LEE KUAN YEW AND HIS QUESTION FOR BERNARD LEWIS : HAS MUCH CHANGED SINCE 1970

LEE KUAN YEW AND HIS QUESTION FOR BERNARD LEWIS

I quote verbatim, from Notes on Century: Reflections of a Middle East Historians by Bernard Lewis published in 2012 by Viking.

During the early 1970s, Bernard Lewis, the best-known Historian of Islam (he is British and Jewish, has been a professor at Princeton for ages), found himself in Singapore on his way to Australia for a meeting. Someone had asked Lew Kuan Yew the PM of the new nation of Singapore (1965 Singapore separated from Malaysia and Singapore to become an independent country) whether he would be interested in meeting Bernard Lewis.

Bernard Lewis turned up at 10 AM at Lee Kuan Yew’s Office, LKY got down to business without any formalities or politeness.

He said, “ I understand you’re a specialist on Islam. We have a problem. In Singapore we have a Muslim minority, partly Malay, partly from South Asia. We do everything we can to help them. We give them preferential treatment in school and in the university, in government employment, and for businesspeople in the awarding of government contracts. We do everything we can to help them. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m no bleeding-heart liberal, but the last thing we need here, between two large Muslim countries, Indonesia and Malaysia, is a discontented Muslim minority. Now,” he said, “despite everything we do to help them, they keep sinking to the bottom of the pile.  I have two questions for you, Why are they like that, and what can we do about it?”

Of course, Bernard Lewis could only muster an inadequate answer to the first question and none at all to the second.

Singapore, which has reached the developed nation standards by every reckoning, sits in between two corrupt governments: Indonesia and Malaysia. The recent elections in Malaysia pitted for the first time Malay against Malay and one could see that the governing party had unfair advantages and huge amount of money was given away. Chinese voted for the opposition and Indian vote is almost inconsequential. The governing party has been in power for 56 years and now four more guaranteed, but the average Malay is still poor and at the bottom. Of course, those who know how to manipulate the system have become immensely wealthy.

So the question of LKY forty years ago is still relevant, perhaps the way to bring an underprivileged group of people is not to throw development at them but educate them and perhaps even free them from the oppression of religion. Countries in Asia, which are very religious, are all at the bottom of the international standings: Indonesia, Philippines, and Timor Leste, Myanmar. Malaysia without the Chinese would sink further down on the list, all observers agree.

On a recent visit to Kuala Trengganu in Malaysia I was shown a mosque, called Crystal Mosque, built at a cost of 500 million Ringgits, more than 150 million American dollars, and the artisans had to be brought in from Uzbekistan (locally not available). I was not impressed, not yet another mosque! When the Moslem children of Malaysia have the highest rate of Obesity and prospect of chronic diseases in South East Asia and I don't hear any one talking or doing anything about it!

Also, close to one million qualified Malaysian Chinese work and live in Singapore contributing to the wellness of that country’s prosperity. More Chinese and Indian Malaysians can be found in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand… which hinders the competence of Malaysia at international levels of education, technology, science and research. A country published just 7000 papers in all fields of research endeavours in 2011 with a population of 29 million people (Malaysia). It does not hold a candle to Israel a country of 5 million people where the productivity of one university centre in Haifa alone would eclipse the total Malaysian research output!!!

LKY is a man of great talent. He was predicted to be in ruins, taking out a barren island out on his own in 1965. Any one who has visited Singapore recently can attest whether or not his move has been a successful one.

IMF rank of Singapore for personal income per capita is No 10 in the world; Malaysia comes in at No 64

http://medicoanthropologist.blogspot.be/search?q=bernard+lewis

Is an earlier blog of mine about Bernard Lewis about Arab Freedom and how it may come about?

It is a great paradox that the most liberal Arab press is not to be found in any Arab country but in Israel!

Bernard Lewis and the future of Arab Freedom..

Historian Bernard Lewis breathes a fresh perspective into the cultural conflict between the Arab and Islamic world and the west. Even as early as 1950, he had thought that the end of this conflict with the west would come from Moslems themselves if they could find a way to modernize themselves, rather than going back into the conservative, non progressive radicalist ideology.

Today I was reading an article by Bernard Lewis, a British Jew, now considered to be most erudite historian of Islam and its people and a doyen of Middle Eastern studies in America and the most influential post war historian of islam and the Middle East…and there are many more accolades.

The article was in March-April Issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS, a very influential monthly of western analysis of what happens around the world. The title of the article is Free at last? The Arab world in the 21^st century.

I would like to summarize the article.

Until recently, Arabs (like the Indians in India) have been ruledby outsiders; Europeans and then Ottomans.

After the death of Gamel Abdel Nassr of Egypt, there has not been any great Arab leader and the idea of Pan Arabism has come to an end.

There are sizeable minority of non arab moslems who live in Arab lands who are beginning to clammer for some form of freedom. They include: Kurds in Iraq, Syria and also in Iran and Turkey. Berbers in North Africa.  (Zidane the French football star is of Berber origin, as are a large proportion of so called “ arabs” living in France).

Arab refusal to recognize the existence of Israel for the past sixty years is a serious problem. ( four wars fought, all won by Israel). Some demagogues in Asia (notably Mahathir of Malaysia) also had taken this blind approach, mainly in countries which had converted to Islam. ( A good read is VS Naipaul’s book on The Land of Believers).

The Oil wealth has actually increased Autocracy of rule and actually has decreased economic development.

Over the last quarter of a century, real GDP per capita has fallen throughout the arab world.  1999 GDP of all arab states was 532.2 billion dollars, similar to that of Spain. Today the total non-oil exportsof the entire arab world ( more than 300 million in population) amounts to less than that of Finland( less than 5 million in population).

The number of books translated into Arabic in the entire arab world is 1/5 of books translated into Greek in Greece. The number of books, original or translated, per million people is at a dismal low level, much lower than asia. (the above also applies to Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapour but not to India. The lowest number of books published per million is in Sub Saharan Africa)

In the field of Science and Technology, the news is BAD.

Israel registered 7652 patents in 20 years in the international arena. Egypt 77 Saudi Arabia 171Kuwait 52 Jordan 15 Syria 20

Compare this to South Korea 16 328.

The Arab world also has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world.

There is a list published of the 500 best universities in the world which is revised annually. None of the 200 universities in the arab world has made into the list ; not even into the less restrictive Asia Pacific section of the list.

This cannot be attributed to the “imperialists” but to the people themselves.

SOME VERY SERIOUS SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The primary one is the lack of power of Women.

Only Iraq and Tunisia has some form intellectual freedom given to women, so that they can become judges, journalists, lawyers.

Treatment of Immigrants to the Arab world. We are always talking about the treatment of the  arab immigrants to the west but very seldom we hear about the sad plight of the immigrants to the arab world, such as the south Asians to UAE

The third is the Information Technology and the availability of information which the regimes are unable to control, so that the people with access to information, can gauge their progress within their individual countries and compare their levels of expressions and freedom with those of other countries. ( this may be a factor for Malays also in Malaysia. After 50 years of independence and unequal treatment of the immigrants, they are in no ways better off).

 

Some important milestones:

1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran

1991 Fall of the Soviet Union

US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan

All these events have given an impetus to the rise of radicalism.

Perhaps this very radicalism that would drive moderate arabs into making peace with Israel, since the threat from their home grown Islamic Militants is far more dangerous than the threats from Israel.

None of the Arab states could be said to represent their peoples consent or participation, but are governed on Loyalty or Obedience and oppression.

Under normal circumstances, opposition parties or groups will have to bow to democratic principles, but religious opposition parties like Hamas or Hizbullah don’t have to.

Lebanon is the only country in the region ( with the glaring exception of Israel) that has had any experience with democracy. Islamic theocracy leads to lesser development in the Islamic world. Democratization as has taken place in Lebanon, with healthy democratic rather than religious opposition parties may be a step ahead.

By choosing to treat themselves, including the intellectuals and women amidst them, and also the foreigners and immigrants, in a more just and equitable manner, perhaps the Arab society would define its place in the history of the 21^st century.

Even though I am Jewish, I would very much like to see the Arab and Islamic societies move into the 21^st century. The hypocrisy of going back to look for answers when every one is moving forward is metaphorically illustrated by designer veils in Iran and Malay girls wearing fashionable shoes and jeans and then cover their heads..

I also applaud France for limiting public expressions of private faith. School children cannot wear clothes which proclaim their religion, or symbols of the religion. Religion is a private matter and it should be held privately. Fundamentalism in any form is bad, in any religion. The fact that the conservative religious thinkers in the USA of various Christian sects have not produced any great intellectuals shows the probability that blind faith in a religion actually makes you blind.. to what is going around you, especially at a time, we are invited to participate, know, learn and enhance with all the wonderful things that is happening in this world..

It is a WONDERFUL WORLD if you care to search for it...

Man Asian Literary Prize to be announced on March 17

Contenders
Kenzaburo Oe The Changeling Japan
Manu Joseph Serious Man Inde
Bie Feiyu 3 sisters chine
Tabish Khair The thing about Thugs Inde
Yoko Ogawa Hotel Iris Japan


Anthropological Comment:
Four out of the five finalists are from just two countries: Japan and Inde
Japan has a historic record of written literature, which was freely published. Two nobel prize winners in Literature Oe and Kawabata
India has a rich tradition of written literature ,but only in the last twenty years that open publishing has opened the doors for excellent new talents. India now is full to the brim with good writing in English: Ghosh Mishra Desai swarup tejpal
Just to name the few that comes to mind effortlessly, there are hundreds virtually hundreds of others.. Especially from the south, who won Booker a couple of years ago, Anita Nair who is a poet etc etc . The list is long.

Compare that to countries with manipulative governments, which try to impose ideology of some sort: Malaysia or singapour or Indonesie
All produce very poor quality literature
Just this morning, I received this note from a fellow professor traveling in South East Asia for six months
I missed the West whilst in Malaysia, because though people were friendly most lacked any competence or interest in performing their work roles, which made functionning there hard. I should also confess that I've gone from tolerating Muslim societies to avoiding them. Penang was becoming unbearable precisely because it has too much religion.

I shall write and confess my love for Malaysia but sometimes I wonder whether it is my proclivity to enjoy the company of MunChing that I am confusing with my malaysian experience and its positive impression upon me.

The results of the Berlin Film Festival you already know.

Asghar Farhadi and Peyman Moadi picked up prizes at Berlin
IRANIAN drama "Nader and Simin: A Separation" won the Golden Bear for best picture at the Berlin film festival on Saturday, while its ensemble cast also picked up the best actor and actress prizes on a triumphant night.

Director Asghar Farhadi's portrayal of a marriage in crisis was firm favorite for the coveted award, and its victory was the first for an Iranian picture, said organisers. In the movie, one family is pitted against another in a gripping legal tussle which highlights the gap between middle class "intellectuals" and poorer, traditional Iranians for whom religious beliefs and honor tend to be more important. It was praised for its subtle exploration of Iran's class divisions and religious conservatism, which it managed to combine with the tension of a crime thriller.

Asghar Fahradi's film won the best film but there were many other notables some of whom were recognized.
Alexander Mindadze Innocent Saturday Ukraine
Volker Sattel Under Control Germany
Alexander Zeldovich Target Russia
Khodorkovsky documentary from Russia about the Oil Tycoon who is falsely accused and imprisoned
Turin Horse Bela Tarr Hungarian Master of Miserabilism (other films include Sotantango) this film was also recognized at this festival
Asghar Farhadi is one of the well known Iranian film makers the only other film I know from him is About Elly
Ulrich Kohler Sleeping Sickness Germany I think this film was also recognized at the festival. This is much more anthropological a work, with a white doctors love for africa and a french doctor of african origin who comes to africa and his discomfort at the urban ness of self and the rural and ritual nature of african lives.. A theme much like some movies about Indians from USA coming to India to look for roots such as Namesake but in this movie there is a conflict between the White doctor who loves being in Africa and the french doctor of african origin full of french values..
There was also another movie presented called Drileiben a triology..

Other movies True Grit by coen brothers The Prize from Argentina The terrorists from Thailand about the Green/Red Shirt protests of last year Margin Call about Wall St /USA

As I am extremely partial to Japanese movies I am watching Confessions, which is also an Oscar contender I think.

Add to that Norman Lewis' extremely readable travel books, I have just finished re reading his travels in Burma, done more than fifty years ago! still reverberates with the vibrancy of a new found love...

Life is abundant, go out and look for it, and you will find it..
The drama is folding in the Arab World... at no time are the words of that great student of Arab History rung true...
you can read my comments on an article by Bernard Lewis at
http://medicoanthropologist.blogspot.com/2009/03/bernard-lewis-and-future-of-arab.html


the above note dedicated to the love and affection shown to me by MC in KL and NM in Tehran.

REMEMBERING CHARLIE HEBDO JANUARY 7TH IN MIAMI SENTIMENTS OF A JEWISH TRAVELER

During the years I lived in Europe, I had to tragically witness three terrorist attacks, two of them involving mainly Jews and the last one in November 2015 of the indiscriminate assassination of innocents in Paris.
The first one, involving Jewish teachers and Jewish children hardly evoked comments. Charlie Hebdo drew widespread attention and sympathy, not only from France but from around the world. (the majority of the victims were Jewish). 
But the government responses from France and Belgium were less than adequate
I thought of the French philosopher who commented? First they came for the Jews, I did not comment...etc and when they came for me, there was no one left to comment.
As a Jewish Traveller, I feel very safe in most countries in the world I travel to, I felt completely safe on a recent trip to Marrakesh, Morocco. In Israel, you know that your brothers and sisters are looking out for you and it is much safer for a Jew to be in Israel than in France or Belgium, even though a recent stay in Brittany, it was as if Charlie Hebdo had not happened. The largest proportion of migrants to Israel last year was from France, if that serves as a social commentary.
On the taxi ride to the Brussels airport, the Brussels born taxi driver and I talked about the problems facing children of North African immigrants. In the USA, you would never even think of him as an outsider, but his question was poignant: it is difficult to integrate when the society points out to you that you are not Belgian? Israel is the prime example of a country which has integrated over 140 different nationalities into its national fibre, USA is fantastic when it comes to integration of nationalities while allowing them to maintain cultural characteristics, it being the home of the largest number of languages spoken in the Developed World!
One year later  I AM STILL  CHARLIE   JE SUIS CHARLIE and refuse to fall into the shallowness of Islamophobia and looking at a person, such as the Brussels born Moroccan origin taxi driver as an OTHER.

Bernard Lewish, the British Born Jewish Historian who is nearly 100 years old, is a beacon when it comes to explain the middle eastern history. We now use the world Assassins irreverently, but Bernard Lewis traces the history of an Ismaili sect of Muslims who used assassinations for political goals and thus the origin of the the sect, which has since died out and the origin of the word in common parlance.

SPIRITUALITY: LETTER TO A JEWISH FRIEND IN MIAMI

Thoughts on Spirituality

I have thought about it for long.

One thing I can tell you what it is not:  Rituals and Dogma like you mentioned in your email of organized religion. I am sure Christianity, Islam were Spiritually embedded religions once upon a time, but it must all have changed when the Crusaders sacked byzantine cities and Arabs and Moslems sacked Europe in return in 1430. I think it is good to separate Religion and State, one of the fundamental problems facing the modernization of Islam, according to Bernard Lewis.

Hatuey was a rebel Taino leader in Baracoa, Cuba.

He was captured by the Spanish and was being prepared for "quartered", that is four horses are tied to his four limbs and then driven in different directions, tearing the body apart

The priest came and said, if you convert to Christianity now, you would go to Heaven

Hatuey thought for a moment and asked: is that where you Spaniards go to when you die?

Yes of course, the priest said with glee.

If that is the place where you people go to, Hatuey famously declared, I would rather go to Hell!

Even though I am grateful for the Hassidim for keeping our scriptures alive (mainly because the 90 per cent of the secular Jews don't, unless you are listening to a rabbi like Mitch) and understand their difficult lives. Once in a flight from Miami to New York, a Hassid sat next to me who wanted to convince me that the earth is only 5765 years old and nothing existed before HShem created it!   End of the story…

What is spirituality?  Why do we say so and so is spiritual?  Why do we say such and such place is spiritual?

We are connected

To our families

By birth and marriage 

And through them to a distant part

Most of us cannot recall or remember our ancestors just past a couple of generations, or know their history for perhaps ten generations,

Then it is only history and hope we were part of that history.

(TOMB OF THE YEMENITE KABBALIST NEHEMIAH MOTTA IN COCHIN, INDIA)

Then, there is our identification

Or cultural identity

We are the luckiest of all people living in the westernized world in that we have a strong cultural identity which although based on a religion has very little to do with it in that as Rabbi Mitch puts it, the religion itself is evolving and not just based on what was written millennia ago in our holy books as there are constant commentaries in every generation.

This cultural identity gives us a connection that to a non-Jew is very difficult to understand. In Cuba even professors of religion are enigmatic why and how the Jews can be Jewish without being religious.

I remember, I was still a teenager, when I first attended my international meeting of Jewish Students in Milan Italy

There were blond Jews from Sweden

A hook nosed tall Jew from Finland, caricature of course, from Turkuu

A beautiful, lithesome Norwegian girl (with whom I fell madly in love with)

And most memorably, Franco Levi from Milan

I said to myself

I know John Levi who was then the rabbi of the liberal synagogue in Melbourne

William Levy

But I have never heard of Franco Levi

And I still remember a story young Franco Levi who said to me

My transistor radio always spoke in Italian to me, but when I went to Germany I was so surprised it began to speak in German!

All of us laughed!

I just goggled his name

Franco Levi Milan and just what I found?

Franco Levi si candida a rappresentare l'Associazione Radicali Senza Fissa Dimora nel comitato nazionale di Radicali Italiani - 

Some of us never give up, right? And I sincerely hope it is the same Franco Levi, Congratulations, Franco!

Then something occurred to me, on that day after I said Hello to Jose Goldstein from Costa Rica, there is a connection here, which is beyond all natural and physical phenomenon!

It is that connection that I term Spirituality.

So the central anchor for any spirituality I might have (I am always dubious of people who claim to be spiritual) is deeply rooted in Jewish Spirituality. Luckily enough I began working away from the non-spiritual world of Medical Practice in the west to the American Indians (and starved for a few years because of that!) and soon a connection to a general mythical Spiritual world emerged. That the spiritual world is the same for all of us regardless of our religion or culture and that we need a particularized form of connection to that spiritual world, in our cases is our Jewish connection, not the religion or rituals but our sense of being part of the universe. (remember, when we pray melech haolam, haolam here is not this earth but this universe!)

At the level of the spiritual world, one begins to see the immense similarity between all the faiths and belief systems of the world: Yogic Philosophy, Philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurty, Buddhism and of course the American Indian Philosophy.

And using idioms of particular expressions, they say very many things that are similar

Just let me talk about one saying

When the student is ready, the teacher appears

So far I have encountered this in Yogic Teachings, Buddhist Teachings and American Indian teachings.

And as is evident in your case, it is also true among the Jewish People.

We grew up knowing and thinking of the immense wisdom available to us at any time among our people, however small in number we may be, and still had only a flirting inclination to delve into it. How can we begin to understand The Guide for the Perplexed by Maimonides, which is usually given as a Bar Mitzvah Gift? Or Kabbalah apart from its superficialities? So we resign ourselves to the pleasant aspect of Jewish spirituality, which is mainly our solidarity with Israel and our identification, a very strong one, with our people.

And then, without realizing a teacher appears, from an unknown quarter and unexpectedly.

I had learned the Jewish rituals and some prayers in Melbourne, Australia but the spiritual aspects did not arrive until I was a regular guest at the home of Dr Joel and Mrs. Irena Glaser in Coconut Grove in Miami! Irena had become such a fount of knowledge (or is it font of knowledge, both derived from the world fountain) and more importantly through her conduct had become our teacher, instructing us without castigating us but with tenderness and thoughtfulness. 

Perhaps that is why when people ask me what are the things you are grateful for in your life, I can answer without much delay, in this particular order

I am a Jew

I am an Australian because of what Australia gave me at a critical juncture in my life

I am associated with American Indians

Cuba is in my heart

All of the above has one thing in common: relationships. One of the more important phrases American Indians say is: Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related.

And to me, that would summarize the essence of Spirituality in the modern world.

YOU ARE SPIRITUAL IF YOU HAVE TIME FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

WHICH INCLUDES THE IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?