Yaacob IbrahimMinister in Charge of Muslim Affairs. He was firstelected to parliament in 1997 and was quickly promoted to the sub-cabinet position of Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Communications in 1998. In December 2004, he was selected Vice Chairman of the People's Action Party's policy-making Central Executive Committee. ¶12. (C) Since his college days, Yaacob has been very involved in Singapore's Muslim organizations. He was a youth member of the Muslim Missionary Society (Jamiyah) and is a long-time volunteer at MENDAKI (the leading Malay/Muslim education self-help group linked to the government). He was also actively involved with the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), serving on its council from 1992-1996. As Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs, he has encouraged community organizations to specialize and avoid duplication of services. He has also been given a role in Singapore's outreach effort to the Middle East. In 2004, he led two business delegations to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Egypt. While in Egypt, he met with Singaporeans studying at Al-Azhar University, as part of the government's efforts to ensure that its citizens studying in the Middle East keep Islamic teachings in a Singapore context. Several contacts have asserted that, since his hajj in February 2004, Yaacob has become less of an integrationist. These contacts said he has come to believe that there were two distinct spheres in Singaporean society: public and private. While he envisioned that Singaporeans of all races would continue to interact in the public sphere in areas of common interest, they could choose to limit their private interactions to people of the same race and religion. ¶13. (U) Dr. Yaacob was born in Singapore on October 3, 1955, the fourth of nine children of a minor civil servant. All of his siblings have excelled as professionals. His eldest brother was the first Malay chosen as a Presidential scholar and a younger sister is political editor for the Straits Times. He graduated from the University of Singapore with a Civil Engineering degree in 1980. He obtained a scholarship to do his Ph.D. at Stanford University. He graduated in 1989 and worked subsequently as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Cornell University. His wife is an American citizen who grew up in Puerto Rico. Yaacob told emboff that he has a more open-minded interpretation of the Koran and said his wife converted to Islam to satisfy the conservative standards of Singapore. They have two children, both American citizens, and they travel to the U.S. frequently to visit his wife's family.
