Reminder of the Arab Presence in Singapore

By John Gee

A move by Singapore’s government to lift rent controls beginning April 1 created alarm among shopkeepers in the older parts of the central city. Many of those who rent their premises said they would be unable to pay the commercial rates that their landlords are likely to demand. Not surprisingly, those renting out property take a different view, and among the owners who are happy about the change are those who manage waqf (or as they are known locally, wakaf) properties.

According to a recent report in the local Sunday Times, the current value of wakaf properties is Singapore $208 million, about US$130 million. Wakaf administrators hope that those shophouses—typical of older parts of Singapore, and consisting of a shop at ground level and two or three stories of dwelling rooms above—from which they draw rents may now begin to yield returns three or four times what they have done until now. This will be of considerable benefit to a range of Muslim institutions in Singapore.

The endowment of awqaf is a practice going back to the very beginnings of Islam. A person of wealth could put a property in trust for religious or charitable purposes and designate what those purposes were. Income generated from a waqf might, for example, be dedicated to the provision of education, or the maintenance of a mosque. Those entrusted with the administration of a waqf have the duty to maintain it in perpetuity and ensure that its proceeds are used for the purposes intended.

Some of Singapore’s 90 wakafs (to revert to the local term) were dedicated by Indian and Malay Muslims, but a large proportion were established by prominent members of Singapore’s Arab community, notably from the Alsagoff, Aljunied and Alkaff families. Syed Haroon Aljunied is secretary of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, which administers 53 of the wakafs, and other Arabs still play a prominent, if diminished role in Muslim affairs in the island state.

When the British took control of Singapore in 1819 and founded the modern city, among the first people to settle there were Muhammad bin Harun Aljunied and his nephew, both of whom were Arab merchants who had previously lived in Sumatra, in present-day Indonesia. When, in 1822, a committee was formed to plan the development of Singapore, one of its members was an Arab, as it was anticipated that a large number of Arabs would come to settle in Singapore. Various areas were designated to be developed for specific communities, including one for Arabs, but although settlers did come, it was not in the numbers anticipated. Nevertheless, they made their mark on Singapore.

By the 1930s, the Arabs were the wealthiest community in Singapore.

Most of the Arab community came from the Hadhramaut, in the southeast of Yemen. Merchants from this area had established an extensive trade network in Southeast Asia as early as the 9th century C.E. and been instrumental in the introduction of Islam. Some took up permanent residence in the region, but maintained close ties with the Hadhramaut. They not only played a major role in Southeast Asian trade, but were very prominent in Muslim community affairs.

In Singapore, Arabs who had built their fortunes on trade often diversified into property, and some made highly astute investments in land at a time when it still could be acquired for very low prices. By the 1930s, the Arabs were the wealthiest community in Singapore, mainly as a result of a sharp rise in land values following the First World War.

Over the years, rich individuals converted sizeable pieces of the lands they owned into wakafs, which not only supported local Muslim projects but, in some instances, institutions in the Hadhramaut. They supported the building of mosques and the establishment of madrasas, or schools: the Aljunied and Alsagoff madrasas still work to meet a demand from Muslim parents. Some were also known as generous benefactors outside the Muslim population: Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Abdul Rahman Alsagoff made a hefty contribution to the construction of the Victoria Memorial Hall, to this day Singapore’s chief concert venue.

The interwar years proved to be a high point for Singapore’s Arabs. Then business competition intensifiedand property did not prove to be the secure investment that had been anticipated. To alleviate widespread hardship in post-World War II Singapore, the British introduced rent controls in 1947. These resulted in a long-term fall in real income for private Arab landlords and for most wakafs. As a result, the latter have tended to provide a dwindling proportion of the income of institutions which they were set up to support: for example, in the past two decades, less than 10 percent of the income of the Alsagoff school has come from the wakaf established to support it.

Since Singapore’s independence, the government has made compulsory purchases of large areas of privately owned land in order to use them for public purposes, including construction of housing, roads and institutions. Arabs being among the largest landowners, as a community they were disproportionately affected. They complain that the price they were paid was considerably less than the land’s value.

Finally, there has been some loss of community identity—or rather, it might be argued, visibility—as Arabs have intermarried with other Muslims, and Malay and Indian Muslims have played a growing part in institutions which once were almost an Arab preserve.

Traces of the Arab role in Singapore remain visible: some notable Arabs are acknowledged in the country’s history books; the streets in the area once designated for development as an Arab community retain their old names, although few Arabs still live and do business there—Arab Street, Muscat Street, Baghdad Street and others. The Arab Association of Singapore believes that the Arab population numbers about 10,000 people in all. Links with the Middle East are very much alive. As Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh commented during his visit to Singapore in 1999, “The majority of the Arabs in Singapore are from Yemen. Many of these Arab Singaporeans still maintain close contacts with their relatives in Yemen.”

Better Luck This Time?

The new president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, has said that she wants to try to reach negotiated settlements to the two armed insurgencies in her country—one by the armed wing of the communist-led National Democratic Front and the other by Muslim rebels in the islands of the south. Following talks in Kuala Lumpur between representatives of the Manila government and those of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the MILF declared an indefinite suspension of offensive operations, beginning on April 3.

The MILF is estimated to have some 15,000 men under arms. It broke off talks with the government of Arroyo’s predecessor, Joseph Estrada, after he ordered the Philippine army to launch an all-out offensive against it. The army succeeded in capturing all the MILF’s main military bases but, despite then-Secretary of Defence Orlando Mercado’s declaration that “our military operations are now in the last stage,” the MILF was far from crushed.

Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the MILF, said, “Mrs. Arroyo is the third president we’ll face in the talks, and we hope this will be it.”

It was reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer that Saudi Arabia had approved a contribution of $100 million to help with the development of Mindanao, the island where the MILF is based. Most will be spent on infrastructure projects, but 20 percent is to be devoted to the rehabilitation of Camp Abubakar, the MILF’s biggest base before its capture by the army. “Camp” is a bit of a misnomer for the base, however, as it encompassed three towns, and had farms, schools, a sawmill, weapons-making facilities and a mosque.

Malaysia Denies Clashes Were Ethnic

Six people died and over 40 were injured during clashes in and around Petaling Jaya, near the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Trouble began March 4, when participants in a Malay wedding party and an Indian funeral crossed paths and ended up coming to blows. A few days later, more serious violence flared up after a Malay man tried to settle an argument between a group of Indians. Rumors spread through the local communities that fighting was taking place, sparking the worst violence.

Details remain vague. There were claims that a large Malay gang from outside the area came in and started beating up Indians and slashing at them with knives and parangs (a cutting implement somewhat like a machete). Certainly, most of those killed and injured were Indians and most of the people arrested by police were Malays. The toll might have been worse if a number of local Malays had not given shelter and protection to Indians threatened by gangs. The clashes caused serious alarm in the government, which tries to keep inter-communal conflicts in check. “This was not a clash between Malays and Indians,” said Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. “It could be that rumors were spread deliberately by irresponsible people who wanted to take advantage of the situation.”

On a visit to the area where the clashes took place, he reminded locals of the communal violence of 1969 between Chinese and Malays, which had a very damaging impact upon Malaysia. It is not the kind of event that the government, or the major opposition parties, want to see occurring again—although that did not prevent Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed from making an entirely unsubstantiated claim that opposition parties had a hand in the trouble.

The violence took place within a small area, where most people are very poor and there are serious crime problems. Most local commentators see the violence as a product of strictly local conditions, rather than a reflection of any wider Indian-Malay tensions.

Many local people believe that the trouble might have been contained more quickly had the police intervened strongly when the first clashes broke out. As it is, most of them are wary of doing anything that would further inflame the situation, and want to get their lives back to normal.

Indonesian Solution in Sight?

President Abdurrahman Wahid appeared before the Indonesian parliament on March 28 to respond to corruption charges. Instead of appearing contrite and conciliatory, however, he brushed aside the accusations made against him and labeled “illegal” the team responsible for investigating them.

This made his critics even more determined to press ahead with a second motion of censure and to demand his resignation, but still they fear a violent reaction by his supporters. Both parliament speaker Akbar Tandjung and the president suggested that one way out of the running crisis would be for the latter to hand over much of his power to Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri—although they certainly disagree about exactly what that would mean.

There are a number of difficulties with this suggestion. Some parliamentarians feel that it would be wrong to accept a compromise when there are questions of integrity involved. Others are skeptical about the president’s ability to honor an agreement to yield many of his powers: he once before committed himself to giving a much larger role to Megawati, but did not do so. Nevertheless, some see the proposal as a way of allowing the president to retire gracefully and for Megawati to take over in practice, if not in name.

It is an idea that her own political organization, the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle rejected immediately, seeing the suggestion as a tactic by the president to buy time. It believes that he intends to cling to power for as long as he can.

Megawati herself has been more cautious in her pronouncements than some of her party members, and well she might be. She is acutely aware of the danger of large-scale street violence breaking out between supporters and opponents of the president, but she must also bear in mind the character of the different forces that now say they support her taking over the presidency. When she originally ran for the post, a number of Muslim parties (including the United Development Party, which won 39 parliamentary seats, but not Abdurrahman Wahid’s own National Awakening Party, which has 51 seats) claimed that a woman could not be elected president of a predominantly Muslim country. They now seem to have forgotten about this “position of principle.” Likewise, most members of the former government party, GOLKAR, also opposed her at that time. Megawati knows that what draws them together is only their determination to remove Abdurrahman Wahid from power. She must wonder if, having got rid of him, they will then direct their fire at her.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: Israel and the Palestinians, available from the AET Book Club.