On limkitsiang.com, undergrad2 comments:
People like Farish and my old friend Muzafar Shah aka Chandrasekhran Pillai from Ibrahim School, Sg. Petani should seriously consider throwing their hats into the political arena…
…This country would be better off if the professionals and intellectuals among us i.e. the intelligentsia take an active role in politics. By this I do not mean being arm-chair critics dressed in suits and ties delivering their “Sermons from the Mount,†giving themselves the role of “talking heads in pin-striped suits†hoping that the rest of us mortals see the wisdom of their advice on what, according to them, ills our society.
Very tantalizing thoughts though bordering on utopian dreams. There’s a sufi saying that states a king who befriends a sufi goes to heaven while a sufi who aspires to be a king goes to hell or something to that effect, I can’t remember the exact phrase. The way I understand it, the noblest of leaders are those who are sincere while the hypocritical saints are those who show piety to gain power.
14 responses so far ↓
kaki bangku // Jan 15, 2007 at 11:41 pm
extreme silence…
PAUHFC // Jan 16, 2007 at 12:32 am
rilex akhi bangku.
like what I try to come out in my recent comment.
have kakiblog reach the critical level of silence?
can anyone answer it??
Kaki have the members to leave comments even if this blog is not visited by the outsiders.But, where are they?
sorry.I’m digress a little bit.I should comment on your posting first.
Btw, I wanna answer your question first. Yup, they should! Cause they have credible to do so.So, rakyat have trust on them to lead our country. Look at our previous PM. Who is him?Everybody knows the answer. But, sometimes it might not be true. Still, they have the credible and can contribute some thoughts even if they might not get a chance to govern the country.
Unfortunately, they are not interested in.
In the future, I can see how it’s gonna be. My friends(which I consider as future professional & intellectuals), most of them are not intersted in this field. They perceive people who active in politics are extremist.It might be true in some cases.But, do they know what is the purpose of politics??Pity, they have excellent brains and government spend billions of ringgit for their education.Or maybe government through JPA have successfully set in their mindset that involving in politics is illegal. Hate the government for restricting their horizon!
kaki bangku // Jan 16, 2007 at 7:07 am
Intellectuals may have the IQ, but do they have the EQ and SQ? Also, would people trust an academician’s views if it is biased towards his political objectives? For sure, his intellectual credentials will be severely dented.
Those are the issues that hinder the involvement of intellectuals in partisan politics.
Yet, of course, ideally it would be great to have the best brains lead the country.
But wait, is that really true?
Shouldn’t one’s piety be the sole criterion for one’s status?
More and more questions creep in… yet, the answer remains elusive.
cyzrael // Jan 16, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Hazri // Jan 16, 2007 at 12:25 pm
The exact saying goes like this, “The worst scholar is one who visits princes, but the best prince is one who visits scholars. Happy the prince at a poor man’s door; wretched the poor man at a prince’s gate.” This Hadith is provided in al-Ghazali’s Ihya Ulumuddin and was quoted in the Sufi Jalaluddin Rumi’s Signs of the Unseen. But as Rumi himself noted, this is not to be taken literally, rather it means that scholars ought to be independent and not bow in meek submission or defer to political authorities.
There is, I think, nothing inherently wrong about scholars assuming political office or participating in partisan politics, provided he knows how to draw the line between politics and scholarship. After all, weren’t the Rightly Guided Caliphs also scholars?
kaki bangku // Jan 16, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Is this abang Tengku Hazri? What a surprise to see you coming here! I used to stop by hazri.com all the time - too bad you’ve deleted it. Or have you reincarnated somewhere else? Please, if you don’t want to make it public, send me the link via e-mail at bangku [di] kakiblog [noktah] com.
So, as already mentioned, it is indeed the ideal to have scholars lead the nation. But I don’t see that being a viable possibility given the present circumstances in all practical purposes. Anyways, thanks for the correction on that quote. That’s probably the right one.
Oh, please do stop by kakiblog once in a while
jubek // Jan 16, 2007 at 10:36 pm
err…
encik bangku…
sorry..was just wndring…
so, there are diffrences between scholars, professionals, intellectuals and academicians right?…
correct me if i’m wrong…but we do have those with brains, and some professionals in the cabinet and in the politcal scene, right???…
i dont know about econmists, because they are not listed as professionals, but i do believe they fall into the ‘brainy’ group.
kaki bangku // Jan 17, 2007 at 3:44 am
There are economists participating in Malaysian politics. But they aren’t prominent intellectuals.
Hurm.. Am I envisioning a Platonian philosopher-king of the al-Farabi construct? Kind of, but not exactly due to the fact that al-Farabi’s idea was leaning towards the shia Imamate leadership rather than Sunni Caliphate.
testing // Jan 17, 2007 at 11:39 pm
ad
alim // Jan 17, 2007 at 11:40 pm
waa..menarik topik nie
Hazri // Jan 19, 2007 at 7:42 am
Jubek,
Yes, there are differences between intellectuals, scholars, academicians and professionals, the nature of “intellectuals” being the most widely contested.
Academicians are those working in the academic field, be it in academic institutions or think tanks. Likewise professionals are those who exercise a particular profession such as accountants, psychologists, etc. The day you commence work in these areas you qualify as academicians/professionals.
By contrast, a scholar is an earned status, acquired through painstaking research into a specific area. Loosely speaking one is also a scholar by holding a scholarship but this is often accompanied with a prefix, e.g. ‘Rhodes scholar’, ‘Chevening scholar’ or ‘Fulbright scholar’.
An intellectual differs from the rest in that he usually has a public role to play and is usually characterised by originality and novelty in thought. He may be a scholar, academician or professional but not necessarily so. If you’ve made a breakthrough in the understanding of lizard’s brain, then I guess you are a scholar but that per se doesn’t make you an intellectual.
Often intellectuals stand as the voice for the voiceless and the beacon for the downtrodden. At all times they would side with the oppressed and marginalised sections of society, vigorously critiquing the powers-that-be and perpetrators of injustice and tyranny. This sounds a lot like social activists but with one remarkably significant difference: the platform from which the intellectual launch his critique is often his own specialised area of learning so that he is able to demonstrate how even the most abstruse of disciplines, the most recondite of affairs, are potentially useful as discourses for liberation and the ideological backdrop for emancipation. We have the example of Edward Said, who began as a scholar of comparative literature, only to venture eruditely into a critique of Orientalism and expose how the West has for centuries epistemologically dominated the Orient and employs ‘knowledge’ as the apparatus for cultural imperialism. This gave birth to what we call today as postcolonialism, a critical theory aimed at freeing the people of the de-colonised nations from the abject servitude they have for long been held owing to their oblivion to the fact that ‘knowledge’ is never ideologically neutral.
Closer to home (and to this blog entry, if I may add!), we have the example of Farish Noor, who masterfully deconstructs the myth of “Otherness” in mainstream sectarian political discourse and helpfully offers a sense of social inclusivity as evident for example, in his recent article “These are Malaysian Temples We Are Destroying” in which he offers a scathing attack against the notion of “Hindu” temple (which he believes constructs a false barrier between the various religious groups) and potently argues the case against demolishing these “Malaysian” temples.
Such quality is beyond dispute desirable in politics and governance, but politics is a different arena and if the intellectual opts to play this game, he must learn that the rules are different, otherwise he can do no more than offer blank stares when he realises that all his footnotes and bibliographies are no match for the concrete and tangible power of his intellectually inferior opponent.
Hazri // Jan 19, 2007 at 7:59 am
Kaki Bangku,
I’m not so sure how al-Farabi’s utopia is distinctly Shiite. To my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong) he understood the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) himself to be at the helm as the Prophet-Lawgiver which apparently transcends the Sunni-Shiite divide. He probably had in mind someone like Imam Mahdi.
Whether or not this can be actualised in modern day Malaysia is more doubtful, largely because of the democratic system, unless our society evolve into one that glorifies the learned. In the US though, the President had much liberty to pick his cabinet members from among intellectuals because of their political structure. Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice are among scholars who have been appointed to that office. Since Malaysia inherits the British political system, the only likelihood of them entering into politics is either through election (in which case they probably need to ’soften’ their intellectual views to fish for votes!) or picked as Senators into the Dewan Negara, then appointed as ministers.
PS: There is also a Hadith to the effect that one who desires a political office should never be granted it. Any thoughts?
Hazri
Taufik // May 30, 2007 at 1:40 am
Isn’t it that Malaysia practices grass root politics? I guess at the US (The West in general perhaps) most of the politicians became pretty successful people in their respective fields before they get into politics, as that is their ticket for success in politics in their country. Whereas in our country, most of the politicians are inspired politicians since they were small, so their sole concern was to ‘work their way up the ladder.’ To work hard and be successful in other fields is considered as a waste of time. Of course this is a generalisation that does not hold true in all cases. So we end up having a lot of mediocre people at the top, who well… They also have little respect for intellectuals, scholars, academicians, etc. In the end, universities are politicized, school system is politicized, everything is politicized and the main objective of a lot of instituitions are blurred under the practice of grass root politics. Well, they do talk about Biotechnology too. They can talk, but they rarely walk the talk. Maybe it’s great to have a few intellects in the political scene, but if the majority are still mediocre people who cannot see through great ideas which do not bring fast cash, then I guess it won’t work out that good. Just my oppinion.
bangku // May 30, 2007 at 3:03 am
You misunderstood the meaning of grassroots politics. I would call that phenomena that you observe as nepotism/cronyism instead. Grassroots politics is almost the entire opposite.
Leave a Comment