Singaporeans need to be on alert

The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

Singaporeans have been a credit to themselves in the face of the terror revelations by the Internal Security Department (ISD). Since the first word of the plot by suspected Al-Qaeda operatives came, the evidence has been that life as the people have lived it was little changed.

The best indications were the normal crowds at post-Christmas sales and public gathering places. Quite the only sign of the untoward was that last Saturday's traffic out of the Yishun MRT station and along the line's city-bound points was light for a weekend. This was just after Singaporeans learnt that the Yishun station was a probable target.

The people's confidence in the security and military services to keep Singapore safe is plain to see. But it is safer to assume there are threats unseen, as Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong has warned, so citizen vigilance is called for -- though not to the extent of harassing every stranger seen taking video pictures of public buildings.

That has been the positive aspect of the episode. The negative side, which is far more problematic and hard to manage, is the impact of the disclosures on race relations and on the Malay- Muslim community itself. Junior minister Yaacob Ibrahim, who is soon to become minister in charge of Malay-Muslim affairs when he takes over from Abdullah Tarmugi, has addressed the latter point in a commendably forthright manner. He asks that the Malays be unambiguous about speaking out against extremism in their midst, lest silence or ambivalence provide succor to subterranean forces.

Worse, silence could be taken for "quiet support or approval" for acts against the state. Yaacob is courting unpopularity in one so new to national life, not to mention risking dissension in sections of Muslim intellectual, religious and community circles which perceive, wrongly, that their religion is being cast deliberately in a negative light.

But he is right to speak of the need for introspection. He asks Muslims to reflect on whether religious classes have anything to do with the motivations and thinking of those pre- disposed to harmful acts. This is controversial but, as he suggests, nothing is to be gained by not examining and facing up to all possibilities.

Non-Muslim Singaporeans should not think they can be mere spectators in the soul-searching by Muslims. They are in it together. The Prime Minister worries about the possible emergence of a hard edge to interaction between the races in the light of the ISD arrests and the link to global terror. It is better for the people to acknowledge the likelihood of prejudice surfacing -- and work consciously towards preventing it.

In schools and work places especially, the Chinese, Indians and Eurasians need to be circumspect and not imagine that Malays are under a cloud. A careless remark, indelicate jokes, thoughtless body language can do enormous harm to the cause of harmony and cohesion. Non-Muslim civic and religious leaders can do their part reassuring Malay-Muslims with public declarations of solidarity. They were scarcely heard from immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks when Malays here were on the defensive. They cannot stay silent this time.