Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope

I was quite pleased to hear that Barack Obama had formally declared his intentions to wade into the 2008 Presidential race. These are early days yet, and of course the race is still wide open, but I've been an admirer of Mr Obama since his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (transcript), in which he rousingly proclaimed "Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead."

It would be great if he eventually did win the presidency, but more importantly, regardless of outcome, I do hope that he conducts himself with humility and grace, especially given his open profession of his faith. In a wonderful speech about the role of religion and politics in society, he speaks of how he came to this faith. (Slate magazine notes that Obama "doesn't recount the story of his conversion in order to establish his religious bona fides; he does it in the service of a broader argument ... for a 'deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country'".)

I was not raised in a particularly religious household, as undoubtedly many in the audience were. My father, who returned to Kenya when I was just two, was born Muslim but as an adult became an atheist. My mother, whose parents were non-practicing Baptists and Methodists, was probably one of the most spiritual and kindest people I've ever known, but grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion herself. As a consequence, so did I.

It wasn't until after college, when I went to Chicago to work as a community organizer for a group of Christian churches, that I confronted my own spiritual dilemma.

I was working with churches, and the Christians who I worked with recognized themselves in me. They saw that I knew their Book and that I shared their values and sang their songs. But they sensed that a part of me that remained removed, detached, that I was an observer in their midst.

And in time, I came to realize that something was missing as well -- that without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone.

And if it weren't for the particular attributes of the historically black church, I may have accepted this fate. But as the months passed in Chicago, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church.

For one thing, I believed and still believe in the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change, a power made real by some of the leaders here today. Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities. And in its historical struggles for freedom and the rights of man, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world. As a source of hope.

And perhaps it was out of this intimate knowledge of hardship -- the grounding of faith in struggle -- that the church offered me a second insight, one that I think is important to emphasize today.

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts.

You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away - because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street in the Southside of Chicago one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

Christmas Greetings: East Timor PM to Osama

East Timor's Prime Minister, Jose Ramos-Horta, sent a message of peace and goodwill via the BBC to Osama bin Laden. Ramos-Horta won a Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to the Indonesian occupation of his tiny homeland, which won its independence in 1999 in a U.N.-sponsored ballot. Listen to his message here.

ON this occasion when we are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, my words, words of peace, are sent to my brother somewhere in the mountains, in the caves, of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Osama bin Laden. Yes, I consider you to be a brother.

We share some common beliefs, beliefs that come from God the Almighty, that teach us about love and compassion. Yes, there are some differences between yourself, my brother Osama bin Laden, and myself. The differences are that while you seem to have a profound resentment towards those who have done centuries of harm to Muslims, and today to Palestinians - I do understand those grievances - and yet I fail to understand why you carry this resentment, this anger, on to attacking innocent civilians, and that includes also Arabs and Muslims who do not share your vision of Islam.

I come from a small country, East Timor, that was invaded by the largest Muslim country in the world. I lost brothers and sisters, yet I do not hate one single Muslim, I do not hate one single Indonesian. That's the only difference between you and me, my brother Osama bin Laden. I beg you to rethink and extend your love, your solidarity, your friendship, the same ones you feel about Palestinians, extend to the rest of the world, extend to Europeans, to Christians. You will then win them over that way, more than through hatred and violence. I thank you, may God Almighty and Merciful, bless us all.


If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Hermann Hesse

C. S. Lewis writing just after the second world war.

EVERYONE says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. "That sort of talk makes them sick," they say. And half of you already want to ask me, "I wonder how'd you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?"

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you ... what I could do--I can do precious little--I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us." There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?

It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier. When you start mathematics you do not begin with calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children, or the nearest N.C.O., for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment. And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself!

Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently "Love your neighbor" does not mean "feel fond of him" or "find him attractive." I ought to have seen that before, because of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can at look some of the things I have done with loathing and horror. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.

For a long time I used to think this is a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact, the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.

Consequently Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.

From The Joyful Christian

Ravi Zacharias on the Uniqueness of Jesus Christ

On the second night Dr Zacharias spoke about Jesus' claims as the only way to God in a pluralistic world. He is, of course, very well-equipped to discuss this subject. Having been born into the Brahman caste in Delhi, the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood, he grew up surrounded by Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists. It was at the age of 17, on the bed of suicide, searching for meaning, searching for the answers to life's basic questions, that he came to Christ.

He talked about how there were four fundamental questions in life: origin, meaning, morality and destiny. How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die? We have all asked ourselves these questions, he said, but only Jesus Christ gives us all the answers. He gave us several reasons why.

Firstly, Jesus gave a very accurate description of our malady. He told us that none of us escape this condition, and that we will end up tumbling down the slippery slope if we continue to deny it. We all fall short of God's standards, not primarily in our actions, but in our very intents and motives. The heart is desperately wicked.

He told us a very funny story about two brothers.

Two brothers were notoriously immoral. They were synonymous with the vice that had overtaken their city. When one of them suddenly died, the surviving brother asked the local pastor to perform the funeral service. He offered him an enormous sum of money if, in his eulogy, he would refer to his deceased brother as a saint. After much pondering, the pastor agreed. As the service came to an end, the pastor (in the thick of his description of the departed individual) said, “The man we have come to bury was a thief. In fact, he deserves every vile description the mind can muster. He was depraved, immoral, lewd, hateful, and the scum of the earth. But compared to his brother, he was a saint!”

The pastor may not have received the promised gift, but he certainly got across a vital point! We set up an arbitrary hierarchy of vices, and then exonerate ourselves by how far we are from the bottom.

From A Slice of Infinity: The Sin Standard

The trouble is, we are all saints compared to somebody else. But the truth is we are all as equally wretched in our hearts. And if we do not understand this, there is no way to stop the human heart. He spoke of an encounter with an aid worker from on an airplane. She told him chillingly that she had just rescued an 18 month old baby girl from the hands of a man fuelled by snake blood and hard liquor, intent on sexually abusing her. Never in her life had she seen such a thing. Can anyone say that that is not evil? Not just the actions of that man, but also the people that offered her to him. In the history of humanity, there are some things that have transpired, things that we have done to each other, that are just pure evil. There are really no other words to describe it. The unchecked human heart can justify anything. It was G. K. Chesterton who said that, When a Man stops believing in God he doesn't then believe in nothing, he believes anything.


Secondly, Jesus provides uniquely for our malady. Dr Zacharias said that Christianity is not an ethical system calling us to a more moral life. Christianity is about becoming a self that the self itself, could not produce. The depravity of man is the condition of his heart - the moral life cannot fix this. He talked about how he was asked to speak at the United Nations Annual Prayer breakfast about absolutes in a relativistic world. He was asked not to specifically mention religion - he reached a compromise with the organisers that would allow him to speak about his personal beliefs in the last five minutes of the speech. He spoke about the absolutes of evil, how it exists, justice, how we all seek it, love, how relationships of love are of fundamental importance to us and forgiveness, how we all need it sometimes. Twenty minutes had passed and the audience was in full agreement with him. In the last five minutes he shared with them how he believed that it is only on the cross of Christ that all these absolutes converge. We see the harsh reality of sin, borne entirely by Jesus on the cross. On the cross, Jesus did not just suffer physical torment - he suffered infinite separation and alienation from the Father whom he had known and loved for all eternity. Death. God the Son went through hell on our behalves, that we may never have to bear it, if we repent and acknowledge him as the Lord of our lives. This speaks of God's justice, in that sin is punished, but it speaks also powerfully of his love, in that he bore it in himself. And in all this, we have every hope of forgiveness.

He told a very moving story about his encounter with Sheikh Talal Sider in Palestine, a Hamas sheikh. He spoke about how killing innocents is wrong, but now suicide bombing had become the only way that they could fight. He had lost several of his children to the conflict.

Dr Zacharias asked him if he remembered the story of Abraham or Ibrahim, who walked up a mountain, not too far from where they sitting, 5000 years ago. He was following God's orders, to sacrifice his son. As the axe is about to fall on the child, what does the Lord say?

"Stop, I will provide," replied the Sheikh.

Dr Zacharias told him, that on another hill, also not too far from here, God did not stop the axe from falling on his own Son. Until we receive the Son that God has paid with, he told the Sheikh, we will be paying with our sons and daughters in battlefields all over the world. When they wrong you, you want to wrong them. It goes on and on. But when insult and violence was hurled upon Christ, sin didn’t bounce back. Sin stopped.

The Sheikh was silent.

As Dr Zacharias stood to leave, the Sheikh reached out and embraced him tightly. "I hope I see you again," he said.


Thirdly, all philosophy has been about the search for unity in diversity.

In 585 B.C., a man named Thales correctly predicted a solar eclipse. It was Thales' love for ordered knowledge that gave birth to philosophy, but Thales fervently sought the answer to another question. He knew the world was made of an infinite variety of things — plants, animals, clouds. What, he wondered, was the one basic element that pulled it all together? Thales thought that element must be water, but his students went on to expand the underlying reality to four elements—earth, air, water, and fire. Since then the quest for the philosopher has been to find unity in diversity.

This very search has made inroads into our cultures. For example, the word quintessence literally means "the fifth essence." Every American coin reads E Pluribus Unum—out of the many, one. Out of our diversity, unity. And the very word university means to find unity in diversity.

How did diversity come about, and how do we locate or identify the unity?

When you think about it, diversity is on every side. We speak to others. We love others. There is an I-You relationship with which we live. May I suggest that only in the Christian faith can these diversities be explained. There is unity and diversity in life because there is unity and diversity in the first cause of our being — the Triune God. Before the creation of man, personhood, love, and communication existed in the one Triune God — what we call the Holy Trinity.

The Trinity gives us a key to understanding unity in diversity, for there is an implicit difference in the persons within the Godhead that does not negate equality of essence. We too have a unity of essential humanity, originally made in the image of the Triune God. Jesus spoke of how we recover that which was lost.

From A Slice of Infinity: Thales, Unity, and Diversity

We long for this unity in diversity within, between passion and reason, rationality and desire, between body, mind and soul. There is no other concept in the world as diverse and unified as the Trinity. God from the beginning is a being in relationship. Made in His image, our hearts hunger for relationship, and all other relationships are secondary until we find relationship with Christ himself.

William Temple, the renowned archbishop of Canterbury, defined worship as quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God.

We were made to live lives of worship, for all things come together in Christ.

The Veritas Forum at Columbia

What is a Veritas Forum?

Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life.

We invite people with differing worldviews, religions, and ideas to participate, ask questions, and join discussions in order to explore true life together, and we encourage participants to bring friends who are engaged in the exploration of life’s hardest questions.

From: www.veritas.org

“What is the biggest problem among today’s students?” Billy Graham recalled asking former Harvard president Derek Bok. The president answered, “Emptiness.” Started up by a group of Harvard students (hence Veritas, which is their school motto) in 1992, in response to the culture of fragmented scholars experiencing this “emptiness” within their own community, Veritas has taken root in more than over 50 campuses across America.

Exactly a week ago at Columbia, we had our annual Veritas forum –
“Exploring True Life. Responding to Suffering.”
This was my first Veritas Forum, ever, and I have just been so blessed by it. It was truly a privilege to grapple with some of life’s toughest questions in the company of very many distinguished speakers, alongside people of differing worldviews. I think that it is in engaging each other in respectful, meaningful conversation, that we all come to understand more of what is indeed, true life.


People Suffer – Who Cares?
A Secular Humanist and Christian Dialogue

The first session on Monday saw Professor Philip Kitcher, the Columbia University John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, in conversation with Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra, a theologian from Sri Lanka who has worked for decades among the destitute of his war-torn island.

Dr. Ramachandra started out by sharing some of his experiences with suffering – experiences that most of us are fortunate enough not to encounter daily, if at all. He spoke of comforting a friend who had lost her whole family to the tsunami, sitting by a four-year old child and watching him die of a disease that doesn’t exist in the West anymore, dealing with violence and tragedy on a daily basis, and watching his aged father slide further and further into dementia. I could feel my heart sink further with every illustration of the suffering that he has encountered. There is so much pain in this world, and yet for the most part, we are blissfully blind to it all.

Dr. Ramachandra was trained as a nuclear engineer in London, but he gave up a comfortable academic career to return to Sri Lanka. He spoke about how he has been passionate about the physical sciences ever since he was a boy. But, if science is the total truth, and all existence is a bizarre accident with no meaning, striving for justice is meaningless, because all people, good and evil, will suffer the same fate in the burning up of the sun, and in the end no one will be around to remember anything.

Nietzsche saw that all talk of human dignity and equality, upon which notions of justice are based, was a legacy of Judeo-Christian thought. We care, because God cares. Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross to cover our sins, tells us that God’s power is found in the mess that we’ve made of the world. God is a God who is not immune to suffering – God himself is to be numbered among the victims and not the oppressors. Human sin – the senseless attempt to live as if we were God and rejecting His rightful rule over our lives – is the prime evil. Dr. Ramachandra argued that the Bible does not even attempt to explain the origin of evil, for you can only explain the reasonable. Our turning against God, who loved us into existence and sustains us moment to moment, is absolutely irrational and absurd. It is because of our alienation from God that evil exists. Evil is irrational and unjustified. It is not be understood, but fought.

We live in the tension between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Jesus’ rising from the dead is the vindication and renewal of the created order, the redemption of all history, and God’s concrete promise that he will make all things new. We now live between the time where God suffered for us on earth and the eventual dawning of a new day. Remembering what God has done for us, and holding fast to His promises, we share in His indignation against injustice, and we turn from self-pity and apathy to action.


The problem of evil

Philip Kitcher responded by raising the age-old “problem of evil”. If God is good, why does He allow evil? Is it because He cannot prevent it? Then He is not all-powerful. Is it because He does not want to prevent it? Then He is not all good. This problem of theodicy has been discussed by countless philosophers far more distinguished than I throughout the centuries – there is not enough space (on this page and in my mind) to survey all that thought now, and I certainly do not profess to have the definitive answer.

However, I attended a debate at the Oxford Union sometime last year, between William Lane Craig and A. C. Grayling, about this very same topic. See Knowing Enough and The greatest thing you'll ever learn...

The gist of the response was that we are made in the image of God, so we have been given free will. The essence of sin is that we choose to reject God. We also considered the limits of human knowledge, especially with respect to finite minds trying to fathom the infinite.

I know that we do not know everything, but I think that we know enough. Now, I also think that if we could fathom God completely, he would surely cease to be God and become more a product of our imagination.

Prof. Kitcher then posed the question – if God is omnipotent, why did could he not create free-willed beings who always chose correctly? But of course, omnipotence does not mean enabling logical contradictions, and choice is not choice if you only ever choose the same thing. Also, I’ve read more recently, and very intriguingly, that free choice is absolutely necessary for true, genuine love. God made us such that we can experience the deepest joy, which is to have a relationship with him – to love him and to be loved by him. If we had no real choice, then there would be no genuine relationship of love. God gave us the ability to choose to truly love him, in the very same way that he chose, at infinite cost to himself, to love us.

Prof. Kitcher described morality as a great, ongoing, work-in-progress of which religion is only a part – none of the thinkers have told us the final story yet. Morality comes from the deep altruism within us, and we can also find primitive similar impulses in animals. We should combine all the best of human thought so that we can refine all the altruistic impulses within us.

One of the participants raised a very interesting question in response to this claim during the Q & A section. He pointed out that if we see morality as an ongoing project, of which we are the ultimate creators and ultimate judges, how will we know if we have improved from where we were before? It seems to me that we do in fact need absolute standards in order to judge “progress”.


The problem of the intrinsic lovability

Prof. Kitcher also argued that we should love people because they are intrinsically lovable and worthy – it is appalling to think that you can only love someone because they bear the image of God. We should do the best we can without any myths and stories and intractable logical problems about a good God who allows evil.

The moderator pointed out that Christians didn't see a distinction between loving people for who they are and loving them because they are made in the image of God. A large part of who they are is that they are made in the image of God. Dr. Ramachandra asked Prof. Kitcher what were his grounds for claiming that people were intrinsically lovable. He pointed out that in the history of Western thought, concepts of intrinsic dignity and inherent worth were only introduced with the arrival of Christianity. Until early Christianity took hold in the Greco-Roman world, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle advocated hierarchical societies made up of individuals of different intrinsic worth (some people were born to be slaves, while others were born to rule). The equality and dignity of all is not a natural assumption everywhere – India still has remnants of the caste system which relegates a certain class of people as a “sub-species”.

Prof. Kitcher insisted on the notion of intrinsic lovability as a free-standing claim with no need for cumbersome metaphysics, but Dr. Ramachandra pointed out that you would still, in the end, have to go back to the “metaphysics” and the foundational claims because how else would you convince people with a totally different worldview to contribute scarce resources to “intrinsically unequal” beings? Prof. Kitcher said that we could convince them by showing them the potential these people have to contribute towards society if they were just given the chance. Dr. Ramachandra said that he now seemed to be valuing people instrumentally, based on what they can give to society. But what about the elderly or the disabled?

Prof. Kitcher insisted on things being intrinsically valuable even though they were transient – it’s not only some kind of transcendental source that can give value. He didn’t really elaborate this particular claim, and I personally think that it is quite problematic. Without an external, objective, transcendental source that confers value, we humans would be the ultimate judges of value, and that would simply allow for far too much cultural and moral relativity – you still would not be able to convince, for example, certain high-caste members in India that the untouchables are equally worthy of love and respect as they are. Everyone would simply appeal to their own judgment and culture and tradition, and who is to say that I am more “right” than you are?


Secular Liberalism as a Christian heresy

Dr. Ramachandra pointed out that it is easy for Prof. Kitcher to assume the universal acceptability of the notion of the intrinsic worth of every human being, because he is very much shaped by Western liberal thought, which, in and of itself, owes a lot of its beginnings to the teachings of Christianity. Dr. Ramachandra said that John Gray (Professor of European Thought at the LSE), who is no Christian, pointed out that secular humanism was nothing more than a Christian heresy. The Guardian reviewer of John Gray’s book, Heresies, writes: Gray evinces a Swiftian contempt for our latter-day lay priestlings, direct heirs of the 18th-century philosophes who proclaimed a new paganism but were in fact neo-Christians, "missionaries of a new gospel more fantastical than anything in the creed they imagined they had abandoned". All the Enlightenment did was to promote religion by other means, and its belief in progress was only the Christian message "emptied of transcendence and mystery". One of the heresies promulgated by Gray is that many of those who today continue to hold to religious faith are far more profound in their thinking, and certainly better educated, than most of their liberal-humanist opponents.

books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1295980,00.html

In my reading, I’ve also come across a fantastic quote by Clifford Orwin, discussing the thought of one of the leading secular liberals of our time: “Richard Rorty, the leading postmodern liberal theorist, …concedes that liberalism, once so jealous of its autonomy from Biblical faith, is in fact parasitic upon it. In his essay “Postmodern Bourgeois Liberalism,” he describes secular liberals like himself as “freeloading atheists.” They continue to rely on the Judeo-Christian legacy of concern with human dignity despite their rejection of the revealed truth that alone could support this concern… For Rorty, God is dead but secularized Christian morality continues.”


A slight diversion: A discussion of John Rawls and limits of Liberalism

The widely acclaimed John Rawls, who with the publication of his book A Theory of Justice was proclaimed the modern saviour of liberalism, seemed to have been sensitive to this problem of fundamental justification. In his book on human rights, The Law of Peoples, published almost 30 years after he wrote A Theory of Justice, Rawls envisions a global world order in which he interestingly does not advocate any sort of “global liberalism”. He makes allowances to tolerate what he calls “decent hierarchical societies” based on a shorter, more basic list of human rights (as opposed to the more comprehensive doctrine of liberal constitutional democracy that he proposes in A Theory of Justice). I think that it is extremely telling that Rawls saw the difficulty of promoting worldwide liberalism in the face of very divergent fundamental worldviews. (How would one convince any of the Islamic states of the superiority of the Western liberal model?) There were many who thought that towards the end of his life Rawls must have lost it – they saw The Law of Peoples as a cop-out – but I think that he was being very prescient and very realistic about the limitations of his theory.

Rawls’ theory of justice has been described as a reworking of Kant without the metaphysics. He wants to build a theory based on an overlapping consensus about the good, without having to delve too far into cumbersome metaphysics or anything of the sort. But of course built into the very foundations of his theory are countless liberal assumptions. His hypothetical mechanism of the ‘original position’, which is used to generate the basic principles of justice, is sometimes thought of as a “neutral” mechanism.

The rational calculators in the original position are behind a “veil of ignorance” – they do not know their gender, intelligence, position in society, religion etc, and they are asked to choose basic principles upon which society will operate. In deriving his basic principles of equal respect and of fair equality of opportunity from this hypothetical construct, Rawls seems to want to procede from socio-economic facts about the human condition to principles of justice. G. A. Cohen (Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, Oxford University), argues in a forthcoming book, that Rawls here confuses the principles of justice with optimal rules of social regulation. The fact that people are different in their abilities and beliefs and desires, makes it socially optimal that we construct a society that allows for different kinds of flourishing, but he argues that the fact of diversity in and of itself does not justify the principle of equality. After all, there have been many regimes and ideologies that recognised the fact of diversity but chose instead to brutally suppress it. The reason why any fact supports any principle is explained by a further, ultimate, fact-insensitive principle. (G. A. Cohen argues for this in his article, Facts and Principles). So the reason why the fact of diversity would lead us to support the principle of equality must be grounded upon a more ultimate principle like the value of human dignity and autonomy – two very “liberal” and very loaded claims.

I think Rawls realised that ultimate principles about the value of human autonomy were not accepted by all peoples – certain societies have a more “associationist” account of flourishing which sees people assigned specific roles in society (based on gender, class etc). The different, ultimate claims about the kind of value that human life has cannot be adjudicated by recourse to fact, and are extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to reconcile. I am inclined to think that it is with these considerations in mind that Rawls wrote The Law of Peoples, in which he advocated tolerance of decent, though illiberal, societies.


Conclusion

I think that Prof. Kitcher speaks hastily when he denies the great influence that Christianity has had on the development of secular humanism, and when he argues that claims about the intrinsic lovability and worth of all human beings are “free-standing”, and in no need of further justification. It is perhaps the privilege of we who have grown up in liberal Western societies (I use this term somewhat loosely…) to simply accept the equal dignity of all as brute fact, but we must never deceive ourselves into thinking that the rest of the world naturally sees things the way that we do, or that they can be easily convinced of our views without any discussion of more fundamental claims about “cumbersome metaphysics”, or perhaps even, a discussion about God.


Publishing the Cries of the Oppressed
On the Front Lines of Human Rights Journalism

Nicholas Kristof on Darfur

Almost as if to prove Dr. Ramachandra right, the next night we had two very distinguished human rights journalists speak to us about the horrors of genocide. Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement, spoke about the absolutely horrific genocide in Darfur, in western Sudan. Mr. Kristof was one of the first journalists to raise the alarm bell about the genocide in Darfur, and he is currently collecting pledges to send Bill O’Reilly, a major news network anchor, to Darfur. It’s partly a joke, but it’s also about naming and shaming the major broadcasters in an effort to get them to take their cameras and news crews into places like Darfur.

Mr. Kristof spoke of his own visits to the country, speaking to the displaced peoples and hearing countless stories of violent brutality and unspeakable horror. The government, in cahoots with the militia, are systematically wiping out the non-Arab African tribes. Rough estimates tell of 300,000 people having been systematically killed off, and 2 to 3 million people being displaced. Those who are alive all tell similar harrowing tales of assault, rape and slaughter. Mr. Kristof said that it was clear that the Sudanese government made the calculation that the death of a few hundred thousand in rural Sudan would not warrant the “trouble” of international intervention – so far they have been proved chillingly correct.

Check out: www.savedarfur.com

Mr. Kristof’s description of the situation in Sudan proves how heartbreakingly true it is, as Dr. Ramachandra argued, that beliefs about the intrinsic human worth and inviolability are not “natural” to all people.


Benedict Rogers on Burma and East Timor

Christian Solidarity Worldwide: www.csw.org.uk

Benedict Rogers, a freelance journalist and human rights activist spoke of the persecution of Burma’s ethnic minorities, which he says is basically genocide. He spoke of Burma as one of the most under-reported countries in the world, even though it is known to be one of the worst violaters of human rights. He said that all the people he spoke to there all say the same thing – ‘Thank God you’re here! We thought we had been forgotten’, and, ‘Please tell the world about us, please do not forget us.’

Mr. Rogers professed that he had become quite the Bob Dylan fan, citing his lyrics from Blowin' in the Wind:

How many ears must one man have
before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows
that too many people have died?
How many years can some people exist
before they’re allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head,
pretending he just doesn’t see?

He showed us photographs of people that had been used as human minesweepers, children who’d been kidnapped and forced to be child soldiers, villages burned to the ground, a child’s drawing of what he had seen – men being shot, women being raped, babies being crushed to death in rice pounders.

During a public speech a few years ago, a senior Burmese general spoke of the regime's desire to eliminate all opposition. "In 10 years, all Karen will be dead," he threatened. "If you want to see a Karen, you will have to go to a museum in Rangoon."

Another Burma Army commander, speaking after he had led an attack on a village—slaughtering people and urinating on the head of a villager—summed up the spirit of the SPDC: "I do not respect any religion. My religion is the trigger of my gun."

From Burma’s Almost Forgotten by Benedict Rogers
www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/003/7.52.html

That the West has come to embrace a system of belief that upholds the equality and dignity of all, without a necessary belief in God, seems to me to be a fortuitous culmination of historical forces, of which Christianity is a very important one (perhaps even the most important). Other cultures that have taken a different historical trajectory have not necessarily come to the same conclusions about human dignity and worth. It was Nietzsche who saw that the only logical consequence of the “death of God” and of the subsequent death of the morality that is rooted in the transcendental objectivity of God is that “This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!”

And this power can be used towards unspeakable ends.

Benedict Rogers also spoke movingly of the faith of those whom he had encountered – an unwavering faith that God is still with them, an unwavering faith that God will deliver them. Ending on a more positive note, Mr. Rogers spoke of East Timor. He was there the night the nation was formed. The account that he shared is very similar to what he writes here: It was midnight on May 20, 2002. The flag had just been raised, the national anthem sung, and the world’s newest nation was born. I turned to the man next to me, a priest who was the first from his country to be exiled. His name was Rev. Francisco Maria Fernandes, and he’d lived in exile for a quarter of a century. Had he ever believed he’d live to see the day when his country would be free? “Yes, I did,” he smiled. “All around the world, during our struggle, people asked me: ‘Why do you carry on? You are fighting a losing battle. The world will never help you; the oppressors will never let you go. Why don’t you just give up?’ But we had one thing those people did not know about. We trusted God. This was a victory of faith.”
www.crisismagazine.com/september2004/rogers.htm


Who Will Solve the Problem of Poverty? Bono, Bill Gates, You?
A Conversation with Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Reed and Vinoth Ramachandra

On the last night of the forum, we moved from theological and philosophical ideas, and issues about reporting atrocities and making them known, to discussing the widespread suffering caused by extreme poverty, and what we can do about it.


Larry Reed

www.opportunity.org

Larry Reed of Opportunity International Network, a global microfinancing coalition that provides affordable loans to the poor, spoke about how his faith had moved him to make a career out of poverty relief. He spoke about how we need to see the poor as part of the solution – not simply as the problem. He spoke touchingly about the people that Opportunity International worked with in the Third World, how all they needed was a little bit of help to get going. He also spoke about how Jesus has a radical concern for the poor, and how that when we serve others, especially the poor, we fulfill our purpose and we touch the very heart of God.


Jeffrey Sachs
www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu

Next up was the “star” of the evening – Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute, Director of the UN Millenium Project, Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, and good friend of Bono and the Make Poverty History celebrity crew. He talked about extreme poverty in Africa. He said that Africa needs, firstly, better agricultural technology, which does not involve advanced machinery, but simply high yield seed varieties, fertilizers and better water management. Secondly, better disease control – 2 to 3 million a year die of malaria and other diseases that have virtually been eliminated in the West. Thirdly, increased connectivity in terms of everything from roads to internet access is also vital to economic progress.

He spoke forcefully about how we do in fact have the resources and the ability to fight poverty effectively, if only we can get our act together and do something about it. He showed us pictures from his numerous trips to Africa. And the one that will haunt me for a long time to come was a picture of toddlers lying in rows on colourful blankets in a spartan room. In close-up pictures of individual toddlers, you could see their eyes half-open and rolled back in a feverish stupor – these rows of children were all in malarial comatose. They were waiting to die.


A slight diversion: Reflections on the absurdity of sin

Professor Sachs looked like a man who was heavily burdened with all the cares of the world. There was a distinct tone of incredulity, of disbelief, in his voice when he spoke about how achievable and how affordable poverty relief is, and yet, time and time again, the rich just turn their backs on the poor. We turn our backs on each other. Children die of malaria, day after day after day, he said, and it just goes on and on and on. Henry Shue, when arguing for subsistence rights in his book Basic Rights, cites Coleridge saying that the poor will merely "die so slowly that none call it murder."

We can do something about it, but we don’t. These are our fellow human beings, but we just don’t care enough. What is wrong with us? It was at this point that I began to understand a little bit more of what Dr. Ramachandra meant by the absurdity of sin. In our self-absorption, in seeking to rule our own lives, our way, we turn away from God, and we turn our backs on each other. If we take selfishness as a brute fact of the human condition, then we are certainly not “irrational” in the means that we employ to achieve our selfish ends – no, we are perfectly rational in that. But what I think Dr. Ramachandra means here, is that if there is a God who created us and who loves us with an everlasting love, and if he created us all as his children through the redemptive work of Christ, then certainly, there is something intrinsically absurd about our sinful selfishness. It is utterly absurd for us to reject his love and to neglect, even actively harm, each other.


Vinoth Ramachandra

Dr. Ramachandra spoke last. He said he fully endorsed what Prof. Sachs had said. He started by talking about how we could understand the rights of the poor. In the 13th century, before any global human rights movement, Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that in cases of need, all things are common property – need alone constitutes the poor man’s right. When the poor steal from the rich it is not theft, for God gave the world to us all. In fact, I am committing theft so long as I refuse to share with my needy neighbour, for the right to life trumps the right to personal property. The poor claiming their rightful entitlement is not simply benevolent generosity or enlightened self-interest on our parts, it is a matter of justice.

He talked about how most of the economic flows in the world are from poor to rich – debt repayment, agricultural tariffs, MNC profits, corrupt politicians squirreling money away to first world tax havens, the brain drain of educated professionals etc. He argued that justice for the poor must be seen in the wider context of shalom, the concept of full human flourishing described in the Bible. Shalom characterises a right relationship with God, with all of creation, with others and with ourselves. Poverty must be understood as a lack of resources overall, for grave economic inequality undermines social solidarity. We cannot separate discussions of poverty from social inequality and domination. A relational approach to poverty would focus, not just on the ends, but also on the means of economic improvement – there is a need to dismantle the relations of domination and exploitation that currently exist in the global economic system.

Perhaps, just perhaps, said Dr. Ramachandra, we need the poor far more than they need us.

We need them to show us our irrationality, our wastefulness, our emptiness, our greed, and our idolatry.

Maybe, just maybe, we are the ones that are in need of human development.

The Oxford Singapore Forum

Just got back from church camp today. Having not read the news for a few days, I logged on to the Straits Times to find that I was almost famous. Well, almost. The inaugural Oxford Singapore Forum was held on Monday - Vivian Balakrishnan, Warren Fernandez, Irene Ng, Tim Huxley and Colin Goh spoke and took questions. I asked the one question that was referred to in the Straits Times "Why no referendum on casino in Singapore" except that they did not put my name down, which, as far as I'm concerned is a good thing, because the question was taken slightly out of context.

The discussion was about the Singaporean Identity - what is it? Does it exist? Dr Balakrishnan spoke of Singapore as a very young country whose sense of nationhood was (somewhat artificially) formed by the state, as opposed to having evolved historically out of a shared ethnic identity (think England); this is not made any easier by the racial diversity of the populace. It's easy to see why the Singaporean identity is an elusive thing to grasp. He spoke of Singapore as an unfolding historical oddity; the need for intrusive government given the youth of the nation and the threat of instability. Singapore is a very small place, and the politics that is practised is the politics of a small place. This was said in response to questions about the lack of democracy in Singapore - we are too small to have a functioning two-party democracy.

This then made me think about what democracy is, and what it is to have democracy in a small state. Immediately I thought of Plato and Rousseau, and the republican philosophical tradition that held that it was precisely in small states that democracy is best established. Plato spoke adoringly of the Greek polis, and Rousseau drafted a constitution for Corsica (a suitably small place). It is in small countries that you have ease of access to information and transportation - it is easier for people to meet up to discuss ideas and to decide things democratically. Here a distinction must be drawn between democracy as manifested in a functioning party system, and democracy in the decision-making process. Even if Singapore did not have a functioning party system, surely decisions could be made in a more democratic manner - a referendum would be a good example. If a referendum was not possible (or deemed undesirable by the government) then surely administering and publishing more opinion polls could do no harm. In fact, they would even add to the legitimacy of the decision.

And so my question was this - You say that Singapore is a small place with an intrusive government which was the result of the historical context in which the state was founded. But if we look at the writings of some of the great philosophers, it seems that it is precisely in small places that democracy would flourish (and then I briefly stated the reasons I gave above). I managed to speak briefly with Professor Joseph Nye when he was lecturing in Oxford, and he mentioned that Singapore was the closest thing on earth to Plato's Republic - a sentiment that I had heard expressed before and one that I agreed with. With respect to the casino issue, my understanding of it is that the government did make an effort to ascertain the views of the people. But having done so, they then withdrew to decide. The proposal for the holding of a referendum was quickly shot down, and by most accounts, there wasn't that much citizen participation in the act of decision.

Now the perception will clearly be that what we think does not matter - that no matter what we say, the government will ultimately decide according to its own agenda. Does this not pose a problem? To feel like you have a stake in something, you need to feel that what you say or do makes a difference - how can you feel a sense of ownership and belonging if you feel entirely alienated from the decision-making process? Given the futility of political participation, how can you blame Singaporeans for being politically apathetic?

Dr Balakrishnan basically said what the article quoted him saying, which is that the only other occasion on which we had a referendum was over the merger. But that was not quite my point. I mentioned the casino issue as an example of how public opinion did not seem that important, and that ultimately the government decides. There are many things you can do short of a referendum in making more democratic decisions - opinion polls for example. What would also help is if the process were more transparent - how exactly do the views of the populace factor into the decision-making process?

I got to speak briefly to Dr Balakrishnan later on. And we spoke about how it was indeed true that Plato's Republic wasn't exactly utopia - there was a huge underclass of slaves and women were denied the vote. (But to be fair to Plato, he was writing more than 2000 years ago.) What we did not manage to get round to discussing (he had to leave) was the fact that the nature of decision-making was quite similar in spirit. While there was clearly more consultation in modern Singapore, the essence of decision-making was still rather elitist - it's very much a top-down approach where ultimate and overriding authority lies with the government. While Singapore may be like that now it may not always be so. Dr Balakrishnan spoke about the constant change and reinvention that characterises Singaporean society - each generation will face its own unique set of challenges in its own way.

Through no active design on my part, I ended up at the private post-lunch reception and so got to speak to Warren Fernandez, Colin Goh and briefly with Irene Ng. Warren Fernandez is very soft-spoken and very nice - he's a fellow Oxonian and also formerly of Hwa Chong Humanz :) He was very upbeat about Singapore's future and the vitality of our meritocratic system, even for those of minority races (he saw himself as a prime example). As a young journalist he had incurred the ire of the then-PM, a certain Mr Lee. He ended up having tea with him and suffering no apparent ill consequences.

Colin Goh is talkingcock.com. Long live talkingcock.com. He's just as funny in person and just as critical. I told him that his wife taught me when I was in secodary school - it turns out that they had met at one of the creative writing camps that she had organised for us (he was a guest speaker - everybody say 'Awww...') He asked me about my plans for next year and I said that I hoped to go to Columbia for grad school. If you do come to New York, come round and visit us, he said, which was so very nice of him. I want to go to Columbia!!! He told very many heroic stories of his battles with the censorship board - an especially funny one was about how he had to argue his case for the Turbanator segment in talkingcock The Movie. He got the entire Sikh community on his side, and in the end they let the segment pass uncut. He spoke about the need to "just go and langgar lah" - just push the envelope and see how far you get. If you believe in something, make sure you do something about it. Fight the good fight. He wrote a rather funny column around this theme just before the forum (see below).

The Oxford Singaporean Forum was fun and quite interesting. I'm very impressed by the few 1st and 2nd years who managed to pull the whole thing off, and also by the speakers who generously chose to give of their time and were patient and gracious in answering our numerous questions.


By the way, church camp was great.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


Given that the Straits Times will make us all start paying in 2 days time, I have included both articles below.

March 15, 2005
Why no referendum on casino in S'pore
Issue not big enough; only one referendum held so far - on merger with Malaysia
By Neo Hui Min
Straits Times Europe Bureau

OXFORD, ENGLAND - THE only time Singaporeans were called on to vote in a referendum was for whether Singapore should merge with Malaysia.

Going by this precedent, a referendum on whether Singapore should have a casino may not be entirely appropriate, Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan said yesterday.

'We didn't even have a referendum for independence. Is this (the casino issue) of the same order of magnitude as independence and merger?' he asked about 130 Singaporean students at a forum held at Oxford University yesterday.

Dr Balakrishnan was responding to a remark by a student participant that the proposal for a referendum was 'shot down very quickly', and that the Government often seeks views but then 'withdraws to decide' what it wants to do.

Citing more recent 'painful' changes that the Government had to make - including increasing the goods and services tax, lowering income tax and cutting contributions to the Central Provident Fund, Dr Balakrishnan pointed out: 'When these painful crunch-time decisions come up, the Government has to consult, explain its decision and then be held accountable for it.'

But if the Government were to decide everything by referendum, then 'you may not have...coherence in policy, and...the accountability of the Government'.

'Whatever happens, we will take the blame or credit for it.'

Dr Balakrishnan was the keynote speaker at the forum organised by the Oxford University Malaysian and Singaporean Students' Association, which explored the idea of the Singapore identity, whether Asean could be seen as Singapore's hinterland, and how Singapore is faring as a post-colonial nation.

Other panellists at the forum included defence analyst Tim Huxley, Member of Parliament (Tampines) Irene Ng, Straits Times Foreign Editor Warren Fernandez and film-maker and satirist Colin Goh.

Opening the forum, Dr Balakrishnan asked students to think about 'what ideals we have as a people or as a group of people who want to be a nation', the insecurities of the people, and the concept of opportunity for the people.

He pointed out that the thing that catapulted Singapore into becoming a sovereign state was the pursuit of ideals of meritocracy and of multiracialism.

'People think our existence was to become rich. If that was so, then we shouldn't have become independent. No right-leaning economist would have said then that Singapore had any possibility of economic success.

'What makes you special is what you believe in, what you fear and what your obligations and responsibilities are - Whether you like it or not, you are part of this small odd place called Singapore.'


March 13, 2005
Speak up first, take cover later
By Colin Goh

I write this, I'm about to fly off to England, where I'm scheduled to speak at a forum organised by Singapore undergrads at Oxford.

While honoured, I'm not sure why they invited me, since the other speakers include a Minister, an MP, a senior fellow at an institute and a serious columnist for this paper (as opposed to a frivolous one, like, um, me).

I imagine I'm there either to be the token nut who's too dumb to get with the programme, provide comic relief, or make the rest look intelligent.

My anxieties were reinforced when I did some calculations and discovered that despite the sponsored flight, attending the forum would put me out of pocket by several hundred pounds, since I have no institution to cover ancillary expenses.

'I'm actually paying to expose myself to a potential tekan-ing by establishment figures,' I wailed to the Wife. 'Say wrong thing, how? Why am I doing this? What's wrong with me?'

'You're Singaporean, mah,' she replied. 'Glutton for punishment.'

A glance at the news proved the Wife right. Last week, a survey of 719 Singaporean couples showed that 39 per cent considered themselves unhappy in their relationships, because of things like unhappiness with each other's personalities or communication problems, but were going to get married anyway.

That's right: Despite unhappiness with their partners, they are ngeh-ngeh going to shackle themselves to each other, ostensibly for life. Totally illogical, but completely consistent with the Singaporean character.

I say this with some confidence, because in 2000, the Wife and I wrote an article for the Singapore International Foundation titled Paved With Good Intentions, about our desire to change the script of our lives.

Somehow it got circulated on the Net and since then, we've received torrents of mail, even as recently as last week, from fellow Singaporeans.

Many of the writers expressed regret at choosing a course of study or career in which they had zero interest, but went along with it for reasons such as 'because Ma and Pa say Gahmen say it's good and because Uncle So-and-So's son did it, and now he's making a lot of money'. And many have said they now feel trapped and depressed.

Singaporeans, it seems, have a high propensity for self-suppression. According to Professor David Olson, the administrator of the relationship survey, the Singaporeans' conundrum may be attributable to a cultural reluctance to express their real feelings, coupled with an aversion to confrontation. In other words, plain old kiasu-ism, and its even plainer sister, kiasi-ism.

At most, Singaporeans' displeasure leaks out in little displays of passive aggression, like those irate drivers who, when someone cuts into their lane, mutter obscenities and make rude gestures even though the offending driver can neither see nor hear them.

My favourite example of Singaporean passive aggression is a friend's account of watching The Lord Of The Rings at a cinema, when some moron decided to amuse himself by pointing a laser pointer at the screen. No one told him to stop, or called the management to remove the nuisance. Instead, the audience simply morphed into chichaks and proceeded to make 'tsk' sounds from the anonymity of their darkened seats.

Of course, yelling at some inconsiderate twit has some risks - he might be a junior member of the Chap Sar Tiam Secret Society looking to work off some aggression, for instance, but if one can't take even these small social risks, how are we going to deal with the big ones? Like, say, marriage or general elections?

And if we're unhappy with our prospective partners, how will our angst leak out after getting hitched? Staying longer at the office to avoid the emotional void at home? Hanging out more at the 'launge'? Pouring boiling water on the maid?

The fact is, when we sweep unpleasantness under the carpet, sooner or later it accumulates into a bump that could lead to a nasty fall. My old army sergeant's advice still rings true: 'Kah kah lai! Meng kia, long tio ooh sia!' (Go boldly. Don't be scared. If you bump into something, it'll make a noise.)

So what should I do with the potential discomfort at Oxford that I've committed myself to? The lesson of the unhappy Singaporean couples suggests that if I've committed myself to a venture, then I shouldn't be afraid to speak my mind.

For better or for worse, speaking one's mind may be risky, but it beats the alternative: losing it altogether.

Between the Idea and the Reality

Exactly a week ago I found myself at St Catherine's College, listening to none other than Anwar Ibrahim speak. You heard me right. Anwar Ibrahim. Former Malaysian Minister of Finance and heir apparent to Mahatir, that is until he got chucked into jail on charges of corruption and sodomy. He's in Oxford now on a visiting professorship - it's so cool that Oxford draws the most eclectic people from far and wide. It was a really interesting talk, "From Paradiso to Inferno", touching on the years 1997-8 when the Asian Financial Crisis struck. I was quite impressed when he started off by quoting Dante:

A heavy clap of thunder startled me up
As though by force; with rested eyes I stood

Peering to find where I was--in truth, the lip
Above the chasm of pain, which holds the din
Of infinite grief: a gulf so dark and deep

And murky that though I gazed intently down
Into the canyon, I could see nothing below.

He spoke about what he did as Finance Minister and how he tried to push for reforms to the system so as to combat corruption. He said he met with great opposition, and he also basically said that it was his personal war on corruption that led to his fall: he was making it harder for the former PM to favour his own, especially his children.

He impressed me further by quoting Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize winner for Economics and formerly of Oxford) on his theory of development as freedom, and proclaiming that Asian Values were clearly overrated. Arguments about the need for example, to curtail freedom of speech in order to maintain racial harmony and guarantee national security have been used since the 1960s - surely we have moved on since then. He stressed the importance of freedom and democracy, specifically expressed in the institutions of an impartial judiciary and a free press, as the best way to fight corruption and encourage greater growth.

During the question and answer session I stood up and said "You say that the way to combat corruption is through having freedom and democracy. I was just wondering what you think about the experience of Singapore as compared to Malaysia in the fight against corruption, especially given the fact that Singapore is, well..." People started laughing, and because I'm so incredibly politically correct, I didn't go on to state the obvious. He smiled and said that clearly Singapore was much more successful than Malaysia in dealing with corruption. And this is something that Malaysia always has trouble admitting - that Singapore is better at it in anything. But he insisted that Singapore could still do with greater freedom. And besides, corruption is sometimes a matter of defintion, is it not? It made me think about how it is possible, while not breaking the letter of the law (and hence not being legally culpable) one is still clearly capable of breaking the spirit of the law.

He also spoke about the "Chinese problem" and the bumiputra policies. He said that there clearly needed to be more equality, and in the cases where there was to be affirmative action, it should apply equally to all races: the Indians on the plantations, the Chinese in the urban slums and the Malays in the rural areas. He said he'd often had arguments with fellow Malays about the matter, and he always pointed out how it was impossible to be a just Muslim if you were to deny, say for example, an accomplished Chinese student a seat at the university on the basis of race.

He was very funny and engaging and I could see why the Economist had said that he was the most charismatic Malaysian politician of his generation. He spoke about the difference in the extent of corruption in Indonesia and in Malaysia. In Indonesia they just ask you for bribes outright, but in Malaysia they were a bit more subtle. "We were trained by the British you see, the Indonesians were trained by the Dutch," he said, to much laughter all round. He talked about his time in jail. "There wasn't much to do in solitary confinement; read, sing, you name it, I sang it all, Elvis Presley and all that."

He looked perfectly fine and healthy which was surprising. He said he had been beaten quite badly in jail but that his operation in Germany had more or less got him back on his feet. He said that he did not regret anything that he did, except for the pain that it had inadvertantly caused his family.

Later on during tea at the Rector's Lodgings I got to speak with him. I asked him what role moderate Islam (as practised in Malaysia and Indonesia) had to play, in the light of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. He said that he was writing a paper on that and that it would be published soon. I then asked him what he thought about Mahatir's incendiary and controversial comments about the West (I distinctly remember him accusing the Jews of conspiring against the Islamic states during the height of the financial crisis) and how he thought it affected relations between Islam and the West. He said that Mahatir was a clever guy and that he knew just how to appeal to Muslims all over the world. When you consider that their options are rather limited (Saddam, Osama, the Saudi King), it is not difficult to see why Muslims would respond positively to someone like Mahatir (a moderate in comparison).

I also had a chance to speak to his wife, Dr Aziza, MP of Penang as I understand it (yay Penang! I have family there :) She seemed really nice and gentle. I asked her what she thought was the role of women in an Islamic society. She spoke about how in the beginning there was Adam and Eve and that is the way God made it - men and women were meant to be partners in this world, but this did not mean that women should be treated like men. She talked about the differences between men and women, women had to bear children, biologically we have a different make-up etc. I asked her if that then meant that men and women have different roles in society, women at home and men in the workplace. She said that women should be in the workplace as well, but that differences should still be taken into account. Do you mean in terms of maternity leave, childcare subsidies and so on and so forth? Yes, she said, and she spoke of recent efforts to extend maternity leave.

She said that a man once asked the Prophet whom he should respect, and the Prophet replied "Your mother. Your mother. Your mother." Women were clearly worthy of great respect. But I kept wondering if, in conservative Islamic societies, it was the case that women only gained the greatest respect as mothers, and that implicit in all that she had said, was an admission that women could never really be "on par" with men, and that "difference" was just another word for inequality. She spoke about how it was important to be gentle and genteel and to be respected when conducting oneself in the political arena - that was how she got things done. But at the same time I wondered how much that respect was contingent on her being the wife of Anwar Ibrahim. Don't get me wrong, she seemed perfectly nice and respectable, and I'm thrilled that she's an MP, but I am still rather sceptical of the prospects of gender equality in a conservative Islamic state like Malaysia, at least for now.

Later that night I spoke to my dad and told him that I'd seen Anwar Ibrahim speak. We have lots of family in Penang (some of them rather well placed) and my dad told me that according to a very reliable source, Anwar Ibrahim had had a very mutually advantageous relationship with one of the prominent Chinese businessmen in Penang. It might not have been a case of straight out corruption, but like Mr Ibrahim himself said, it's a matter of how you define corruption, isn't it? Cherfarn said quite humorously and quite accurately that it was not a matter of whether you were muddy or clean, but how muddy you were, because everyone was dirty. It is a matter of degree, so where do you draw the line?

In his speech, Mr Ibrahim also quoted (much to his credit) T.S. Eliot. It was particularly apt.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

- from 'The Hollow Men'

I was speaking to Dr Aziza when they had to leave. "Thanks for coming," she said, "And God Bless."

"Thank you," said I, "God Bless you too." I thought it was nice that we could say that to each other meaningfully, even though we had different conceptions of God.

I really enjoyed the session and it really made me think. They were both very pleasant and approachable, and I do hope to God, for his sake and for his country's sake, that Mr Ibrahim is innocent of what they charged him with. And also, that he truly means what he says.

Lectures: Prof Joseph Nye and Prof Sir Adam Roberts

I've had two very exciting lectures in two days - Oxford surprises me at every turn, and I am just so glad to be here. Yesterday the eminent Professor Joseph Nye of Harvard University, recently retired Dean of the Kennedy School, who served in the Carter administration and headed countless thinktanks, whom, as Cherfy tells me coined the term "soft-power", and as I just found out attended Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship way back when, was delivering the 2nd of his three-lecture series on power.

He was talking about the IT revolution and about how different countries dealt with it. He talked about how China was rather paradoxically trying to harness the economic potential of an open information network and yet at the same time trying to restrict its citizens access to other types of information. He recalled a particular conversation he had with a certain Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Senior Minister of Singapore. (He must not have heard about the revamp in the Cabinet and re-branding of the "Minister Mentor"...) He had asked Mr Lee about the paradox of equipping the younger generation with IT skills and yet at the same time trying to limit the information that they could access online. The eminent Mr Lee apparently replied that if the younger generation were tech-savvy and literate enough to circumvent the censorship, then he would not care if they did.

After the lecture I went up to him and asked him if he thought Mr Lee had gotten it right. He said that he had lots of respect for the man, that he didn't agree with everything he did, but that you had to give the Singapore government credit for being so astute about the impact of technological change, and recognising that they wouldn't be able to stem the tide forever. He said Singapore was wildly economically successful when they could just as well have been a poor immigrant city-state. I asked if he thought the attitude that lay behind the policy was somewhat patronising and instrumental in its conception of freedom of information. He was of the opinion that change could happen faster and that the administration tended to err on the side of caution. And, well, it is a very paternalistic state. He said that he'd often thought of Singapore as the closest thing to Plato's Republic on earth. I said that that was not an uncommon sentiment. He said, however, we have had several Singaporean students over the years, and I'm always very impressed by them.

Professor Nye was very liberal and non-reactionary for an American. But I suspect this is more the case within American academic circles, which unfortunately, are hardly representative of the whole country. In speaking about soft power, he emphasised the importance of credibility and legitimacy, and he admitted quite freely that on that front, America had bungled up the Iraq War. I'd like to think that his time at Oxford had something to do with it, because there are quite a few eminent American IR professors who belong to the more hawkish, realist school of international relations, and who, unfortunately are advising George Bush, and I would put good money on the fact that they weren't educated at Oxford. At least, I hope they weren't.

Today I went to an IR lecture given by Professor Sir Adam Roberts - possibly the coolest title on earth, and a very big mouthful. He spoke about democratisation. At the end of the lecture he took questions and I raised my hand and asked what he thought about the culturally deterministic view that some countries just cannot have democracy. He had referenced Fareed Zakaria a couple of times during his lecture, and I remembered reading an interview that Zakaria did with LKY in Foreign Affairs back in the 1990s. Essentially, what LKY was arguing was that culture is destiny.

Prof Sir said that history tends to prove these culturally deterministic theories wrong. He said in the 1960s in Europe there was quite a lot of literature that argued that there was something about Catholic societies like Spain, Portugal and the Latin American countries that meant they weren't amenable to democratic change. Of course history has since debunked that theory. Also, in Asia, there can be seen to be a distinct move towards democratisation in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, where before people had argued for the existence of a distinctly Confucian form of government. By the way, has anybody been championing Asian values post-Asian Financial Crisis? Yep. That's what I thought. Although, he said, it's very important to note that culture is hardly irrelevant - there is no single route to democracy or any single model and each country has to develop at its own pace and within its own culture. But culture is not destiny.