Chitchat Bertha Henson's 5 seconds of glory

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://themiddleground.sg/2016/07/30...riend/Zulfikar
Mohamed Shariff, ISA detainee, my Facebook friend
Jul 30, 2016 05.41PM | Bertha Henson linkedin

by Bertha Henson

A FEW months ago, Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff reached out to me through Facebook. He wanted to offer a column to The Middle Ground, and asked for our email. I said sure, but no promises that it would be published. There was a little chit chat about how he hoped I wouldn’t be tough editing him and so forth. I thought nothing of the overture until his column about the internet community needing a code of conduct popped up in our email.

It was an old issue which canvassed old points but I thought that it could be worth reprising given the then on-going trial of The Real Singapore founders. I spent quite a bit of time knocking it into shape and asked an intern to get more about the man so that we could credit him properly. I have always been partial to the efforts of students and he had said he was one.

The intern did so. He CSIed him and suggested that I look at what he found out.

Goodness! I was about to run a piece from a man with such a ferocious background! I had quite forgotten about Fateha, the extremist website that he founded and how he fled the country after he was fingered for criminal defamation. That was like a decade ago. I had read about his pro-ISIS leanings online – which is no secret that the Internal Security Department dug up – but never connected the name to the man.

As an editor, I was in a quandary. Do I run the piece because of the content, or the man? To be clear, his content was passable after extensive editing. It would have been an innocuous addition to the site. But I was also conscious that I would be giving the man a platform, even if his views in the piece he offered us had nothing to do with brainwashing Muslims or inciting dissent. It was, in fact, a very middle ground view of discourse on the Internet.

I chose to err on the side of caution. I didn’t publish the piece. I replied to him saying that the piece wasn’t up to mark and thanked him for the offer.

Was I censoring him? Shouldn’t I be judging the content and not the man? I tell myself that readers wouldn’t be deprived of any original insight. But the truth was, I didn’t want our site to be associated with someone of such dubious background and radical viewpoints.

Then again, I might have been too cautious. In May, he had a piece on then Philippines President elect Rodrigo Duterte published in The Straits Times. He wrote about how Mr Duterte’s personal ties with the communists and the Mindanao Muslims offered hope for a lasting peace agreement in the sprawling archipelago. He was credited then as a final-year PhD candidate at La Trobe University, Australia (International Relations), who focuses on Asean.

That same month, he had a letter published in TODAY in the wake of the racist hiring practices of Prima Deli. He warned against institutionalised racism.

The internet, especially, is an open, welcoming space. We follow different people online because we share their views or like what they say. Sometimes we publish them. We ask to be “friends’’. He is, in fact, my Facebook friend. Now, if he had attempted to use my timeline to propagate extremist views, he would have been booted out. But I cannot recall that he did.

So did I do right? Can’t people compartmentalise their views – hold some really wacky ones on one issue and are terribly moderate on another? Or should we dismiss everything about the man because he is somehow “fundamentally” unsound?

I suppose years of being cautious about being used as a lobby for different people prompted my move. One question was: Why did he offer the article to The Middle Ground? Did he want some “cred’’ (sorry for being so arrogant) by being published on a moderate site or did he think the checkers would be asleep? Was he some kind of Trojan Horse?

I gather that Zulfikar is on several closed FB groups as well, mainly conservative ones. Was he invited in or did he insinuate himself into them? He would be smart enough not to let his religious views make him stick out, I am sure. If they knew his background, would they boot him out lest his views influence the rest?

I think to myself the number of stories that have emerged on social media just because someone said something or saw something dramatic or controversial. They are turned into articles, put on a bigger platform and then go viral. The content is more important than the person behind it. Never mind that the person could have a vested interest or a bigger agenda or long-term objective that would have terrified anyone.

It’s time that people on social media be careful about not becoming unwitting accomplices of people like him. Poison can be spread in many ways. Wolves can come in many guises.


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