Documentary film maker

Was recently approached by a documentary film maker from India.

He is currently scouting for young and hip Malaysian writers to do a feature on.

Since I am neither young nor hip, I decided to pass the buck and recommend him to my friends Yvonne, kG, and Sharanya.

Will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Apologies

My apologies to Swifty for copying and pasting a comment on his blog. I

t came across as spam, which is a very, very bad thing.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused.

De Niro and Pacino pair up again

It’s about time. BBC reports:

Movie legends Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are to share the big screen for only the second time in their careers, according to film trade paper Variety.

The stars have signed up to play police investigators hunting a serial killer in thriller Righteous Kill.

It has been over ten years since HEAT, so this will probably be their last chance to do a proper team up.

Back to Bahasa Malaysia

Came across this in The Star:

KUALA LUMPUR: Bahasa Malaysia will again be the official term to be used to refer to the national language.

In a unanimous decision last April, the Cabinet felt that reverting to the term Bahasa Malaysia would help inculcate a sense of belonging for all citizens irrespective of race, said Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin.

Bullshit by any other name is still bullshit.

How To Restore America’s Place In The World

Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria ponders how American foreign policy has gone wrong today, and what America can do to make it right tomorrow:

In a global survey released last week, most countries polled believed that China would act more responsibly in the world than the United States. How does a Leninist dictatorship come across more sympathetically than the oldest constitutional democracy in the world?

Some of this is, of course, the burden of being the biggest. But the United States has been the richest and most powerful nation in the world for almost a century, and for much of this period it was respected, admired and occasionally even loved.

The problem today is not that America is too strong but that it is seen as too arrogant, uncaring and insensitive. Countries around the world believe that the United States, obsessed with its own notions of terrorism, has stopped listening to the rest of the world.

The Four Freedoms

Lina Joy’s case got me thinking about the Four Freedoms, as enumerated by Franklin Roosevelt:

1. Freedom of speech

2. Freedom of worship

3. Freedom from want

4. Freedom from fear

It is sad how we often trade away our freedoms with such ease, only to replace them with silence, inaction, and indifference.

Malaysia’s Crisis of Faith

Lina Joy’s fight to finalize her conversion from Islam to Christianity has been rejected by Malaysia’s highest court. TIME Magazine reports:

The Joy verdict, which will likely become a precedent for several other pending conversion cases, is seen by many in Malaysia as evidence of how religious politics are cleaving the nation, with a creeping Islamization undermining the rights of both non-Muslims and more moderate adherents to Islam.

Last November, at a party conference for the Muslim-dominated United Malays National Organization ruling party, one delegate vowed he would be willing to “bathe in blood” to defend his ethnicity — and, by extension, his religion. In several Malaysian states, forsaking Islam is a crime punishable by prison time.

Earlier this week, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who in December acknowledged that race relations in his homeland were “fragile,” hosted the World Islamic Economic Forum in Kuala Lumpur.

In an era where Islam is so often partnered with extremism and autocratic governance, Malaysia was held up at the annual conference as a model of a moderate Muslim nation committed to safeguarding the rights of its diverse population.

But the Federal Court’s verdict on Joy’s case, which represented her last legal recourse, may undercut that reputation. After all, is it complete religious freedom if a 42-year-old woman isn’t allowed to follow the faith of her choosing?

The Economist is even more damning in its judgement:

“EVERY person has the right to profess and practise his religion.”

Article 11 of Malaysia’s constitution could hardly be more definitive.

Yet Lina Joy, who has fought for nine years for the right to convert from Islam to Christianity, was told by the country’s Supreme Court on May 30th that the guarantee is worthless to her.

The court rejected her demand to have “Islam” removed as the religion stated on her official identity card. It ruled she first needed permission to leave the faith from the country’s separate sharia courts, which interpret traditional Muslim law.

These treat apostates as sinners to be punished, not individuals with a right to their own beliefs.

And last, but not least, The Boston Globe reports that Lina Joy has had it with Malaysia:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia –A woman who lost a court battle to change her religion from Islam to Christianity suggested she might leave Malaysia rather than stay without the right to practice the religion of her choice, her lawyer said Thursday.

Truly disgusting.