Section 377A - the slippery slope: a short musing

Everyone around me is now divided on whether Section 377A, an outmoded law which criminalises homosexual acts between consenting adults, should be repealed. Churches seem to be quite eager to see that homosexuals remain branded as criminals. While that may be the official stand of the National Council of Churches, individual Christians are very much divided on this issue.

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing Part 3

This is a continuation of the saga created by ignorant but hyperctitical netizens and if you want the full picture, please go to:

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing Part 1 and 

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing Part 2

As it turns out, Nadine Yap now acknowledges that the teacher was right and she and her entire motley crew of loud-mouthed rabble were wrong. That is something I have been saying from the start and I'm glad I got someone close to the school to refer the teacher to my blog posts.

Suddenly, everyone is silent on her Facebook page. Gone are the ignoramuses who bandied the subjunctive about without fully understanding its significance. "A little learning is a dangerous thing", Pope tells us but nothing is more dangerous than a little learning in an inflated ego. I can't understand how anyone who is totally unfamiliar with English grammar can have the audacity to declare a sentence ungrammatical. How arrogant can such a person be? I would never presume to condemn a Pakistani teacher for ungrammatical Urdu. How can these people whose knowledge of English grammar is evidently no better than my knowledge of Urdu grammar arrogate to themselves the authority to pontificate on what is correct English and denounce a teacher when she has done no wrong? They were a loud, strident and violent mob and one of them even wrote, "Please shoot the teacher!!"

I am normally not bothered about ungrammatical English and it's not in my nature to go about telling others they are wrong. But the gross injustice of this cyberspace lynching compelled me to speak up for the teacher.

Now, all is well and everyone is agreed that the test question was not wrong and the teacher was correct and only those who commented in Nadine Yap's Facebook thread and criticised the teacher were mistaken. But not quite. Some of them still feel there has to be some error somewhere and they are loath to admit that Yap's daughter didn't answer the question correctly. One of them just posted her view that the question is wrong in grammar. I asked her to read both my two posts which I'm sure properly addressed the issue (see the links above).  And I asked her why she said the question was wrong. She didn't answer for some time and I thought that after reading my blog, she must have sheepishly realised her mistake and decided to lie low and being a peace-loving chap, I decided I should say nothing further.

So that you don't have to go back to my previous blog posts, here's the question that she says is ungrammatical:

If you are celebrating a family member's birthday, how do you plan to celebrate it?

Mind you, nobody is talking about the elegance of the sentence. Elegance is not the issue. The only question is whether it is grammatical.

A friend of mine who has been following this entire episode told me that she was certain the woman would say nothing further. But she came back with this post:

I'm grateful to this woman for allowing me a glimpse into how a person who has no knowledge of grammar thinks. Most of my friends do not like to expose their lack of knowledge and they get upset with me when I try to probe just to understand better the way they reason out a sentence that they claim to be ungrammatical. Most people would just become ominously silent when I ask them why they think something is wrong. But this woman openly tells me and I'm grateful to her for it.

She's doing what most people do when they have no knowledge of grammar.  When she mentions that a sentence is "weird", that tells me immediately that she's using her own limited exposure to the language to determine if a sentence is correct. This is of course highly unreliable given the fact that most people who are unacquainted with the rules of grammar probably are not au fait with a wide range of English literature and it's understandably disastrous if they draw their boundaries of what correct grammar should be according to their own inadequate knowledge. If a sentence structure is unusual to them, they are more likely to dismiss it as ungrammatical even if the sentence has the full backing of grammarians and the great works of literature.

That something is weird to her does not mean a thing to me. But thankfully, she goes on to explain why there's this tingling sensation she feels that makes her decide that a sentence is weird. This is what she says:

"If you are making lemonade" invites you to imagine a scenario where you are in the process of making lemonade.

I'm so delighted with this woman because for the first time since this episode started last week, I finally understand why some people object to that question. I need to know how they think. Sadly, some people mistakenly think that I'm testing them to see if they are fools when I ask them for their view on a point of grammar. Unfortunately, I used very strong language in this blog when I reviled the Speak Good English Movement for the countless errors that they've made. Click here for a summary of all the posts I've written on the Speak Good English Movement and others.

But while I may slam with harsh words a corporate entity such as the Speak Good English Movement, I do not, as a rule, criticise individuals for their language errors. I do not mind if someone speaks or writes ungrammatical English. I am a firm defender of Singlish and other variants of English. I am only harsh to people who wrongly criticise others and what Nadine Yap's friends did to the teacher is one example of the kind of outrage that will make my hackles rise.  Especially when the poor teacher was right and the mob wrong.

The error is obvious. This woman has a poor understanding of the progressive tense. When she sees it, she imagines that the act referred to is being done. As she puts it, "you are in the process of making lemonade". This simplistic understanding of hers is something taught in kindergarten picture books. You see the drawing of a boy walking with his school bag and the sentence at the bottom of the picture says "John is walking to school." He's in the process of walking. Voila! That's the progressive tense.

But the progressive tense in English has many other uses and one of them is the expression of futurity. I will just pick a simple example from one of my grammar books so there is no argument as to its correctness:

"Are you going to the meeting (tomorrow)?" 

I'm sure you can think of thousands of other examples and I don't think anyone who has the least knowledge of the English language will dispute this. Of course "Will you go to the meeting (tomorrow)?" also indicates futurity. And this is one mistake many people with a poor grasp of English grammar frequently make. As I have commented in my earlier posts, the people who castigated the teacher for not using the subjunctive mistakenly thought that since the subjunctive would have been quite correct, anything else had to be wrong. Hence, many of them mistakenly thought that an indicative would always be wrong where you could have a subjunctive and somehow in their ears, the subjunctive sounded better and perhaps the indicative sounded "weird".

What the woman says further is a little confusing. She gives an example of a sentence that is irrelevant because there is no sense of futurity in it. She gave another sentence she says is all right but she does not say why it is OK. That's the kind of reasoning you would expect of someone who's only guided by her own limited familiarity with the different sentence structures.

Now that it's clear that "If you are celebrating a family member's birthday..." can be a reference to the future, let's see whether it can be followed by a present tense in the next clause.

There are many examples that I can think of (and some are direct examples from established grammar books). Here's one:

If you are driving to London, which route do you take? 

You can also reverse the order of the clauses in this way:

Which route do you take if you are driving to London?

Both are perfectly right. Again, I don't think there's any English-speaking person who would object to the above sentences. Of course you can also say, "If you are driving to London, which route will you take?" They aren't mutually exclusive. The fact that one sentence is correct does not necessarily give it a monopoly over all other equally correct sentences. That is something people who do not have an understanding of English grammar must always bear in mind.

Here's another example where the "if" clause contains a futurity and the following clause carries a present tense:

If you won't arrive before six, I can't meet you.

Or you can also have:

If you aren't arriving before six, I can't meet you.

Here's another example:

If she won't be here before midnight, there's no need to rush.

Or,

If she isn't coming before midnight, there's no need to rush.

The beauty of the English language lies in the myriads of ways something can be expressed in different words, all of which are grammatical but each of which may carry a slightly different nuance. This beauty is fragile and can easily be destroyed by people who use the language indiscriminately and without a decent knowledge of grammar. A language is highly dependent on the people who use it. If the majority of speakers of a particular language speak an ungrammatical form of the language, over time, what is non-standard will become standard language. If you follow the progress of the English language, you will notice changes in grammar so that what used to be condemned as ungrammatical might in some instances be perfectly acceptable today. In many cases, the culprits are language users in America who tend to blunt the finer distinctions in usage.

But nothing is more insidious than those who do not know grammar but insist on telling others what they think is right and wrong based on their feelings of whether something sounds "weird". There are many ways you can construct a sentence. Unless a usage or sentence structure is specifically condemned by grammarians to be wrong, it's best not to make any pronouncement on grammar based solely on your own feelings. You should resist the temptation to make up your own grammar rules (which is what Singapore's Speak Good English has done many times). You are probably going to get them wrong and you will only disgrace yourself or worse, persecute an innocent teacher. 

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing Part 2

In my previous post, I explained why those who commented on a mother's Facebook page were all wrong. The mother had posted her daughter's test paper in which her daughter's answer was corrected by the teacher. Everyone on her Facebook page vilified the teacher and insisted that her daughter was right. I have read my blog post again and as far as I can see, I have explained clearly and succinctly why they were all wrong. At least that's what I thought until some friends of mine who had read my blog post continued to hold the view that the teacher's question was ungrammatical. How could they do that?

I asked one of them. Apparently, my previous post was a little too long-winded. I had also made the assumption that people knew basic English grammar. Anyone whose knowledge of grammar is zilch (and that means everyone on that mother's Facebook page) would find what I had written tedious and incomprehensible. So my friends who had gone to my previous blog post did not read what I wrote. They saw the link to the newspaper article and read that instead.

If it's true that many people don't really follow what I wrote in my previous post, I will have to make amends here. I will have to explain so clearly that even a child of ten can follow easily and that is what I'm determined to do. And I will be brief. I understand from the comments I've received that most people do not like to read long articles. From now on, brevity will be second nature to me.

Let's look again at the test question.

This is the original test question the class was given:

If you are celebrating a family member's birthday, how do you plan to celebrate it?

The child answered as follows:

If I were to plan a birthday, I would plan it for my mother. Instead of a cake I would make cupcakes.

The teacher corrected the child's answer to read:

If I am to plan a birthday, I will plan it for my mother. Instead of getting a cake I will make cupcakes.

Let's also follow the reasoning, if any, of the people who commented on the mother's Facebook page:

They say the child's answer is grammatically sound. [As I stated in my earlier post, this is NOT the issue]. They praised the child's use of the subjunctive. Again, this is neither here nor there. We mustn't be muddle-headed. The issue is simply whether the teacher was wrong in correcting the child's answer. They then proceeded to say that the question given by the teacher is grammatically wrong. Here is where I take issue with them. I've read every single one of their comments just to understand how a large group of people could be afflicted by this collective insanity. Many of them did not say why they thought the question was wrong but some of them gave the reasoning that an "if" clause should always be followed by a subjunctive. For authority, many of them cited the "If I were a rich man" line in the musical "Fiddler on the Roof". To them, the question "If you are celebrating..." is erroneous because there is no subjunctive.

Any basic English grammar book will tell you that the "if" clause can exist without a subjunctive. In fact, the "if" clause frequently does not have the subjunctive. One reason why I had that "Oh my God!" tone of despair in my previous article is I just couldn't believe that any English-speaking person could be so incredibly wrong. If any of my children had displayed such a monstrous ignorance of basic English grammar in their earlier years, I believe I would have been quite stern with them. And the people who commented on the mother's Facebook page are presumably adults. In my book, any English-speaking adult has got to be a lunatic if he says that the "if" clause must have a subjunctive.

I will write down all the possible patterns that I can think of for sentences beginning with "if". I will strive to be comprehensive but bear with me if I inadvertently leave out a few. The most basic must be the simple present in both the conditional and matrix clauses. Then we have the present, or continuous, or perfective in the conditional clause and a modal in the matrix clause. Next, is the past in the conditional and past modal in the matrix. I bet most of my readers will probably say that for this pattern, a subjunctive is obligatory. But no, even for this pattern which traditionally has a subjunctive, I can think of a few exceptions and if you don't believe me, let's have a bet and the loser pays for dinner. Next is the past perfective in the conditional clause and past perfective modal (+continuous) in the matrix clause. I can also think of two other patterns that aren't so common but that grammarians say are perfectly grammatical and acceptable: a modal in both the conditional and the matrix clauses and a past progressive in the conditional clause and a past modal in the matrix.

Of the six patterns I have listed above, only one of them has to have a subjunctive or at least I can't think of an exception for it. There is one more pattern that usually carries a subjunctive in the clause but even then, it doesn't always have to. The other four patterns cannot have a subjunctive. Do you see now why I say you've got to have your head examined if you claim (as many do on that mother's Facebook wall) that the "if" clause must have a subjunctive and that the question given in the test paper is grammatically wrong because it lacks one?

Even if, like the Speak Good English Movement, you don't know a single grammar rule, you must at least know that "If you are celebrating a family member's birthday..." is different in meaning from "If you were celebrating a family member's birthday..." and that alone should stop you from declaring the first construction to be ungrammatical. It simply means a different thing. The child's answer is more suited to the second question which was not the question in the test. The teacher was merely guiding the child to answer only the question that she was asked. And this is one thing every child should be taught from an early age. I've seen uni students going off on a tangent when answering questions. They probably didn't have this teacher to point out their mistake to them in their formative years. What the teacher did is perfectly correct. But what the mother and her ignorant friends did is outrageous. In their utter ignorance of basic English grammar, they insisted the question "If you are celebrating..." was wrong because there was no subjunctive. They failed to realise that there are at least 6 patterns for the "if" clause as I have enumerated above. I can think of a few examples where the subjunctive is obligatory but the test question is not one of them. The teacher who set the test question was free to choose any one pattern that suited the meaning he or she intended.

And how can something as simple as this escape them?  The answer is obvious. They don't know even the most basic rules of grammar but they haven't got the decency to shut up. Birds know the rules of chirping and pigs know the grammar of oinking but alas, many human beings don't know the grammar of the language they use daily. But I have no quarrel with ignorant people. What I can't stand are people who despite their total ignorance of grammar insist on telling others they are wrong when they are not. This is precisely what the Speak Good English Movement is notorious for doing and I have in more than 50 articles in this blog alone exposed the flagrant errors made by the Movement.  If you would like to see a tidy one-page summary of all the articles I've written on this subject, please click here.

But what is even more alarming to me are those who quote that "If I were a rich man" line from "Fiddler on the Roof" as authority for their proposition that the "if" clause has to have a subjunctive, as if any departure from the lyrics of a musical would render a sentence ungrammatical.

I have no doubt that the recommended treatment for such people in Psychiatry 101 has to be nothing less than the combined restraints of both the straitjacket and the padded cell.


EDITOR'S NOTE [16 October 2015]:

Nadine Yap has apologised to the teacher and has admitted that she and the rabble on her Facebook page were wrong while the teacher was right. But one intrepid woman insisted that the test question was wrong and so as not to flood Nadine Yap's facebook page, I told the woman that I would respond to her comment on a further blog post. After I wrote it, I was told by friends that this is by far the most comprehensible post on the matter. Here it is:

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing Part 3

Brouhaha in Singapore over Nothing

It's amazing how swiftly and firmly Singaporeans react. Even when they have no clue what they are talking about. A few days ago, a mother posted on her Facebook wall her daughter's answer script which was corrected by the English teacher and the post went viral. Many netizens slammed the teacher and a few have even made the suggestion that the Ministry of Education should take action against the teacher. You can read the report in the Straits Times.

If there is one thing I can't tolerate, it's the bullying of a primary school teacher when he or she has done nothing wrong. In this blog, I have excoriated the Speak Good English Movement, blasted MOE's self-proclaimed language experts, criticised a senior language teacher at Singapore's National Institute of Education who has written a book on Singlish and exposed the Vice-Dean of a local university for shocking and unpardonable errors in English but so far, the Ministry of Education has not even bothered to look into the matter. These people play a crucial role in the teaching of English in Singapore. Some of them teach our school teachers.  And the Speak Good English Movement arrogates to itself the role of the nation's language watchdog.  You can imagine how ruinous it can be to the standard of English in Singapore for these people to blunder over even basic grammar and as I have shown in numerous examples in this blog, they even go to the extent of butchering perfectly correct sentences and substituting their own erroneous ones. If you are interested in having a look at my user-friendly, one-page summary of all the blog posts I have written on their errors which I have conveniently and neatly categorised (and there are more than 50 such articles in this blog alone), please click here.

A few days ago, a mother posted on her Facebook wall a test question given to her daughter's class. Here's the question:

If you are celebrating a family member's birthday, how do you plan to celebrate it?

The child gave this answer:

If I were to plan a birthday, I would plan it for my mother. Instead of a cake I would make cupcakes.

The teacher corrected it to:

If I am to plan a birthday, I will plan it for my mother. Instead of getting a cake I will make cupcakes.

The mother's post was immediately followed by a flurry of angry comments from readers. Many of them went on the basis that the child was using the subjunctive and so she was grammatically correct. Others went further to say that the teacher's correction was ungrammatical. I was amazed at the surprising lack of knowledge of simple grammar among these people who saw fit to comment on the Facebook wall.

Here's one good example of how they reasoned:

Most of those who commented on the Facebook page say exactly the same thing. I was about to despair when I heard the first voice of reason:
---------

I thought to myself, "Go on. Don't just stop there." But the first woman wasn't having any of this. She chimed in:

Again, Lydia got it right.

Jo should just stick to singing German arias. She would not know what a subjunctive is even if it were served to her on a platter with flickering neon lights all round. It's people like her who irritate me. They are loud but ignorant. She's just like the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore and if you follow the link I've given above, you will see more than 50 errors that they have made and these are errors that a child of ten who has a reasonably good education should not make.

Nadine Yap, the mother, then went off on a tangent.  This is what she wrote:

Her facebook page is a sad illustration of how clueless most English-speaking people are about grammar. Nadine Yap raised the totally irrelevant point that the test question did not specifically demand that the present tense be used. And she couldn't even see that she had totally missed the point.

For hypothetical conditions with present and future references, where the past appears in the conditional clause, the matrix clause must have a past modal. If it's a past perfective in the conditional clause, the modal in the matrix clause has to be a past perfective. That must be clear to any English-speaking person.

The correctness of Nadine's daughter's answer as far as grammar goes is NOT the issue. Most of the people who commented on her facebook page and slammed the poor teacher made this very mistake. This is how I think they processed the matter in their heads. They looked at the girl's answer and they looked at the teacher's corrected answer and they thought about the subjunctive which they have the skimpiest knowledge of. From their comments, it's clear that they are not sure when the subjunctive should be used or how to use it effectively. I'm pretty sure they don't know the different kinds of conditional clauses and when to use each of them. And yet they have the audacity to comment with seeming authority and to castigate the teacher.

What the teacher has done is to make minimal changes to what the child wrote in her answer. The teacher probably wanted to tell the child that she should preserve in her answer the tense used in the question. And that is what an exemplary teacher should do.

If the question is "If you are celebrating a family member's birthday, how do you plan to celebrate it?" the answer should not be in the subjunctive. It's not for the student to change the purport of the question. But it's perfectly all right for a child to make a mistake. It's the teacher's job to correct her. But it's not all right for the clueless public to go on a verbal rampage against the innocent teacher. What really puzzles me is the uncalled-for vitriol against the teacher from those who saw fit to comment on the Facebook thread.  How can they not know that there is a difference between "If you are celebrating ...." and "If you were celebrating...."? I have, just as an example, singled out our aria-singing woman who got herself all tied up in knots over when a subjunctive should be used but the rest are equally ignorant. Isn't this basic grammar? How can almost everyone on Nadine Yap's facebook page be so singularly illiterate? Many of them insisted that the question should have employed a subjunctive. How could they have been so united in their error? Is this the modern-day version of a mob attack? All it takes is for some hapless victim to be falsely accused of some crime and the whole village will descend on him and lynch him without a moment's thought.

When ignoramuses get together, they can create quite a din as they did in Nadine Yap's facebook thread. They can do a lot of harm to an innocent teacher who was just doing her job. I have been denouncing the Speak Good English Movement for a long time because I really believe they are not fit to say anything about the English language. They have shown themselves on countless occasions to be wrong on even elementary aspects of English grammar. I firmly believe that people should only talk about what they are familiar with. I would never make a comment on Urdu poetry because I know nothing about it. I really hope everyone will stop making comments on things they know nothing about. Common decency should tell us to keep our lips sealed.

It can be very traumatic for a primary school teacher to be at the receiving end of so much vitriolic diatribe. I hope he or she will just ignore these ignorant but loud critics.


EDITOR'S NOTE:

On realising that not many people followed what I have written here, I took the liberty to write a second part to this article. You may access it here.

Jesus and Lee Kuan Yew

In a video that got 16-year-old Amos Yee into trouble for his insults aimed at Singapore's much beloved founding father Lee Kuan Yew, he likened Lee to Jesus and he said they were both "power-hungry", "malicious" and "horrible".

Left: Jesus cleansing the leper painting in a Sicily cathedral

Right: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father of Singapore

But was Jesus really all that? If Amos Yee's description of Jesus is correct, his criminal conviction for having offended Christians' religious sentiments surely cannot stand. Because if Jesus was really what Yee says he was, and if there is biblical scholarship that supports him, merely repeating what Bible scholars say cannot be a criminal offence against Christianity.

It's only fair and right if I state at the outset that I am a church-going, church-serving Christian but as always, I will examine the facts rationally and fairly. But before we examine the person of Jesus, it's important for us to understand that like all religious figures, Jesus can be looked at in his two personas. The first is the historical Jesus and the other is the Jesus of faith.  The Jesus of faith is the Jesus created by the church. He is imbued with super-human power and is fully divine. He is also fully man. "Very God and very man" as the Creed tells us.  The Jesus of faith is also the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity and his properties and nature can't be questioned but are to be accepted as dogma. That's the bummer about religion. There's no room for critical thinking. But nobody outside the church is interested in the Jesus of faith. If at all anyone is interested in Jesus, it's the historical Jesus that he's interested in.

The historical Jesus, assuming he exists, is the Jesus who really lived in Palestine some 2000 years ago.  We cannot project the Jesus of faith into a historical setting. The historical Jesus has to be gleaned from various sources and no historian is going to accept any authority, be it so high an authority as the Church, to lay down dogmas about Jesus if they're not supported by evidence. We have to examine the facts.

Because Jesus was never mentioned in non-religious sources and the very few disputed sources where he is mentioned have been shown and accepted by Bible scholars to be forgeries by early Christians, there can be serious doubt about the historicity of Jesus. However, most historians are prepared to accept that Jesus really did exist and that is the view I will adopt for this post. But bear in mind that I do not totally dismiss the arguments of those who deny the historicity of Jesus. I admit they are compelling; but for the purposes of this article, I will take the position that Jesus did exist in history.

Because of the paucity of evidence for Jesus' existence in non-religious texts, we will have to examine the Holy Gospels in order to understand the historical Jesus. Now, you may legitimately ask that if I want to find out the character of the historical Jesus, surely going to the Holy Gospels will only reveal the Jesus of faith and not the historical Jesus. Surely the Gospels will only say good things of Jesus and it is unlikely that the Gospel writers would portray Jesus as anything but the ideal God-man, compassionate and loving and slow to anger. But because there is no secular record of Jesus in order for historians to base their assessment of Jesus, historians have no alternative but to seek recourse to the only available accounts of Jesus ie the Holy Gospels and they have to look for areas in the Gospels where the writers, despite their eagerness to describe a perfect Jesus, somehow inadvertently but truthfully disclosed the other side of Jesus. This is not a simple task. To look for the Jesus with warts and all in a religious text that glorifies Jesus as God is indeed a Herculean task.

Now supposing some early biblical manuscripts do show a description of Jesus that is less than ideal or even downright nasty. And subsequent manuscripts show a different reading and a kinder word is used to describe Jesus. How would you deal with that? Naturally, a historian will have to accept that it's more likely for the original writing to contain that nasty word and a subsequent scribe (always a monk) altered the word to reflect a Christology that is more acceptable to the teachings of the Church.  So the nasty word is looked at very seriously by historians as more likely to be the original portrayal of Jesus.  And that is of course fair.

As it turns out, there are countless examples especially in the earlier texts and in the older manuscripts where Jesus is portrayed in a rather poor light but I will give only two examples from the Holy Gospels in order for us to understand the historical Jesus' true character.  If you are really interested in this subject and would like more examples, you may want to read the books of Bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a renowned Bible scholar and historian. Trained in Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman continued his theological education in Princeton under the great Bible scholar, Bruce Metzger.

AN ANGRY JESUS?

I will first read from the Gospel according to St Mark. Mark's gospel is accepted by all Bible scholars to be the oldest Gospel of the four. Many scholars accept that the writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke copied large chunks from Mark and there is compelling textual evidence to support this. Hence, to understand the person of the historical Jesus, it is always more accurate to look at what the earliest accounts say of him. Later books may be less accurate because the writer had had time to think of what prevailing church doctrines were and there was always the temptation to write a more sugar-coated account of Jesus.

In Mark 1, we read of Jesus healing the leper. I will first quote from the KJV:

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

We read in this passage that Jesus was "filled with compassion" when approached by a leper for healing. This may seem like a simple statement of fact to us lay folks but scholars have agonised over this for a long time. You see, the Koine Greek word for "filled with compassion" is SPLANGNISTHEIS (I'm on my phone and I have no access to the Greek alphabet and we'll have to make do with a transliteration). This word is found in many of the later manuscripts. But the earlier and more reliable manuscripts use a different word,  ORGISTHEIS which means "filled with anger" or "becoming angry".  Our earliest text, Codex Bezae which is supported by 3 Latin manuscripts and which textual experts concede goes back to at least the 2nd century uses this word which describes Jesus as angry.

Modern Bible translations today which seek to honestly and faithfully use words as close to the original manuscripts or at least adopt the readings in older and more reliable manuscripts retain the original "angry" when describing the emotion of Jesus at this scene. For example, the NIV which is a modern translation and one used by the majority of churches and Christians all over the world reads in Mark 1:40, 41:

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’

So, the NIV retains the word used in the most reliable manuscripts and describes Jesus as indignant.

But why was Jesus indignant? Here is where Christian apologists come in. These are defenders of the faith and they will spring into action the moment there is anything that may raise a doubt among the faithful in any way. Some apologists suggest that perhaps Jesus was angry with the disease. But that doesn't make any sense and there is no textual support for this. Others say Jesus was angry with the law that makes a leper an outcast in society. But that again doesn't make sense because it's God's law, the Law of Moses, that strips a leper of all his rights in society and makes him a total outcast. Further in verse 44 Jesus commands the leper to observe the same Law of Moses after he was healed so Jesus couldn't have been raving at the Law of God.

It is interesting to note that the earliest gospel, Mark, also describes Jesus as "angry" in at least two other occasions but when the writers of Matthew and Luke copied the text, they copied everything but left out any reference to Jesus' anger.

In Mark 3:5 Jesus is described as angry in the story of the healing of the man with a shrivelled hand but in the corresponding story in Luke's Gospel we see that the writer of Luke copied almost verbatim from Mark but left out any reference to Jesus' anger. Matthew re-wrote that story and he too left out the description of Jesus as angry.

Similarly, in Mark 10:14, we read of Jesus being angry yet again. The corresponding story as related by the writers of Matthew and Luke completely omitted any references to Jesus' characteristic anger.

There are many other references to Jesus' quickness to anger even on occasions that do not merit it but these would be beyond the scope of this blog post. This is not a theological thesis.

So we have a portrayal from the Holy Gospels of Jesus as one who is quick to anger. When most people would be filled with compassion for a leper, Jesus was filled with anger.


A RACIST JESUS?

This time, we don't even have to delve into the older manuscripts. We only need to look at one of our canonical gospels. That's because this story about Jesus was not removed in transmission and remains in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 15. You can find it in ANY version of the Bible. I'll print it here from the NIV from verse 21:

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’ 

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, ‘Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’ 

The woman came and knelt before him. ‘Lord, help me!’ she said. He replied, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’   

‘Yes it is, Lord,’ she said. ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ 

Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed at that moment.

This is not an easy passage for the church to deal with. I have read every attempt at explaining away Jesus' racism and cruelty and I must say none of them is valid. Some apologists have tried to show that calling the woman a dog was done as a term of endearment. I'm sure I need not explain to my readers how insane such a suggestion is.

First, Jesus ignored the woman who was crying out and begging for mercy. Notice that Jesus' disciples did not once ask Jesus to attend to the woman. Instead they asked him to chase her away. Jesus' reply was that he would only attend to Jews. But the feisty woman knelt before Jesus and begged him for help. This time, he couldn't ignore her. But what did he say to her? You can read it for yourself Jesus' shocking words that I can't even bear to repeat.

It is well-known that Jews at the time of Jesus would never talk to a Canaanite woman. They were racists of course. Jesus showed himself to be no different from the average racist Jew in the first century. Calling a Gentile a dog was common in those days. In fact, even today, you may hear the same word used on Arabs by Jewish extremists.

THE HISTORICAL JESUS

For the historian, the historical Jesus was most probably an apocalyptic zealot. There were many such zealots in Palestine at the time of Jesus. In fact about a hundred years before Jesus, there was one such zealot by the same name as Jesus who was crucified for treason. Those who deny the historicity of Jesus believe that Jesus was a myth created a hundred years after the earlier Jesus was crucified. It is not within the ambit of this post to examine such a claim.  All I wish to say here is that the historical Jesus, as the evidence stands today, may very well be an apocalyptic zealot.

An apocalyptic zealot believed that the Romans had to be thrown out of the holy land and a Messiah would be raised by God to lead the people in an insurgency against the Romans. There is a great deal of textual evidence for the argument that Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and a case can be made for such a claim based solely on the Holy Gospels.

When someone calls Jesus a horrible person, he is referring to this historical Jesus. Some Christians may be annoyed because they fail to see that the criticism is not directed at the Jesus of faith, the godhead in the Holy Trinity but at the historical Jesus who, even from the two passages in the canonical Gospels that I quoted above, does appear quite horrible.

AMOS YEE'S "GRAMMAR ACCORDING TO A SCHOOL DROPOUT"

I'm really not interested in the petty juvenile dust-up between Amos Yee, the infamous school dropout, and just about everybody else in Singapore. But as I have said many times in my blog, I'm more interested in impersonal concepts such as religion and atheism and in this respect, I don't think I will differ much from Amos Yee except that he obviously is quite unable to see the bigger picture but that's not the purpose of this post and so I won't digress any further.

I happened to read Yahoo News recently and I came across an article about Amos Yee which I wouldn't have read if my eyes hadn't focussed on a small paragraph about grammar. Yahoo News says quite unashamedly that the article "originally appeared on Vulcan Post". So I went to Vulcan Post to read the original article on Amos Yee and grammar. This is the paragraph that caught my interest:

Philip Ng on the meaning of wealth

A friend of mine just posted on Facebook this article which was published almost a year ago about a talk on wealth given by Philip Ng, CEO of Far East Organisation, and one of the richest men in Singapore. Instead of talking about the strategies in accumulating wealth, Ng, who is a devout Christian, quoted St Matthew 19:24 which reads, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

This is a story from the Holy Gospel about Jesus' meeting with the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what he has to do to "have eternal life". Jesus' reply is that he has to do good and obey the commandments. The rich man explains that he has done all that from his childhood. Jesus then says he has failed in one area - he should sell ALL that he has and give them all to the poor. The man is unable to do that and he walks away sadly. Jesus then turns to his disciples and tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

If you look at the comments at the bottom of the article, you will see the comments by some of the readers who expressed surprise. Was Philip Ng going to sell all he had to give to the poor? Obviously not. Then why did he quote this part of the Holy Gospel?

Here is where non-Christians, quite rightly and reasonably, do not understand how a Christian thinks and I don't blame them one bit. Although I'm a devout Christian myself, I must confess that we Christians are so conditioned that we are unable to see anything that is wrong with our Gospel stories or how they don't gel with reality or how much at variance biblical teachings are from our own personal lives. We have through years of conditioning become so inured to biblical errors and discrepancies that we don't really see them at all. And when they are shown to us, we will find some way, however ludicrous, to justify the biblical text.

I'll tell you how a Christian mind works. This applies to followers of all other religions too but I'm more familiar with my own religion. I'll take an example from an article I wrote in this blog years ago. As I've shown in that article, Jesus promises in at least 5 different places in various gospels that his Second Coming would take place in the lifetimes of some of his disciples and hearers. Apart from these unambiguous words of Jesus, this is also how the early Christians and St Paul understood Christ's Second Coming to be - while most of them were still alive or in any case not later than the first century.

But as I wrote in that article, some scribes even tried to alter some of these verses around 200AD. They were worried that since it'd been 200 years after Christ and he still hadn't come, how likely was his coming, given that he had broken his own promise in the Gospels? But it's been 2,000 years now and we still continue in the same faith without a problem. How is that possible?

You see, the religious mind works this way. You put the cart before the horse. You first decide that the Bible is the word of God and the Holy Gospels tell only the Gospel truth. If reality tells you that certain things didn't come to pass as foretold by Jesus, it CANNOT be that Jesus was wrong because after all, he is God Almighty himself and Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And the Gospels can't be wrong either because they are a part of God's holy word.

So proper Christian exegesis will have you understand that Jesus DIDN'T MEAN that he would be coming back in the lifetime of the disciples. Why? Because it didn't happen so he couldn't have meant that. This has led some Bible scholars to concoct a principle of interpretation which is sometimes called the Principle of Compression. According to biblical scholars, Ridderbos and Leon Morris, prophecy usually compresses time so that the time of Jesus' resurrection up to his Second Coming is compressed to read as one event. So, Jesus' resurrection which the disciples must have seen (if you believe the Gospels) and Jesus' Second Coming which they didn't see because it hasn't happened yet - even though separated by more than 2000 years - are essentially one event. Leon Morris says, "They would see the early manifestation in the resurrection and what followed immediately, though the final fulfilment of the words is yet future."

But of course this is terribly dishonest. Jesus says in the Gospels that his hearers would see him coming in the clouds in all his glory with the angels and these scholars are saying that although Jesus' hearers didn't see that, they must have seen his resurrection and let's pretend both events (the resurrection and the Second Coming) are one and the same in order to make the words of Jesus true.

Leon Morris writes further, "Some such understanding of Jesus' words is surely required." Why is it required? Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't be telling the truth.

This exercise may seem strange to the atheist who is not familiar with the need of the religious person to justify the claims of his religion.

So when Philip Ng quotes Matthew 19:24, he fails to consider the fact that his words would be quoted to non-believers and they will find it hard to understand what he's saying.

From the clear words of Jesus, a rich man CANNOT enter the kingdom of God. He can't have eternal life (to use the rich young ruler's words). There is no mistake about this. It means the same thing whether you are reading the English translation or you're reading it in Koine Greek. But what constitutes "rich"? Bible scholars and historians are agreed on this. In the eyes of anyone living in the time of Jesus, all of us who can read my blog on their computers or iPads or tablets or mobile phones are filthy rich. We are all barred from entering heaven and there's no way you can honestly dispute that and of course Philip Ng, by virtue of his immense wealth, is barred a thousandfold.

So the Christian looks at the verse again and he tries to re-interpret it. One way is to pretend that the eye of the needle is really some other object and camels do go through it. This is a common way for Christian apologists to justify or alter the meaning of a biblical verse and its falsehood is usually not apparent to the deeply religious who are desperate to grasp at any straw. But if you read the entire passage, it's obvious Jesus is saying no rich man can enter heaven and that's that.

I recall reading in one of James Joyce's novels a priest reading this same passage in church. Joyce intends it to be satirical and I remember feeling rather edgy as I read the novel because naturally this is one of the many passages we Christians are uncomfortable about when it's handled by a non-believer.

If you look at the historical context, you will understand why the Gospel passage says that. All known writings at the time about the Christian community in the first century tell us that Christianity was the religion of slaves and very poor people. Even the early Church Fathers accepted this without question. Certainly at the time when the Synoptic Gospels were written, every Christian was poor. Those who had money or property had to sell away everything they had and give it to the Christian community. Early Christians were perfect Communists. This can be seen in Acts 5 where Ananias sold his property but kept a portion for himself and gave the rest to the church. Because he deceived the church into thinking he didn't keep any proceeds for himself, he was instantly struck dead by God, or so the story goes.

Given that this was how the early church was like, it's not surprising to read in the Gospel of Jesus slamming rich people. But of course unknown to the Gospel writers, the church became very successful and one of the richest men in history, the Roman Emperor, even accepted the faith 300 years later and then suddenly, this passage becomes painfully anachronistic. But the religious mind is very malleable. Christians no longer look upon the rich as automatically debarred from heaven. We merely say this passage is a reminder to us not to love Mammon and to hold our wealth as stewards for God. Hey, that's not what Jesus says in the passage but we have more important things (such as our investments) to think about.

Thinking of Charlie

Yesterday in church, the sermon, as expected, touched on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. But the vicar while condemning the massacre as totally repugnant to all that is holy exhorted the faithful to turn the other cheek and to bridle the tongue as the epistle of St James tells us to do. The Christian duty not to cause offence must override our desire for free speech.

I thought I should refer to the sermon in my blog and so I took a

stealthy pic. I hope the parishioner seated next to me will forgive

me for the impertinence but he's obviously the prayerful kind

who would be happy to dish out forgiveness quite liberally.

As a Christian, I am unable to fault the sermon in any way. Christianity always places the Christian at the losing end in any situation. He's to turn the other cheek, if any asks for his coat, he should give his shirt as well, if asked to walk a mile, a good Christian should do two. If there is a religion of peace on this planet, Christianity certainly is the best candidate for such an honour.

But the Charlie Hebdo editors are not Christians. I should have said "were" since most of them were brutally gunned down. Even if they were Christians, so what? It may be right that the Christian should go out of his way not to cause offence to others but what has that got to do with the massacre? It may be right for those of us who were properly brought up in polite society to greet one another when we meet but any one of us can flout the rules of courtesy any time we wish. The correct response to a rude person is a frown and nothing more.

That's precisely my point about the Charlie Hebdo episode. The editors were just guilty of rudeness. But it's their job as the editors of a satirical newspaper to be rude. They were just doing their job. Charlie Hebdo has satirised just about every religion on this planet and nobody has even bothered with them or given them any notice until the two Muslim brothers slaughtered them.

What I find truly outrageous is there is nothing offensive about the cartoons of Muhammad that the newspaper published. Pope Francis recently remarked that if someone swore at another person's mother, he would probably receive a punch in the face. But that's a silly remark because a person's mother is not a historical figure. Muhammad is and like all historical figures, he is naturally subject to the same treatment as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, St Paul, Buddha and many other religious figures from Zeus to Joseph Smith.

Making religious jokes is common anywhere in the world. When I was an altar boy, I made a lot of jokes about almost every sacred object in church. The chief brunt of my jokes was the holy oil which came in vials from the Bishop and which my vicar used to treat with an inordinate amount of respect. Years later, when I taught Sunday School in church, the other Sunday School teachers and I (and sometimes the students as well) would come up with the best religious jokes, some of which were uproariously funny.

When I was very young, I even engaged in inter-denominational banter with a classmate who was an altar boy in a different church. Those from my church would make jokes about his church and we'd tease him about being "touched" by his priest (the notoriety of his church was well known even in the days when I was a young lad). One day, he told me a joke which was quite good. A nun went for confession and she whispered to the priest that she was once a prostitute. The priest turned ashen and hit his fist against the wall of the confessional. "What did you say?" he roared. The nun was trembling in fear and she repeated her words, "I'm sorry but I was once a prostitute".  The priest took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Phew! That's quite all right, child," he said. "I thought you said you were once a Protestant".

I couldn't help laughing at the joke but I immediately cooked up another joke and this time it was a boy who went to his Protestant vicar for auricular confession and he said he was once a catamite. You probably know the rest of the story. Don't ask me how I knew the word "catamite" as a young boy but I assure you the priests of my church were all happily married men.

But it's not just Christians who have a sense of humour. The followers of many of the world's major religions do not treat the divine with murderous seriousness. There is even a dish in the Far East blasphemously called "Buddha Jumps over the Wall". That's the dish that is reputed to be so tasty that Buddha himself had to jump over a garden wall to taste it. If you're thinking of ordering it the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, perish the thought. It's a most disgusting broth that smells like a Chinese medicinal shop. Buddha may have jumped over the wall to eat it but I would jump over a wall and several rivers to be away from it.

After what has happened in Paris, you would think that Muslims are the only ones who have no sense of humour. I don't know what the percentage is of Muslims who have a sense of humour but let me tell a story from my own experience. There was a time in my life when I was terribly insensitive and would say the wrong things without realising it. I was chatting with a Muslim friend who was extremely pious. He's an educated and respectable man who later became a member of Parliament but his daughters were all educated in a Muslim religious school. I noticed that his wedding band was worn on the finger of his right hand which is of course unusual. In reply to my query, he explained that the prophet was known to have worn his wedding ring on a finger of his right hand. At that moment, a very witty thought came to my head and I said something really brilliant but it would not just be lost on someone who had no sense of humour; it would probably offend him. There was another friend of ours who heard our conversation and he jokingly said that my Muslim friend might just pull out a dagger and stab me with it. Now, that is the kind of unfair opinion many people had of Muslims even then. But my Muslim friend laughed good-naturedly at my little joke and he said that I was factually correct since Muhammad really had twelve wives and would presumably have twelve rings.

A lot of people treat Muslims as if they were all terrorists waiting with scimitars to hack you to pieces which is really quite unfortunate. Many people are unable to separate Muslims from Muslim terrorists and these are the people who are doing Muslims a huge disservice. I have been rebuked in the past for slamming Muslim terrorists by non-Muslims who mistakenly thought that insulting terrorists was synonymous with insulting Muslims.

But some Muslims who try to play up the "offensiveness" of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by comparing them with jokes about the Holocaust are in fact doing their religion a disservice. There is obviously a huge difference between a joke about 6 million Jews who were slaughtered and a cartoon of Muhammad. Holocaust jokes cannot be likened to a mere cartoon of Muhammad. A better analogy of a Holocaust joke would be a joke about the cruel ethnic cleansing by the Serbs in which many Muslims were killed. That would be an example of a truly inappropriate joke and no newspaper however satirical would publish such a joke. Not even Charlie Hebdo. But when educated Muslims bring up Holocaust jokes and pit them against Muhammad cartoons, one cannot help but wonder if their inability to see the huge disparity between the two might have arisen from the same innate anti-Semitism that drove the Charlie Hebdo murderers to attack a Jewish supermarket.

The world should never treat all Muslims as terrorists. There are many Muslims who are wonderful people. We must always distinguish a Muslim terrorist from a Muslim. We must not treat Muslims as if an insensitive word would mean a dagger to our throats. We must treat Muslims like we do people of other religions or no religion. The Charlie Hebdo editors did precisely that. They wanted to treat Muslims no differently from people of other faiths. They have satirised the church, the Pope and Jesus himself. If they could draw cartoons of Jesus who is God himself in Christianity, why shouldn't they satirise Muhammad who was only human and not deified in Islam? Unfortunately, the carnage would only blur further the line between Muslims and Muslim terrorists in the minds of many people. There may be no logic in that but that's how people will think.

Singapore - 7th cleanest government in the whole world.

Congratulations to the Singapore Government for its spotlessly clean governance! Singapore is the 7th least corrupt country in the world.

This is the result released today by Transparency International.

Only some Scandinavian countries and NZ beat us. Singapore trumps all other Asian and American countries. Denmark is No. 1. Canada No. 10 and Germany is No. 12. UK occupies No. 14. Japan is 15th and the US 17th. Disgraceful Malaysia occupies the same place as Samoa at No. 50. Indonesia is of course worse - it's No. 107. North Korea and Somalia are at the bottom, both sharing the 174th place.

Cost of living in Singapore - is it really that bad?

I usually throw away letters that are addressed to "the resident". It's usually nothing more than rubbish from real estate agents.

But this morning, when I saw this letter in my letter box, I opened it up and was about to throw it away when I saw postage stamps in the envelope.

This is a sweetener from the postal authorities to increase the local postal charge to 30 cents. That's about Euro 0.15.

A lot of people complain about how high the living costs in Singapore are but are their complaints just? With the implementation of the Certificate of Entitlement system, car ownership in Singapore is most certainly the costliest luxury one can afford and it will be hard to find a car anywhere else in the world that costs more than half the cost an equivalent car in Singapore. Yes, it's that bad and I don't think I'm exaggerating even though I must admit I'm not a fan of motor vehicles and I know very little about them. Apart from the price of cars, housing is extremely costly too.

While car and housing costs are among the highest in the world, the cost of living in Singapore is extremely low. I have just gone this morning for breakfast at the hawker centre (the official term is now "food centre" although I still prefer the original name that is redolent of the history of this beautiful country) and my meal of nasi lemak (rice cooked in fragrant coconut milk with a fried chicken wing, anchovies, an egg, cucumber and the delicious sambal) and a cup of tea cost less than Euro 1.50. It was about Euro 1.20 to be precise.

Although houses are expensive, there are many cheaper options. In his recent National Day speech, the Prime Minister gave the full breakdown of the cost of public housing in Singapore.  I have forgotten the details but I recall it was something that was quite affordable for everyone. And public housing in Singapore isn't like public housing in other countries. Government flats here look very much like flats in luxurious private condominiums.

I have strong views against the car culture and the overuse of fossil fuel and I think I won't be totally dishonest if I say that to all intents and purposes I have never owned and will never own a car. One can get by quite comfortably in Singapore on public transport which is cheap and extremely efficient. For all the complaints against public transport in Singapore, the fact remains that there is hardly any breakdown. For every single breakdown in the MRT system in Singapore, there are probably a hundred breakdowns in the Underground in London and the British Rail.

There is also a healthier alternative which I always advocate. Ride a bicycle. Singapore is small enough for one to go practically anywhere on the bicycle.

It's very good of the postal authorities to give every household a booklet of postage stamps while announcing its price hike.  But we must bear in mind that it's a price increase to only SGD 0.30 or Euro 0.15.  Let's get real. In most countries, you've got to pay ten times that amount just to use a public toilet which is almost always free in Singapore and when you have to pay (which is not common), it's usually only Euro 0.05.

Is Obama right? Is ISIS really non-Muslim?

In his recent address, President Obama makes it clear that the US will strike ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State and demolish them. He added that ISIL is not Muslim. Is he right? Is the Islamic State really non-Islamic?

You will probably notice that the only people who declare ISIS to be non-Muslim are non-Muslims themselves. I have yet to see a single Muslim group or council that declares the members of ISIL or ISIS to be non-Muslim. That is something that has puzzled me for a long time. For example, why are suicide bombers and Muslim terrorists NEVER ex-communicated? I've been told that there is no ex-communication in Islam but that's not true. We know how Muslims in Egypt have tried repeatedly to get Nawal El Saadawi excommunicated and her crime was merely the writing of a book on women's rights. Why then is there NEVER a single attempt by moderate Muslims to excommunicate Muslim terrorists, members of ISIS or Osama bin Laden when he was still alive? This reluctance or even refusal to excommunicate terrorists is one thing. But you will recall that when Osama was announced to have died, many moderate Muslims were anxious if he had been given proper Muslim rites in the disposal of his body.

For a long time, I could not understand why moderate Muslims behaved in this manner. After all, I can imagine if a Christian were to commit even a fraction of the carnage that Osama bin Laden had inflicted on the human race, not only would churches renounce him as a non-Christian and instantly excommunicate him and have nothing to do with him, it would be very hard to find a single church that would be wiling to conduct his funeral upon his death.

I decided to do a little research of my own. I went into Muslim websites and Muslim forums (the non-radical ones) just to understand a little about the Muslim mindset.

You see, as long as a Muslim recites the Shahada and maintains himself to be a Muslim, no other Muslim is permitted to question the validity of his faith. Another Muslim may not agree with his actions but he must still treat the person he disagrees with as a fellow Muslim brother or sister and accord him or her the full privileges of a Muslim. Osama bin Laden killed thousands of people in his lifetime. Muslims may be quick to point out that the Quran abhors the killing of innocent people. To kill an innocent person is akin to killing the whole of humanity, they are quick to quote from one of their holy books. Yes, Osama might have been guilty of countless murders but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Osama recited the Shahada (probably more faithfully than most moderate Muslims I would imagine) and of course he regarded himself as a faithful Muslim. That made Osama a Muslim in the eyes of the entire Muslim world (moderates included) till his very death.

The same can be said of every member of ISIS and every Muslim terrorist. Nawal El Saadawi is different. Because of her progressive writings especially on women's rights, it's easy for radical Muslims to suspect that perhaps she has given up her religious beliefs. But Saadawi in fact countered the accusations of her detractors and her excommunication was overturned.

Takfir or the act of declaring a Muslim to be a kafir or a non-Muslim is a very serious matter. If it's incorrect, it's considered a major haram and is akin to blasphemy. As long as someone continues to recite the Shahada and declares himself a Muslim, he is a Muslim and that's that.

Let's now turn our attention back to ISIS and President Obama's statement that they aren't Muslim. ISIS members probably recite the Shahada more than the average Muslim. The Shahada is written on their black flags and the Shahada is recited every time they cut off the heads of their victims in the videos that I could not get myself to sit through. There is no question that they recite the Shahada.

So while President Obama and other non-Muslims may be quick to declare the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims, Muslims on the other hand are understandably silent. They may condemn the actions of ISIS as wrong and sinful but you will never catch them declaring the members of ISIS to be non-Muslims. And if ISIS members die, the wider Muslim community would expect that their bodies be given Muslim rites. As long as they continue to recite the Shahada and ISIS members do recite it ever so often and even while they are committing the most heinous atrocitites, they are brothers and sisters in the Muslim faith to the wider Muslim community which includes the moderates.

President Obama would do well to find out more about Islam before making hasty pronouncements that the Muslim world does not accept.

Wrong charge, wrong conviction

If you have been following the news on Malaysia's prosecution of a group of naturists who went nude on a deserted and remote beach of Penang, you will know that six of them have been convicted and sentenced to one month's jail and fine of Malaysian Ringgit 5,000.00. The remaining four have claimed trial.

A group of nudists that included Malaysians, Singaporeans, Burmese, an Indian and a Filipino gathered in May this year on a remote beach in Penang for what they grandiloquently called the Penang International Nude Games Extravaganza. Activities that included a running relay on the beach and kettle bell workouts round a campfire were carried out. Subsequently, someone in the group posted a video of what happened on the beach on vimeo and the video went viral in Malaysian social media. It caught the attention of the Chief Minister of Penang and because it happened in Penang, the ruling party in Malaysia took the opportunity to lash out at Penang which is ruled by an Opposition Party. There was a huge exchange between the Chief Minister and the Federal Government, both parties condemning the incident and in the meanwhile, Muslim groups in this Muslim-majority state lodged police reports.

We must bear in mind that the incident was seen by absolutely nobody. The nudists got clearance from the park security who even got food for them. When the furore blew up in Malaysia, the park watchman claimed he tried to get them to dress up when all of them went nude but they refused. This of course defies belief since no nudist in Malaysia would dare to go naked against the express orders of a park watchman especially when they were staying overnight on the beach and they needed the help of the watchman and the boatman to get them back to civilization.  And a simple phone call from the park watchman would have brought a battalion of policemen to the beach. Don't forget, this is Malaysia where the police spring to life when there is a nude scene while they seem to slumber through murder and robbery cases. The fact that there was no objection from the watchman can also be seen from the fact that the nudists planned another event at the same place scheduled for 5 December this year. If the watchman had raised any objection not only would they not have dared to stay overnight on the beach and continued their activities the next day, they would certainly not have planned for another event later this year at the same place. Even the authorities were sceptical of the watchman's claim. It was reported that the police spotted from the video someone who looked like the watchman helping the nudists with the campfire. The police must have pretty sharp eyes; I don't see it myself.

So, nobody saw the nudists when they were in Penang and complaints were only made two months after the event when Muslim groups saw the video and lodged police reports. Let's examine the charge against the accused in the Magistrate's Court.

Except for one participant of the Nude Games who uploaded the video online and had an additional charge against him which I won't be dealing with, all participants were charged under Section 294(a) of the Malaysian Penal Code. I understand from one of the accused who claimed trial that there are no other charges. Section 294 reads:

Leaving (b) aside, the section under which they are charged, reads, "Whoever, to the annoyance of others, does any obscene act in any public place shall be punished..."

I have not researched the matter and I have never had occasion to deal with this area of the law but I believe where the accused were at on the remote beach in Penang would constitute a "public place". However, if my memory isn't faulty, I believe case law is clear that mere nudity does not constitute an "obscene act". Doing relay runs or workouts in the nude cannot be considered obscene acts. When you take a shower in your bathroom, you are not doing an obscene act in a private place.

The other pertinent point is the words of the section are clear. "Whoever, to the annoyance of others, DOES any obscene act..."

It is clear that the act committed must be contemporaneous with the causing of annoyance to others. Who were annoyed by the act so that they filed police reports? The Muslim groups. When were they annoyed? Two months or so after the event. They were annoyed after they saw a video posted online. Notice that the verb, "does", is in the present tense. If the annoyance of others arose from something someone did two months ago, this section does not apply at all.

It is quite obvious that the purpose of this section which is titled "OBSCENE SONGS" was intended to punish rowdy sailors who sang obscene songs and ballads and probably performed lewd and obscene acts to the annoyance of the general public. It is also an appropriate section for flashers who expose themselves to women with intent to outrage their modesty, possibly as a perverted means of satisfying their warped sexual craving.  It is not meant for nudists who go naked on a deserted beach and have taken every precaution not to be seen by others and are in fact not seen by anybody at all.

I understand from one of the accused that at least two of the four who are claiming trial are seriously considering throwing in the towel at the next mention on 16 October. I cannot attest to the accuracy of what I have been told but one of them is purported to have said that she was worried that the Malaysian government would never let them go even if they are not guilty of the offence for which they are charged. This is very sad. I cannot believe the Malaysian government for all its faults (and there are many) would go so far as to tamper with justice. If there is a lacuna in the law and the Malaysian government is so concerned about ensuring that public nudity of any sort is made a serious offence, it is for Parliament to enact statutory provisions criminalizing the act. The nudists should not be made a scapegoat whatever the political agenda of the government may be. As matters stand, I cannot see how the charge against the accused can possibly stand.

Why nudity made Malaysia go berserk

In my last post which I wrote when I was still on holiday and had to be rather brief, I talked about the adverse publicity that naturism had been getting lately in the Malaysian press after a group of naturists were arrested more than two months after they went nude on a deserted beach in a remote part of Penang. A video of the event which was uploaded on vimeo.com went viral and it caught the attention of the Penang Chief Minister and that led to an unnecessarily hyped up outcry in the Muslim majority country. Incidents of people going nude on Malaysian beaches are not uncommon as the Chief Minister himself has said but there was an obvious political reason why the Penang incident was blown out of proportion. See this for other incidents of nudity in Malaysia.

People in Malaysia and presumably other parts of Asia are usually in the dark about who a naturist (or nudist) is and what it is he does at a naturist gathering. Too often, the public associates nudity with sex and the first thing that springs to mind when they are confronted with a naturist incident is to assume that some outrageously debauched orgy is going on among the participants. That was precisely the kind of reception I got when I told my friends I had been to a naturist gathering in Taiwan last year. When I told them that I took a lot of photos and my wife was quite amused by some of the photos, they thought I had gone mad. One of them asked me if my wife would consider a divorce.

It took me a long time before I understood what really went on in the minds of non-naturists. It's easy for those of us who are naturists to dismiss non-naturists as sex-crazed or having an obsession with sex to such an extent that they associated the human body with it but the fact is there are so many more non-naturists in the world and it's not helpful to begin an explanation of what naturism means by insulting those who are not naturists.

A naturist is simply a person who does not accept the ridiculous notion that there is a part of the God-created or nature-formed human body (depending on your religious persuasion or an absence of it) that is obscene, indecent and so vile and filthy that it has to be covered up. A naturist refuses to accept the worldview that the human body is so base and has such a corrupting influence that anyone looking at it uncovered might be lured to lead a life of debauchery and licentiousness. A naturist believes that the human body is wholesome and decent and worthy of our respect and full acceptance. A naturist accepts and respects the human body in all its colours, imperfections, defects and whatever shortcomings that flesh is heir to.

When someone says that he or she won't go to a nudist beach unless he has gone to the gym for months and has lost 10 kg or so, you know he's not a naturist. He's viewing the body in the light of pornographic culture and that has nothing to do with naturism. It's very hard to explain to non-naturists that a naturist does not look at the body the way viewers of porn do and even after I have explained many times to them, they still revert to thinking of nudity the pornographic way.

Some Singaporeans remind me of the A*Star scholar who walked down crowded Holland Village one evening stark naked with her Swiss boyfriend and insist that they were naturists. But they were probably not naturists. They were more likely people who wanted to shock the public into some sort of reaction. Most naturists are not extreme nudist activists who will insist on having their space in society to go naked. Most of us just have a healthy respect for the human body but we are perfectly aware of societal norms and we conform to them strictly. A naturist is usually extremely tolerant and considerate and he will not do anything offensive to the rest of society. Attention seeking people who expose their nakedness in public for its shock factor are not naturists. Neither are flashers who seek the perverted thrill of being seen by women in dark corners on lonely streets. These are by no means naturists.

Because naturism is so uncompromisingly non-sexual, true naturist gatherings are usually very strict about the conduct of naturists in the resort. Naturists do not stare at one another and any hint of sexuality is a no-no. If for some reason a person appears to be in a state of arousal, he will immediately cover himself with a towel. That's basic etiquette in naturism. Many naturists bring their entire families including young children to a nudist place and I cannot overemphasize the fact that naturism is a family-friendly lifestyle that has nothing to do with sex.

But we are all individuals and of course not all naturists are the same. We only have one thing in common - our respect for the human body (with all its defects) and because of that, we do not view the body as obscene or vile which the rest of the world does.

I knew about the Penang Nude Games but I didn't want to go for a few personal reasons. Although the Games would be held on a remote beach, I was still afraid of being pounced upon by the police and I knew I would be so anxious that even if I did go I would probably not have had a good time. The other thing is my personal taste. I don't like organised games at a nudist place. If I do go to a nudist beach or resort, I would rather be left alone to tan in the sun, swim on my own and read a book without having to participate in fixed games.

In May, at around the time the Penang Nude Games were held, I went on my own to a naturist resort (which I subsequently discovered was rated by a travel magazine to be the 8th best in the world). I was very fortunate indeed for I had, until my final night, the whole resort to myself. I had a very good time lazing under the sun, swimming and reading at the large resort with nobody in sight except for the staff of the resort. Admittedly, some people who are more gregarious may not like such a quiet holiday and like I've said, we naturists are no different from other individuals in that we have our different personal tastes.

 

Luxuriating by the pool where I had the whole resort to myself.

Notice the dove just a few feet above me? Where else can one

take a pic of such sublime serenity?

The press and more specifically the comments of individuals online have been rather scathing of the activities carried out by the participants of the Penang Nude Games which included crab walks and relay races but the one activity that many would single out with some disapproval is the game in which a person would crawl over a few people lying facing upwards on the sand. Personally, I would be very uncomfortable with such a game but that's just me. Non-naturists would immediately give a sexual interpretation to the game but it is very obvious to me that the naturists who took part in that game did not view it in that way at all. If you had seen the video, you would have noticed that they were more concerned about having to bear the weight of the person crawling on them and some of them could be seen pushing the person on top so that he or she might move over to the other side more speedily. There was not the slightest trace of impropriety, sexual or otherwise, in the entire video.

Two weeks ago, when I was tanning myself on a nudist beach in Croatia, I learnt about the uproar in Malaysia over the Penang Nude Games incident. I really believe the furore has a lot to do with a total misunderstanding by Malaysians of what naturism really means. Every online article I read had some negativity towards the concept of naturism.

The participants of the Penang Nude Games clearly had no intention of offending or insulting the modesty of anyone. They chose such a remote and inaccessible part of Penang that absolutely nobody knew about the incident until the public saw the video more than 2 months after the event.

Ironically, the participants of the Penang Nude Games were in all likelihood the only people who did not engage in any sexual activity during their stay on the beach. I know some of the participants and I really can vouch for them. It's the non-naturists who if they were to stay overnight on such a beach would probably indulge in some sex. I wonder if the more fanatical Muslims in Malaysia might have been placated if they had understood the real meaning of naturism and were satisfied that the participants did not do any sex, which presumably is what Islam forbids and what the general public was upset about.

 

Acceptance of nudism really depends on a proper understanding of it.
Near this beach which is ranked the world's 3rd best nudist beach, there
is a beautiful bay and many boats and canoes have to come close to the
beach to get to the bay.  Those who object to nudism and cannot bear the
sight of the human body will probably have to give a trip to the bay a miss.
But as it happens, Europeans are generally not uptight about nudity and
there is a healthy harmony between naturists and non-naturists as they
meet at the shoreline that divides the "FKK strand" from the clothed world.

It really boils down to the people's understanding of naturism. A society that understands naturism is usually quite accepting of it. Last year, when I was with the Taiwan Naturist Association, we rose early to go to a beach by the Pacific Ocean to view the sunrise. A beach ranger from the Police Department came on his buggy and spoke to the President of the Association. Anyone would have thought we would all be taken to the police station for being naked on a public beach if we had been in Penang. But all the policeman wanted was for us to move further up the beach because there was a family not far from us on the same beach. We moved about a hundred metres further up the beach. What happened after that really surprised me. Someone asked the policeman to help take photos of us and he readily obliged us. He even allowed us to pose on his buggy for photos. I have quite a few photos of me sitting au naturel on the policeman's beach buggy but since we naturists are considerate people who do not wish to offend the general public, I won't post the photos here. As you can see, all the photos that I post here are the sort that even the Ayatollah can have no objection.

 By the Pacific Ocean and posing with the policeman's red buggy.

The policeman was the photographer who snapped this pic.

It's sad that Malaysians lack a proper understanding of naturism and because of this misunderstanding the participants of the Penang Nude Games were treated like criminals. If only the authorities in Malaysia knew how spotlessly pure and decent their conduct and intention were on the beach, there would have been no uproar in the first place.