ICRCG 2018: Of Religion, Society, Culture and Literature

By Atiqah Zulkefli

GOMBAK, 6 October 2018- The freedom of cultural expression received less attention, hence causing the right of the Muslim healthcare workers to be forgotten, according to IIUM PhD candidate, Salilah Saidun who shared her findings with participants of the International Conference on Religion, Culture and Governance in the Contemporary World (ICRCG) 2018, in a parallel session on Wednesday (3 October).

She highlighted that “there were several healthcare workers in the past who had to resign because the dress code policy contradicted their religious belief”.

Salilah Saidun presented her paper titled “From the colonial design to the Malay-Muslim style: The evolution of the civilian nurse uniform at the Ministry of Defence Malaysia from 1981 to 2017” which, she said, its main objective is to highlight the struggle faced by Muslim women to fight for their rights in the workplace.

She added that the evolution of the healthcare workers’ uniform can be divided into four phases where in the first phase which is during the 70s, the colonial culture was still strong among Malaysians. In the second and third phases which were in the 80s and early 90s, the colonial tradition was partly compromised and accommodated to the local tradition.

“Only in the last phase which was in the 2000s, the Muslim healthcare workers were given freedom to wear the Muslim friendly uniforms,” she said.

Lastly, she highlighted that there are still many Muslim women in other working sectors that are struggling for their right to wear Muslim-friendly attire at their workplace. Thus, she hoped that her paper would inspire Muslim women to fight for their rights to practise their religious belief no matter where they are.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nurul Jannah Zainan Nazri, an Assistant Professor at Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, IIUM, in her paper “A Pilot Survey on ‘Muslim – Friendly’ Event Management Standards in Malaysia and its Acceptance among Malaysian Practitioners” focused on how Islamic values should be imposed in event management.

She said that “it is vital for Islamisation to happen in the event management where Islamic teachings are practised in order to achieve Maqasid al-Shariah”.

She then further explained to the audiences that Maqasid al-Shariah is the benefits and advantages behind the revelation of Islamic laws which is its goals are mainly for the preservation of life, faith, wealth, intellect and dignity.

“It is not impossible to manage and plan events which comply to the Islamic laws or Shariah because Shariah itself aims to guide and ease human life.”

Besides that, during the same parallel session, Muhammad Azizul Hoque, in his paper “A Critical Analysis of English Lexical Borrowing into Modern Bengali Novels”, attempted to analyse the degree of influence and borrowing the English language into the Bengali language.

He said that the status of Bengali language also plays a role in determining the quantity of the borrowed English words and the directions of the borrowing whether it is a one-way or two-way directions. Plus, he said, “Language borrowing has caused the diffusion of cultural items across the linguistic boundaries.” ***

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