What role do you think religion has to play in the public sphere in Singapore? Justify your stand.

i feel that although religion should not be playing a pig part in the public sphere. however, it is necessary that religion has to be involved in public sphere, and it must appeal to secular arguments.

since Singapore is a multi-racial country, religion would have to play a part in the public sphere, in one way or another. as said by Devan : "but in some respects, singapore is less strictly secular. the state helps to fund mosque building, and mission schools, for instance. suh compromises, can reassure the malays. especially after the seperation;or from the pragmatic public policy considerations."
thus i feel that religion would have to be involved in the public sphere, because we should not be so rigid in our policy making. sometime, we would have to compromise to those other religions, to ensure there would be peace in the country. for example, in singapore, where our ministers make an effort to attend religious celebrations like hari raya, vesak day, deepavali. this shows how religion does have a part to play in the public sphere.

however, as Chua says, "in other words, religion may influence your viewpoint, but when arguing your case in the political arena, you need to present arguments understandable, and accpetable to those of different faiths" thus i feel that religion cannot have every part to play in the public sphere. if it does, which religion should the political arena follow? it will not ever be possible, for the political arena to cater to every religion since all religion are not the same.

thus n conclusion, religion would have to play a part in the publi sphere but not a very big part.

are there circumstances where human rights may be curtailed?

human rights is defined as, fundamental rights, esp. those believed to belong to an individual and in whose exercise a government may not interfere, as the rights to speak, associate, work, etc.
human rights can be in the form of freedom of expression, voting, socio-economic rights, and many more.

from the first passage, in paragraph 1,2 and 3. it has mentioned that there are times where human rights can be curtailed. a few reasons include, "the primacy of duty to the community over human rights." and also, "we should co-operate with the leaders and also, leaders are expected to me dominant" and lastly, "restriction of rights is justified if it could provide prosperity and economic progress"

in the context of my country, this is very true, the government has done a good job in providing us with certain rights like education where rules are set to make sure everyone has a primary education. the government can also proudly say that it has improved singaporeans standard of living. the classic example would be how we improved from a fishing village to a urban country with obvious developments that can be seen everywhere.

however, i feel that our rights should not be totally curtailed. as seen in passage 2, "freedom of expression in singapore- is most commonly championed by human rights groups."

in sinagpore, we only have one source of newspapers which is from the singapore press holdings which is controlled by the temasek group is under the government. in this case singapore is kind of lacking in freedom of expression. since singapore is gradually progressing, we should start considering in our human rights. Whereby we should have freedom of speech, so that our voices can be heard and not have most of the decisions made by our government.

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Do you think it is ever right for one country to be involved in the internal affairs of another?

In my opinion, i believe that a country should not be involved in the internal affairs of another unless there is strong humanitarian reason or permission for the countries to intervened in the business of another. Although the humanitarian factor maybe subjective, the motivation to embroil in foreign affairs are not of self-interest.



In my opinion, countries are entitled to the privacy of solving their own domestic issue. Afterall, thats the purpose of the elected constitution. The goverment should be given the chance to handled their internal affairs. However, World bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union are right to intervene if the situation is unable to be suppress by the goverment. For example, the cyclone nargis issue in Myanmar was getting out of hand, yet the military goverment persist on rejecting aids offered by the world bodies. As a result, an estimated 1.5 million burmese were unable to to recieve aid and were left suffering. This was due to the inability of the goverment to solve pressing issues, thus other countries should have the rights to recrify such problems instead. In such events, i believe that a country has a right to be involve in the internal affairs of another because of the inabiltity of the local goverment to solve the issue.


Humanitarian factors should also be considered when discussing the rights of intervention. Citizens may be suffering due to the inept of the goverment, yet they lack the rights and power to call for change. For example, the Tutsi in the rwanda genocides were being prosecuted by the majority hutus and the goverment. The UN was right to intervene but was not allowed to as the Rwanda goverment did not allow them to. As a result, an estimated 1 million people died in the civil war. As seen, countries are right to intervene in the affair of another country and it may provide aid and protection to the suppress citizens in the country.

Grace touched that the countries are right to intervene if only their methods of intervention are appropriate. For example, i believe that the americans were right to intervene in iraq as the Iraqis were suffering under the regime of Saddam Hussein. However, their method of intervention was wrong as it generated more casualties instead of solving the problem. Thus the countries are right to intervene if they can really help the other country.

do you think it is EVER right for one country to be invovled in the internal affairs of another?

i feel that countries can be right to be involved in other internal affairs of other countries, but they may not always be right to do so.

Countries like Mynmmar are really in need of help from other countries. It is the fact that they are so resistant to help from other countries that has made them more backward compared to other countries. thus maybe the way to helping Mynmmar would be not to force them to get help from us but maybe to change their mindset by showing them how other countries are more developed than before.

getting involved in another countries affairs can be in many forms like, how america was involved in iraq's affairs. i feel that this is not a very good way as it can be seen from the number of deaths, how it wasnt very sucessful. other countries could get involved maybe by offering useful advice on how to run the country, like turning democratic. another way to be involved can also be offering monetary help to the other country to break free from the vicious cycle.

thus it can be right for one country to be involved but depends on how involved the country would be.