Censorship madness in Malaysia

At 11.30am, on the 29th of May, a publishing house in Petaling Jaya was raided by 20 officers of The Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais). 180 copies of a book by liberal Muslim Sudanese-Canadian activist Irshad Manji were seized, and the director of the publishing house Mr Ezra Zaid was arrested and then released on a RM1800.00 (USD600.00) bail with one surety over the publication of the controversial book.

Yes, it sounds like the plot from a movie by Sacha Baron Cohen, but it happened in real-time in Malaysia. During the ISA period, people lived in fear of doing or saying something wrong, or even fraternising with someone not 'approved' of, terrified of the the 2am knock on the door and the sudden removal and total disappearance (for a few days) of a loved one, and a prolonged incarceration at our equivalent of the Gulag. Now, that law has been repealed, and we can breathe (and sleep) a little easier; or at least, so we thought.

Black cloud

The book business in the country, however, has seen no such reprieve. All booksellers and publishers live in constant fear of being raided, having our books seized, and personnel detained (or worse). Any of your customers could be a Special Branch agent prowling through our aisle for contraband material, and you’d have no idea what is not allowed until he (or she) seizes it and deems it so. A daily occurrence? No. How many times have I been raided? None. How many visits have I received from the Special Branch? I have no idea. Like Sauron’s dark forces, they are formless, but everywhere. The fear is real and constant. It is like a dark cloud that permeates and poisons the air, and infects everyone who breathes. Sometimes it's so thick that one feels one can cut it with a knife. Perhaps, we have been conditioned by genetic memories, several millenniums old, of cattle raiders, invading armies and burning villages; of rapine, pillage and plunder. Then, when we hears of twenty-burly-men raiding parties, it all leaps to the surface again, because they can strike you any time, anywhere and from any direction, and they (the dark raiders) want you to know that they can. Irrational fear? Maybe. Paranoid? Hey, which country do you think we live in?

I watched on television, a BBC correspondent interviewing a well-to-do Libyan family at their home during their recent war. The journalist kept asking the mother of the children, why she was against the government when they had every material need, and all the food they wanted. Her English was not good, but I understood immediately what she was trying to say. Malaysia is not Libya. But when a twenty-man raiding party descends on one's premises, it is enough to scare the shit out of most. What the woman was trying to say was that the most important freedom, for her, was the freedom from that constant fear. I understood that.

Intimidation and harassment

Why twenty men? Wouldn't a polite phone call have been sufficient for Mr Ezra Zaid to 'surrendered' himself for questioning? Wouldn’t one or two persons have been enough to carry off 180 books?

Not in a civilised society, one would think. But it all becomes perfectly clear when one considers the intimidation factor of twenty men at your door. Intimidation is the tool of those not interested in discussions, or debate; a tool of those that is intended to demonstrate naked primal power, and its maintenance. Intimidation and harassment is also the tools of choice for those who wish to control this country by censorship.

In the case of the raid on the office of ZI Publictions, publishers of the book Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta (Allah, Liberty and Love), it has been in the news for over a week, with the author even allowed to come into the country for the book launch on 19 May (though some of her other events were cancelled). Earlier, in 2009, Malaysia banned her book, The Trouble With Islam Today. With this in the background, one is all the more surprised at the treatment meted out to the Mr Ezra Zaid. I speak out for him, not only, as a fellow publisher and a friend, but a remark I expect to be thrown in my direction is, “Why are you so concerned; you’re not a Muslim. Stay out of Islamic affairs, or else ...”
 
Right to freedom from fear

Do Muslims have fewer rights in the country by virtue of their religion? Do they not deserve to be treated with the same human decency as everyone else; do they not deserve to expect, and receive, that polite phone call? Or, is a twenty-man raid a non-Muslim publisher just as likely? That black cloud spreads while the emperor fiddles.

Back to censorship (this is an old story): I had a shipment of Khalil Gibran books detained by the Customs at KLIA. When I tried to explain that only The Prophet by that author has been proscribed by the government and not all his titles, the officer retorted, saying of the government, “Apa dia tahu, apa PM tahu.”  (What do they know; what does the prime minister know.) There was no point in  further talk. I never saw my books again. (One officer told me that someone in the Ministry didn’t like the way some of them were written, and so they decided to seize the lot. Everyone is a critic.)

Yes, it does appear that I am willing to compromise and live with censorship. Let me assure you, that’s not true; but I’ll have that debate on another day.

First, let’s establish some civility, human decency and freedom from fear in this country.

Raman Krishnan
Publisher
Silverfish Books

Panflation: the devaluation of everything

I read this story in The Economist recently, and was quite amused. Panflation is described as a ‘virulent monster’ that is ‘dangerously out of control’ and ‘” needs to be recognised for the plague it has become’. I had to read on a little more to see where this doomsday scenario was leading.

World traveller

The first example quoted is the size of women’s dresses: ‘Estimates by The Economist suggest that the average British size 14 pair of women’s trousers is now more than four inches wider at the waist than it was in the 1970s. In other words, today’s size 14 is really what used to be labelled a size 18; a size 10 is really a size 14.’ The reason for this is obvious: marketers have decided that women feel happier buying dresses in smaller sizes. I have heard this before but I still don’t get it. They do have mirrors at home, don’t they?

Another example is super-sizing: what used to be small, medium and large, is now regular, large and very-large, which may soon give way large, very-large and humongous. (Hold your breath; it is going to happen – in some form – sooner than you think.) Then there is the ‘deluxe and luxury’ that used to be ‘standard and deluxe’; and one would no longer need to endure the ignonimity of the ‘economy class’ because some airlines are already calling it the ‘World Traveller’ class.

Six times cleverer

Then, there is the scary bit; grade inflation. The story says, ‘In Britain the proportion of A-level students given “A” grades has risen from 9% to 27% over the past 25 years. Yet other tests find that children are no cleverer than they were. A study by Durham University concluded that an A grade today is the equivalent of a C in the 1980s. In American universities almost 45% of graduates now get the top grade, compared with 15% in 1960.’

I have always wondered about that during the ‘PMR (School Leaving Certificate) exam result season’. During my time in the 60s, the best a top student could score was 8 ‘As’. Now, we have a handful of students scoring 20 ‘A’ all over the country. If these results are a fair reflection of today’s generation, the top student now is two and half times cleverer than those in the sixties, and since there are two and a half times as many in the top bracket, and the entire younger generation is more than six times cleverer than the old. Scary, right? But, walking around Bangsar, I wonder where they all are. Facebooking? Building nuclear powered rockets in their backyard? Attending Bersih rallies? Maybe, they’re all living abroad. (Utusan story for picture on the left: Seramai 4,117 atau 7.69 peratus pelajar di negeri ini berjaya memperoleh semua A -- 4117 students score As in in all subjects in the PMR exams in Johor.)

Literary super-sizing

Naturally, this brings me back to the book world. I read another story in The Daily Beast, ‘Are Books Becoming Too Long to Read?’ Says Marc Wortman, ‘We read books by the word. But lately publishers seem to sell them by the pound. For a book to win recognition as BIG these days, it must be weighty.’

So, is there a case for literary supersizing?

Certainly, we have had customers who value books by the kilo (perhaps keeping future resale value to the paper-lama man in mind). ‘Aiyoh, why the book so expensive, one. So few pages only, what?’ That's not an uncommon reaction. Parent’s balk the most when buying books for their children. “Before we go home, she already finish reading in the car, lor.” So they make their children read the same book fifteen times, and then they fight.

Incarnation

Still, I don’t get Marc Wortman’s beef. Are big books only a modern phenomenon? War and Peace comes to mind, and so does Crime and Punishment; and Gone with the Wind. And  A Suitable Boy. Methinks  Mr Wortman has forgotten (though I agree with his view of the Steve Jobs book by Isaacson which could have easily been halved: what a waste of paper).

In the seventies, I don’t recall Catch 22 by Joseph Heller being a small book, nor Alex Haley’s Roots. The eighties had John Fowles and John Irving who both didn’t write too many small books. In the seventies and eighties, big books were ‘in’ if one wanted to look erudite, or impress chicks. So, nothing much has changed. I now balk at big books for a different reason: not enough time left in this incarnation, lor.

New way to impress friends

If there was supersizing in the book world (note the past tense) it was in the mega store business. Whatever the chains may say, blaming the e-book for their woes, the collapse of the mega bookstore was due to poor business plans: too many large bookshops (sometimes on the same street), renting very  expensive real estate, and undercutting one another on prices, particularly of best sellers (where the meat is).

Big books will always be around; but with the advent of the e-reader, they may no longer be necessary to impress friends.