10 things about: Tanya Sierra, the ‘lost and found’ sculptor |
- 10 things about: Tanya Sierra, the ‘lost and found’ sculptor
- Nato catalyses Russian response
- Handmade cendol anyone? And yes, you can tell the difference!
- Upward battle against corruption in Indonesia
- Are Singapore scholars the only ones who can rule the country?
- What do we do with our jihadists?
| 10 things about: Tanya Sierra, the ‘lost and found’ sculptor Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT
In between a day job at a boutique hotel in George Town and designing architectural hardware such as doorknobs, handles and levers, Sierra turns her artistic energy into sculptures. The 44-year-old takes inspiration from the female form and household domestic objects to create unique thought-provoking pieces. However, all of her sculptures are not the usual large-scale ones that can only be found in museums and art galleries. For over 20 years, she has been more interested in introducing sculpture collecting to the man on the street in the most interesting way ever – by "losing" her sculptures. Once, she saved up for four years so that she could launch a project to "lose" her bronze sculptures all over Barcelona and let people "find" and keep them. She also buried her sculptures in the backyard of where she lived and then left "treasure maps" to the "buried" sculptures at the airport when she moved away. Last month, she "lost" eight bronze sculptures during the month-long George Town Festival's Lost and Found project. As part of the project, Sierra would "lose" a sculpture in a secret location in George Town twice a week and then she'd leave clues on her website and her Facebook page as to where they were "lost." Whoever finds it gets to keep the sculpture. Due to the popularity of the project, Sierra "lost" a few more sculptures during the George Town Festival (GTF) finale event last Sunday night at the Victoria and Armenian Street (V&A) Project around the heritage enclave. In her own words: I'm from New Mexico. A very rural tiny town right by the Mexican border. In that area of New Mexico, there are a lot of sculptors but they don't call themselves sculptors though. They are artists. They make things. They make kachina dolls, they make spirit animals. They make all kinds of different things. Since I was very young, I've always made three dimensional objects. I've been a sculptor professionally for 25 years, I studied metal casting and pouring metal, all of that at university. So I do everything from the primary mould, the wax, the secondary mould, pouring, welding and then doing the carving and finishing. All the stages. I have no idea (what inspired me to become a sculptor). It's a disease. I was born with it. I did not choose it. No person in their right mind would choose to become sculptor as a profession because it's crazy. It's really hard to make a living. It's hard to make people understand. It's like becoming a poet. At least, if you become a novelist, people like to read novels, but only very few people like to read poetry. That's the same thing with sculptures. People are more open to paintings. If you leave a painting on the wall, you don't have to think about it every day. If you have a sculpture in your hand. It's kind of like having a presence. You need to find a place for it, you've to interact with it, move around it, so it takes more of your attention. It's really simple. It's just the way I was made. That's what I do. For most of my career, what I wanted to do was to approach people who had never thought about collecting sculptures. I've always had it around me because it was part of our culture. But sculpture is something that you generally find in a museum or as a public monument so they tend to be difficult to approach. They are either in expensive museums or it's just some monument. I spent 15 years living in Europe where public sculptures is a part of life. Everywhere you go, there's a public sculpture. So what I wanted to do, originally, with the seed of this project was the year-long project I did in Barcelona where I would leave a small bronze at a public space every month. Then I would put up a "lost" sign with a picture of the sculpture with my url to my website so whoever found it got to keep it. This was in 2007. It was from that same seed. It was incredibly expensive to self fund. It took me about four years to save up all the money that I would need in order to pull off that project that lasted a year. So I did that all self-funded. When I was talking to Joe Sidek from George Town Festival, he loved the idea of giving sculptures to people who maybe never think about collecting sculptures or maybe don't own any art of their own. So, Joe said "We'll fund it, we'll get these pieces out and we'll make eight new accidental art collectors" just by the fact that they accidentally find it. The sculptures vary in size and weight. Bronze is expensive. It's laborious, time-consuming, and takes up a lot of energy like gas and electricity to make a bronze piece. I wanted to keep them small; I have hand-held sizes. They are all limited editions, I only cast 10 pieces of each design so once I've given them away or sold them, I don't cast them anymore. So whoever has them will have their signed piece of what number it is. I use a lot of domestic household objects (for sculpture designs) like the utilitarian things we use every day such as teacups, dishes, keys, spoons; things we use all the time. I incorporate those and I use the female form as well and I generally find a way to bring them together. I had another project with GTF this year where I designed small chairs. Joe wanted the theme to be humble things. He had me design chairs, to be produced in three desktop sculptures and three pendants. All different chairs. He wanted them to be fun and whimsical. I designed them and had them produced by Royal Selangor. GTF owns them and what we're doing is we are creating a fund so whoever buys them, the money goes into a fund to support a young metal sculptor for next year's festival. We want to get young people at the beginning of their career who are focusing on metal work and we have a pot of money that's ready to support that kind of work.   |
| Nato catalyses Russian response Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT BARCELONA, Sept 7 — The conflict between Russia and Ukraine took a big step towards significant escalation this week with the Western world giving its most threatening warning to date at the Nato summit in Wales. The fact that Nato (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) is involved at all, and would indeed be by far the most likely source of military action against Russia, is a large part of the explanation for why the situation has arisen in the first place: if you understand Nato, you understand why Russia is following its current aggressive path in Ukraine. As the name suggests, Nato was founded in the aftermath of the World War II between a relatively small and geographically specific alliance of nations, located either side of the Atlantic Ocean: notably the Unites States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, the Scandinavian and Benelux states and Italy. It was always a military organisation, initially intended to counter the considerable threat of Soviet Russia — led at that time by the uncompromising and violent Josef Stalin – and post-war Germany, whose potential for rapid reconstruction was seen as a major potential long-term threat to future peace. At that time, Nato was an entirely justifiable organisation. The world was extremely unstable following two major scale wars in the space of three decades, with uncertainty throughout much of Europe, Asia and the Americas. A strong military display of power between transatlantic allies was, it could easily be argued, a necessary deterrent to ensure stability. In the following decades, however, the global outlook changed drastically. The Cold War thawed with the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s, tensions in Asia were reduced with the cessation of conflict in Korea and Vietnam, Germany became a cherished ally rather than a vanquished enemy, the senseless race for nuclear weapons slowed and the world appeared to have become a safer place. At that point, it would have seemed logical for Nato to take a backward step and become a more peripheral player in world politics — after all, the threat it had been founded to oppose no longer existed. In fact, the opposite happened as three former communist countries — Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic — joined the organisation in 1999, followed by another seven in 2004. Far from allowing itself to become more relaxed following the self-destruction of its former Soviet enemy, Western military power was gradually expanding, with intentions for a more proactive approach signalled by forceful interventions in the Yugoslav civil war in the late 1990s and Afghanistan a few years later. Whereas Nato had previously been a peace-keeping organisation consisting of a handful of members, threatening military action only as a last resort and never actually using it, by the turn of the new century it had grown into a much bigger, stronger and more active force, voluntarily involving itself in conflicts which only had an indirect impact upon the security of the member states. Throughout that period of Nato expansion, Russia kept its distance and was forced into a reluctant silence of an almost subservient nature, demoralised and bankrupted by the collapse of the Soviet Union and powerless to prevent the rapid encroachment of an American-led alliance onto territory it continued to regard as its own. The Baltics, the former Yugoslav states, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania… they were all swallowed up by the rampant Nato monster, allowing the "west" to become more dominant by the day as the "east" became little more than fading memories.
For Russian president Vladimir Putin, however, the last straw came when both EU and Nato started making overtures to Ukraine – a country that many Russians regard not as a separate state at all, but an integral part of historic Russia. The departure of other countries, those with fewer ties to Russia's cultural legacy, into the Western world, could be just about tolerated. But not Ukraine: this, as far as Putin and many, many Russians regard it, was a flagrant breach of unspoken rules, one step too far onto Russian turf. The gloves came off, and Russia — boosted by the knowledge that its energy supplies are of vital importance to much of Europe — adopted the new, aggressive policy which has led Ukraine to the brink of outright war. Nato's leaders know this, and for all their talk this week of "standing shoulder to shoulder with the Ukrainian people", what they are essentially doing is protecting their own status against this sudden Russian rejuvenation. The fate of Ukrainians is incidental. A statement delivered this week in Wales by Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen argued that Russia was guilty of "destabilising" the situation in Ukraine. Russia, contrarily, believes the destabilising forces are actually Nato and the EU for their many years of aggressive expansion and increasing propensity for military intervention. Russia wants Ukraine back and will, it seems increasingly likely, stop at nothing to get it. The question, then, is whether Nato is willing to take on its most challenging and potentially damaging military campaign so far in order to defend Ukraine, a nation which is not even a Nato member state. The next few months, or even weeks, will tell us. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist.  |
| Handmade cendol anyone? And yes, you can tell the difference! Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT
I love this aspect of our local food scene: Casual eateries that serve simple, comforting meals amidst an al fresco environment surrounded by lush greens. Call me sentimental but in my books, food that's served under the shade of leafy trees always tastes better. A bunting tied to one of the trees displays the truck's menu: Cendol, ais batu campur, rojak, mee rebus and mee kari. Such food trucks are common across Malaysia and most of the offerings are pretty standard fare. I started with a bowl of cendol and a plate of rojak mamak or pasembur, as recommended by Ferhad. I had arrived on a rainy afternoon so there was no crowd and it was just a matter of minutes before my order was laid out on the long table covered with a plastic tablecloth.
The cendol itself, jade green and worm-like, were fairly thick and of uneven forms as I expected to see, due to their handmade nature. They imparted a subtle pandan fragrance and flavour, which told of their authenticity, and were slippery soft yet firm to the bite. The gula Melaka, another important component that can make or break a cendol, was another plus point – aromatic and not overly sweet. Altogether, it was a refreshing and highly satisfying bowl of dessert that paired really well with the rojak. Slivers of finely-julienned jicama and cucumber sat in a pool of chunky peanut sauce with bite-sized pieces of fritters, a hard-boiled egg and blanched bean sprouts. I would have loved more vegetables in the mix, but it's a small shortcoming that was easily made up for by the rest of the dish. The sauce had a spicy kick to it that gave just enough heat without overpowering the rest of it. The fritters were another delight, full of flavour and most importantly, tasted fresh and not greasy. It prompted me to try more of their food so I ordered the ais batu campur (ABC) and mee rebus. The ABC, while striking to look at with its vibrant pink jelly pearls and green jelly, was too sweet for my liking. The latter, on the other hand, was an appetising plate of yellow noodles in a thick, creamy sauce that's cooked from fresh prawns, sweet potatoes, curry leaves and a blend of spices including cumin, star anise, fennel and cloves. Most mee rebus tends to lean towards either the sweet or the spiced side but this was a good balance of both. The sauce had a good depth of well-rounded flavours that unfolded in the mouth. There's a richness and freshness to the dishes, and when I spoke to owner Mohamad Hanefah bin Abdul Latif, his food mantras say it all: "I cook as I would want to eat" and "always cook with love." Hanefah, whom friends and customers fondly call Pak Su – Su being short for bongsu, which means the youngest in the family and he is – went on to tell me the importance of sustainability in this business. "You must do things properly, no chin chai!" That means not skimping on any ingredients or proven methods, even if it takes longer or delivers a lower yield.
Pak Su also has personal reasons for staying faithful to the recipes, which he learnt from his late father who used to run a cendol stall near the old railway station in their hometown of Batu Gajah, Perak. After SPM, Pak Su spent a year and a half helping his father manage the stall and learning about the intricacies of cendol-making. It's a long time to spend on picking up one skill, I remarked. Pak Su was quick to point out that there are many details to it and everything takes time. The cendol is made by mixing rice flour, water and pandan essence and then pushing it through a special sieve. Pak Su and his brother Mohamad Abdul Majid, who runs the truck with him, make the cendol themselves at home once every three to four days or whenever it runs out, using about five kilos of flour each time. The syrup that's served with the cendol is a mixture of brown and white sugar scented with pandan leaves, an alternative they had to resort to as pure gula Melaka has become scarce. The sugar mix needs to be cooked for up to five hours to achieve the desired consistency and taste. Even though Pak Su has been making and selling cendol from his truck for 14 years now, he does not consider himself an expert and definitely not as good as his late father. "I'm still perfecting my skills as I go along," he says modestly, adding that being humble is actually an important ingredient in making cendol. "Whenever someone praises my food, I would just nod and smile. If I as much as boast, something is bound to go wrong the next time I make cendol!"
"They would scold me if something is not up to standard, and tell me not to sell it to my customers!" Pak Su also makes it a point to never serve leftovers; anything that's unsold at the end of each business day is thrown or given away. When you eat at his stall, you can be assured that everything is freshly made that very morning. Pak Su's dedication to serving honest, good food and attention to details spills over to the way he runs his stall. I had observed as his brother Abdul Majid prepared the rojak. The ingredients were kept in a simple larder with open shelves that's ubiquitous at food stalls but this one had a soft purple curtain covering it as a hygiene measure. He would lift the curtain to take out the ingredients as needed and as soon as an order was done, the curtain went back down. I looked around the truck and the seating area, and was pleased to note that everything was clean and neat, which is something we don't see often enough at local food stalls. "Of course cleanliness is important," Pak Su confirmed. "Who would want to eat at a stall that's not clean? Not me!" The brothers are assisted by one staff who has been with them for more than 10 years now and the three share an easy camaraderie. For the first-time visitor, it may be hard to tell who's the boss and who's the worker!
Besides selling at their regular spot, Pak Su also does catering for private functions and corporate events, and is savvy enough to ensure that their uniform of polo T-shirts are embroidered with the stall's name and contact details on the back. Pak Su's business acumen and exposure come from his previous jobs; he has worked at a fine dining restaurant of a five-star hotel in Singapore and for four years, he was a steward on a private yacht. Those were what he calls his "golden years" as he had the opportunity to travel to more than 15 countries for free while earning a living. It was also during that time that he met his good friend Param Jothy Krishnan, now the captain of a private yacht, who encouraged him to establish this business and lent him the money for his start-up. Param never once asked him to pay back the money but it was always Pak Su's aim to do so. Last year, he finally managed to save enough to repay his friend and supporter. It would seem that everything is going Pak Su's way, so is there anything else he would like to see through? "I'd encourage my children to travel," he said. "Everyone needs to see the world." And if you're a cendol fan, you need to travel to his neighbourhood and try his handmade dessert and spicy noodle dishes. If you're interested in dining here, how about an exchange for this Secret Eats' location? You can email me your own secret eat or a place you like to frequent for good food at thisbunnyhops@gmail.com and I'll reveal to you this secret eat. Vivian Chong is a freelance writer-editor, and founder of travel & lifestyle website http://thisbunnyhops.com/  |
| Upward battle against corruption in Indonesia Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT JAKARTA, Sept 7 — Now that Indonesians have pretty much moved on from the drama and the euphoria of the election, corruption is taking centre stage again in the local media. This week's "big catch" by the Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) is great news and a reminder of what a huge task the upcoming government of Joko Widodo faces in fighting graft in Indonesia. On Wednesday, KPK named Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Jero Wacik a suspect for allegedly forcing his subordinates in the ministry to amass money through procurement-project kickbacks, budget mark-ups and bogus programmes. Jero is the third minister in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Cabinet to have been named a suspect, after former youth and sports minister Andi Alfian Mallaranggeng and former religious affairs minister Suryadharma Ali. He is also the sixth senior politician of Yudhoyono's Democratic Party who has been implicated in corruption cases. KPK officials said the money was used for his personal needs (including funding his family's trip to the London Olympics, golfing games and entertaining people), as well as for image-building campaigns (the daily Koran Tempo said he paid an editor of a national newspaper to help boost his public image). Jero ran for Parliament in the April Legislative Election and is due to be sworn in this October. His case has been long anticipated, following a string of scandals that led to the arrest of some high-ranking officials in the energy sector, including chairman of the Parliamentary Energy Commission Sutan Bhatoegana, another Democratic Party member. Rudi Rubiandini, who headed the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKK Migas) testified against Jero in his own trial, while the state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina president, Karen Setiawan, said during questioning as a witness that Jero had bribed some parliamentarians to secure the budget for his ministry. Karen, who resigned last week citing personal reasons, later recanted her testimony, however. To many Indonesians, the latest arrest validates the long-held assumption that energy is one of the worst governed and most corrupt sectors. The term 'oil mafia' was made popular a couple of months ago during a presidential candidates' debate when vice-president elect Jusuf Kalla cheekily asked his opponent Hatta Rajasa what he would do to address the problem. Observers were quick to note that Kalla was hinting at Hatta's close relationship with an Indonesian businessman known as the 'Godfather of Oil'. The way the oil mafia works, according to media reports, is by marking up the prices of imported oil that Pertamina buys from its third-party private partners. A lack of transparency in the system allows the corrupt practice to occur, potentially causing trillions of rupiah in losses to the state. The sugar industry, for example, is controlled through an oligarchic practice that supplies low quality seedlings to small-scale farmers and procures poor machinery for factories, keeping domestic production low so that they can flood the market with foreign-imported sugar. And then there's the meat mafia, a sector known to have been the turf of the Muslim-based Justice and Prosperous Party (PKS), whose senior politicians were found guilty early this year of bribing the ministry of agriculture (long been a political territory of PKS) to secure an increased quota for imported beef. Highly vulnerable to corruption is the procurement process of goods and services for government offices. Corruption is so "structured, systematic and massive" that the government does not really have the capability to fight it with the existing system, noted anti-corruption activist Teten Masduki, an aide to president-elect Joko Widodo during the campaign, to the influential Kompas daily. He blames this on ineffective internal monitoring system and law enforcers who lack capability as well as integrity. Worse still, many ministers in Yudhoyono's Cabinet are political appointees and senior cadres, if not leaders, of their parties, and they would abuse their power to amass money for their parties.
And often all their great work is undermined once the case is tried in the corruption court. On Monday, for example, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Banten Governor Ratu Atut Chosyiah to four years' imprisonment, lower than the 10 years demanded by the prosecutor. The first female elected governor and a matriarch in Banten's most powerful political clan, Atut was found guilty of bribing former Constitutional Court Chief Justice Akil Mochtar in an attempt to take control of a district her clan had lost in a local election. Akil was sentenced to life imprisonment. Atut's disappointing sentence shows the shortcomings of the current effort to fight graft through the legal avenues in a country where the public has lost much trust in its law enforcers and justice system. Also, like the cockroach principle, there is a chance that for every official caught for corruption, many more will learn from their mistakes and become more sophisticated and elusive. This is why President-elect Joko Widodo badly needs to implement a bureaucratic reform that ensures better governance and a strong monitoring system, as well as to foster an anti-graft culture throughout the nation. But first, he needs to put in place competent ministers, preferably not politicians, with professional track records and proven integrity. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist.  |
| Are Singapore scholars the only ones who can rule the country? Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT SINGAPORE, Sept 7 — A specialised caste chosen, at a young age, via a rigorous selection process, set aside from ordinary mortals, celebrated by society, lavished with opportunities, then tasked with ruling a nation. It sounds like science fiction but actually this, to some extent, is how Singapore has been run for decades via its deeply entrenched system of publicly funded scholars. Scholars are students who receive government or government linked corporation scholarships to study at prestigious overseas universities. After completing their courses they are bonded, ie they must work for between four to eight years, to the particular agency that awarded them their scholarship or in the case of more general scholarships like the prestigious PSC -- to any or even a combination of government departments. The system was put into place to ensure that the brightest Singaporeans would have access to a world class education and that on receiving this education, these Singaporeans would return to serve their nation. This was/is a core part of the meritocracy that we are told underpins modern Singapore. Scholars are chosen on the basis of their academic record, extra curricular achievements and character — no reference is made to race, or family background. So, in theory, anyone can be a scholar.
The powers that be may be listening. This year, in his annual national day speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that promotion within the civil service would solely be on the basis of performance and that advancement and fast-track schemes would be made open to experienced and successful civil servants regardless of their academic qualifications. While this seems like an unremarkable statement to some, in a society that has long placed academic achievement on a pedestal — it's a revolutionary concept. It implies that a non-graduate can be as good, in a role, as a graduate and that a non-graduate might even be as good as a scholar. If the government truly follows through on these words with actions, it will mark a very deep change in the way Singapore is run. So what was wrong with the scholars anyway? Scholarships effectively reward bright 18-year-olds with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of funding, guaranteed employment and accelerated promotion on the basis of their A-level results. The assumption being that a student who does well in his/her A-levels, is likely to do well in his/her degree, and then likely to fit into an organization and continue to perform well indefinitely.This always struck me as a bit of a stretch. Some As earned when you are 18 can't necessarily predict if you'll do well in the Irrigation and Water department aged 26. This is also completely the opposite of modern best practices where everyone is under pressure to perform and basic results, not academic success, determine promotion. Perhaps this is why scholarships are often found in state linked corporations but not in MNCs which tend to offer grad schemes after graduation and fast track schemes after a few years' work experience instead. Aside from delivering questionable performers the second core problem with the scholar system is that it is now widely perceived as subverting the meritocracy it was once an integral part of. Given the fiercely competitive nature of education today, one could argue that those who have the ability to afford the tuition, extra curricular activities, and steer their children in the direction of the elite schools Ango-Chinese, Raffles that produce the majority of scholars have an advantage. So rather than a meritocracy, the scholar system can end up creating an entrenched elite, a privileged class who interact extensively with others of the same class but rule over the less privileged. Personally I believe a lot of the funding currently directed at scholars should be channeled to grants and bursaries that would allow civil servants with a good track record to take on relevant higher qualification in the form of certificates masters degrees later in life once their commitment and capabilities have been proven. The PM's announcement hopefully signals a turn in this direction as we move towards reward based on performance bringing us closer to a stronger meritocracy. *This is the personal opinion of the columnist.  |
| What do we do with our jihadists? Posted: 06 Sep 2014 06:00 PM PDT KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 7 — "So, what do you think we should do to our jihadists when they return?" an interviewer from an Asian TV station asked me recently. We were talking about the factors that motivate Malaysian youths into jihadism, a topic I previously covered in this column. I have to admit the question got me stumped for a while. I never had much reason to think about the issue before, partly because of the movement's only recent resurgence. The other reason was I never expected them to come home alive anyway. The proposal, however, got off to a halting start on Monday, after Cameron admitted that it would be legally difficult to prevent a British citizen from returning home, and the fact that such a move would render them stateless. Malaysia faces a similar conundrum, primarily because we do not yet have a standard operating procedure to deal with Malaysians who either joined a militant group fighting on foreign soul, or pledging allegiance to a political entity such as the Islamic State (IS). Barring our citizens from entry would pose huge questions on their freedom of movement, which is protected by our Federal Constitution. Additionally, as revealed by Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar last week, Malaysians who have left for Syria and Iraq have been using indirect routes. By leaving or entering the country through Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, it would be harder to trace their jihadist jaunts. A suggestion was then made by Wan Junaidi: that those suspected of joining IS be arrested upon arrival. Unfortunately, this opens up more questions for Putrajaya than it answers. Firstly, are our laws sufficient and prepared to deal with involvement in jihadist activities overseas? The Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012, more popularly known by its acronym Sosma, largely deals with terrorism attacks or activities on our home soil. If so, do we charge them for war crimes? Secondly, how do we prevent them from indoctrinating other prisoners if they are sentenced to jail? It is no secret that some of our locals currently fighting overseas do have criminal records. The Malaysian jihadists killed and injured during an attack last month included, among others, suspected bank robbers and detainees of the Internal Security Act (ISA). Putting them in jail will only present the Malaysian jihadi ring with potential recruits. With scarce employment opportunities and stigma from society waiting for them outside bars, wouldn't the prospect of fighting in the name of God sound rosy? Which brings us to the third question: will the authorities seek to rehabilitate the fighters, and if so, how will the approach be? We must remember that the fighters do so believing they are on the righteous path set and blessed by God.
Another point to consider is whether action should only be taken against those who join IS. What started off as a Syrian civil war involving President Bashar al-Assad's forces and the rebels has since attracted dozens of splinter groups all out to carve a name for themselves. The rise of IS and its declaration of an Islamic caliphate had then sparked an internal conflict between the rebels themselves, resulting in an almost three-sided war. Those now fighting against both Assad's forces and ISIS include the Saudi-backed Islamic Front, the al-Qaeda branch al-Nusra Front, and the ragtag coalition Army of Mujahidin. Shouldn't Malaysians who join these militant movements face similar action? Perhaps the biggest concern about arresting these jihadists would be the inadvertent elevation of them into "martyrs" for their cause. Stripped from potential glory in death, they would just turn to glory in life. We only need to look at the influential Indonesian preacher Abu Bakar Bashir, who was previously jailed in his country for several bombings. Formerly linked with the South-east Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and al-Qaeda, Abu Bakar now pledges allegiance to IS' head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. His jail time had only turned him into a bigger hero for extremists. When 19 Malaysians were arrested by police between April and June en route to fighting in Syria and Iraq, Abu Bakar's books were among the things they had with them. The sense of being unfairly persecuted runs through the roots of the jihadist movements. If even the closing of their Facebook pages could strengthen their resolve and vindicate their feelings, just imagine what an arrest by their "secular" government could do? We need to do more than stop jihadi fighters. We need to ensure that violent holy struggle does not become the most defining feature of the Muslim community. So, the question still remains: what do we do with our jihadists? *This is the personal opinion of the columnist.  |
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