KUALA TERENGGANU, 6 Jan 2009: Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said today the backlog of 33,000 Malaysian citizenship and entry permit applications will be resolved in six months. He said a special task force comprising the National Registration Department and Immigration Department had been set up in November to deal with the matter. […]
Home Ministry
Let Catholic weekly run in Malay
By Khalid SamadEVEN though the Home Ministry recently approved the publication permit for the Herald – the Catholic Weekly, only publication in English, Tamil, and Chinese is allowed. Publication of the weekly’s Malay language version has been held back, pending a court decision on the use of the word “Allah”. While my Christian friends applaud the decision […]
No ban, but Al-Arqam book seized
By Zedeck SiewBook cover of Rahsia ArqamPETALING JAYA, 18 Dec 2008: Copies of a book examining the Al-Arqam sect were confiscated by Home Ministry officials on four different occasions, beginning May 2006. Yet, until today, the status of the book remains unclear. According to PTS Publications general manager Fauzul Na’im Ishak, whose company publishes the title, there […]
Two JI members among six ISA detainees freed
KUALA LUMPUR, 10 Dec 2008: Six Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees, including two Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) members, have been released from detention, Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said. He said that the six were freed as they no longer posed security threats to the country. Five of them — comprising two Thai nationals […]
Farish Noor’s book under investigation
By Zedeck SiewBook cover of From Majapahit to Putrajaya PETALING JAYA, 27 Nov 2008: A leading bookstore in Kuala Lumpur has stopped selling a book by Malaysian public intellectual Dr Farish Noor, pending an investigation by the Home Ministry. The entire stock of the book, From Majapahit to Putrajaya, was confiscated from Kinokuniya’s KLCC outlet on 15 […]
The bane of book banning
By Ooi Ying NeeTHE day Norani Othman found out her book was banned by the Malaysian government, she knew she had “arrived” as a scholarly writer. The Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia sociology professor had not expected that Muslim Women and the Challenge of Islamic Extremism — the book she contributed chapters to and edited — would be banned, but […]