Samuel Ho
Calligram project
This calligram of Allah was designed in the style of stained glass: a medium which has been used to great effect across the Muslim world, from the Masjed-e Nasir ol-Molk in Shiraz, Iran, to the Büyük Çamlıca Camii in Istanbul, Turkey. When light shines through stained glass, it is an awe-inspiring experience, and is a perfect metaphor for the duality of jalal/jamal: of majesty and beauty. The light from the sun reflects a phenomenal power of such grandeur and extremities beyond our human understanding (and about which we can only attempt to speak of theoretically, but cannot possibly attest to a personal experience); yet when it is filtered through the stained glass, it is turned into a mosaic of beautiful colors reflected upon the ground. So too, is Allah simultaneously majestic beyond human understanding and possessing a compelling and stunning beauty.
In this manner, the window frame represents the frame of the Qur’an and the ways of the Prophet Muhammad which guide Muslims in their adherence to the majesty of God’s light.
Firstly, the calligram of Allah is centered in the frame, reminding Muslims of the centrality and oneness of God. Nonetheless, it is not immediately apparent, and the observer must isolate the word Allah from the rest of the patterns, reflecting the practice of interpretation and search for inner meaning.
Secondly, while all of the other patterns have a circular/elliptical form, and flow from edge to edge, the writing of Allah are some of the only straight lines that cut across the symmetry of the underlying patterns. This reflects the righteousness of Allah that surpasses human design, and of how humans can only approach perfectness by following and submitting to Allah.
Final project: op-ed
The perils of religious tolerance
Samuel Ho
One of my closest friends is Muslim, and so every time we plan to meet for lunch prompts an almost immediate Google search for halal food in the area where we are to meet. As a Singaporean Chinese, I grew up in an educational context that forbade me from proposing non-halal food to a Muslim friend: that would have been, my primary school social studies teacher warned, a deeply offensive contravention of my friend’s religious beliefs.
This speaks to an unspoken code of inter-racial and inter-religious interactions in Singapore – to, at first instinct, provide the maximum amount of accommodation and representation to those of minority religions, and in particular, Islam. This, in turn, is informed by the predominant racial and religious policy instituted by the People’s Action Party (PAP) government, whose term in power extends from today in the 21st century back to the 1960s, when Singapore experienced violent and destructive racial-religious riots between the Malays (who mostly adhere to Shafi’i Sunni Islam) and Chinese (who generally do not adhere to Islam). In reaction to this period of strife, the PAP government instrumentalized and instituted laws to clamp down on any expressions of ill will between adherents of different religions. Furthermore, in public campaigns, the government promoted the idea of racial and religious harmony as a key existential ingredient for Singapore to survive.
Over half a century, this has ossified into an unquestioned orthodoxy, or as the government puts it, an ‘out-of-bounds marker’ that Singaporeans must not cross. Malay-Muslims are proportionally represented in all forms of public communications, religion and politics have been successfully kept separate, and Muslims, despite being in the minority, are able to freely and publicly profess their faith. Yet, socioeconomic issues of Malay-Muslims are rarely brought up in the public square for fear of religious offense, and Islam is frequently regarded as an ‘issue’ that the state has to ‘manage’. Non-Muslim public officials are capable of saying incredibly tone-deaf and culturally insensitive things about Muslims. On a more personal level, in my efforts to show my Muslim friend that I was adhering to the state’s orthodoxy on religious harmony, I ended up proposing halal food options to him without first stopping to simply ask him what he would have liked to eat. My expression of respect to his religion was formal but not attentive – it was content to display my sensitivity to the state-mandated division between halal and haram foods, but did not seek to understand the nuances of ahkam, the broader juridical basis undergirding the permissibility of actions in general within Islam. Despite presenting myself as culturally aware, I had not truly put in the effort to understand my friend’s religious practices.
Indeed, most Singaporean Chinese will likely live their entire lives without a Muslim friend. Being culturally distinct and holding significantly different daily practices (chief of which is the relative uniformity with which Muslims in Singapore strictly consume only state-certified halal food, but also others like fasting during Ramadan), it is difficult for the high number of repeated interactions for people from both sides to form deep and lasting bonds. This is worsened by policies like the government’s support for Special Assistance Plan schools, which nominally cater to academically strong students but substantially are only provided to those who speak the Chinese language, thus excluding Malay-Muslims from certain well-resourced institutions, further worsening educational inequities and walling off Chinese youth from their Malay-Muslim peers.
This worries me, because it allows us as Singaporeans to claim premature victory amongst the dismal field of religious harmony. We say to ourselves: surely we aren’t as bad as the United States with its post-9/11 hate crimes against Muslims, and surely we aren’t as insensitive as the French to ban the burka. Yet, the veneer of religious tolerance allows us to assert and preserve distance – in censoring ourselves from speaking about the other, we also suppress the possibility of admiration and appreciation and allow private misunderstandings to fester under the justification of a public-facing tolerance.
While we reject the demonization of Islam, we must also be careful to avoid its close counterpart: its infantilization. We must seek the closeness of engagement so that we may develop a sense of empathy necessary to forge a truly multireligious society.
Final project: write-up
I chose an op-ed in a major local Singaporean newspaper that would be read by Singaporeans of all races and religions as my medium. I felt that an op-ed was an appropriate medium since it allowed me to use personal anecdotes to inform the larger concept I was speaking to: that religious tolerance is insufficient, and religious understanding (possibly in the style of a cultural education class like Gened 1134) is necessary for genuine religious harmony. In particular, the anecdote that I used of never interrogating or seeking to more deeply understand the idea of halal and the categories of permissibility in Islam, was something that I had been used to doing when going out for meals with my Muslim friend, and it had never struck me until taking this course and immersing myself within Islamic thought that my expression of respect could be shallow and uninformed.
Furthermore, writing in the style of an op-ed allowed me to take an advocative stand on what I felt to be the state of religious harmony in Singapore. Ironically, such a piece may be regarded by the newspaper editors as cutting it close to contravening religious harmony laws in Singapore, and may not, in reality, be published at all. Writing this piece was therefore an act of imagination in which we would be open to engaging more deeply on religion. My audience, being Singaporeans and in particular non-Muslims from Singapore, was an important point of focus because, firstly, I am a Singaporean and the ways that we engage with Islam is crucial for our social fabric. Secondly, I also speak more broadly to the dangers of the self-presumption of progressive enlightenment on race and religious issues (an attitude which Singaporeans are prone to), when this may often be a political tool to conceal the genuine lack of concern and regard for minorities.
My piece represents idea #2 in Section A: that it is crucial that we do not develop a monolithic notion of Islam, which in turn prevents us (as outsiders to Islam) both from dismissing or criticising Islam wholesale, as well as from unquestionably accepting and defending what some people may say about Islam without, in fact, deeply engaging with the substance of their claims and viewing it within the context of the diverse tapestry of Islam.
My op-ed represents this idea by situating the notion of a monolithic Islam within the Singaporean context: that there is a singular Islam with strict, inviolable and unquestionable rules. It showed the pitfalls to adopting religious policies on the basis of such a perception of Islam: the near-complete lack of religious discourse and understanding, and the consequent perpetuation of inequities between majority and minority. As such, it was also a warning to other societies grappling with how to establish religious harmony in the first place – tolerance can also have suppressive power, and true empathy grows when we stop treating religious differences as fragile objects, but instead regard them as beautiful manifestations of our humanity.
