Arif Maftuhin

For many in the Southeast Asia, Siti Nurhaliza is a diva. For me, she is the only female singer I would love to spend money for her albums. She may be unknown here, in the US, but in Malaysia. Indonesia, Singapore, and Brunei (where Malay is spoken), everyone knows this Malaysian singer due to her unique beautiful voice. Her performance is simple and "very Malay", touching heart of those who miss a traditional Malay woman. As an entertainer, she really shows her superb voice. Therefore, when she will get married with an old guy, many feel a broken-heart (like me... ha.. ha.. ha..). How can this "innocent" girl, the baby-face, get married with a "bad" guy, Datuk "K" (Datuk Khalid Muhamad Jiwa)? It is NOT FAIR!! I am fine if she doesn't choose me -- I am maried anyway; however, at least she deserves more than that Datuk, doesn't she? (huh!) Anyway, who is Siti Nurhaliza? Here is the information I found in Wikipedia: She was born in Berek Po...

David Harvey’s book, New Imperialism, seeks to explain current events by uncovering the underlying forces within the chaos of surface appearances. Why America fights? Why Iraq? Propagandistic claims and rhetoric will not answer such questions because they are made to mask the real objective. For example, if democracy really matters in the case of Iraqi war, then why not war against Pakistani and Saudi regimes? Instead of claiming that Saddam should be removed from his position because he supported terrorism, we were informed just a couple weeks after the war that Saddam had no relation to 9/11. Therefore, it is important to seek the explanation beyond the “said” to the unsaid. To make a long story short, today’s events in America are related to the history of capitalism, to the rise of bourgeois imperialism as the way out of capital overaccumulation in Europe and America. The first capital overaccumulation marked by the European-wide economic collapse of 1846-50 indeed opened the way f...

Tom Heneghan, redaktur agama di Reuters, menyebut kasus penerbitan dan penerbitan ulang kartun Nabi Muhammad di Denmark dan koran-koran Eropa seperti dialog tuna rungu. Pers Eropa tak mendengar pendapat umat Islam yang merasa terhina, dan umat Islam tak bisa memahami arti freedom of expression. Ada batas yang mestinya dipahami kedua belah pihak dimana “pelecehan”, di satu sisi, dan “kebebasan berekpresi” di sisi lain. Batas itu, tentu saja bukan batas legal, right, melainkan batas “etis”, golden rule dalam ajaran luhur semua agama, bahwa “bila ingin dihormati, maka hormatilah orang lain”. Mengapa batas legal (right) tidak mampu menyelesaikan persoalan ini? Pertama, kita sekarang hidup di kampung global yang tak lagi bisa dibatasi oleh jurisdiksi tertentu. Penerbitan kartun itu ada di wilayah hukum Eropa dan mayoritas orang yang merasa tersinggung berada di luar Eropa, di dunia Islam. Kedua, kasus ini melibatkan perbedaan kultur, nilai, persepsi, sejarah, agama, dan bahkan politik yang ...

The book poses twofold thesis: First, the judicial process in Islamic court courts is informed by a very clear cultural logic that this logic itself is well informed by contrasting discourses and the play of contradictory elements. Second, Islamic courts are in fact strategic site for modernization of Malaysia. Peletz in fact writes in a multi-disciplinary tradition involving political sciences, anthropology, sociology, and women studies, by which he provides ethnographic, historical, cross-cultural, and transnational perspective on recent development in Islam and laws. In this regard, his study is against Weberian account on Islamic law, in which Islamic law is seen as an irrational and backward, and against more general attitude of “orientalist” literature that consider Islam as incompatible with modernity, monolithic, and eternally unchanging. He is not the first one doing such studies and he confirms findings of other scholars such as Bowen, Eickleman and Piscatori, Lawrence, and H...

Opinion and Editorial - February 04, 2006 Arif Maftuhin, Seattle, WA Hamas' landslide victory has shocked the world, especially Israel and the US. By the day, Hamas has proved its dominance in these polls. Pessimists take the view that Hamas is purely a terrorist organization rather than political party, and argue that nothing can be hoped from an organization whose sole strategy is violence. Since Hamas prefers violence, their win implies that Palestinians want to continue to wage war. Optimists compare Hamas to the political wing of IRA, Sinn Fein, and believe that Hamas will change their violence strategy. Hamas is no longer a militia; it is a government whose responsibilities are not only killing enemies and creating terror, but also providing shelter, food and education for their citizens. Naturally, they are forced to become more realistic and make some compromises. Those taking a more cautious attitude are waiting for further developments. While the optimists and...

The Approach: State, Nation, Community Kastoryano saiys her study is different to other studies of negotiation of identities in the way she deals with “state”. While other studies deal with the intercultural negotiation between groups or minorities sharing public space, her study focuses on “the state and minorities” (Kastoryano, 2002: 4). To put her idea differently, she analyzes two political entities, state and immigrant, instead of majority and immigrant (minority) sharing a public space. She argues that state: …is not seen simply as an administration and juridical power whose role in matters of immigration is limited to the control of flows and thus to the protection of national borders. (Kastoryano, 2002:5) Her assumption of the capability of state to play more roles is obvious in her statement: By state, I mean an institutional reality that, although influenced by external forces, has its own internal logic, born of history and nourished by ideology, acting directly on civil soc...