Opini

By Wang Gungwu Nation states tend to stress their cohesion and solidarity. Migrant states, however, where the majority of people are descendants of immigrants, are distinguished by the multiple cultural origins of their peoples. They tend to be organised to accommodate diversity. Singapore is the only country in Asia that can be ...

By B. D. K. Saldin Much controversy has arisen about the origins of the Sri Lankan Malay Language and as to why it differs from that which is spoken in other parts of the Malay speaking world where the langauge has been standardized. Perhaps a brief history of the Malay language would throw some light on this vexed question. The ...

By Rene Q. Bas In our region‘s slow but unstoppable movement toward unity, the  Malay people of Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines will do well to form a tight bloc within Asean. We Filipinos will do ourselves a disservice if we do not do what the late statesman Blas Ople vigorously recommended: Learn to speak Bahasa ...

By Rudy Handoko The Panembahan Matan Palace at Mulia Kerta, Ketapang, is the only remaining palaces from Islamic era in West Kalimantan. From the viewpoint of its historical artefacts, the Panembahan Matan Palace was the governmental centre of the Kingdom of Matan-Tanjungpura, which was actually the descendant of the Kingdom of ...

By Don Pathan It`s difficult for any Thai government to qualify what constituted a successful visit to Malaysia. In this respect, it`s a matter of all`s well that ends well. This assumption has been more or less the guiding principle between the two countries ever since a new generation of Patani Malay militants emerged in the deep ...

By Margaret Kartomi In 2004, the people of Aceh were in the unfortunate yet unique position of having to endure both the armed civil conflict, which had begun in 1976, and the massive natural disaster of the tsunami on 26 December, in which around 200,000 people died, including thousands of artists. Along with the many musicians and ...

By Himanshu Soon after Abhisit Vejjajiva assumed power as prime minister of Thailand in January, he took the unusual step of holding a cabinet meeting in Pattani, at the heart of the restive and much neglected southern region of the country. His landmark trip was followed by a meeting with the governors of five southern provinces as ...

By Farish Noor In his highly influential work the Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (1963), Syed Naquib al-Attas argued that “the coming of Islam, seen from the perspective of modern times, was the most momentous event in the history of the Malay archipelago”. [1] Naquib ...

By Lim Kim-Hui The word `budi` originated from the Sanskrit word `buddhi`, which means wisdom, understanding, or intellect. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary defines the meaning of buddhi as `the power of forming and retaining conceptions and general notions, intelligence, reason, intellect, mind, discernment, judgment…` (Monier-Williams ...

By Azmi Anshar The most telling pop culture obsession among Malaysians right now is English, the global language whom everybody perseveres to read, write and speak, but only a minority, mostly those who were raised in an English curriculum environment or those likely born before the 1970s, have a firm grasp of the language`s technical, ...

By Farish A Noor These days we often hear the accusation that someone or another is doing something nasty by interpreting a book or a text out of context. The common refrain that follows goes something like this: “Who are you to interpret our holy book on your own without the guidance of our supreme religious elders who are so ...

By Sandra Bader The slogan ‘Dangdut Never Dies‘, written in big letters, immediately leaped out at visitors entering the South Jakarta studio of TPI (Indonesian Education Television) on a Monday night in January this year. As they strolled through the building waiting for the event, they saw a number of famous dangdut legends hanging ...