The Ortigas ‘mosque’ in our Greenhills shopping center makes news in ‘sin’ city

SINGAPORE – In yesterday’s leading English-language daily, The Straits Times, an eye-catching headline announced, "MOSQUE IN A MALL."

I took a closer look, and indeed the story said that "Real Estate firm Ortigas and Co., which owns and operates the 16-hectare Greenhills Shopping Centre in San Juan district, hopes to finish the 500 sq. meter ‘prayer area’ in time for this year’s Aidilfitri celebrations on November 14."

"By building this prayer area, we hope to give our Muslim brothers a solemn place of worship," said Mr. Rex Drilon (as quoted in The Straits Times), chief operating officer of Ortigas and Company.

The article revealed that 500 of Greenhills’ 2000 merchants are Maranaos, "one of the largest Islamic groups in the country".

Drilon did not elaborate apparently on what items they were selling in his Mall, which might have been of interest to Singaporean readers and other ex-pats here in Singapore. Sus, they might have rushed over to . . . well, shop.

The Ortigas-sponsored Mosque, the article disclosed, will cost an estimated Singapore $300,000 and be "fully-airconditioned . . . which will include an ablution area" and "will accommodate up to 400 people in its prayer hall".

"However," the story points out, "because of space constraints, it will not have a dome and will be part of a four-storey building also housing a halal restaurant, boutiques and parking spaces."

My Singaporean friends, when they read the article, asked whether the new Ortigas "Mosque", would include a madrassa or Islamic religious school, like the 140,000 pesantran (Koranic schools) in neighboring Indonesia where fundamentalist clerics and Imams preach suspicion of Infidels, like Christians ("crusaders") and Jews. The Indonesians, by the way, in a backlash against the Bali bombings (belatedly) and last week’s Jakarta bombing, are investigating the role of some pesantran, particularly in their radical strongholds of East Java, in instigating membership and support to the Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda.

The Greenhills pesantran, surely, will teach support of GMA. Why is staid Singapore called "sin" city? That’s what your luggage tag says on your suitcase.

Oh, well. It would be "profiling" (as the 25 million Muslims living in Western Europe are today protesting) to try to classify the Maranaos not as Moro rebels but as "peaceful traders". Who can be sure today of anything? I myself come from a race of peaceful, frugal, hardworking Ilocanos – but we Saluyots in the past decades have been enduring a bad press with regard to our allegedly gunslinging ways.

I guess the Ortigases have nothing to fear from the Muslim faithful who’ll flock to their mosque. They’re not Jewish.

* * *

My old friend, Cheong Yip Seng, Editor-in-Chief of the English Malay Newspapers Division (Singapore Press Holdings) which runs The Straits Times, picked me up at my hotel and we hied off to his club, the Tanglin Club for tea and merienda. A very tasty Makan it was, indeed.

Cheong and this writer go back a long way, so we had a long and happy discussion about the affairs in our neighborhood, both what was good about it and what was troubling.

I congratulated him, of course, for the excellent coverage The Strait Times has been giving Indonesia, the Jakarta blast and its aftermath. They maintain a full-dress Jakarta Bureau, since that huge nation of 220 million, mainly Muslims, is located next-door to Singapore’s 3 million population – as proximately as nearby Batam Island.

During our banter, I twitted Cheong about the big play-up The Straits Times had lately been giving Imeldific and her movie and shoes – you know our ex-Superma’am.

He laughed heartily.

"Don’t forget, Max," he remarked, "Imelda still makes news, even when you just mention shoes – and she still looks good."

With a twinkle in his eye, my friend Yip Seng recounted the first time the late President Ferdinand Marcos and his First Lady, Imeldita, arrived in Singapore for a state visit.

"They came in two separate B-747s. The two airplanes landed in tandem, then, when they came to a stop, the doors of the two aircraft opened simultaneously. Out of one stepped Marcos, and out of the other one floated Imelda! It was a sight to knock our socks off, I tell you," Cheong grinned. "I’ll never forget it."

There you are! A tale from the misty past of the legend of Cam-Ulot, the dream that became a nightmare.

As we walked out, promising to meet each other at the next meeting in Bangkok (in November) of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), I remarked that it was interesting that today most of the members of the upper-crust Tanglin Club are Singaporeans, and other Asians. In the old days, before 1960, the Tanglin Club was reserved exclusively for whites – i.e., real gweilo. In fact, despite the fact that he was Chief Minister at the time, Bruce Marshall (later named an Ambassador by Lee Kwan Yew) couldn’t get in – because he was Jewish.

Cheong grinned even more broadly and chuckled, "Those Western colonial masters knew how to live it up and enjoy their perks, but Mr. Lee, when he became Prime Minister, set them straight on that!"

Now that Lee Kwan Yew is Minister Mentor to the new Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loon, who happens to be his son, will this mean LKY would continue to "run" Singapore, a nation after all, he founded?

In truth, the word I used was "created", but let’s not quibble about that.

Cheong smiled and said that, as "Minister Mentor", dad would only "advice".

"For how long?" I pressed.

"Well," my friend nodded, "Mr. Lee is 82 now, but he says he hopes to live to be a hundred."

May you live 100 years, then, LKY!

And kindly remain as outspoken, sometimes grumpy, and always irascible as ever. We would not have it any other way.

* * *

THE ROVING EYE . . . This is written as I rush to the Changi International Airport. Don’t forget: Tonight, we’re hosting Diplomatic Night, the traditional gala dinner-meeting of the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC). Our guest of honor and speaker at the affair, which starts at 7:30 p.m. will be Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto "Bert" Romulo. See you at the Grand Ballroom of the Westin Philippine Plaza Hotel in Manila! . . . Speaking of the Indonesian elections, it seems that incumbent President Megawatti Sukarnoputri is on the skids. The wellknown polling agencies, the International Foundation for Election System (IFES) and the Indonesian Survey Institute (ISI) – though her ratings climbed slightly – still put her 30 percentage points behind her frontrunning rival, former Interior Security Minister (General) Susilo Bambang Yudyohono. Ibu Mega’s suddenly energetic last-minute rally may have come too late. If so, SBY will slide through to the finish.