Malay Muslim woman to be Singapore President

Agencies
September 11, 2017

Singapore, Sep 11: There are no Muslim Malays in the top echelons of Singapore’s army, and few among the senior ranks of its judiciary, but a member of its poorest ethnic minority is set to become the first woman President of the Southeast Asian city state this week.

Halimah Yacob, a former speaker of Parliament, will be formally named to the mostly ceremonial post on Wednesday, media reported, after other candidates fell short of the criteria set for contesting the election. Ms. Yacob (63) was born to an Indian Muslim father and a Malay mother.

As per decree

Aiming to strengthen a sense of inclusivity in the multicultural country, Singapore had decreed the presidency would be reserved for candidates from the Malay community this time.

Ms. Yacob’s experience as house speaker automatically qualified her under the nomination rules.

Of the four other applicants, two were not Malays and two were not given certificates of eligibility, the elections department said.

The last Malay to hold the presidency was Yusof Ishak, whose image adorns the country’s banknotes.

Yusof Ishak was President between 1965 and 1970, the first years of Singapore’s independence following a short-lived union with neighbouring Malaysia, but executive power lay with Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s first Prime Minister.

The separation of Singapore from Malaysia gave ethnic Malays a clear majority in Malaysia, while ethnic Chinese formed the majority in independent Singapore.

Preserving harmony

Leaders of both countries, however, recognised that peace and prosperity depended on preserving harmony between the two groups.

But living in a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood, with Malaysia and Indonesia next door, Singapore’s leaders have long worried about the risk of conflicted loyalties among Malays.

“You put in a Malay officer who’s very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine-gun unit, that’s a very tricky business,” the late Lee Kuan Yew was widely quoted as saying in 1999.

For Lee, whose son, Lee Hsien Loong, is now Prime Minister, the answer to social cohesion lay in creating a culture of meritocracy, rather than adopting policies of positive discrimination to boost the chances of advancement for Singapore’s Malay and Indian minorities.

Grumble of discrimination

Still, a government report published in 2013 found Malays felt they were sometimes discriminated against and had limited prospects in some institutions, such as the armed forces.

Singapore’s economic success and education policies have helped swell the ranks of middle-class Malays, but the last census in 2010 showed they lagged other ethnic groups on socio-economic measures such as household incomes and home ownership.

Malays, who form just over 13 per cent of Singapore’s 3.9 million citizens and permanent residents, also underperform on measures such as university and secondary school education.

Despite being the establishment candidate, Ms. Yacob wears a hijab, which is banned in state schools and public sector jobs that require uniforms. But she has seldom spoken publicly on the issue and there is little sign of change in official attitudes.

'Room for improvement'

Farid Khan, one of the unsuccessful candidates and the chairman of marine services firm Bourbon Offshore Asia, told Reuters more Malays now hold political office, and some are making their way in the corporate world, but “there is still room for improvement.”

The prospect of a Malay President is by itself unlikely to resolve concerns over under-representation, but analysts and advocates say it could help foster trust among communities.

Yet the reserved election has also injured some pride.

“It cheapens the credibility of a Malay person that it requires a token election for us to be President,” said Malay comedian and television personality Hirzi Zulkiflie. “Some people intending to run are very capable.”

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News Network
March 20,2025

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New York: An Indian national enrolled as a postdoctoral fellow in the US has been detained by immigration authorities, said a media report, less than a week after a Columbia student from India self-deported following allegations of activities supporting Hamas.

Badar Khan Suri's lawyer claimed that he is being punished “because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a US citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose US foreign policy toward Israel.”

He is a former student of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Suri is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

A report in Politico said that Suri, who was studying and teaching on a student visa, has been “detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists whom the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy.”

The report said that “masked agents” arrested Suri from outside his home in Virginia Monday night.

A petition filed by his lawyer Hassan Ahmad said that he was taken to a facility in Virginia and is “expected to be transferred soon to a detention centre in Texas.”

The Politico report said that Suri’s lawyer has filed a lawsuit for his immediate release.

“The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa,” the lawsuit says, according to the Politico report.

The report added that according to Suri’s petition, he was put in “deportation proceedings under the same rarely used provision of immigration law” that the government has invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident arrested for his role in leading campus protests at Columbia against Israel. 

The petition says the couple has “long been doxxed and smeared” on anonymously run, far-right websites due to their support for Palestinian rights. The petition adds that Suri’s wife Mapheze Saleh has been alleged to have “ties with Hamas” and once worked for Al Jazeera.

The petition further notes that Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime. Ahmad said he had not been able to contact Suri as of Wednesday evening.

“We’re trying to speak with him. That hasn’t happened yet,” Ahmad said.

“This is just another example of our government abducting people the same way they abducted Khalil.”

According to his profile on the website of Georgetown University, Suri completed his PhD in Peace & Conflict Studies from Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2020. 

He wrote his thesis on Transitional Democracy, Divided Societies and Prospects for Peace: A Study of State Building in Afghanistan and Iraq in which he underlined the complexities involved in introducing democracy in ethnically diverse societies; as well as challenges to project state building.

He has travelled extensively in the conflict zones of India, Pakistan, Balochistan in Iran, Iran, Turkey, Kurdish Areas in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and its southern region, Egypt and Palestine.  

The Politico report quoted a statement from a Georgetown spokesperson as saying that Suri is an "Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention. We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly," the spokesperson said.

Suri's detention comes less than a week after Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian student at Columbia University, self-deported after her visa was revoked for allegedly “advocating for violence and terrorism” and involvement in activities supporting Hamas.

Srinivasan had entered the United States on an F-1 student visa as a doctoral student in Urban Planning at Columbia University, the Department of Homeland Security had said.

It added that Srinivasan was “involved in activities supporting” Hamas, a terrorist organisation.

The Department of State had revoked her visa on March 5. The Department of Homeland Security said it has obtained video footage of Srinivasan using the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Home App to self-deport on March 11. 

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News Network
March 28,2025

chaos.jpg

When the ground violently shook beneath his feet, Prem Kishore Mohanty, an Indian expatriate in Bangkok, was attending his five-year-old daughter's school sports day. What began as a routine event—children competing, parents cheering—quickly turned into a moment of panic as tremors struck.

"I felt my head spinning and had to sit down. The overhead lights swayed, and chairs moved," said Mr. Mohanty, 44. The school's PA system quickly announced an emergency evacuation, directing everyone to the outdoor field while warning against using nearby lanes lined with high-rise towers.

Water from rooftop swimming pools, including those at the InterContinental Bangkok, cascaded down buildings, as captured in viral videos.

Fear and Chaos as Bangkok Shakes
The 7.7-magnitude earthquake, with its epicenter in Myanmar, sent powerful tremors into Thailand, bringing Bangkok to an abrupt standstill. Public transport was suspended, traffic snarled, and people evacuated buildings, waiting anxiously for the all-clear.

Earthquakes are rare in Bangkok, a city more accustomed to heat and monsoons than seismic shocks. For the Mohanty family, who live in a high-rise apartment in Sukhumvit, confusion and fear gripped them as the evacuation began.

"It was terrifying. We were told to take the fire escape stairwell and wait outside. There was no time to think," Mr. Mohanty recalled.

Now safe, he remains shaken by the unexpected jolt that turned a normal day into a moment of chaos for his family and thousands across the city.

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