daulah.

Dan jizyah ini adalah hukum Islam, bukan hukum kufur. Jadi, bayaran jizyah yang dikenakan ke atas kafir zimmi ini adalah terlalu jelas dan nyata dan secara automatiknya menunjukkan kepada kita bahawa kafir zimmi wajib mengikut atau tunduk kepada hukum Islam. Dengan kata lain, jika kafir zimmi tidak tertakluk kepada hukum Islam, maka tidak perlulah mereka membayar jizyah. Dan hal ini demi Allah sesungguhnya tidak akan terjadi (kerana kafir zimmi wajib membayar jizyah dengan maksud mereka wajib tunduk kepada hukum Islam). Firman Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala,

“Perangilah orang-orang yang tidak beriman kepada Allah dan tidak beriman kepada hari akhirat, dan mereka pula tidak mengharamkan apa yang telah diharamkan oleh Allah dan RasulNya, dan tidak beragama dengan ugama yang benar, iaitu dari orang-orang yang diberikan Kitab (kaum Yahudi dan Nasrani), sehingga mereka membayar jizyah dengan keadaan tunduk patuh” [TMQ at-Taubah (9):29].

Apabila orang-orang kafir zimmi menolak untuk dihukumi dengan hukum-hakam Islam, maka Khalifah wajib memaksa mereka untuk tunduk. Rasulullah Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam pernah menulis surat kepada penduduk Najran yang beragama Nasrani, dengan kalimat yang amat tegas sekali, di mana sabda baginda, “Sesungguhnya siapa saja di antara kalian yang melakukan transaksi (jual beli) dengan riba, maka tidak ada lagi perlindungan (zimmah) atasnya.” Kedudukan penduduk Najran waktu itu adalah sebahagian dari Daulah Islamiyyah. Selain ini, terdapat banyak hadis yang jelas menunjukkan bahawa orang-orang kafir yang hidup di dalam Daulah Islam adalah dihukum menurut hukum Islam atas kesalahan yang telah mereka lakukan. Dalam sebuah hadis riwayat dari Anas, “Seorang Yahudi telah menyepit kepala seorang perempuan dengan dua buah batu.

Kemudian ditanyakan kepadanya siapakah yang melakukannya? Ia menjawab, ‘sifulan atau sifulan’ dengan menyebut nama seorang Yahudi. Rasulullah Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam bertanya, ‘Apakah engkau telah menyepit kepalanya?’ Yahudi itu akhirnya mengakui perbuatannya. Kemudian Rasulullah Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam memerintahkan untuk menyepit kepala Yahudi itu dengan dua buah batu (iaitu membunuhnya)”. Dalam riwayat Muslim disebutkan, “...maka ia dibunuh lantaran ia datang kepada Nabi dengan menyerahkan jiwanya”

Dalam sebuah hadis yang diriwayatkan oleh Bukhari dan Muslim,

“Bahawa Rasulullah Sallallahu ‘alihi wa Sallam telah pun menghukum rejam dua orang Yahudi. Kedua-dua itu sebelum berzina telah merasai persetubuhan melalui perkahwinan di dalam agamanya”.

Imam Nawawi dalam Minhaj At-Thalibin menyatakan, “Dan had (hudud) untuk penzina muhsan, mukallaf yang merdeka adalah rejam. Syarbini berkomentar menjelaskan ungkapan ini, “..kerana Nabi telah merejam dua orang Yahudi sebagaimana diriwayatkan dalam Sahihain, dalam tambahan riwayat Abu Daud, ‘mereka berdua adalah muhsan’. Tambahan lagi, akad zimmah adalah syarat untuk melaksanakan hudud ke atas zimmi, bukan kerana statusnya muhsan” [Nihayat Muhtaj VII:427].

Teramat banyak dan nyata sekali dalil di dalam Al-Quran dan juga Al-Hadis yang menunjukkan bahawa hukum Islam terpakai ke atas orang kafir. Adalah wajib ke atas pemerintah menghukum pesalah ini dengan hukum Allah. Orang kafir yang berzina, mencuri, membunuh, makan riba dan sebagainya wajib dihukum dengan apa yang telah Allah turunkan. Teramat jelas juga berdasarkan Quran dan Sunnah bahawa menghukum orang kafir berdasarkan undang-undang kufur adalah haram dan berdosa dan merupakan satu kemaksiatan kepada Allah.

Konsep dualisme hukum/undang-undang yang ada sekarang adalah sama sekali bercanggah dengan nas kerana Allah sama sekali tidak membenarkan umat Islam untuk memutuskan hukum dengan selain hukumNya. Hukum Allah wajib diambil dan dilaksanakan sebagaimana yang Allah perintahkan, bukannya diambil atau dilaksanakan berdasarkan kehendak atau apa yang disukai oleh orang kafir. Janganlah sekali-kali kita sebagai umat Islam terjerat dengan sistem kufur-sekular yang ada sehingga kita mengambil hukum Allah sebagai alat untuk mengambil hati orang-orang kafir. Ingatlah akan firman Allah,

“Dan hendaklah engkau menjalankan hukum di antara mereka dengan apa yang telah diturunkan oleh Allah dan janganlah engkau menurut kehendak hawa nafsu mereka, dan berjaga-jagalah supaya mereka tidak memesongkanmu dari sesuatu hukum yang telah diturunkan oleh Allah kepadamu. Kemudian jika mereka berpaling (enggan menerima hukum Allah itu), maka ketahuilah, hanyasanya Allah mahu menyeksa mereka dengan sebab sebahagian dari dosa-dosa mereka; dan sesungguhnya kebanyakan dari umat manusia itu adalah orang-orang yang fasik” [TMQ al-Ma’idah (5):49].

Friday, September 6, 2013

Bakar ayam tepi laut...

Hari semalam last day Syawal tahun ni.
Moga kita dapat apa yg kita kerjakan di bulan Ramadfan & bulan2 yg lain.
Tengok gambar teringat bakar ayam tepi laut...em... seroinok jgk pegi ramai2 bakar ayam.
Nak buat d mana?
Pulau 9? Belum? Lokasi kena exotic...
Ada idea?

Monday, July 22, 2013

Pemergian Ibu Mertua & Ayah Saudara 2013.

Tok Mansur, my Ayah Saudara, your Tok Sedara is Tok Jantan elder brother. Passed away in June 2013.
My mother in law, Mak Pohn as she was affectionately refered to, passed away in July 2013 after a long illness.
Be generous & sedekah Al Fatihah to these people who are dear to us, so that people will be generous to us later.

Setahun dah berlalu...

Diam2 dah setahun berlalu. Last post was on Raya 2012. Byk peristiwa yg tak di catatkan dah hilang dari memory. Takde rekod.
Somehow blog have lost the glitter to fb, wlw pun fb is just like a fad. FB is user friedly vis a vis blog?

What are the milestone over the past year? Would u share ur milestone? Getting married, going to college & whatnots..

Skrg kita sdg di hari ke14 ramadah
Don't lose the whole year just bcos kita lalai or lose concentration in the next 16 days. Play to win everyone! We arenot halfcooked muslim, we are the chosen, better than the jews.

Anak cucu Hj Jantan & Yang Masari