Sajakkini

There’s this peculiar belief among Malay men and women that a man’s 38th birthday is his religious crossroad. A lothario reaches that particular birthday. He has two years to think of what or who he wants to be before he hits the big Four O. The two years are crucial as they are his markers: will he turn pious or not? If once he reaches 40 and is still a major slut, there’s no hope of redemption for him. Or so they say.

Zain Hafsham is 32. According to him, he has six more years before he goes ‘bananas’ and becomes the God fearing Malay-Muslim everyone wants him to be. In the meantime, he cycles fanatically, dates as if women are going to be extinct tomorrow and enjoys his wine like the connoisseur that he wants to be. Hope is not lost though – what he’s looking for now is true love. Real love. Once he has that and reaches 38, he can die a happy man.

But why 38? Why not now, so he has a few extra years of piety? He’ll then have more credit with God. He could die on one of his cycling jaunts tomorrow and what then?

Ramadhan has come and gone, and Eid Fitri was spent in a drunken haze, as he and friends celebrated the end of a month of abstinence. They had been sorely tested, appetite-wise and are now hungry for life to begin. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

It was the right thing to do, to put off the end of amnesty for undocumented migrants on Dec 31 last year after the Dec 26 tsunami tragedy.

Thus it seemed odd that Najib Razak tagged the initial postponement to a specific request from the Indonesian government. He was acceding to that request to “show that we sympathise with the calamity the Indonesian people and government face.”

Surely nobody would question Malaysia for that decision. Malaysia herself suffered casualties and devastation in her northern states. It would have appeared more gracious as the right thing to do without prompting from any quarter. Najib’s approach implies that, if not for the request, Malaysia has no qualms whatsoever to arrest, detain and punish the “illegals”.

Najib’s sympathy for the people and government of Indonesia (and other tsunami-hit countries in the region) however has run dry after barely a month. He postponed the end of amnesty on Dec 30. On Jan 22, he announced the end of amnesty on Feb 1. (more…)

Elizabeth Wong : 13th Floor

If you had chanced upon last Sunday’s headline news in a leading English tabloid (”Crude, Rude and Abusive”), you would have been forgiven had you speculated that another set of photographs of Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib had been released, or that ‘BDSM-meets-American Idol’ was the latest trend in our fair land.

There were elements of force, domination, humiliation, voyeurism, exhibitionism, forced confinement, a variation of golden showers, dirty talk reserved for the women, and ‘blowing’ (into a breathalyzer) for men.

No one wants to be prudish here. If consenting adults want to play games in the privacy of their bedrooms, by all means, go ahead.

But the tabloid was not offering our daily dose of sensational sleaze.

Instead it highlighted an incident two weeks ago that began at one of the more popular Kuala Lumpur clubs and ended up in the corridors of the Federal Territory Department of Religious Affairs (Jawi) with Muslims Malaysian being tortured. (more…)

How does one begin to comprehend a religion that supports peace, promises rewards on earth and in the afterlife, and yet has extreme followers that use Islam in so-called terrorist attacks?

Islam, for moderate believers, is a religion of peace, moderation and has all the answers to their worldly questions. For fanatical Muslims, so to speak, Islam gives them permission to defend the religion, their way of life by encouraging suicide bombings and threats against Western countries. And for non-Muslims, their perception of the religion vary – from the accepting to mortification, and sheer confusion. (more…)

Salbiah Ahmad

By early morning on Jan 14, a small crowd of children and male elders had gathered at the T-junction at Kampong Kepala Jalan, one of the village hit by the Dec 26 tsunami in Kuala Sungai Muda, Kedah.

The day before a truck had unceremoniously dumped about some 50 boxes of used clothes at this junction. It was difficult to miss the pile as this junction leads to the main road out of the several villages of Kuala Sungai Muda to Kota Sungai Muda.

Eleven people perished here including an 11-year-old child. The dead were “kept” (“simpan” was the word used by villagers) in the cemetery in Kota Sungai Muda which is on higher ground, not in the village cemetery.

Some boxes had been opened, clothes strewn carelessly adding color against the grey 5-7 metre high wall of rubbish bull-dosed from the streets and compounds which lined the beach blocking the view to the sea. The wall was a pile of earth, broken houses, mortar, bricks and furniture. (more…)

My first memory or rather introduction to my religion was asking Ustaz Dahalan, ‘If God existed, how come I couldn’t see Him?‘ My mother was mortified, my father rolled his eyes – ‘Ahh … Dina, again you ask funny questions,’ and Ustaz laughed.

I was about seven years old then. My unlimited play time was now shortened, as for an hour twice a week, I was to learn how to read and recognise the Arabic alphabets. That attempt was short-lived for not long after, we moved to Moscow.

I am a practising Muslim. I am not a perfect one though, and I certainly am not a role model for a young modern Muslim woman. My religious upbringing was erratic. My father was a diplomat, and we lived here and there, before Father packed in his diplomatic career and brought all of us back to Malaysia, because he did not want his daughters to be heathens.

Speaking no Bahasa Malaysia, and bewildered by the education system (“They don’t teach about dinosaurs in school, Bah-bah”) and societal values placed on us (“We’re Malays, we don’t behave this way”), my sister and I came home as foreigners. Liza had an easier time acclimatising to the environment, for she was much younger than me. I was then too Americanised, too ‘aggressive’, ‘too un-Malay’, and when I was 15, I was booted to Tunku Kurshiah College to rediscover my roots and religion. (more…)