Harakah

Jika Turki yang tiada sesen pun hasil minyak mampu memberi pendidikan percuma kepada rakyatnya, tiada sebab Malaysia yang mencatat untung RM90 bilion setahun dari sumber petroleum tidak berupaya melakukan kebajikan sama.

Ketua Pembangkang, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, berkata Recep Tayyib Erdogan memberi pendidikan percuma kepada rakyat dari peringkat rendah hingga universiti walaupun baru tiga penggal memerintah Turki.

“Bila kita sebut mansuh PTPTN, isu utama yang harus difokus ialah pendidikan percuma untuk semua rakyat terutama golongan miskin. Bukan isu nak pindahkan wang Petronas bayar PTPTN.

“Prinsip asasnya ialah pendidikan percuma dari peringkat rendah hingga ke universiti,” katanya pada dialog bertajuk ‘Pemberdayaan Kebajikan dan Ekonomi Rakyat’ anjuran Pejabat Penasihat Ekonomi Selangor di Subang Jaya 31 Mac lalu.

Beliau mengakui PTPTN adalah isu paling popular yang diaju kepadanya termasuk di facebook dan twitter.

Walaupun PTPTN dimansuh, Anwar berkata, Pakatan Rakyat memberi jaminan tidak akan membuang kakitangan di perbadanan itu kerana mereka akan diserap ke Kementerian Pelajaran dan Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi.

“Walaupun pegawai ramai, kita juga tetap pastikan khidmat atau mutu kerja mereka bertambah baik untuk rakyat,” katanya.

Mengenai pemberian 20 peratus royalti minyak kepada Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu dan Kelantan seperti yang termaktub dalam Buku Jingga, Anwar berkata ia tidak akan menjejaskan negeri lain.

Ini kerana, katanya, 80 peratus hasil minyak itu mampu menampung perbelanjaan negara dengan memastikan royalti diurus mengikut pengurusan yang baik.

“Keutamaan royalti 20 peratus difokus kepada golongan miskin. Apabila kita menyebut kemiskinan ia merangkumi sama ada Melayu, Dayak, Iban, Kadazan, Cina dan India.

“Pada masa sama, kita memperketat prosedur kewangan selain pengurusannya dijalankan individu yang bertanggungjawab, amanah dan berintegriti,” katanya

Ihsan Media Rakyat

TVRI stesen  rasmi Republik Indonesia akan menyiarkan rakaman wawancara khas bersama Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim  jam 10:30 malam ini. Program yang bertajuk ‘fokus Internasoinal‘ ini memberi penekanan kepada buku yang pernah ditulis oleh beliau pada tahun 1996 berjudul “Gelombang Kebangkitan Asia”.

Klik untuk menyaksikan siaran di link ini: TVRI NASIONAL

In the name of God, prayers and peace be upon His Messenger, his household, companions, and supporters.

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters may God’s peace and blessings be upon you.

I thank the Centre for the Study of Islam and Democracy for giving me the opportunity this evening to speak to this distinguished elite of Tunisian men and women and those coming from abroad. I am not here to teach you anything, since the subject we are here to discuss has no set instructions to be delivered but rather only points of view to be deepened and efforts to reach a common ground that would enable our elite to reach a consensus or at least a quasi-consensus.

Our topic is quite problematic in the sense that it deals with the Islam’s relationship to secularism. Is this relationship one of conflict and disaccord or one of harmony and overlap? Related to this question are issues such as Islam’s relationship to governance, the relation between Islam and Law, which are all contentious matters.

It seems that when we speak of secularism and Islam, as if we are talking about evident and clear concepts. However, a non-negligible amount of ambiguity and multiplicity of understandings surround these concepts, in that we are not talking about ‘a’ secularism but rather a multitude of secularisms as is the case with Islam, by virtue of what is proposed in the arena, we are faced with various understandings of what it means.

Although secularism seems as if it was a philosophy and the fruit of philosophical reflections and meditations which came to fight idealist and religious outlooks, it is not so. Secularism appeared, evolved, and crystallized in the West as procedural solutions, and not as a philosophy or theory of existence, to problems that had been posed in the European context. Most of these problems emerged following the Protestant split in the West, which tore apart the consensus that had been dominant in the Catholic Church, and imposed the religious wars in the 16th and 17th century. It was thus that Secularism and/or secularization began.

This leads us to ask the following question: are we in need of secularism in its procedural aspect? Perhaps the most important idea in the ensemble of these procedures is the idea of the state’s neutrality i.e. towards religions and its abstention from interfering with people’s consciences. Whereas, the state’s scope or jurisdiction is limited to the ‘Public Domain’, religion’s scope extends to the ‘Private’. In the United States religious interference in the public domain is evident, despite the differentiation that exists there remains a significant religious influence. Their leaders’ speeches are laden with religious content and references, and religion is debated in all electoral campaigns where it manifests itself in issues such as prayer in schools and abortion. This in reality is due to the fact that America was founded by evangelical pilgrims fleeing with their religion from the Catholic Church’s persecution in Europe. It is for this reason that the U.S. is looked at as the Promised Land, the land of dreams mentioned in the Torah and Gospels.

As the Franco-American thinker Tocqueville once remarked that the Church is the most powerful party in the United States. This is by virtue of the huge influence that it enjoys, though this is not the case in Europe. Whereas the number of those who can lead prayer in the US exceeds 50%, in Europe it does not reach 5%.

In the European context, also, there are differences in the state’s relationship with religion between the French heritage and Anglo-Saxon one, whereby in the UK the Queen combines the temporal and the religious powers. The complete separation is the one that is associated with the French experience, which resulted from the clashes that took place in French history between the revolutionaries’ state and the Catholic Church. Even in Europe, therefore, we are not dealing with one experience in secularism, perhaps for our purposes, since our elite is influenced by the particular French perspective (particular even for Europeans) where religion is totally excluded from the public sphere and the state considers itself as the sole guardian of national identity. This exclusion of the religious and its symbols from the public domain is what lead France to be the only country that refused the covering of heads for Muslim women, while we don’t see such a crisis in any other European country over the issue of headscarves. This is exclusively due to the particular nature of the relationship between state and religion in France which was the result of a particular historical experience.

We in turn are not faced with one understanding; perhaps the most important procedure invented by the secular worldview on this level is the state’s neutrality. In other words, the state is the guarantor of all freedoms be them religious, political or otherwise. And the state should not interfere in favor of this or that party. We pose the following question now: Is Islam in need of such a procedure? i.e. the state’s neutrality towards the various religions.

Islam, since its inception, has always combined religion with politics, religion and state. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was the founder of the religion as well as the state. The first pledge of allegiance made by the group of Madina who came to Mecca was a religious pledge to believe in Allah and his Messenger. But the second pledge was to protect the Muslims, even by sword, should al-Madina be attacked. Al-Madina, and this expression is of the utmost importance, used to be called Yathrib before becoming Al-Madina (The City) which implies that Islam is not merely a religion but also carries a civilizational meaning. It is a transferring of people from Bedouin life to urban/civilizational life. This is why ‘Bedouinization’ was considered a great sin once urbanization had been achieved. No wonder then that wherever Islam went it established cities and our country hosts the oldest city built by Arabs in North Africa. Therefore, The City founded by the Prophet (pbuh) is a clear indication that Islam is a religion of civilization, whereby it shifted those warring tribes from a Bedouin level to a civilized one and united them around a state.

The Prophet (pbuh) was a an imam in the religious sense as he lead prayers in mosques, and at the same time a political imam that arbitrated people’s disputes, lead armies, and signed various accords and treaties. Of relevance to us is the fact that upon his arrival to Medina he established a mosque and put in place a constitution that was called Al-Sahifah. You have precedents here Mustapha! [In reference to Mr Mustapha Ben Ja'afar, President of the Constituent Assembly, who was present in the audience]. This Sahifah, which is one of the oldest constitutions in the world, contained a bundle of covenants regulating the relations between Meccan immigrants and their hosts (these were considered as one nation) and the Jewish tribes of Madina (also considered a nation). Al-Sahifa considered these two religious nations as comprising one political nation and entity that is distinct from others. The most important concept offered by such scholars as Muhammad Salim Al ‘Awwa and Muhammad ‘Umar is the distinction between the religious and the political as corresponding to the separation between state and religion.

The distinction between that which is political and that which is religious is clear in the Sahifah in that Muslims are a religious nation (ummah) and the Jews another, but the combination of the two plus other polytheists made up a nation in the political sense. This distinction can be witnessed in the Prophet’s dealings even if the boundaries were not always clear. Whereas the religious is the sphere of observance and obligation, the political is the sphere of reason and Ijtihad. At times when the ambiguity confused the companions, they would ask the Prophet (pbuh) whether this is divine revelation (wahy) or a mere opinion. In the case of the former they would obey, and when it is the latter they may differ and offer alternatives. On more than one occasion did the companions differ with the Prophet (pbuh) in his capacity as the head of state, and Sheikh Tahar Ben Ashour has dealt in detail with the topic of what he called ‘Prophetic Statuses’.

One day the Prophet (pbuh) passed by a group in Medina cross-pollinating palm trees and said: ‘I do not see the benefit of doing so.’ The Medinan people thought that that was divine revelation and stopped treating their trees which made their harvest of that year of a lesser quality. They asked him why he ordered them to do so, and he replied: you are best placed to know what is beneficial for you in your worldly affaires. Therefore, it is not the duty of religion to teach us agricultural, industrial or even governing techniques, because reason is qualified to reach these truths through the accumulation of experiences. The role of religion, however, is to answer the big question for us, those relating to our existence, origins, destiny, and the purpose for which we were created, and to provide us with a system of values and principles that would guide our thinking, behaviour, and the regulations of the state to which we aspire.

So, Islam since its inception and throughout its history has not known this separation between state and religion in the sense of excluding religion from public life. And Muslims, to this day, have been influenced by Islam and inspired by its teachings and guidance in their civic life, with the distinction remaining clear. This distinction between the religious and the political is also clear in the thought of Islamic scholars/jurists. They have distinguished between the system of transactions/dealings (Mu’amalat) and that of worship (‘Ibadat). Whereas the latter is the domain of constancy and observance i.e. reason cannot reach the truth, the former is the domain of searching for the general interest, for Islam came to realize people’s interests as confirmed by such great jurists as Al-Shatibi and Ibn ‘Ashour. These scholars have agreed that the highest objective of all divine messages is to establish justice and realize people’s interests, and this is done through the use of reason in light of the guidelines, objectives, values, and principles provided by religion. Thus, there is a domain of transactions/dealings which is constantly evolving and represents the sphere of variables, and there is the domain of creed, values, and virtues which represents the sphere of constants.

Throughout Islamic history, the state has always been influenced by Islam in one way or another in its practices, and its laws were legislated for in light of the Islamic values as understood at that particular time and place. Despite this, states remained Islamic not in the sense that their laws and procedures were divinely revealed, but that they were human endeavours open to challenge and criticism. States have also practiced a degree of neutrality, and when they tried to interfere and impose one understanding on Muslims, as happened in the Abbasids state, it sparked revolution. It is mentioned that al-Mansour had become concerned with the multitude of religious views and interpretations emanating from the same religion and feared their divisive effect on the state. So he sent for Imam Malik and asked him to amalgamate all these in one to unify people’s outlooks. Imam Malik produced his famous book al-Muwatta’, with which al-Mansour was greatly pleased and wanted it to become a law that binds all Muslims. This horrified Imam Malik and asked for it not to be made so, because the Prophet’s companions have travelled to different lands and took with them much knowledge, so allow people to choose what they see fit. This is why we see that one school of thought is dominant in the Maghreb, while another is so in the Levant, and yet another in Egypt…etc

It is due to the absence of a church in Islam that what remains is the freedom of thought and interpretation. This will naturally lead to a diversity in interpretation, and there is no harm in that except when we need to legislate, at which time we are in need of a mechanism, and the best mechanism that mankind has come up with is the electoral and democratic one which produces representatives of the nation and makes these interpretations a collective as opposed to an individual effort. Again, in the absence of a church representing the sacred on earth and a spokesperson of the Qur’an, the nation is the only manifestation of divine will through its interactions and not any particular scholar, party, or state.

When al-Ma’moun (Abbassid Caliph) wanted to impose one interpretation of the Quran and one particular understanding of Islamic creed (that of the Mu’tazili school), Imam Ahmed Ibn Hanbal revolted and refused the state’s attempt to dominate religion. This lead to him being persecuted and tortured, but in the end he managed to turn public opinion against the state and force al-Ma’moun to cede.

While the problematique in the west revolved around ways of liberating the state from religion and lead to destructive wars, in our context the problem is one of liberating religion from the state and preventing it from dominating religion, and keeping the latter in the societal realm, open to all Muslims to read the Qur’an and understand it in the manner that they deem appropriate, and that there is no harm in the plurality that is combined with tolerance. But should Muslims be in need of laws, the democratic mechanism is the best embodiment of the Shura (consultation) value in Islam.

It is of the utmost importance that our heritage is devoid of a church. Maybe only our Shi’ah brothers hold the belief in a religious institution, but in the Sunni world there is no such a thing save for a council of scholars which are usually in disagreement and hold different views. For this reason, we are in need of scholars and intellectuals to debate and study our issues in a climate of freedom and accept that the legislative institution is the ultimate authority by virtue of being elected.

There is a debate that is currently ongoing in our country between secular currents which may be described as extremist and Islamist ones which may be described in like manner. One would like to impose their understanding of Islam from above using state tools and apparatuses and the other aspires to strip the state, educational curricula, and national culture of all Islamic influences. At a time when the whole world, including the Islamic world, is witnessing a religious awakening, and having seen the role played by the Catholic Church in the development of Eastern Europe, starting with the efforts of Pope John Paul II, and also the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the success of Putin’s presidential campaign. At such a junction in time, it is unreasonable to object to religious influence on the state’s cultural and educational policies. In fact, we do not need do impose Islam because it is the people’s religion and not the elite’s, and Islam has not endured for so long because of states’ influence but rather due to the large acceptance it enjoys among its adherents, in fact the state has often been a burden on religion.

As I said, many of those who belong to the Islamist current and others fear the religion’s emancipation from the state to be left as a societal matter. Why does the state train Imams? Why does it control mosques?

The issue of the state’s neutrality involves a great deal of risk and adventure. If what is meant by the separation between religion and state is that the state is a human product and religion a divine revelation as the distinction was made clear in the context of the early Muslims between the realm of revelation (wahy) and what was the realm of the political, then it is ok. But if what is mean is the separation in the French sense or in accordance with the Marxist experience then we may engage in a dangerous adventure that may harm both religion and state. The total stripping of the state from religion would turn the state into a mafia, and the world economic system into an exercise in plundering, and politics into deception and hypocrisy. And this is exactly what happened in the Western experience, despite there being some positive aspects. International politics became the preserve of a few financial brokers owning the biggest share of capital and by extension the media, through which they ultimately control politicians.

In this context, people are deeply in need of religion and its spiritual and moral guidance which would enable them to distinguish between right and wrong (halal and haram). And in the absence of a Church that monopolises the definition of what is halal and haram, this task is left to be debated by the elite of thinkers, the people and the media.

Should religion be entirely emancipated from the state and politics, this would also carry some risks whereby things would get out of control and social harmony would be endangered. The way to do it, therefore, is to find a balance that would guarantee people’s freedom and rights, because religion is here to do exactly that. To achieve this balance, we need to go back to the issue of distinguishing between religion and politics and adjust the parameters of what is constant in religion and that which is variable. We need our legislators to be well acquainted, educated and versed in religious values, so that when they are legislating they do not require the tutelage of religious scholars and authorities, and the same goes for politicians. There is no value to any religious observance that is motivated through coercion. It is of no use to turn those who are disobedient to God into hypocrites through the state’s coercive tools. People are created free and while it is possible to have control over their external aspects, it is impossible to do so over their inner selves and convictions.

This is exactly why we saw two models in dealing with issue of the headscarf/veil, the first is a veil that is dictated and imposed by the state and the second is a veil forbidden by it. Once I was in a Muslim country’s (in reference to Saudi Arabia?) airport where all women were covered, but as soon as the plane took off the veils flew away with it. This is a clear failure of that country’s educational system, which was unable to guarantee people’s religiosity except through coercive tools. In Ben Ali’s Tunisia, women were forbidden from wearing the veil and express themselves in whatever appearance they saw fit, also through the state’s coercive means. This was also a failure.

The primary orbit for religion is not the state’s apparatuses, but rather personal/individual convictions. The state’s duty, however, is to provide services to people before anything else, to create job opportunities, and to provide good health and education not to control people’s hearts and minds. For this reason, I have opposed the coercion of people in all its forms and manifestation and have dealt with such controversial topics such as al-Riddah (apostasy) and have defended the freedom of people to either adhere to or defect from a religious creed, based on the Qur’anic verse that says: ‘there is no compulsion in religion’.

There is no meaning in forcing people to become Muslims, the Muslim nation has in no need for hypocrites who manifest belief and conceal disbelief. Freedom is the primary value through which a person adheres to Islam, so he who announces his shahadatayn (‘I declare that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his final Messenger’) does so on the basis of free choice underpinned by awareness and conviction. In this manner, the state is Islamic insofar that it assures its actions are in accordance with Islam’s values without being subjected to the tutelage of any religious institution for there is no such a thing in Islam. Rather there is a people and a nation who are the decision makers through their institutions.

When the Meccan people objected to Muhammad’s religion, he asked them not to interfere with his preaching activities and to allow him the freedom to communicate his message to the people. Had the Meccans accorded the Prophet (pbuh) the freedom of expression, he would not have immigrated and left his homeland. But because his message was so powerful, they could not offer an alternative to counteract it. This is why Muslims consider Islam’s proof to be so powerful that there is no need to coerce people, and when the voice of Islam proclaims ‘Produce your proof if ye are truthful’ this challenge is being proposed at the heart of the political and intellectual conflict.

Thus, the greater part of the debate taking place nowadays in our country is a misunderstanding of such concept as secularism and Islam. We demonstrated that secularism is not an atheist philosophy but merely a set of procedural arrangements designed to safeguard the freedom of belief and thought as Abd al-Wahhab al-Masiri distinguished, in his writings, between partial and total secularisms. An example of the latter would be the Jacobin model in French history. In their war on priesthood, the Jacobins’ raised the following slogan: “strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest.” This is a French specificity and not the absolute definition of secularism. There is also an ambiguity regarding Islam, for there are those who believe that Islam can only be victorious by confiscating people’s freedom and imposing prayers, fasting, and the veil through force. This would be far from being a success, for Allah Almighty had considered hypocrisy to be the greatest crime, and the hellfire to be the eternal abode of Hypocrites.

The fact that our revolution has succeeded in toppling a dictator, we ought to accept the principle of citizenship, and that this country does not belong to one party or another but rather to all of its citizens regardless of their religion, sex, or any other consideration. Islam has bestowed on them the right to be citizens enjoying equal rights, and to believe in whatever they desire within the framework of mutual respect, and observance of the law which is legislated for by their representatives in parliament.

This is my understanding of things, and my view with regards to Islam’s relation to secularism. I hope that I have touched on the main issues, and I thank you profusely for your attention.

Transcripted and translated by: Brahim Rouabah/CSID

KeadilanKini

Ketua Pembangkang, Anwar Ibrahim berkata syarikat perdagangan dari negara Teluk yang berurusan di Malaysia perlu memastikan setiap urusan perdagangan dijalankan dengan telus dan menepati syarat.

Dalam wawancara dengan akhbar Gulf News di sini semalam, Anwar turut menyatakan bahawa gejala rasuah dan perjanjian perniagaan yang berunsur penyelewengan mengakibatkan Malaysia mengalami kerugian yang besar.

Beliau juga menyatakan sokongan ke atas inisiatif pelaburan dari negara Teluk ke Malaysia meski pun wujud beberapa perbezaan pandangan terhadap dasar-dasar kerajaan.

“Saya menyokong keperluan untuk menarik pelabur dari sini ke Malaysia, namun saya tegas berpendirian bahawa ianya perlu dilandaskan atas prinsip ketelusan. Tiadanya ketelusan serta amalan perjanjian yang menyeleweng akan menyebabkan timbul masalah di masa akan datang dan ini seharusnya dielakkan,” ujar beliau.

Tambah beliau lagi, pada ketika ini Malaysia sedang menuju ke arah mengamalkan dasar-dasar pasaran bebas, namun timbul beberapa kesan negatif akibat amalan nepotisme dan kurangnya ketelusan.

“Kamu tidak boleh memberi kontrak kepada ahli keluarga dan melabel amalan ini sebagai penswastaan dan kamu tidak boleh meluluskan tender tanpa mengikut prosedur sah — ini akan mengakibatkan kerugian. Laporan kerajaan menyatakan bahawa kerugian sebanyak USD6 bilion telah dicatatkan akibat amalan rasuah di Malaysia,” tegas beliau.

“Dalam aspek daya saing iaitu menerusi kadar pelaburan langsung asing dan pertumbuhan, kami (Malaysia) telah dipintas oleh Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam dan Singapura.”

Anwar berada di sini sebagai memenuhi undangan menyampaikan ucaptama di Kongres Perhubungan Awam Sedunia (PRWC) ke-20.

Ihsan TVPAS

Speech by Anwar Ibrahim at the 20th Public Relations World Conference 2012 in Dubai, UAE, 14th March?
 
 
Half a century ago in Vietnam, a Buddhist monk set himself on fire and triggered the fall of a regime. Since then, there have been numerous self-immolations with significant consequences but none as catastrophic as the one that happened in Tunisia.

Indeed, as we all know, Mohamed Buoazizi did not just set himself on fire. His death ignited the Arab Spring and spelled the doom of long held dictatorships and autocracies alike.

Back in 2005, at the US-Muslim World Forum in Doha, I spoke of the winds of change sweeping across the deserts of the Middle East. I said that given half a chance, the people would opt for freedom and democracy.

Well, the winds of change have become a raging storm, blowing the likes of Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi and Abdullah Salleh off their pedestals of power. There are others still hanging on for dear life but we know the outcome: it’s just a matter of time. You can’t fight the tide of history.

The repercussions of the Arab Spring are far reaching, going beyond the Middle East. Southeast Asia, for example, will be among the first to reap the fruits of this phenomenal change. Even so-called Old World democracies are affected. Wall Street, the icon of free market capitalism, has not been spared.

But first, the primary implications for the Middle East. Tunisia has successfully experienced her post-revolution general elections with significant results. The Egyptians too have cast their votes and all indications point to an Islamist-centric power sharing coalition.

There are concerns that reactionaries may want to turn back the clock on democracy but this fear is premature. What is certain is that the test of democracy will be manifold and challenges will emerge to push the endurance to its limits.

For Egypt now, the real test of the Arab Spring is whether it will be the voice of the people that will prevail or will the guns and mortar of the military hold sway. And even in this people’s voice, whether the voice of moderation will prevail over the voice of ideological rigour.

As for Southeast Asia, detractors, sceptics, and the powers that be in the region have dismissed the idea of an Arab Spring. They say that it won’t happen because unlike the Middle East, there has been no winter of discontent in Southeast Asia.

They say that the economy has been good, unemployment numbers are far lower than even the old democracies, and that revolution is not the Asian way. (more…)

The Malaysian Insider

Oleh Subky Latif

9 MAC — Saya tidak bercadang untuk membela Anwar Ibrahim yang menyatakan boleh menimbang menjamin keselamatan Israel dengan syarat-syarat yang dijangka tidak akan diterima oleh Israel.

Tetapi Perdana Menteri Najib Razak, Dr Mahathir Mohamad dan pemimpin Umno lainnya belumlah lebih jelas sikapnya terhadap Palestin dibandingkan dengan Anwar Ibrahim.

Kerajaan Malaysia baik di bawah Mahathir mahupun di bawah Najib ada membela Palestin dan negaranya yang dicadangkan di bumi Gaza dan Tebing Barat yang ditadbir oleh kerajaan Palestin sekarang. Mahathir akrab dengan Yasser Arafat dan Najib kenal Presiden Mahmood Abbas.

Mahathir dan Najib tidak kenal rapat Khalid Mishal, pemimpin Hamas yang mendapat perlindungan di Syria selepas dia dibelasah agen rahsia Israel di Jordan tidak lama dulu. Tetapi Anwar Ibrahim kenal Arafat, Mahmood Abbas dan kenal semua pemimpin Hamas.

Antara Anwar dan Najib campur Mahathir siapa lebih kenal dan lebih rapat dengan Khalid Mishal yang memimpin Hamas? Tentulah Anwar. Malah selepas kenyataan Anwar tentang apa yang dikatakan menjamin keselamatan Israel di WSJ, Anwar sudah berjumpa Khalid Mishal. Mereka sudah membincangkan isu yang berbangkit itu.

Khalid dan Hamas mewakili perjuangan membebaskan Palestin yang lebih jelas dari perjuangan PLO. Pendirian Mahmood dan Fatah yang dipimpinnya telah lama cair terhadap Israel, tetapi Hamas belum melepaskan senjata terhadap regim zionis itu.

Menyokong Palestin saja tidak cukup kalau tidak sama menyokong Hamas. Adakah Najib dan kerajaan mempunyai hubungan yang baik dengan Hamas? Semasa Hamas berkuasa di Palestin ada satu sidang antarabangsa di Kuala Lumpur. Kerajaan Malaysia memberi perwakilan itu kepada Fatah sedang Menteri Luar Palestin dari Hamas yang sudah berada di Kuala Lumpur dinafikan.

Semasa Najib jadi ketua Pemuda Umno Khalid Mishal pernah datang ke Kuala Lumpur. Dia bercadang untuk menermui Nazri Aziz yang belum jadi menteri tetapi menjadi Ketua Biro Antarabangsa Pemuda Umno. Mishal bercadang untuk membincangkan kemungkinan Hamas menubuhkan pejabatnya di Kuala Lumpur sama seperti yang diberikan kepada Fatah.

Rombongan tertinggi Hamas tidak dapat layanan yang baik kerajaan dan Umno. Semasa Khalid berada di Malaysia, saya yang menemankannya ziarah hingga ke Kuala Terengganu dan Kota Baru. Bukan Wisma Putra dan bukan pemimpin Umno.

Kiranya ditanya pemimpin dan penyokong Hamas, siapa lebih mereka kenal antara Dr Mahathir, Najib dan Anwar? Kita terkejut jawapannya ialah Anwar. Mengapa? Justeru Anwar ada talian dengan kebanyakan orang Palestin. Ada pun Najib dan Dr Mahathir, ramai yang kenal tetapi dipercayai jaraknya tidak sama dengan Anwar.

Justeru itu, apa pun yang Anwar kata tentang Palestin dan Israel, hati rakyat Palestin lebih kenal dengan Anwar dari semua yang pernah menjadi Perdana Menteri Malaysia.

Untuk dikatakan Anwar itu alat dan boneka Israel, bagi setengah orang Palestin belum tentu Anwar lebih dari rekod Arafat dan Mahmood Abbas.

Kenyataan Anwar tentang Israel rasanya sekadar menjamin bersyarat jika ia dapat dipenuhi Israel. Jaminan belum sama dengan pengiktirafan. Anwar belum menyebut tentang pengiktirafan. Apa lagilah hubungan diplomatik.

Kiranya Zionis boleh bersetuju dengan syarat Anwar itu, maka barulah jaminan itu akan dibincangkan. Kalau pun jaminan itu boleh diberi, tetapi tidak semestinya ia boleh diiktiraf.

Saya kata begitu untuk bersangka baik dengan Anwar bahawa dia tidak dapat disama dengan Najib dan Mahathir yang dipercayai banyak bermain mata dengan Israel.

Contoh terbaik jaminan Malaysia tanpa pengiktirafan dan tanpa hubungan diplomatik ialah dengan Taiwan. Malaysia hanya mengakui satu China di dunia. Siapa yang mengakui Taiwan maka rosaklah hubungannya dengan China.

Tetapi China tidak tersinggung dengan jaminan Malaysia kepada Taiwan dan segala hubungan dagang antara keduanya.

Bagi mengukur sokongan kepada Palestin sekarang apa kata kalau Khalid Mishal tidak selesa tinggal di Syria berikut pergolakan di negara itu. Di mana Khalid hendak mendapat perlindungan? Jika dia mohon perlindungan menetap di Kuala Lumpur sambil meneruskan perjuangan Hamas. Adakah Najib bersedia? Kalau Pakatan berjaya mengambil Putrajaya, rasanya Khalid tidak ada masalah.

From www.theatlantic.com

As democratic movements spread in the Middle East, governments are cracking down, and that means big business for the companies who help them do it.

Reliance means vulnerability, and the activists and citizen journalists of the Arab uprisings rely heavily on the Internet and mobile technology. They use text messaging to coordinate protests, for example, or social media sites to upload the photos and videos that then make it into mainstream global media. In the first protests in Tunisia, because traditional journalists could not get access, citizen journalists filled in, using YouTube and the live-streaming platform UStream to give the world — including, for example, the Egyptians and Syrians who later began revolts of their own — a window into the events there.

For all of the good this technology has done, activists are also beginning to understand the harm it can do. As Evgeny Morozov wrote in The Net Delusion, his book on the Internet’s darker sides, “Denying that greater information flows, combined with advanced technologies … can result in the overall strengthening of authoritarian regimes is a dangerous path to take, if only because it numbs us to potential regulatory interventions and the need to rein in our own Western corporate excesses.”

The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it.

“The Chinese could come here and learn from you.”
Recent investigations by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News have revealed just how expansively these technologies are already being used. Intelligence agencies throughout the Middle East can today scan, catalogue, and read virtually every email in their country. The technology even allows them to change emails while en route to their recipient, as Tunisian authorities sometimes did before the revolution.

These technologies turn activists’ phones against them, allowing governments to listen in on phone calls, read text messages, even scan cell networks and pinpoint callers with voice recognition. They allow intelligence agents to monitor movements of activists via a GPS locator updated every fifteen seconds. And by tricking users into installing malware on their devices — as is currently happening in Syria – government agents can remotely turn on a laptop webcam or a cell phone microphone without its user knowing.

In Syria recently, American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed by a mortar attack that may have been targeted to the locations of their satellite phones. We don’t know for sure how the Syrian army tracked them, but Lebanese intelligence had recorded Syrian officials as planning to target Western journalists, and following satellite phone signals is just one of the tech-aided ways they could have done it.

Syria and other abusive Middle Eastern regimes rely on technology companies such as Area SpA, the Italian firm that contracted with the regime there to build a surveillance center, and that pulled out only after exposure by Bloomberg News prompted protests at their Italian headquarters. There’s also the American company Bluecoat Systems. When it was reported that their Internet-monitoring equipment had been re-sold to the Syrian government, a senior VP told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t want our products to be used by the government of Syria or any other country embargoed by the United States.”

For all the evil of Syria’s regime, it’s hard to ignore the role and often the complicity of Western technology companies that can sometimes act as dictator’s little helper. While Syria’s use of surveillance has been particularly egregious and well-documented, this problem goes far beyond just one country. For years, Western firms have been selling surveillance equipment to the most brutal regimes. And while sales to Syria often violate sanctions policy, such companies can sell to many other authoritarian countries — many of them U.S. and E.U. allies — without repercussions.

In pre-revolutionary Tunisia, surveillance firms gave discounts to a government agency because the firms wanted to use the country for testing and bug-tracking. The technology was so advanced that it prompted the post-revolutionary head of the Tunisian government’s Internet agency to remark, “I had a group of international experts from a group here lately, who looked at the equipment and said: ‘The Chinese could come here and learn from you.’”

In Bahrain, dozens of political activists have testified that the security officers who detained and beat them also read transcripts of their text messages and emails likely gathered from technology purchased from Germany-based Trovicor, a former Nokia Siemens subsidiary. According to Bloomberg News, a spokesman for the latter confirmed the sale and maintenance of this equipment to the Bahraini government.

“The bulk of this digital arms trade happens under the radar.
Qaddafi’s regime was later found to have spied on Al Jazeera journalist Khaled Mehiri by monitoring his emails and Facebook messages using technology made by French company Amesys. Mehiri was later interrogated and threatened by the head of Libya’s intelligence service. The reporters who found Mehiri’s surveillance file in Tripoli’s abandoned Internet monitoring center discovered similar files on many other journalists, human rights advocates, and democratic activists.

The mass surveillance industry is a large one — estimates now put the global market at $5 billion per year. The businesspeople getting rich from the crackdown industry don’t often talk to the media, but some of the few who do can seem less than concerned about their potential role in their clients’ violence.

Jerry Lucas is the president of Telestragies Inc, the company that runs ISS World, the trade show circuit (also known as the “Wiretapper’s Ball”) that brings these companies and their clients together. Asked by the Guardian in November if he would be comfortable knowing that regimes in Zimbabwe and North Korea were purchasing the technology from his trade shows, he responded, “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a bad country and who’s a good country.” He added, “That’s not our business, we’re not politicians … we’re a for-profit company. Our business is bringing governments together who want to buy this technology.”

This is the crux of the problem: These companies seem fully aware of what they’re doing – after all, the better they understand how to help secret police find and terrorize dissidents, the better their products will do on the market — but far less concerned about the implications. As Dutch member of the E.U. Parliament Marietje Schaake told us last week, “The bulk of this digital arms trade happens under the radar; through spin-offs of well-known companies, but mostly by players without a reputation to lose with consumers.”

Schaake, who has been leading an effort in Europe to halt the sale of surveillance technologies to repressive regimes, helped pass E.U. export restrictions to some government actors in Syria. In the U.S., Rep. Chris Smith introduced a bill in the House that would require American companies listed on the stock exchange to report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on how they conduct due diligence on human rights issues.

Unfortunately, apart from the work of a few individuals, this problem has gone mostly ignored by Western governments, and the digital surveillance trade still seems to be flourishing. Congress, the E.U., and the U.N. all have the ability act — by requiring the relevant companies to at least transparently evaluate whether or not their technology is aiding in human rights abuses, if not banning those sales outright — but so far, even as dozens of Syrians die every day, they haven’t.

Malaysiakini

Ketua Umum PKR Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim hari ini mengadakan pertemuan dengan Mursyidul Am PAS Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat berhubung kenyataannya berhubung kenyataan kontroversinya tentang Israel.

Selepas 40 minit bertentang mata, Anwar berkata kenyataannya yang dibuatnya sebelum ini selari dengan pandangan Hamas dan Fatah.

“Saya rasa baik sebab dah beri penjelasan,” kata Anwar. (more…)