ABSTRACT
The famous Maria Hertogh controversy and riots in Singapore in 1950 are a demonstration of Heidegger’s suggestion that Christianity can prevail as a cultural force long after it ceases to be invoked as a principle of government. Involving a custody dispute over a Dutch-Javanese child abandoned by her parents during the Second World War, the decision in court in favour of the biological parents was portrayed as legal and to do with family law although it provoked the worst anti-European and religiously-inspired rioting in Singapore’s history. The repatriation of the child to her Catholic parents ignored the fact that she had been raised by a Muslim nanny for 8 years.
