Raffles and Religion problematizes the heart of Singapore's history by bringing to light the intimate thoughts of its founder which were conveniently lost in Singapore's short history. It also questions the glorification of heritage through history. In our fond recollection of "the good old days", we fail to realize that those days upon closer scrutiny were not that good after all. The same goes for our past heroes and founders. The image of infallibility and invincibility is perhaps integral in the process of social cohesion and the strengthening of identity. The selective amnesia that has infected much of written history is put under the microscope by this particular work.

The book brings into focus the issue of the use of history and the past. It brings to attention the use or rather the misuse of knowledge/power. It highlights issues of representation reminiscent in Edward Said's Covering Islam and drags to light the intimate thoughts of a man much revered in Singapore history. This book is necessarily a study on epistemology. It gives rise to questions of power as to why is Stamford Raffles depicted the way he is in Singapore history? Who does it benefit that he is portrayed as such? It problematizes the study of the history of Singapore by focusing on a central figure in the island-state's past and portrays him in a new light through an erudition of facts and an excavation of history. This well-researched book treads along the fine line of Orientalist discourse which can be rather sweeping and overarching. However, the danger in writing a book of this nature, as with handling other concepts such as Eurocentrism and Androcentrism, it is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and overlook certain "truths". Although the writer does not credit Michel Foucault for his writing, his discussion of discourse and knowledge/power smacks heavily of much of Foucault's work particularly the Archaeology of Knowledge. Through a presentation of discourse analysis, the "truth" becomes relegated to nothing more than a mere possibility. Discourse can be argued as the process by which ideology becomes "textualized" as knowledge or truth. What is not being said and what is suppressed by what is being said is as important if not more important than what is actually being said.

However, readers of history should be careful not to get carried away and indulge in "presentism", judging the past with values of today. History needs to be located and made sense of in context. It is convenient and often too simplistic to portray the colonialists and imperialists as chauvinists and bigots but rather to go beyond and look at their contributions in totality. The author reciprocates the long-time concerns of intellectuals such as Syed Hussein Alatas who points to the difficulty in studying Singapore due to gaps in its history and Khoo Kay Kim who underlines the necessity in rewriting Singapore's history. Even though Raffles is a pivotal figure in Singapore's history, not much has actually been written about his thoughts and ideas. In a sense this book manages to make the necessary leap and bring the history of Singapore from one of colonial history to a postcolonial one at the same time providing a clear response to writers such Gayatri Spivak (Can the Subalterns Speak?) and Ranajit Guha who pushes for locals to write their own history. Even though the nation has been bestowed self-rule for almost half a century, no real attempt before this have been made to retell Singapore's colonial past. Perhaps even though the colonial masters have long relinquish the reins of political and territorial captivity, the minds of the people have there far been captive.

As a well known philosopher, George Berkeley has said, "To be is to be perceived." The writer in his chapters entered into a discussion of how Raffles perceived the Malay religions. He went on to show that perception is not cast in stone but rather is a fluid concept shaped by events and time. Perception is a two-way process. Not only how we are being perceived which is also totally external to us are constantly being constructed by others, how we are perceived also has an immediate impact on the individual who is being scrutinized in this case the Malays. Policies, treaties and decisions are constantly being made based on perceptions. And as this book has pointed out, perceptions are also more often than not, misperceptions.

It is perhaps poignant to notice that the writer ended the book with a thought as to whether we could rid ourselves off these prejudices and biases. Perhaps true objectivity in the study of history will never exist; nevertheless it is vital that a writer, as correctly pointed out by C Wright Mills, is mindful of his biography and history when he is writing as he is always relating a part of himself through his work so that the writer himself will not fall into the trappings of prejudice.