Outspoken former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) yesterday denied calling Islam a “venomous religion” after leaked US diplomatic cables set off a furore in the multiracial city-state.
One of hundreds of cables from the US embassy in Singapore released last week by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks had Lee as describing Islam as a “venomous religion” in a 2005 meeting with then-US senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“This is false,” the 87-year-old Lee, Singapore’s founding prime minister and elder statesman, said in a statement.
Lee said that he looked up a foreign ministry note of the meeting, and “nowhere does it record me describing Islam as ‘venomous,’ nor did I say anything which could have given that impression.”
“I did talk about extremist terrorists like the [Southeast Asian] Jemaah Islamiyah group, and the jihadist preachers who brainwashed them. They are implacable in wanting to put down all who do not agree with them,” he said. “So their Islam is a perverted version, which the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Singapore do not subscribe to.”
During the meeting, another US lawmaker in Clinton’s party had asked Lee about “how organized terrorists were internationally,” according to the leaked cable signed off by then-US ambassador to Singapore Frank Lavin.
It said Lee “responded that orthodox Islam was a powerful force capable of recruiting volunteers for terrorist groups.”
“He noted Singapore’s experience in 2001 and 2002 in dealing with Jemaah Islamiyah’s terrorist plots in Singapore and characterized Islam as a ‘venomous religion,’” the cable said.
Singapore has a predominantly Chinese population, with minority races including Malays, who are mostly Muslim, making up 13.4 percent of its population of 5 million.
The small nation’s closest neighbors geographically are mainly Muslim countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
Lee’s comments sparked a furore among Singapore’s online community, which now plays a large part in shaping public debate in the city-state, where newspapers are perceived to be pro-government.
“LKY [Lee Kuan Yew] should not make general and sweeping statements like that,” Lee Rou Xuan, a Singaporean citizen, wrote on the Facebook page of the blog site The Online Citizen. “He should have taken a greater effort to find out more or maybe his million-dollar-paid ministers should have given him some good advice.”
Sonny Pereira, another Facebook user, said the former leader’s remarks were seditious.
“This is serious! He ought to [feel] shame in public and the Arab world for what he said. This is sedition!” Pereira wrote.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion