Word: malays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Singapore, the architects of the Assyafaah Mosque, which was finished in 2004, cater to the country's multicultural population by creating an aesthetically neutral space, sleek and futuristic, where the island's Malay and Chinese Muslims can both feel comfortable...
...irony is both sad and delicious. The Little Nyonya, a Singaporean television serial about a Chinese Peranakan family that concluded in the middle of January, was told entirely in Mandarin, a language whose creeping bid for dominance in Singapore has lately eclipsed Baba Malay - the pidgin Malay at the heart of Peranakan culture. But in a sly act of revenge, the immensely popular serial triggered a boomlet in all things Peranakan - like the batik fabrics Peranakan women used to stitch their sarong kebayas, worn most famously by Singapore Airlines' stewardesses, or the lavender-and-purple-colored porcelain bowls from which...
...boundaries between them." His latest book, Sea of Poppies - recently short-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize - crests along the collision and collusion of tongues found aboard the Ibis, a 19th century schooner plying the Indian Ocean. Its crew speaks a babble of English, Portuguese, Hindustani, Malay, Tamil, Chinese - and yet, through "the alchemy of the open water," as Ghosh writes, they communicate sufficiently well to sail this great wooden hulk. Language animates the Ibis, as well it should: loaded with migrants, opium and the dreams of unwitting pioneers, it is intended to be the vessel...
...Malaysian government 10 years ago, focuses not so much on Islam's traditional heartland in the Middle East as on its Asian domains, the works of which are often overlooked in Islamic-art collections. Among the IAMM's standouts is a rare 19th century Koran, made for a Malay sultan with lashings of gold illumination. Precious, too, are the Chinese calligraphic wall scrolls with Koranic quotations - not merely because paper scrolls rarely last, but because so many were buried by fearful Muslims or destroyed by Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. Several are testimony to the fusion of Chinese and Islamic...
...wasn't just ethnic minorities who abandoned Abdullah's coalition. The P.M. heads the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), a Malay-based party that dominates the 14-party National Front. In a clear sign that UMNO can no longer automatically count on Malay votes, two of Abdullah's former cabinet members lost their parliamentary seats. One beneficiary was PAS, some of whose leaders have previously advocated instituting Islamic Shari'a law nationwide. With crime rates rising, PAS candidates struck a chord by preaching that their spiritual values would be more successful in managing society than UMNO's policies...