The Noordin Soopie Chair of Global Studies

I went for a talk yesterday at Dewan Budaya. What moved me to go, in spite of a mountain of assignment and deadlines to meet up with. Well, the lecture was given by Prof. Dr. Chandra Muzafar, the newly appointed Noordin Soopie Professor of Global Studies. The chair was attained by the late Dr. Noordin Soopie whom passed away in 2005 and serve as an appointment to contribute to various human interest aspect in this world by doing research and studies, especially regarding religion and world peace.

His inaugural lecture titled, The Light that Illuminates touched on religion at various stage. He discussed on the rise of religion conciousness among countries like Iraq, India, Pakistan and etc, and questioned their relation to the presence of tension and violence in their respective countries. However, Dr. Chandra believes that religion is not the factor of violence and tension , per se, which i find rather contradicting as the Holy Crussade itself was based on religion, and talk abou Hindus and Muslims fights in India. However, he did mention on the inequity in social and economic standings that contribute towards these tensions.

I was anticipating some sort of reference to the election through out this lecture, but presumably, I was dissapointed. However, Dr. Chandra received a bare-it-all intro by the CENPRIS Dean, Dr. Shanon whom mentioned his detain under ISA in 1987. Being an ex-PKR vice president, before joining UMNO, Dr. Chandra is now serving USM under the Centre of Policy research and International Studies, citing his return to USM as the Third Coming, for he had served in USM twice before. Nevertheless, his appointment as the Noordin Soopie Professor of Global Studies would be for two years, according to the chair holders term and conditions.