Singapore Malays/Muslims Financially Better Off

The Singapore government has released a report showing that the Malay/Muslim community here is improving in a number of key areas, especially with regard to personal finances and education. Some of the specific achievements mentioned by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his speech at Mendaki's 25th Anniversary Dinner include:

The percentage of school enrollment is almost 100%, the number of school dropouts has come down steadily, and educational outcomes have improved significantly. For example, in 1980 only one in six Malay students achieved five "O" level passes at the GCE "O" examinations. Today more than 60% do so, a fourfold increase. In the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMMS), which compares achievements in Mathematics and Science among students of different countries, Malay students rank well above the international average.

More than 80% of Malay students now make it to post-secondary education, into the ITEs, polytechnics and pre-university centers. The community is on track to achieve its target of 90% entering post-secondary institutions by 2010. The percentage entering tertiary institutions – the polytechnics and universities – has also increased sharply from 1.3% in 1980 to 34% in 2005. More are making it to the universities – 5%, a ten-fold increase in 25 years. And in universities, more students are in professional and technical disciplines like Accounting, Engineering and Life Sciences.

There is a growing middle-class with increasing purchasing power. Malay/Muslims are holding higher-skilled and better-paying jobs. Incomes have correspondingly increased.

More Malay/Muslim households have upgraded to better housing. The vast majority (93%) own their own homes. The proportion living in HDB 4-room or larger flats and private properties have increased by more than 6 times (from 11% in 1980 to 71% in 2005). There has also been a steady increase in ownership of consumer durables, including cars, air-conditioners, PCs and handphones.


While the Prime Minister noted the declining usage of drugs among Malays, he noted several concerns among social issues, including:

Dysfunctional families - This problem manifests itself in many ways: the rising divorce rates, the growing number of single parent households, and the unacceptably high number of teenage births and early marriages.

I have been searching for a copy of the report online, but have not been able to find it just yet. In the meantime, here is a recent Channel News Asia report on the subject:

More Malay/Muslim households financially better off: new report
May Wong, Channel NewsAsia
September 3, 2007

SINGAPORE: Malay/Muslim households are now much better off financially compared to 25 years ago, with more owning luxury items such as cars, according to a new report tracking the progress of the Malay community since 1980.

The 40-page study also showed a steady rise in the number of single-parent households.

Out of every 1,000 Malay households, 70 were headed by single parents in 2005, compared to 47 in 1980.

Number of births by single Malay women also increased from 5.9 to 9.3 per 10,000 female residents in 2005.

For some Malays, education is the key to a better future.

Irwan Shah, 27, graduated with first class honors in education about three months ago, and is now working as a teacher.

He is an example of how the Malay/Muslim community has progressed.

Irwan's parents are firm believers in the importance of education. And from all that he has received, Irwan is now going to pay it forward.

“Currently I teach. So I hope that I can teach them, not just through academics but through other areas as well, like values, especially behavior and character. Without good character, it's no use to be an intellect,” he said.

"I was glad that I was given the opportunity by Mendaki. When I was young, I had the tuition scheme. It started when I was in primary three, all the way till I was in (secondary) four. Then even when I entered polytechnic, I didn't come from a well-to-do family, they helped me by paying for my tuition fees."

The report also showed that Malay/Muslims in the workforce have better education today compared to 25 years ago.

In 1980, 19 per cent of Malay/Muslim workers have a secondary or higher education qualification. But in 2005, the number jumped to 70 per cent.

The number of Malay/Muslims holding managerial or professional jobs also grew from seven per cent in 1980 to 21 per cent in 2005.

Despite better education and better jobs, the community still faces social challenges such as dysfunctional families, increasing divorce rates and teenage pregnancies.

Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said, "We've recognized this problem for a long time, since 2002. We've been evaluating the data. And therefore we've started a couple of programs dealing with teenagers and youths at risk. What we'll do now is to put all of these together on the drawing board and see whether there are gaps and if those gaps are critical and strategic to the community. We'd probably have to move our resources there.”

He believed if the community puts in the same amount of efforts in tackling these issues as it does in overcoming the drug problems and education challenges, it will succeed.
-- Channel News Asia

Islamophobia = Sedition

The other day, I got a survey from some students over at Nanyang Technological University's School of Communication and Information (Nanyang Tech, a good school, is located here in Singapore). The survey had to do with blogging behavior, whether I was self-censoring or erasing any of my blog posts in light of some incidents that happened last year involving the Sedition Act.

[Here, in Singapore, seditious behavior includes the promotion of "...feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore" or "to point out, with a view to their removal, any matters producing or having a tendency to produce feelings of ill-will and enmity between different races or classes of the population of Singapore..." Last September, three Chinese men, two in their mid-20s and one teenager, were charged with making seditious and inflammatory racist comments on the Internet against the Malay/Muslim community. All three pled guilty. The punishments, IMO, were mere slaps on the wrist compared to what I felt the three should have been given; however, the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, made it quite clear that such remarks would not be tolerated here, even if posted on the Internet.]

The survey itself was rather basic, with questions on the types of topics I write about on my blog (personal or non-personal), my familiarity with the Sedition Act, and so on. However, there were two questions where I gave some additional comments (that were not asked for by the students). I thought I would share my answers and comments to these two questions here:


15. I practice self-censorship on my weblog (5-point scale where 1 = Strongly Disagree and 5 = Strongly Agree). I answered 4, "Agree."

Most of my “self-censorship” takes place during the pre-writing and writing phases. On those posts that I write myself (as opposed to copying someone else’s work), I may take up to a couple days writing the piece, which gives me time to think of what I want to say, how to prepare a better argument, cool down if I’m angry, and so on. Once the post is published, I rarely self-censor.


19. How much has your blogging content changed since the incident of the Sedition Act? (5-point scale where 1 = No Change and 5 = Large Change). I answered 2, "Little change."

I support the Sedition Act as it’s currently written. In fact I wish other countries (especially Western countries such as the U.S.) had Sedition Acts that were modeled after Singapore’s. As a Muslim, I’m concerned about the Islamophobia and xenophobia expressed by non-Muslims, especially in my home country. I question whether I will ever be able to bring my wife back to the U.S. to meet my family, whom she has never met (despite our having been married for several years now). Based on what I have read over the past four years since I left the U.S., I am not sure we can pass through the country without experiencing any anti-Muslim bigotry. *I* often experience bigotry against Islam (and even myself for being a Muslim) just by reading the various comments on my blogs and that of others.

Incidents like the Danish cartoons need to force other countries to question a fundamental trade-off: whether an unregulated freedom of speech is more important as a national value, with all of the attendant consequences that may happen both nationally and internationally, or a regulated freedom of speech that minimizes potential social upset both locally and abroad. Singapore, with its earlier experiences (e.g., the race riots of the 1960s), has decided (wisely, in my opinion) to regulate free speech for the greater benefit to Singaporean society. The Prime Minister recently said that an incident like the Danish cartoons would never have happened here, and I both agree with and applaud him for making such a statement (in fact, I did so a few weeks ago in one of my blog posts). The Danish have learned, much to their chagrin, that what is published locally can have international consequences. Media sources – including bloggers – need to consider the consequences of their writings and be willing to self-censor when necessary. Incitement against any race or religion is wrong, full stop, and those who incite the hatred of others may find that their work rebounds against them to their detriment.

Just ask Julius Streicher.

Heroes and Hypocrites

Two different news stories that are worth mentioning.

Locally, the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, has spoken out against the publication of the controversial Danish cartoons. From Bloomberg:

Singapore won't allow the publication of a controversial sequence of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said late Thursday, condemning the caricatures as insensitive.

Maintaining racial harmony is a higher priority than freedom of expression, Lee said in broad-ranging comments in a meeting with community leaders.

...

"It's wrong, it's provocative. We would not have allowed in Singapore,'' Lee said in the two-hour dialogue yesterday with 1,700 community leaders and students. "It was wrong for the Danish newspapers to publish the pictures, it was wrong for the other European newspapers to say, in solidarity, 'I will republish.'''

...

Singapore's Lee said that, in some circumstances, the maintenance of religious harmony is more important than freedom of expression. He cited the example of the city's ban on "The Satanic Verses,'' the novel by Salman Rushdie that incensed many Muslims and led Iran's former spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to sentence the author to death.

"In 1989, when Salman Rushdie wrote a book 'Satanic Verses,' which many Muslims found very objectionable, we banned it,'' Lee said. "People say, 'where is the freedom of expression?' We say maintaining harmony, peace, that's the first requirement.''
-- Bloomberg: Singapore Won't Allow Publication of Prophet Cartoons, Lee Says

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister, for making these comments. I do greatly appreciate them. I only wish more government leaders around the world (particularly in Europe) would have made similar comments. If they had, this controversy would have died down long ago.

Insha'allah, I hope to finish a post soon that will mirror some of the Prime Minister's comments above.


Then there's William Bennett.

Bennett appeared on CNN recently (The Situation Room) with Wolf Blitzer and Jim Zogby. Bennett, who is supposedly Roman Catholic, made numerous false accusations against Islam (in the video, you can see Zogby - who is not Muslim - shaking his head in disbelief several times at Bennett's lies). Two of Bennett's statements deserve closer attention. The first is that:

"Here's the standard. Catholicism is as Catholicism does, Judaism is as Judaism does, and by God Islam is as Islam does and what it's doing right now I wouldn't wanted to associated with."

As numerous people wrote in commentary at both Crooks and Liars and AmericaBlog, if "Catholicism is as Catholicism does," does that mean that Catholicism and Catholics - and, by extension, William Bennett - condones pedophilia? Of course it doesn't, which is why Bennett's argument is so laughable. The other statement that Bennett made was:

"I wish they would speak out. I wish they would speak out and take to the streets like these people do, when we see the beheading and beating of people."

But Bennett himself believes that in certain circumstances, beheadings are "morally plausible."

"Bennett is a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs and has been criticized for his extreme views on the issue. On a television show, he said that a viewer's suggestion of beheading drug dealers would be 'morally plausible.'"
-- Wikipedia: William John Bennett

Way to go, Bill! You've just exposed yourself to be a hypocrite.


To see the video with William Bennett and Jim Zogby, click here (QuickTime). For a Winamp version, go to Crooks and Liars: Bennett slanders Islam.