THE WORLD AROUND ME

When we discoursed over the survival of Homo sapien , there is no way we can leave out  Cro-Magnon and Neantherdal . Whether you believe in God or not, it is preposterous to deny the existence of dinosaurs, neither do the hominids , who exist concurrently with our ancestors during the ice age. How do we know this? The answer is from the fossil remains. A conservative preacher may try to convince you that devil leaves the bones there to confuse your faith but if we let such kind of reasoning infiltrate our intelligence, we may give way to more brainy manipulation. Just because it goes contrary to our spiritual beliefs doesn't mean it was wrong. Psychologically, we recognized this cognitive bias , which happens when a person favors over a piece of information that supports their existing biases or beliefs. We, humans, are curious about certain truths but equally petrified of being refuted. Thus, often, we are there to guard our ideology not because of our reasoning but because ...

During WW2, the Nazi searched every corner for the last Jew who remained in the land of Germany. When found, they are either sent to the concentration camp or the gas chamber, where they blow their last breath. Around one million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and Anne Frank was one of them. I read her diary many years ago. It was published in the year 1947. I personally believed it was the best way to emotionally relate to someone who lives during wartime and their fate who cruelly swung them around. Anne was a cheerful girl, fearful but optimistically curious about tomorrow. The war has killed everyone in her family, including her except for her father, Otto Frank. Escaping the Nazi pawn, he survived to tell the horror of WW2 and the reality of the Holocaust.  It was unfortunate for this to happen to an ethnic group, but sadly, Jews did the same to the Canaanites when they entered the land of the Philistines. The prophet Moses claimed to receive revelation from God to perform...

It's the first time in human history that we live in an unknown world where the future is almost unpredictable. It was mentioned in the Bible that Jews will return to Israel and it happened 2000 years later. It was mentioned in Chinese classics that one day, the "iron bird" will fly the sky and "iron snake" will block the road, the prophecies came true a pproximately one hundred years ago  following the invention of airplanes and railways. However, we can't really predict what the future holds fifty years later from  now. The stock market is too volatile today and world politics are fickle. Martin Jacque wrote about China who is anticipated to become the greatest economy in the world by 2050 but today the covid situation and Chinese "zero cases" policy may have nullified the forecast due to exacerbation of the international tension as a result of the border restrictions.  Furthermore, the Chinese naval invasion in the South China Sea into Nusantara...

It's been some time I wanted to write this story. It may sound ridiculous to you but bear with me because it may not be the first time you heard this and it is not new in the military camp. It happened in the National Service Training Programme, which is a compulsory training camp for selected Malaysians. At least one in a family will be randomly chosen for the program. There was a man in his young adulthood selected for the program. He was enrolled in the program with his girlfriend and some of his best friends from high school.  The camp was located deep inside the tropical forest with no town or villages nearby. However, there is a highway that connects to the camp to ease local transportation. Therefore, unless it is urgent, no one could leave the camp in the span of these six months. Everything   in the camp  was new and exciting for the young juniors. Males have a short and tight haircut, and females are permitted with hair up to only shoulder length. Everyone is we...

"Genesis 17:20   And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.  21   But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year. " Too often, we pay immense attention to the main character in the story we read or movie we watched and completely ignore its sidekicks. In the Bible, it was mentioned that God established the covenant with Isaac, and from his clan,  the Messiah  will come. Thus, we often see only Isaac but overlooked Ishmael, whom God promised to bless. We thought Ishmael was just another insignificant character that no one would remember and not worthy of studying upon. The world,  including Arabs themselves who are the direct descendants of Ishmael,  thought the same for hundreds of years. No one questioned where are the...

  I'm not an Afghan, nor an American. But today I can't help but write this article about what happened in Afghanistan. The picture above shows a British soldier holding a baby handled over by a desperate Afghan mum in Kabul airport. The baby is throwing over the razor-sharp wires at the airport compound as many families desperately seek to leave the country as the Taliban approached. After the Taliban took over the country, they had blocked Afghans from leaving the country. By then, there were already 18,000 Afghans left with the U.S. troops in loaded military planes. The plane can't take any more Afghans, and some have decided to brace themselves outside the plane, which led to the tragedy that humans fell off the airplane we see today in social media. The Muslim critics used this picture to criticize the U.S., claiming that the U.S. dropped bombs in Afghanistan in 2001; in 2021, they dropped humans.  One question the world asked today is why Afghans  desperately  ...