What is it about the need to assert a sense of “religious attachment” nowadays? Mission schools in Singapore have been doing this for ages, though I don’t know how it’s practiced in Missions schools in Malaysia. There are prayers each morning and they provide various other religiously-motivated programs.

What sparked the above is the fact that now ‘tudungs’ will eventually become mandatory for students to wear in the International Islamic University (IIU). How to think about it objectively? I don’t know; the situation’s pretty charged in ‘multi-religious’ Malaysia, I suppose, and any view could always be seen as partisan.


Well first, we have for a fact that IIU purports to be an Islamic university. Dr. Ongkili insists that the tudung as part of a female student’s attire during convocations is a matter of ’school uniform’ rather than having any religious implications. That’s disingenuous on several fronts, actually.

The tudung may have developed from a very Malaysian practice of women wearing shawls, but has now taken on religious overtones as a matter of ‘menutup aurat’. Less restrictive than the full dress worn by women under the Taliban, I’m sure, but I’m led to believe it’s just as effective.

If that is so, then I don’t see how the wearing of the tudung is merely a matter of ‘uniform’. Dr. Ongkili should have been more honest and just come right out and affirm LKS’s complaint (read in parliament, I gather).

Should it be enforceable? The way I see it, wearing the tudung is just like having morning prayers. If the IIU is overtly Islamic in character and purpose, then I’m sure it has the right to impose such modes of dress. To complain, then, that this is contrary to a multi-racial/religious society is wrong-headed; we should expect students to know full well what they’re getting into by reading subjects at the IIU.

On a more general and slightly tangential point, should institutions of education allow overt religious overtones? I think not, and that includes Mission schools that provide an anglicized atmosphere; there should be an overt separation between education and religion. This is not an anti-religious sentiment viz. public education, nor is it a view I have because I have appear to have sympathies with atheism. It’s neither because I believe institutions of public education have a duty to educate, not proselytize, and because I believe reason (the basis of what we learn in school) must have a separate existence from religion, in the process of educating a child.

On an even more general point, I’m starting to get sick of countries, this one included, wishing to appear more “Islamic” than the next guy by promoting public institutions with overt references to one particular religion. It’s ridiculous how secular governments run by leaders inspired by their own religions start enforcing completely non-secular views on citizens.

All this “islamization” is bemusing because it speaks less of “religious devotion” and more of “enforced conformity” with a system of belief not shared by everyone. Worse, it bespeaks of an inherent retreat behind the wall of certainty provided by religion in the face of changes leaders are only now begining to admit.

University systems the world over too Western? Fine, start up Islamic universities. Worse, I blogged about what a colleague once told me about students in UM while he was there; a large, large majority of Malays tend to take Islamic studies. Why? What for? If what he said was true, is this another retreat? Just what the hell is happening? And if what he told me was true, why the hell are a large number of Malays in UM retreating behind Islamic studies? Can anyone confirm this?

It’s just such a worrying trend. If there are statistics showing the types of graduates who currently form the huge crop of unemployed fresh faces, I’d be interested to see it.

What the hell is happening?