Admittedly, Malaysia has not had many great opportunities to rise to leadership in any sort of viable or high potential industries. This is compounded by the fact that Malaysia is neither the cheapest place to run a factory, nor well-equipped and well-run enough to be host to the regional HQs of the largest companies. Simply put, Malaysia today just does not have the comparative advantages available to countries like China, India or Singapore.

As such, every high potential opportunity available to our country must be pursued ardently, including the growing halal industry recently spotlighted at the inaugural World Halal Forum held at Kuala Lumpur a few weeks back. It is said to be already a US$500 billion-a-year industry, and with the ever-increasing Muslim population, the halal industry’s growth opportunities are almost infinite.

Malaysia’s key comparative advantage is clear. Malaysia is one of the very few moderate (i.e. scientifically and economically-inclined) Islamic countries in the world with the necessary infrastructure, well-diversified labour force and related resources to provide foreign multinational companies (MNCs) a stable, and relatively low-cost Islamic hub to produce, promote, export and manage their halal products. MNCs will not have to be worried about an overly aggresive religious environment, an unstable political and socio-economic climate, or a ridiculously tight regulatory framework.

In fact, Malaysia fulfills all the necessary qualities to serve as a successful platform not only for the traditional halal food market, but also for financial services and tour packages. Malaysia already has in place multiple Islamic banks with a well-documented Islamic regulatory framework, and a labour force well-suited for the Islamic tour industry given its multi-racial nature. Perhaps its simpler to say that Malaysia is well-suited to be a forerunner in the largely untapped global halal logistics industry.

So, what steps must Malaysia take? In the short to medium run, we should be looking at accelerated efforts to not only promote the strict halal certification process touted by the Government, but also attract foreign MNCs to Malaysia by offering the “standard” tax and infrastructure incentives, not unlike the Transport Ministry’s planned trade mission to Dubai. In the long run, developing a central hub for the halal industry, where supporting industries (e.g. transport and distribution) can take root, should be a key aim.

But of course, the real question still remains. Can the Goverment effectively develop the halal industry in Malaysia without creating the same problems we have seen in prior high potential industries?

Well, almost nobody in their right mind would dare say “horny” or “gatal” in public, but it seems certain ahmm… politicians are an exception. Mr. Abdul Fatah Harun, a MP from Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party - an opposition party by the way - recently said that single mothers were “gatal” when asking a question about aid for them.

As expected, this caused an uproar in Parliament, which was made worse by the fact that he initially refused to withdraw the word even after condemnation by the Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Sharizat Abdul Jalil. Let’s also not forget the fact that Mr. Harun hails from an Islamic-focused opposition party.

Truthfully, I’m not sure whether Mr. Harun meant to be funny or politically imbecilic. Women make up a large percentage of voters, no matter the constituency, so you do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that he has probably lost a significant number of voters - not that there were going to be many in the first place.

In any case, Mr. Harun did finally withdraw the world after continued protests, but the damage (potentially unrecoverable) has clearly been wrought.

Incest and rape come in many forms, some more extreme than others - though all absolutely heinous and unjustifiable. But few would have imagined the recent case of a father - having four wives - raping his 12 to 15-year old daughters.

But, we’ve heard such cases before. So, what makes this man particularly evil is that he used religion to convince his wives that he “owned” his children, thus giving him the right to have sex with them. At this point, I won’t blame his wives that were (for some reason or another) gullible enough to convince their children to have sex with him. According to The Star, the daughters were actually prepped by their mothers, with various reasons given to justify the act of incest.

In any case, I’m sure that those of us out here are relieved that the eldest daughter finally reported their father to the police, and can only hope that this man is given the harshest possible sentence in the book.

P.S.: I rarely throw around highly subjective words like “evil” in my articles or essays. Please tolerate just this instance.

Controversial or not, it seems more Malaysians are leaping at the opportunity to exercise their freedom (or rather, luxury) of choice in deciding their future child’s gender. And the nice thing about the whole process is that most methods seem remarkably safe and simple minimal surgery, minimal drugs, and most of all, minimal invasive biotechnological methods.

For the simpler (and less effective) approaches, all you need to do is to attend consultation with recognised fertility centres, and implement a few relatively simple instructions - from eating “…more alkaline-based food such as seafood…” to having “…intercourse during ovulation using a certain method.” But once we go to the extremely controversial (and expensive), yet effective (~99% accurate), pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) method or even the less controversial Micro-Sort and Intra-Uterus Insemination (IUI) techniques, then things start looking a bit cloudier as embryos and the like come into the picture.

In any case, certain religious groups are already complaining - Christians in particular. But I suppose this isn’t a surprise given that, on a worldwide scope, this “playing God” debate is nothing new. However, as long as the more controversial methods (e.g. PGD, IUI) do not become predominant in Malaysia, I doubt there’s really much to argue about.

We had a set of news bites earlier on 10th Feb., but the backlash from the publishing of the Prophet’s caricatures has yet to end - with global news pouring out almost every day. So, I thought it would be right to post an update on Malaysia’s side of the firestorm.

1. Malaysia’s Biggest Anti-Cartoon Protest - 3000 protestors marched towards the Denmark Embassy around a week back, shouting:
   

   “Long live Islam. Destroy Denmark. Destroy Israel. Destroy George Bush. Destroy America…”

   Well, I would have to say that even though it had this kind of not-so-nice slogans, it was still a non-violent protest, and therefore, there isn’t anything too serious about it. But I guess the one thing people would be looking at is the 100% increase in attendance compared to a similar protest the week before (which attracted only 300 people).

2. Denmark Asks Malaysia For Help - So, it seems Denmark fears future backlash and asks for Malaysia’s help to “…explain the situation and their respect for Islam…” as the current chair of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC).

If all goes well, these we’ll be the last negative news bites we’ll see about the cartoon firestorm, at least in Malaysia.

There’s just too much news coming out of this cartoon firestorm. While it was almost certain that a mere call-up wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for Sarawak Tribune, few would have expected the latest developments in Malaysia:

1. Sarawak Tribune Suspended - The Ministry of Internal Security has taken action, and it comes in the form of a suspension for the offending newspaper. As expected, a single resignation wasn’t enough, with the Deputy Information Minister stating that the suspension:
   

   …should serve as a warning to newspapers to be responsible in practising press freedom…

   More specifically, it seems that “…the Cabinet was concerned with a trend by certain media and political parties which sought popularity through sensitive issues.”

   But this suspension is probably a minor response if compared to the blanket ban:

2. Malaysia Slaps Blanket Ban on Prophet Caricatures - I don’t think you would want me to paraphrase the fact that it is now illegal to “…publish, import, produce, manufacture, circulate, distribute or possess caricatures that may “jeopardise public harmony and safety, which may cause chaos, or endanger public peace or national interest.” Well, I’m not sure what other caricatures can “jeopardise public harmony and safety”, but I have to agree that publishing these Prophet Mohammed caricatures was a foolish move - given the time (tension-filled world) and place (Muslim-majority country).

   And now, let us end with a possible explanation for the firestorm:

3. No Historical Precedent To Muslim Fury - There’s an interesting piece over at Malaysia Sun on how there is supposedly no historical precedent for the furore that has erupted due to Prophet Mohammed’s caricatures since “…depictions of Mohammed are in the collections of such institutions as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris and the Edinburgh University library.” But more interesting is the possible reason provided for the uproar: “…tensions that were already there between the Islamic world and the West.”

Yes, tip of the iceberg it was indeed. Our PM has indicated that action against the Sarawak Tribune is likely to be taken. In the process, he highlighted that “…press freedom is not without its limit. In Malaysia, our newspapers are free, but they also understand what it means.”

But even if action is taken, I believe that it is likely to be minimal - especially in light of the Sarawak Tribune’s front page apology to the Muslim community for the publication of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.

When I said earlier that it was only a matter of time before an editor of the Sarawak Tribune newspaper would have to resign, I probably didn’t realise that it was just the tip of the iceberg. Today, it has been reported that the Internal Security Ministry has summoned the senior managment of the Sarawak Tribune to explain the caricature reprinting incident.

And according to the news report, this isn’t Sarawak Tribune’s first time at pushing the limits either:

Noh revealed that the Sarawak Tribune had been issued three notices last year, advising it to be careful with the type of pictures it published.

“The paper has been cited over pictures of sexily-dressed women and horrific pictures of accidents which show a lot of blood and gore,” he explained.

Truthfully, I’m not terribly interested in seeing how this will progress since this is a pretty clear-cut case. But as a Malaysian, I sincerely hope that the situation in Malaysia does not degrade the same way it has in Afghanistan and Lebanon (I doubt it will anyway).

Given the recent condemnation of the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad by our Prime Minister, it was only a matter of time before an editor of Sarawak’s Sunday Tribune newspaper would have to resign. Why? Because he allegedly allowed the reprinting of the controversial caricatures “…all alone by himself without authority in compliance with the prescribed procedures as required for such news.”

But in my opinion, his greatest mistake was allowing this headline to pass inspection: “Cartoon not much impact here.” (Source: paper form of the New Straits Times) In a predominantly Muslim country, I believe it should be obvious that the caricatures would have significant impact. That is, if they were allowed the (un)necessary exposure. The caricatures have not had much impact solely because of the discretion of Malaysia’s largest newspapers and of course, our PM’s call for calmness.