On the Asian road to freedom.(Asia)

HARDLY HAVE I put down my suitcase when I am drawn onto the balcony by one of the Australia Day fireworks over Sydney--those circuses the authorities inflict on taxpayers with frivolous frequency. As I watch, snippets of conversation and bits of information are flooding back from my whirlwind trip to post-Mahathir Kuala Lumpur, gleaming Singapore and Sri Lanka, for a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international academy of academics, business leaders, politicians and publicists dedicated to the cause of freedom. Those impressions are no more than raw material yet to be consolidated into knowledge and opinion, valuable stimulus in coming to grips with this most fascinating part of the world.

One theme recurred with great frequency in the talk around Asian dinner tables, in government and business offices and on the fringes of the conference: the cultural and social consequences of globalisation, and more specifically, international migration and the conflict of Muslims with modernity.

I RECALL THE GLEE in the eyes of the several Malaysian friends who tell me that Aslan's wife has deserted him. Poor Aslan, always a devoted Muslim from the East Coast, is an honest, religious and intelligent man and an old friend. Over the years, since he did his PhD in the United States, he had become increasingly pious. I remember those occasions, half a lifetime ago, when our children played together in the sandpit, we fought badminton marches in the garden and enjoyed open, easy banter between the two families.

I also remember Asian taking me aside when we met again in the 1980s to tell me that it was no longer appropriate for me to shake hands with his wife, let alone peck her on the cheek. How shocked I was to see Sharida, a vivacious doctor, wrapped in a headscarf, her hands hidden in white gloves. I remember how I adopted a posture of distance as if speaking to a nun--until her chatter reminded me of the Sharida of old, and we returned to our former, more relaxed familiarity in exchanging family news.

Last December, Sharida declared that she was no longer putting up with the headscarf, had moved into an apartment of her own and was out and about in Western clothes and with elegant make-up. And Aslan had gone into hiding, mourning the loss, not understanding the world. The glee in the eyes of my lady friends, whether Chinese, Hindu or Muslim, told me of silent approval, although some male Malay friends seemed saddened. Signs of the new century in a part of the world where economic change unprecedented in history was triggering far-reaching social and cultural evolution--those millions of little, personal revolutions that Naipaul has written about.

To be sure, most Asians, whatever their creed, eagerly embrace modernity. And thoughtful Asian observers know that belief systems, which evolved in the closed, stationary societies of old, will have to be reformed. This holds true also of Islam.

At the opening dinner of the conference in Colombo, on a beach under the stars, I happen to sit next to an Afghan. The waiter pours wine, and I alert my neighbour to the fact. He holds out the glass assertively, as if to demonstrate his rejection of fundamentalist restraints. Later, I speak to a bubbly young lawyer of Indian Muslim extraction, who has spent part of her youth in Saudi Arabia. She predicts the imminent downfall of the house of Saud.