THE debate about the novel Interlok by Malaysian national laureate Abdullah Hussein continues to rage, but among a select few. The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) wants the book to be withdrawn from the Form Five syllabus for Malay literature on the grounds that the novel contains “offensive” words and depictions of Indian Malaysians. The MIC [...]

DO you unnecessarily kill animals? Do you eat meat? We often consider these to be two different questions. I don’t believe they are. Many upstanding citizens who would not hurt a fly eat deli meats or Big Macs quite comfortably. They would never kill a living thing but have no trouble enjoying a chunk of [...]

IT so happened that this Ramadan I had to take an 18-hour flight to Vancouver to attend the wedding of a close friend’s only daughter. I wouldn’t normally choose to travel during Ramadan but it was a rare opportunity to see my friend’s happiness as she saw her daughter married off. I did tell a [...]

WALKING around Bangsar one balmy night six years ago, I bumped into filmmaker Amir Muhammad and film academic Khoo Gaik Cheng sitting with a rather foppish Mat Salleh man. It took less than an hour of my being introduced before all of us banded together to bully the hapless Australian Mat Salleh to prove that [...]