Is Malaysian sun of moderation setting?

Would "Malaysia's Islam" lose its shine after it has proven to be a model of the balance between faith and modernity? asked Ahmed Amiri in the Emirati newspaper Al Ittihad. Malaysia takes pride in being a tolerant country, offering a fresh, Asian-inspired perspective on Islamic thought, allowing the peaceful cohabitation of the Muslim Malay majority and the Indo-Chinese minority that embraces Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism.

But Malaysia has been witnessing rising tension between Muslims and Christians lately, after a newspaper affiliated with the Catholic Church won a case against the government which ordered the newspaper to stop using the word "Allah" as an interchangeable word for "God". The government deemed that the sacred word "Allah" is exclusive to Muslims and alleged that the Catholics' insistence on its usage is part of a scheme to "disturb the Muslim community".

"But it seems that the court that ruled in favour of the newspaper was not convinced by the government's argument, which indeed is an unfounded one. For Allah is everybody's God, and if this issue is taken any further, the fuss about it will not stop. Some Muslims would bar other fellow Muslims from using the sacred name because, for them, they are not pious enough."

Contrary to expectations, when the former British prime minister Tony Blair stands this January 29 before the Chilcot Inquiry, which is the British investigation committee on the Iraq war, he will not find it too difficult to evade questions and embarrassment, wrote Raghid al Solh in the pan-Arab Saudi newspaper Al Hayat. The investigations and interrogations that have been carried out by the committee so far have proved benign, more like "a chat in a Whitehall club" as the British columnist Simon Jenkins noted in The Guardian last December.

Had Mr Blair declared, before taking British troops to Iraq, that the goal of the war was to change the regime in Baghdad because it has "abused its people" and "repressed its opponents like no other government has before", as he did in a recent interview, Gordon Brown would not have faced the necessity to set up an investigation committee in the first place. Mr Blair lied about Iraq's nuclear weapons, but the Chilcot Inquiry, which is supposed to be looking into precisely that, will not convict him for it. "And even if it does, he will still have patrons who protect him and make sure he is always there to play the role of a Trojan horse on the international scene."

No radical changes have occurred in US policy since the president Barack Obama took office a year ago, but should that be attributed to Mr Obama personally or to the left-over mess of circumstances that he had to navigate through after George W Bush? asked Sohbi Ghandour, the director of the Washington-based Arab Dialogue Centre, in the Dubai-based newspaper Al Bayan.

This question is key, because it puts in perspective the huge load of aspirations that numerous peoples have pegged on Mr Obama's election. There is a critical difference between disappointment with the man and frustration with the conditions surrounding him. "Upon Mr Obama's election last year, I wrote that he would be 'a good car driver' but he will remain subject to the 'American traffic laws'."

The US attitude may have mildly changed on the international sphere. At least Washington has abandoned the "pre-emptive war" panacea that became popular under the Bush administration, but the same factors that helped Mr Obama win the presidential elections are the ones pushing his popularity downhill at present. Mr Bush's multifarious misdeeds favoured Mr Obama's election, but failure to reverse them saps the spirits of the solid base that still roots for the current administration.

On January 29, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai will be presenting in London a detailed offer that promises the Taliban fighters employment, education, pensions and plots of land if they are willing to stop their operations against the government and hand in their weapons, reported Mazen Hammad in the Qatari newspaper Al Watan. Mr Karzai also pledged to hold a new peace convention with the leaders of the Afghan tribes next spring to work out how the Taliban fighters would reintegrate into Afghan society.

"Well, this kind of pitch is not new actually, but its recycling into this new format points to one thing: the US and its western allies are suffering just as much as the government in Kabul from military and political exertion in the face of mounting Taliban might." Afghan government officials maintain that they have learnt from the lessons of the past and are now set to announce a reconciliation plan that is significantly more feasible. But attempts to mend fences with the Taliban have often failed due to a lack of funding and insufficient guarantees from Kabul to potential returnees. Again, doubts are rampant about the ability of the government, which has trouble offering basic services for its population, to back up Mr Karzai's bid. * Digest compiled by Achraf A ElBahi @Email:[e-mail]