Farish A Noor

COMMENT Fluid borders only exist when a visitor is a friend. The moment guns come into the picture, the fluid border becomes hard.

Myths are grand narratives.

COMMENT One doesn’t need to be be a philosopher to know it would be silly to offer themselves to an already hostile media.

Despite his claims to have laboured and sacrificed for the sake of Muslims, Dr Azahari Husin was hardly a friend and ally of Islam or Muslims.

My decision to write a book on the history of PAS, says the author, was based on the same conviction that PAS was a legitimate and worthy subject of serious political analysis and commentary.

It should be clear by now that neither PAS, nor Umno, nor PKR, really understand or appreciate what a democratic civil culture means in the proper analytical sense.

That which began as a regional autonomy movement demanding fair and equal governmental treatment has now been transformed into a 'militant religious threat' by the Chinese authorities.

In Part 2 of the 'non-debate' in the Muslim world, the writer focuses on how the public sphere has been systematically diminished as a result of the hate-campaigns and strategies of deliberate misrepresentation used by some groups.

Iraq's new interim president Jalal Talabani has an important cultural precedent to look back upon: the great warrior-statesman Salahuddin al-Ayubi, or as he is known in the West, Saladin.

The net result of the collusion between repressive states and conservative Islamist movements has been the limiting of the public sphere for discourse and debate.

They were Malay intellectuals who were not only proud of being Malay, but whose understanding of Malayness was not based on a narrow race-based communitarianism that was divisively sectarian.

When Malaysia's right-wing Islamists support the Chinese vernacular educationists, we should be immediately aware of what this entails.

Much of the current angst from Malaysia's neighbours could have been avoided if Asean had invested in building a common political culture that transcends borders within the region.

The most startling discovery of late is the revelation that Malaysia is loved and admired by our Indonesian friends for one simple reason: Siti Nurhaliza.

The first condition to be met when dealing with developments in the Arab world today is understanding that war and the exercise of power and violence are not means to spur genuine democratic change.

The sight of angry Indonesians burning the Malaysian flag and chanting the slogan 'ganyang Malaysia' ('Crush Malaysia') brings back painful memories of the Konfrontasi (Confrontation) between Malaysia and Indonesia from 1962 to 1965.

The celebration of International Women's Day brings to the fore some disturbing realities, not least of which is the growing power differentials between the developed and the developing worlds.

The most appalling aspect of the present media-orchestrated scare about illegal migrants in Malaysia is the unstated prejudice that at times accompanies the campaign.

The ascendancy of political Islam in Malaysia means that the state's propensity to 'care' for the moral welfare and wellbeing of the nation has manifest itself with more and more moral policing of the lives of citizens.

To suppose, as the right-wingers do, that the banning of Valentine's day would somehow miraculously solve the problem of uneven development and globalisation is as nave and simplistic as their own overblown rhetoric.

Malaysian parents are a curious breed indeed. They produce children who never asked to be produced in the first place, and then demand as their right that their children grow up to be exactly what they wish them to be.

Book review by Farish Noor on Thaksin Shinawatra on Thai politics and business.

The heavy-handed actions of Jawi is proof that a brand of anti-modern, authoritarian statist religiosity is taking root in Malaysia.

The Jawi raid on a KL nightclub brought to the surface an unpalatable aspect of Malaysian society. Is the apparent silence of non-Muslims the result of divisive communitarian politics?