Sajakkini

Did you know I read that if you don’t have sex for a year, you can actually become re-virginized? Charlotte York, Sex and The City

I was back in KT recently, and bought the May issue of Forum Perdana, solely for its very arresting headline: Pulih Dara Guna Chopsticks. Loosely translated, it meant that you could become a virgin again using chopsticks, and only Bomoh Cha had the gift to re-virginise you. According to the article, he practised traditional Islamic healing, and by using chopsticks, he would not have to touch his female patients. How he treated them was not explained, my theory was that all he could do was poke a woman’s nether regions, but he did advertise his cell-phone number, which I’ll furnish at the end of this article, so you can call him and ask.

I had to buy it. I thought to myself, on how virginity is still prized in this modern world, despite the fact that it is no longer such a precious commodity to many. And in this age of STDS, HIV/AIDs, virginity and loyalty do not protect you from harm. (more…)

I have four stories for you.

I.

She was heartbroken. As she wailed her grief out loud, a long teardrop of her saliva dangled from her mouth before it snapped and dropped to the floor.

I have prayed, begged, asked from God, that after this, He would give me peace. A happier life. Is it too much to ask for? I do not ask for wealth. I do not ask for the worldly. I just want happiness. Why do the wrong, the bad have everything?

He has forgotten me. (more…)

The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him), in the Year 11, on the 27th day of the month of Rejab, experienced a journey of a lifetime. The journey that he took is now known as Israk Mikraj ~ The Journey by Night.

After about 10 years of dakwah (missionary work), two people that were the closest to him died. They were Abu Talib, his beloved uncle and his wife, Siti Khadijah. Muhammad (pbuh) consoled himself through prayers and supplications to God.

How the Messenger prayed was like how his former predecessors prayed. The first prayer ever was performed by the prophet Adam. When he was cast out of heaven, and landed in Sarandib (Sri Lanka), he was directed by God to walk towards Mecca, and build the Ka’abah.

When that was completed, he performed thawaf, circumvating around the Kaabah seven times and prayed two rakaat. Thawaf is the practise of the malaikats – angels – that circumvate the Baitul Makmur in the seventh layer of the sky. Each action of the prayer is an ode to God, and revelling in His creations. (more…)

X is at the crossroads of her life. She has been on the Hajj twice. The last trip had her questioning the one main issue that had brought her much love and happiness, but did not coincide with her religious beliefs.

X is a lesbian. She is in a dilemma: if she chooses the right path, she knows she may find a place in paradise, but her life will be without companionship and sex. Should she decide to opt for love and a home with a woman, she can pray all she wants, flagellate herself if need be, but she’ll never touch the lowest of heavens.

“I don’t know what to do. When I went to Mecca for my Hajj, I prayed to God to take away my sexuality, make me normal, because no matter how hard I try to justify myself, the Book does not sanction homosexuality. But when I came back… imagine… it’s been years since I’ve been on a date with a woman. I go off for my second pilgrimage and wham! Women everywhere!” (more…)

She was the daughter of a wealthy man, sent to Europe to learn about literature, wine, dancing, and meeting people from all over the world. She smoked Gitanes that she stole from her mother’s purse, wore Biba and Mary Quant, and read Jackie magazine and Barbara Cartland romances, while picking up European languages as a duck took to water.

He was a clerk that had worked his way up in the consulate, and arrived at his newly assigned post, bewildered and yet excited. Meeting her at one of the many parties the consulate hosted was like being hit by a tropical meteor. She was not beautiful – she wore thick spectacles and had a bad perm, but she made him laugh and feel like a prince.

He spoke little English and no Malay. She learned his language. He was Spanish. She was Malay. He was Catholic. She was Muslim. They fell in love and got married. (more…)

“Remember when we were kids? Even at 20, we were more interested in making the grades at uni, making friends, travelling, than sex and drugs. At 15, we didn’t even know what sex was about. I hated boys then; they were noisy and stupid,” my sister, Liza, laughed ruefully.

My second sister and I came of age in the late 80s and 90s. Nora, being the youngest, is a 21st century baby, wise and very with-it, compared to her two decrepit sisters.

Like many of our peers, Liza and I grew up in a modern Malay household. Because of our East Coast roots, religion was, and still is a very important factor in our lives, but it wasn’t a hindrance to our lives when we were growing up. Going to a disco as it was called back then, was something you did after final examinations or to celebrate an occasion. It wasn’t a must to dance night after night in a disco, and back then, there weren’t club nights like how they have now with world-class DJs flying in and out of the country. (more…)

Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad

Dina Zaman has been pestering me to write something on Islam for Rentakini for quite some time. She wanted to have a different perspective. For various reasons I have postponed her request. For one, I can only speak as far as an interested observer, who had undergone secular education throughout my life. I do not want to be pulled into specific issues of which I do not have knowledge of. Furthermore, controversies have erupted over a whole array of issues related to Islam which has polarised the debate.

In her last e-mail she provided me with the opportunity to take a different perspective vis-à-vis Islam: about a Malaysian Muslim (or as some prefer, Malay Muslim) student in the United Kingdom, on the eve of coming home.

What are things I cherish more back home? (more…)

Daniyal Yusof is good-looking, works for an IT consultancy and is divorced with four children. He is on a spiritual mission: to find himself through religion. It is through religion that he is able to save himself and protect himself from worldly temptations and sins.

When I first met him, he was hell-bent on redeeming himself and absolving himself of his past wrongdoings. He has been attending religious classes somewhere in Sri Damansara, and applying all the teachings into his life. He goes to work in a somnambulistic state - every night he recites Surah Al-Ikhlas 3,000 times. It is his only way of coping with loneliness and the unbearable silence that reverberates in his small flat.

“I lost so much,” he says softly. He has lost his family, house, car and high-paying job as a consultant for a multi-national. Just as he was picking up the pieces, he met someone and fell in love deeply. When it ended, it devastated him.

“My marriage was a practical one. I had everything except a wife. She was a friend, we knew and liked each other, got married and then everything went downhill. Divorced, lost everything except the clothes on my back, and then…” he faltered, “… I met her…” (more…)

My short sojourn as a location manager for the Malaysian segment of a regional documentary was quite a reflective experience. I had expected it to be hectic, but I did not expect my trip have me question my role, my individuality as a Muslim. March 18, 2005 was also a momentous day for me (personally) and that kicked off the trip.

Mitra Media Komunika was an Indonesian production house, and Yuli Yismartono, an editor at Tempo magazine, had contacted me, asking if I wanted to be part of the team that was travelling around the region to film Muslims in Southeast Asia.

The documentary would investigate five countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and finally Indonesia. ‘Living Faith’ (the working title for now) is an exploration of Muslims at work, play and home, questioning themselves as Muslims. Malaysia was the second leg of the shoot.

To say that both the crew and I had multiple discourses on religion and Southeast Asia would not be true: we were too tired from all the running around, and trying not to kill the hired drivers that drove us to all our engagements. Apart from this little incident that demonstrated our language differences, it was all work: (more…)

On Dec 26, 2004, Aceh, Phuket, Sri Lanka, Penang among other countries were visited by a biblical calamity. If Moses parted the Red Sea with his rod to escape his enemies, (Surah Asy Syu’araa, verses 52-66), then the tsunami that appeared on Boxing Day left communities devastated by a loss that’s incomprehensible.

Madness was the only solace to grief. And it was mentally, emotionally and physically tiring for everyone: rescue workers, relief organisations, community leaders, parents, children, even masterless pets. Singapore’s Straits Times reported on Jan 2, 2005 that in Sri Lanka, there were three cases of child rapes, which, though deplorable, were ‘not uncommon in times of conflict and trauma.’

For Muslims, the natural disaster was a divine sign of Godly wrath. When pictures of the Grand Mosque at Banda Aceh appeared around the world, still upright and strong, it was proof that God protected the true believers. When more reports appeared in the news, of mosques and holy shrines not destroyed by the tsunami, everyone started chattering.

My mother, the Breakfast Ustazah, had a story for every piece of evidence of God’s tsunami miracles. Call me a cynic, and trust me when I tell you that I truly believe in miracles and God’s will, but there were some harebrained theories being spouted over our depressing but most nutritional breakfast: toast, oatmeal and muesli. We went to work, doomed. (more…)

Once in a very rare while, yours truly attends smart dinners and parties hosted by very wealthy relatives and friends. When you put your mind to it, you can be that social butterfly.

The pre-requisites, if you don’t have money: you better be beautiful. If you’re dirt ugly, you better be witty. Clever too, but not too clever, yah, we don’t want to outshine anyone else in their Pradas and Marc Jacobs. It’s all part of the game, and really, social Malaysia is practically Additional Maths, what with its sub-sets and inner circles.

Let’s not even bother with the nouveaus. They’re so passé and gaudy. Oh you really don’t even want to go there. They hit it lucky with one tender and are chummy with a few A-list Ministers, and they think they’re It. No wonder they marry artistes and kampung girls made good for second wives.

We’re not going to even touch royalties. Been there, done that.

Besides, the true bluebloods are the tycoons and their offspring. They look good, aren’t overweight and are educated. These boys and girls aren’t stupid. You know these types: trust fund babies that get Swiss bank accounts at the age of 15. (more…)

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately; I think I’m a better Muslim overseas than at home.

Perhaps it is the distance that makes it so, and because I am a minority when I am away, that I am able to practise my faith better. Laugh if you wish, but this has been echoed by friends who have studied or worked overseas.

Maybe the reason why we feel this way is because of the isolation we feel, being away from home and the familiar. While we grab the many chances to explore and travel, we still hold on to our roots because they give us security and that we are something – Muslims – hence the strength to face a very different world that can be bleak and harsh.

I don’t have the answers. (more…)

One day, a friend called me up, told me to wear the baju kurung and selendang to work the next day, because after Maghrib, we were going to visit a holy man. She had had a bit of a haunting recently, and it was affecting her marriage. While I digested the fact that she, a quantity surveyor and her husband, an accountant, actually believed in mumbo-jumbo, she turned up at my office and kidnapped me for the night. The holy man’s home was just an hour away.

It became more apparent to me, as we headed towards nowhere, that we were not going to meet a Datuk Harun Din type in a Darul Syifa setting. We were heading towards secondary forests and dirt roads. The fact that the trip had exceeded more than an hour made me nervous.

“Who are we visiting?” I asked my friend.

“Uncle Din.”

“And who is Uncle Din?” (more…)

If you want the sanest, most sage and also bonkers advice on love, life and religion, talk to a cab driver. They come in all shapes and sizes: you have the kohl-eyed drivers with serbans who can tickle your funny bone, you might come across a graduate driving a taxi because it’s more lucrative and of course an Indonesian immigrant trying very hard to pass off as a local, despite lapsing into Javanese as he careens his way through the traffic and asking you from time to time, the directions.

Taxi drivers are the same everywhere; they know the beat, the pulse of a city and empathise with the heart of a country. So they should, ferrying all sorts across town, cities and villages. While you can’t generalise the drivers, most of them are men (and women) that know what it means to eke a living in an unsure economy. Malaysian cab drivers can be the most ornery service providers in the world, but nothing’s perfect.

Almost 90 percent of the cab drivers that have brought me from point A to C and then Y have been Malay, and chatty. I don’t exercise the NEP when it comes to hailing cabs, but it’s rare that I get a non-Malay Muslim driver. And every one of them had something to say about the state of our country. (more…)

She is reticient. Her scarf is tied loosely around her head, for she is at home and not expecting any visitors. She is wearing a loose kaftan. He is smartly dressed in a shirt and trousers, and is raring to check his durians at his dusun. She looks away a lot, and seems to search for something at a distance. He is almost hyperkinetic; his thoughts run from his speech. She says she is happy. He is happy. View this union as a metaphor of the Malaysian landscape.

They were once idealistic. When they met in the 1980s, they had been working in Kuala Lumpur: she was in advertising and worked side by side with a few illustrous names that headline theatre performances today, while he was a professional with dreams. Together, they decided to go back to their homeland, bring up a family and turn Terengganu into their paradise.

Today, she seeks peace in prayers and the many religious classes held in town, and tells her family and relatives that she has found contentment. She is so adamant that she has found it that it makes others wonder, whether she truly has. He is still a working professional, with a dusun and a few small enterprises, because these days in Malaysia, everyone’s a businessman. They have four children, and they have to make ends meet. (more…)

Idlan Zakaria

Dear Dina,

The Guardian ran a special feature on Young Muslims in Britain recently, and their struggle in finding an identity as a British Muslim, or a Muslim Brit, whichever way they defined themselves. I’ve read and seen many calls upon British Muslims to stand up and be counted as a British citizen, both in newspapers and on TV, questioning whether their loyalty lies first and foremost with their nation or their religion; and these have come fast and furious post September 11.

I often wonder why these two points on the spectrum need be so far apart, and whether there is space for reconciliation. It is perhaps different for me, growing up in a country whose government proclaims itself to be a Muslim nation; and if we fail to find a consensus on whether this is true or not, we can at least agree that for all intents and purposes, as per the constitution, our official religion is Islam.

Islam advocates that we follow the law of the land we live in, insofar as those laws do not contravene Islamic principles and values. From this perspective, the question of whether ’should I (as a Muslim) report my Muslim neighbour whom I know is a threat to national security’ should be answered in the affirmative; in the same way one would report a non Muslim neighbour who may be comitting the same offence. (more…)

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…)

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…)

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…)