Warily Ever After

First published in Poskod in 2013.

Of a Malay Singaporean girl & a Dutchman; of syariah law & civil marriages.

When I was 21, my conservative parents found out that I was dating someone whom I found to be smart, funny, beautiful, endearing, and family-oriented. Even better, we were from similar backgrounds: being Malay and Muslim. The only problem? She—there you go, the someone in question was a young woman. At 25, having gone to The Hague to pursue a Master’s degree, I came home ten months later with a man whom I’d met while looking for an apartment, with plans to marry by the end of the year. He had come to Singapore with me during my summer vacation to meet my family, and undergo a legal conversion at an organisation for Muslim converts (even though there wasn’t much else that he didn’t already know after doing his own reading).

My mother was married at the age of 23, and there I was, at 25, already two years overage. Having never brought anyone serious home, having disparaged most of the Malay men who never seemed to have the egalitarian qualities I was looking for, and topped off with being suspected of being not-quite-heterosexual, I think my aged parents might have been rather close to the edge of panic at the thought of me never getting married.

I can only imagine my father’s relief and thought process when he first found out about the Dutchman. He’s white? No problem. He’s not born a Muslim? At least he knows the five pillars and six articles at least. He doesn’t know how to pray? He can learn. He’s not circumcised? Easily done. At least he’s a man! Plus, he likes you and you like him! 

That summer vacation ended with a proposal from my father to the Dutchman for us to do a ‘small and symbolic’ ceremony. His suggestion that we either get engaged or married before we went back to the Netherlands caught me completely off guard. After I explained to the Dutchman the local concepts of engagement (his family traditionally would come and ‘reserve’ me for marriage) and nikah gantung (lit. ‘hanging marriage’, an Islamic wedding without a public reception; sometimes without state recognition), we decided to get married but without telling the Dutchman’s parents (there was drama enough just from having converted). Since we didn’t have the required documents for a state-recognized wedding, we told my parents that we would do a nikah gantung.

That ‘small’ and ‘symbolic’ ceremony turned out to include 50 guests (my father’s wishes), searching for hours for specific traditional dresses in white (my mother’s wishes), and a full force of elderly men with authoritative white beards, who gave me some stunning pre-marriage advice such as obeying my husband in all rightful matters (clearly they had no idea of our feminist leanings). 

The rebel in me relished in getting married outside the law: in secret, without any official papers and without half of our families knowing. But the level-headed part of me understood that things were not going to be smooth from this point onwards, and that the sooner I accepted that it would always be a little difficult, the easier it would be.

Just four days after the wedding, the Dutchman went back home, as planned (all he had wanted in Singapore was a vacation—I guess he got more than he bargained for). I spent two more months researching for my thesis and also spent my last Eid ul-Fitr in Singapore for some time to come. I endured questions from my extended family, who were all naturally curious but limited themselves to dancing around the elephant in the room: who was this tall and skinny white man that I was married to, without warning and in semi-secret, and where was he now that they wanted to gawk at him and ask him questions mostly centred around how “Muslim” he is?

When I got back to The Hague in September, I packed all my things, said farewell to my flatmate, and moved into the Dutchman’s house. This was a smart move (pun intended) for two reasons:

Contemporary Dutch society is overwhelmingly secular and people today expect years of cohabitation before a wedding (if any). It was acceptable and even preferable to live together for at least five years before getting married (if at all), and I knew a couple who had married only after 10 years! Some couples may also prefer the more discreet civil partnership, which provides all the legal benefits of marriage, without having to announce it to everyone and throwing a party. Others gave off vibes of contempt for religion, marriage before cohabitation, and worst of all, religious marriage.

In contrast, in Singapore it is virtually impossible to cohabit (either due to social norms against premarital sex, or prohibitively high rental rates) and most Muslim couples get married in their mid-20s. After a few years of living with their in-laws most of them are dying to move out into their Built-To-Order apartments. By moving in with the Dutchman after our secret marriage, his family saw it as a sign that we were serious about each other and were moving our relationship to the next, correct, level according to their social norms.

Also, my parents were extremely concerned about how others would perceive my (im)morality, as filtered through Facebook, if I had gone back to The Hague as a single woman, living independently, and dating a white Dutchman. My parents had previously met my Indonesian flatmate, with whom I was sharing an apartment, through video calls on Skype, and even received a 360 degree tour of our apartment. However, they didn’t seem too convinced that I wasn’t in fact enjoying my free and liberal life by immediately shacking up with the first Dutch guy I found (I would later discover that my father had given my younger brother the impression that I was indeed cohabiting with the Dutchman before we were married.)

Or at least they were not convinced that others wouldn’t think that about me, and they worried a lot about how our extended family and their friends would perceive me. By marrying the Dutchman, my family (and whoever else who knew about the marriage) stopped worrying about the possibility of us cohabiting and having sex outside of marriage.

Meanwhile, there was some tension with the Dutchman’s family after he told them that he was planning to convert to Islam. He had pre-empted them of his decision before he left for Singapore. This had caused a cryfest at his mother’s house, and at his father’s house, a barrage of quotes from Geert Wilders, a Dutch far-right politician famous for his Islamophobic speeches.

This hateful phobia of Islam from his family had always stumped me, and still does. While I had never made overt admissions of my religion to any of his family, such as requesting a space to pray at their house, or refusing meat on the counts that it was not ritually slaughtered, I had also never consciously hidden this aspect of myself. I remember sharing with them that I had worked in a mosque and an Islamic school, and even showed them photos of myself or my family members who were visibly Muslim (including but not limited to wearing hijab, for example). It was almost as if tolerance meant that it’s okay for me as a foreigner to be Muslim and never talk about it, but it’s definitely not okay for me to force this abomination upon their white Dutch son. Today, we adopt the policy of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ towards his family – we avoid all topics related to Islam and Muslims, and if it inadvertently comes up (when talking about travelling to Cairo, for example), we quickly change the topic.

Eventually, things calmed down and we announced that we were “engaged” and planning for a wedding. My parents were hoping that we would do the state wedding and reception in Singapore about five months after the secret wedding. But it proved to be beyond our acting and diplomatic powers to squeeze an engagement and a wedding in five months. At the same time, I had been thinking very hard about whether I wanted to have a state wedding in Singapore or in the Netherlands.

My concerns about where we would register our marriage was the wedding process and then the legal and social implications afterwards, including the possibility of divorce and death (not to be a wet blanket here, but these are possible scenarios).

I was not at all keen to apply syariah law to our marriage, with what I perceived to be inequality and unfairness, as interpreted by the semi-government bodies of Islamic Religious Authority of Singapore (MUIS) and the Registry of Muslim Marriages (ROMM). As a registered Muslim in Singapore, these laws applied to me through marriage registration at ROMM, unless I declared myself to be a non-Muslim in order to have the Women’s Charter apply to me through registration at the Registry of Marriage (ROM) (clearly something that would not fly with any average Muslim family, let alone mine).

My idea of spousal equality under Islam was not the same kind of Islam as it had been institutionalised in Singapore. I didn’t think the Singaporean syariah laws were perfect (and remember, influenced by colonial British law) and they certainly didn’t fit my vision of marriage. In particular, the main problem I had was with the way that the Islamic marriage ceremony was conducted. I didn’t like having to sit behind the Dutchman during the secret nikah, and I didn’t like having it justified and explained away with “Islam”. I didn’t like my father passing on his “guardianship” of me to my husband instead. I didn’t like being preached to, by elderly bearded men whom I barely knew, that if I just obeyed my husband, I had a pretty good chance of going to paradise.

I was uncomfortable (okay, more than that—I absolutely disagree!) with polygamy. Hypothetically, the Dutchman could marry three more women under Singaporean law if we married in ROMM, and even if I said no, he could still seek legal permission to do so without my consent. Under Dutch law, polygamy is illegal. Most importantly, the Dutchman says that marrying another woman will never cross his mind, but to me it was more important to verify if a set of laws would indeed protect my rights and wishes, and not merely to take claims of ‘protecting women’ for granted.

Another issue was unilateral divorce. The divorce process is different for Muslim men and women in Singapore. Even though both parties eventually have to go to court for all the four types of divorce, a man may still divorce his wife by verbal repudiation. According to Dutch law, there was only one type of divorce, and both parties had to go to court to settle it.

The final straw was the issue of faraid, or inheritance law. As a Muslim convert in Singapore, the Dutchman had a different set of laws applied to him. For example, if he died without a will, his assets would be seized by the central authority and up to one third given to me, some to our children (if any) with boys receiving twice the share of girls, and the rest to the community. His parents would get nothing because they are not Muslim. It was perplexing for me to hear my father give this as an argument to me in favour of a registering in ROMM, since he had himself tried to circumvent inheritance decisions in situations that he found unfair to the female parties involved.

Why was I being pushed towards a system that clearly would not work for me, as it didn’t for some people around me whom I had seen suffer? Women who silently but tearfully accepted their husband’s second and third wives, or children who fought for their “rightful” share under faraid to the point of harassing their elderly parent? I had seen this happen in my own family. The same people who agreed with syariah law as a concept were also working around these problematic laws in practice by writing their own wills with specific conditions that went against the faraid laws.

This was not something I wanted for my own marriage. I wanted the Dutchman and I to be able to think for ourselves, and for our own situation, knowing that this will change materially and ideologically over time. We found that Dutch law could provide the most space for this to happen, and we prepared a pre-nuptial agreement in anticipation of some of the issues that we were worried about.

Not many people agreed with us however, because Singaporean Muslim community has been socialised to defer to authority and fear their own opinions – especially when authority appears in the form of an elderly male (beard optional) with a diploma from a Middle Eastern university, or official representatives of Islam like ROMM and MUIS. In our society, most people feel that the official interpretation of Islam is correct and should not be questioned by laymen. One friend considered marrying in ROMM as a way to “follow what syariah tells us”, without knowing the exact differences between syariah and civil law. Another friend who was in the same situation as I was, and was aware of the differences, decided to go along at the final moment so as “not to upset family and friends”. I was beginning to get the impression that marrying under syariah  law was just a way to confirm to themselves and to others they there were indeed Muslim – making the contents and material consequences of the law itself irrelevant (at least in that moment).

I was told by parents and friends that I was reinventing the wheel—the religious authorities speaking on behalf of Islam had created this wonderful marriage system with all its inbuilt roles and obligations for me (like how I didn’t have to work, my husband should provide everything for me, and in return I only had to obey him and give ‘sexual access at all lawful times’), and here I was trying to recreate it in the Dutch system. To make matters worse, some people back in Singapore had picked up on the term “civil marriage”, hearing that I was going to go through one in the Netherlands.

The term “civil marriage” is loaded with socio-political significance in the Muslim community. Because the Singaporean marriage courts divide couples along religious lines (non-Muslim and Muslim), it is assumed that a couple marrying in the civil court are both non-Muslims, (or no longer Muslim), and that a couple marrying in the Islamic court are both Muslims. If a Muslim person has a “civil marriage”, it is assumed that they are no longer Muslim. Or that their marriage ceremony did not fulfil the Islamic requirements (a male guardian, two male witnesses, and a gift from the groom to the bride). Add a white foreigner to the mix, and you have a recipe for assumptions of apostasy gone wild.

I loathed this narrow-mindedness. Indeed, when I spoke to an official from ROMM, she could not even fathom the idea of Muslims who undergo a “civil marriage”, which is the case for Muslims who live in countries without parallel civil and syariah courts. Both ROM and ROMM recognise state marriage certificates from virtually all countries in the world (including the Netherlands); they consider these marriages as valid. This means that ROMM does indeed recognise the dreaded “civil marriage”, and that the fears and shame that Singaporean Muslims attach to it is simply irrational.

After waiting eight weeks for our marriage application to go through (being a foreign bride is suspect enough for Dutch immigration authorities), we finally performed an official wedding ceremony in a small office in the outskirts of The Hague. We wanted it as small as possible, so some of the Dutchman’s family was present, and some of my closest friends.

How happy I was to be able to stand with the Dutchman at the same table, hold his hand, and read our own vows to each other (like promising to buy him a popsicle if I ever made him cry). It was a vast change from the first, secret, wedding, and I was above all relieved to not have to hide anymore.

Even if I did have to pretend to be a blushing, first-time bride. 

Re-thinking Disability in Islam

This article was first published on Jan 10, 2020, in Beyond The Hijab.

My sister, Syiqah, gets around on a wheelchair. As kids, we used to attend weekend madrasah classes in a mosque. Every Sunday, we gathered two or three young men to carry her wheelchair down three big steps to the classrooms, before rearranging the wall panels to let her into the classroom. This process was reversed after class. Many thanks to these young men, but sometimes I wished that we didn’t have to make such a grand entrance into class every week.

I often wonder though, how the people who worked at the mosque and madrasah viewed my sister. To start with, I will look at discourses and examples of how people with disabilities (PWDs) have been represented in Islamic theory and practice, both in history and in the contemporary period. I then turn to the Qur’an to come up with a nuanced interpretation of disability. Finally, I will build on some of Syiqah’s experiences to provide insights and suggestions on how to embrace PWDs in our communities.

Islamic discourses on disability

One of the dominant discourses in mainstream Islam is that PWDs are “special” or closer to God as they have no capacity to do wrong. This logic states that they will always remain innocent, child-like, and cannot be accountable for their actions. However, this discourse should differentiate physical from intellectual disabilities, since accountability requires mental capacity.

Another discourse is that they are “imperfect”, but this is also similar to being “special”. This logic states that there is a perfect model of a human body, created by Allah, and a disability is thus a deviation from the norm. It may also imply that when someone is deprived of a certain ability, they may have other, different abilities as compensation. For example, someone who is visually impaired may have more sensitive hearing. 

In the Malay archipelago, there are several well-known dua related to children. This supplication found in Surah Ali-Imran [1] stands out: 

At that, Zakariya called upon his Lord, saying, "My Lord, grant me from Yourself a good offspring. Indeed, You are the Hearer of supplication." (Qur’an, 3:38)

This verse describes Prophet Zakaria’s supplication God for offspring that is tayyib (good, righteous, or pure). Tayyib is used in the Qur’an to describe land (34:15), Paradise dwellings (61:12), food (2:57), properties (4:2), upright men and upright women (24:26), as well as an abstract concept that is the opposite of evil (3:179, 5:100). 

However, in Malay translations of this verse, tayyib is often translated and explained as sempurna (perfect or complete) or tidak cacat (not imperfect). Muslim parents-to-be may also be taught a dua asking God for protection from Shaitan harming one’s baby. This logic implies that foetuses or newborns with a defect or disability are the result of Shaitan’s influence. [2]

In many cultures, mental illnesses are likely to be viewed as supernatural possession by jinn. It remains a controversial topic among Muslims globally. PWDs with mental illness or intellectual disabilities may have grown up being exempted from fasting, prayer, or going to the mosque because in mainstream jurisprudence, ‘aql or a rational state of mind is required for acts of worship to be valid.

Although PWDs are not actively discouraged from taking part in communal Muslim life, physical barriers often stop them from doing so. In Singapore, mosques (as any other building) built after 1990 must be made fully accessible, while older mosques are being renovated to include lifts and ramps. Despite these improvements, some mosques in older or historic neighbourhoods remain inaccessible. Sometimes, having lifts may also reinforce segregation of prayer spaces, delegating entire levels to women and children, when it could have been more flexible before, due to the need to accommodate different circumstances.

Organisations that work on providing religious access have varying degrees of success, depending on their country’s levels of infrastructure and awareness. For example, Al Fitrah Foundation, a Malaysian non-profit organisation for visually impaired Muslims runs a Braille Quran Initiative, [3] but it relies on small-scale private donations. However, in countries with more developed infrastructure for the disabled, organisations like Kitaba (United Kingdom) and Dirasa (Norway, Denmark, Sweden) have been producing and teaching in Braille and audio, as well as even organising assisted umrah trips. [4]

Malay Islamic discourses blend different ideas from various Islamic cultures when it comes to the perception of PWDs, their characteristics and life purposes. A look at mainstream Islamic history helps us to enlarge our perspective on this topic.

Stories of disabilities in Islamic history

Julaybib was one of the Ansar, the first community of Muslims surrounding the Prophet Muhammad in Madinah. The name Julaybib means “small-grown”, suggesting that perhaps he had dwarfism. He was also described as being damim (“ugly” or “deformed”). His most serious limitation was that his parents or lineage was not known, since he could not expect any support or protection in a society that heavily stressed family and tribal connections. 

Julaybib was ridiculed and shunned to the point of being prohibited by a certain Abu Barzah of the Aslam tribe, from entering his home. However, the Prophet being aware of Julaybib’s needs and sensibilities went to one of the Ansar and suggested that his daughter marry Julaybib. While her parents protested, the Ansari girl trusted the Prophet’s decision-making process and married Julaybib. She is lauded by scholars for having ‘readily agreed to be the wife of a physically unattractive man’. [6] However, the reverse – encouraging able-bodied men to marry Muslim women with disabilities – rarely happens as reproduction heavily stressed in marriage. 

Historically, there was even a religious position which favoured those with visual impairment. In Egypt, before the advent of loudspeakers in the 1950s, such men were deliberately employed as mu’azzin to give the call to prayer from the minarets. Their disability was an advantage: they preserve the privacy of surrounding houses as they cannot look into these courtyards. Could it be possible that since no one reaches out to engage PWDs, today’s mosques may have overlooked accessibility in not just designing but organising their spaces?

As the acceptance of PWDs in practice is fluid and changes across time and space, it is always useful to go back to our basic source of divine knowledge.

Disability in the Qur’an

The Qur’an gives us a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of disability. The general reference is al-darari (4:95), translated as ‘disabled’. Coming from the root d-r-r (ض ر ر), it can connote ‘harm’ or ‘suffering’. Humans can suffer or be harmed, but this only occurs with God’s permission. [6] The actions of shaitan, hypocrites, disbelievers, or disobedient believers (e.g. use of black magic) cannot harm us (2:102). This already counters the common idea that mental illnesses and associated disabilities are the cause of jinn possession or black magic.

The form ud’turra means ‘force’ or ‘compulsion’. Doing something forbidden by force or by necessity has no sin. [7] Another form, darraa, which connotes ‘affliction’, ‘hardship’ or ‘adversity’, is also a kind of compulsion because it comes from God and it not under our direct control. 

And [mention] Ayyub, when he called to his Lord, "Indeed, adversity has touched me, and you are the Most Merciful of the merciful." (Qur’an, 21:83)

Prophet Ayyub acknowledges that his adversity, which included a painful physical disability, comes from God and that only God can remove them. [8] The Qur’an reminds us that everyone will experience hardship and ease, it’s only whether we realise it or not (7:95). Times of hardship are meant for us to remember and call on God (10:12, 16:53, 30:33, 39:8) and be patient (2:177) because it is just a trial (2:214, 39:49) aimed to humble us (6:42, 7:94). God only gives us what we can handle, and even provides supplications for us (2:286).

Taking all these nuanced meanings into account, al-darari (4:95) can be considered a person who has been has either been hurt, harmed, or born with a disability. These may be considered adversity or hardship because society generally caters to the able-bodied and the neurotypical. However, they are certainly not forbidden or necessarily exempted from striving in the way of God, as shown by the historical example of Julaybib: in a battle he managed to kill several before dying, which so moved the Prophet that he prepared Julaybib’s grave himself.

My sister

My sister has a genetic condition called spinal muscular atrophy. This is a group of inherited diseases that cause muscle damage and weakness, which worsen over time. This condition was also only recognised in medical texts in the last 20 years, so when she was younger, my family went to different people to try and find a cure. I remember a bomoh, or a traditional healer, performing rituals combined with Qur’anic recitations in my home. At the same time, she went for physiotherapy sessions.

My parents used to exempt her from fasting or praying, saying that she didn’t have to. However, as she got older, she became more interested in attending seminars, conferences and additional classes on Islam. We did start attending one class together in a mosque, but stopped going when we realised that the bus was not accessible.

My sister wears the hijab because she believes that is part of being a good Muslim. She once told me that she would like to get married and have a family someday, but she realises that her disability does stand in the way of how men perceive her.

Most importantly, she says she does not feel disabled because she was born with her disability. To her, asking if she would like to walk is like asking if we would like to fly. She has been able to excel in her studies, her work, her sport, and the various languages she learned along the way. She works and supports our family, travels independently, and has a thriving social life – pretty much what most of us want anyway.

Rethinking disability

PWDs are not a homogenous group: family support and financial ability to provide caregiving and transport matters. Physical and intellectual disabilities must be differentiated, and yet, many PWDs are eager for a sense of community, too.

The low visibility of Muslims with disabilities is probably because of the predominant ideas about them and their spiritual capabilities. Hence, there is still a dearth of critical conversations around disability. For example, would a Muslim using a guide dog be allowed in religious spaces?

Saying that all Muslims with disabilities are ‘special’ and do not need to fulfil religious obligations is counterproductive for inclusion. Even as it helps Muslims with disabilities connect, the widespread availability of Islamic knowledge, seminars, sermons, and even Friday prayers online should not prevent mosques and religious spaces from being fully accessible with ramps, lifts, railings, larger toilets and ablution areas, Braille Qur’an, or television screens to visualise the khutbah.

… "[A]dversity has touched us and our family, and we have come with goods poor in quality, but give us full measure and be charitable to us. Indeed, Allah rewards the charitable." (Qur’an, 12:88)

If a Muslim with a disability expresses their wish and interest to participate in a Muslim community, it becomes our duty to make things easier for them. A masjid should be a refuge, and not a place that causes divisions (9:107). 

Ultimately, the empathy we cultivate for Muslims with disabilities should extend to empathy towards other marginalised Muslims. Let’s make sure we are not overlooking an integral part of our community.

Notes

[1] This article uses the Sahih International translation of the Qur’an, available at www.quran.com.

[2] http://www.informasikini.com/petanda-gangguan-syaitan/

[3] http://www.alfitrah.net/braille

[4] http://www.kitaba.org/?s=umrah

[5] http://theclearsunnah.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/the-story-of-julaybib/

[6] Qur’an (5:76, 6:71, 10:18, 10:106, 13:16, 20:89, 21:66, 22:12, 25:3, 25:55, 26:73, 34:42, 48:11)

[7] Qur’an (2:173, 5:3, 6:119, 6:145, 16:115)

[8] Qur’an (10:12, 10:107, 17:56, 21:84, 36:23, 39:38)

Blackface and brownface in Indonesia and Singapore

This article was first published in ERIF Sinterklaas Brand & Product Study 2020: 5 Years of Monitoring Blackface in the Market, 2020. 

On a clear day a decade ago [2009] in East Java, where my grandparents were from, I found myself watching a carnivalesque procession of floats and performers of all ages, dressed up in marvellously colourful and shiny costumes. Behind a truck carrying a dozen heavily made up secondary school students were a group of men, painted shoe-polish black, with fabric leaves around their waists. I asked a relative beside me to explain this: “This group represents the transfer of mysteries from Irian Jaya,” he said, and I remained mystified.

A reog procession in Ponorogo, East Java in 2009.
Photo by author.

Only a year later, I would arrive to study and live in the Netherlands, discover the ‘tradition’ of Zwarte Piet. I did not make the connection until one day, at the annual concert of my academic institution, a group of students from Indonesia performed a variety of ethnic dances from their archipelago. Decked in costumes borrowed from the embassy, they demonstrated dances representing Sumatra, Java and Bali.

From video 'Yamko Rambe Yamko'

For their final piece, four male students appeared in pitch black full body leotards and paint marks on their faces, accessorised with raffia skirts. Halfway through, I realised that the grunting dance was meant to represent Papuans. An Indonesian friend who witnessed this performance too later told me that every 5th of December, people in her hometown in Ambon – who speak a creole inflected with Dutch words – dress up as Sinterklas, Suarte Pit (also known as Om Pit (Uncle Pete) or Pit Hitam (Black Pete), fairies and clowns (see Goppel, 2016 for a video).

From video 'Sie Gins Kom de Stoomboot - Sinterklaas Op De Molukken: Ambon'

In 2008, I was attending a conference on critical Islam when the conversation veered to the colonisation by Muslims of other peoples. I asked an Indonesian man in our group about colonisation of Papua and incidents of forced conversion happening there. His defence: “But they are a little primitive, backward, you know?”

Blackface and brownface in Asia

In American cultural history, blackface is used to portray racist stereotypes of African Americans through performances. As a representation of a ‘subservient black body’ lacking in intellect, coordination and other virtues, blackface is an ‘imposed conceptualising representation’ that has travelled across the globe (Reyes, 2014).

Ad for Dunkin Donuts in Thailand

In Asia, some recent incidents of blackface in print and television advertisements in Thailand (Dunkin Donuts in 2013), Japan (Astigu pantyhose in 2014) and Malaysia (Watsons in 2017) caused major backlash online. In Japan, African-American writer Baye McNeil led a campaign to remove blackface performances in 2015. In each incident, the initial defence was that the ‘local’ use of blackface does not having racist intentions, but a look into the country’s history reveals economic and political connections with colonial powers.

The Euro-American discourse on Black people has shaped the discourse in Asia more than actual encounters with Black people (Fukushima, 2011). This is seen in the influence of European and Hollywood films and minstrel shows in different countries. As cuisines from the colonies transferred to the metropole (Kuipers, 2017), cultural influences like Zwarte Piet and minstrel shows travelled to the colonies. In 1887, the year of the 50th anniversary of the accession of Queen Victoria, one of the celebrations in the British crown colony of Singapore was a costume race that included racial caricatures of ‘native’ communities of Chinese, Malay and Tamils as well as blackface.

A 1935 photo of Singaporeans in blackface republished in a 1980 Straits Times column.
National Library archives.

 Minstrel parties and groups were common in the 1930s. Each neighbourhood had their own minstrel group that performed at events, parties and weddings. Until the late 1980s, American and British minstrel performances were popular, available ‘live’ in theaters and on television, and described as “good family entertainment” (Kaur, 2019).

Closely related to the practice of blackface is brownface: the portrayal of racist stereotypes of Indians and other ethnic minorities by artificially darkening the skin, using visible ethnic or religious markers such as the turban, and adopting an “Indian accent” which involves head-shaking and rolled ‘R’s. The diversity of Indian ethnic groups like Punjabis, Bengalis, and Tamils are all collapsed into a homogenising, offensive stereotype.

Some Singaporeans had taken great offense at the use of brownface in the film Gunga Din (1939) and comedy Short Circuit (1986). However, in the last decade, there have been incidents of brownface that included corporate Bollywood parties, YouTube channels, and state media (Veerasamy, 2019). These have mostly gone unchallenged, and brownface was declared by government bodies to be “insensitive” but not illegal (Kaur, 2019). Tradition is not innocent either: in Malay folklore exists a blackface bogey man called Orang Minyak (‘oily man’), who commits voyeurism and abduction of young women under the cover of night.

Performing racial supremacy and inferiority

Showing minority populations with a history of racial oppression as varying combinations of primitive, backward, stupid, ignorant serves the discursive strategy of keeping them subordinated. The same processes occur globally, whether as a result of information flow and exchange with former or current colonising countries, or as a proven technique for keeping minority populations subordinated and establishing racial superiority both “on and off-stage” (Reyes, 2014).

The racial dynamics of non-White societies such as those in Latin America, the Caribbean (see Bonilla-Silva, 2004). and most of Asia, has gone largely unstudied and unanalysed. Within a discourse of white supremacy, the “reality and politics of a middle-racial category” can show us new ways of identifying and analysing racial interests.

Because the discourse of a ‘Black-White’ racial order is so pervasive, one of the common defences of societies without any majority White populations is that racism simply does not exist. However, the examples above have shown that while White racial supremacy exists globally, a similar, parallel process manifests in different forms as linked to local racial interests. Hence, the dominant group in a society will often enjoy economic, political, social and cultural privileges – all while also being linked to how near to Whiteness they can attain i.e. honorary White (Bonilla-Silva, 2004).

Just as the historical legacies of Black peoples are marked by “slavery, gender-specific servitude, conquest, legal segregation, colonisation, and socioeconomic peonage” (Reyes, 2014), so are the bodies of Brown and other racialised groups today in different ways and to different extents according to their contexts.

The colonised colonises: case of Indonesia

The Indonesian case illustrates all the above processes. Under Dutch colonisation, the practice of blackface was documented in the 1890s when a Malay-language commercial theatre group Komedie Stamboel performed stories from A Thousand and One Nights, which included a ‘black-amoor’ character meant to represent an African slave. As this actor announced the next night’s play (as per theatrical tradition), he used “broken Dutch mimicking an African” mixed with malapropisms, Malay and low Javanese words (Tjerimai, 15 November 1893; in Cohen, 2004).

In 1945, the new Indonesian republic declared independence from the Netherlands and claimed the entire territory of the former Dutch East Indies. What was Western New Guinea remained under the Dutch until the mid-1960s, when a controversial referendum resulted in the Indonesian annexation of the region. Thus in 1962 with the New York Agreement it became the province of Irian Jaya and was later renamed to Papua and West Papua in 1999 (the eastern half of the island being independent Papua New Guinea). Organisasi Papua Merdeka (Free Papua Movement, or OPM) was established by West Papuan nationalists, who rejected the compromised referendum.

Blackface and racist stereotypes of Papuans justify economic exploitation through extraction of natural resources. Papua houses Grasberg, the world's largest gold mine and third largest copper mine. It is operated by Freeport Indonesia since 1973, a subsidiary of US-owned Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold. The mine dumps waste in the deltas and rivers, destroying food sources and degrading the environment. Military and police oppression, kidnapping, torture, and surveillance of religious and local leaders are all attempts to contain any protests or demands for self-rule. The profits of mining are not channelled back into the province, where Papuans live in poverty in addition to dealing with Indonesian settlers from other islands.

In the national discourse, the province is seen as valuable to the country because of natural resources and biodiversity. However, Papuans who study and work in cities on the major island of Java face racial discrimination from both the general public and the police. In August this year, Papuan students in several cities protesting the 1962 agreement were accused of vandalising the Indonesian flag and were arrested, sparking protests in West Papua demanding justice for the students with banners saying ‘kami bukan monyet’ (we are not monkeys) and social media hashtags #papuabukanmonyet.

Demasking blackface

[…] all people are defined according to a set of terms that are constructed as mattering by those in positions of power or by those with investments in maintaining social hierarchies. To “see” “racial difference” is thus not to actually see differing bodies, but to see bodies as fundamentally marked by a particular way of viewing, with a particular emphasis on certain aspects of embodiment. (Riggs, 2008)

What does it take to demask the harms of blackface and brownface, when they are often hidden under the guise of humour? The first step is to make the connections between what seems like ageless cultural traditions and transnational flows of conceptualised representations. What seems to have always been there needs to be situated in a historical context. Excavating the past may also reveal more a history of progressive action and refusal of blackface and brownface.

Next is to understand that the performative use of blackface and brownface creates and reinforces racial hierarchies in a society. While in some contexts, brownface is used with reference to local dynamics while blackface to global dynamics, both build on each other and have a shared goal of dehumanisation, subordination and oppression in the service of larger economic ends. Finally, as culture is dynamic, it is always possible to create or bring back alternative performances that humanise historically marginalised peoples.

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2004. “From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27 (6): 931–50.

Cohen, Matthew Isaac. 2004. “Thousand and One Nights at the Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theatre and Travelling Stories in Colonial Southeast Asia .” Middle Eastern Literatures 7 (2): 235–46.

Fukushima, Yoshiko. 2011. “Ambivalent Mimicry in Enomoto Kenichi’s Wartime Comedy: His Revue and Blackface.” Comedy Studies 2 (1): 21–37.

Goppel, Daan. 2016. “Sie Gins Kom de Stoomboot - Sinterklaas Op De Molukken: Ambon.” YouTube. 2016.

Ho, Michelle H.S. 2017. “Consuming Women in Blackface: Racialized Affect and Transnational Femininity in Japanese Advertising.” Japanese Studies 37 (1): 49–69.

Kaur, Sharan. 2019. “Everything Old Is New Again: Singapore’s Long History with Blackface.” Coconuts Singapore. 2019. https://coconuts.co/singapore/features/everything-old-is-new-again-singapores-long-history-with-blackface/.

Kuipers, Matthijs. 2017. “‘Makanlah Nasi! (Eat Rice!)’: Colonial Cuisine and Popular Imperialism in The Netherlands During the Twentieth Century.” Global Food History 3 (1): 4–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2017.1279515.

Reyes, Angelita D. 2019. “Performativity and Representation in Transnational Blackface: Mammy (USA), Zwarte Piet (Netherlands), and Haji Firuz (Iran).” Atlantic Studies : Global Currents 16 (4): 521–50.

Riggs, Damien. 2008. “How Do Bodies Matter? Understanding Embodied Racialised Subjectivities.” Darkmatter. 2008. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/02/23/how-do-bodies-matter-understanding-embodied-racialised-subjectivities/.

Veerasamy, Visakan. 2019. “It’s Time for a History of Singaporean Chinese People in Brownface.” Twitter. 2019. https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1156127173721251841.

I'm back!

I'm back! After 7 years, some of which was spent in Singapore. I spent that time having children, completing a PhD and doing a bunch of social justice work.

Now that I've moved back to the Netherlands (this blog name still fits!), it will be fun to continue deconstructing the various ideologies in which I found myself immersed in the last few years. In 2021 I had an awakening to the nature of the world and I found myself on a whole new level of independent and critical thinking.

Read on for more of my social critiques and rambles, though I must warn you they have only gotten more (and not less) unacceptable over the years. Enjoy!

Taking a stand against domestic violence? Good. Pretending religious justifications don't exist? Not so good.

Firstly, great that MUIS is actually taking a stand, detailing the different forms of abuse, and stating that divorce is a logical solution to a crappy situation.

Because you know, there is no vendor of Muslim pre-marriage counselling that does. All of them dance around verse 4:34 in the Qur'an, never contesting the hegemonic interpretation and translation of 'daraba'.

They tell you that husbands have the right to discipline their wives, but then embarrassingly temper this obviously vile right with concessions that it can only be done 'lightly', with a miswak twig or a hanky, and with only the intention to 'humiliate' (as if physical abuse > psychological abuse).

And what about all the highly respected ustaz who beat their wives and say it is in the name of Islam? What about all the wives who kept silent because others told them they had to sabr as their husbands knew best? 

It is not 'most disappointing' that abusers use religion to justify abuse, it actually makes sense. Because there is plenty of 'evidence' they can use to justify it.

Emotional abuse in the form of policing of women's behaviour can be justified by appointing men as the head of households and being responsible for the sins of their wives and children. 

Abuse in the form of directly or indirectly coercing women to carry the bulk of household chores (or hiring a Third World woman to do it, while she leaves her own children behind) can be justified by the teaching that she is the 'shepherd of the home' while the man is the 'shepherd of the family'. 

Erasing marital rape can be justified by a hadith about angels cursing a woman till dawn if she doesn't have sex with her husband whenever he wants it.

What about the counsellors at our Syariah Court who indirectly but consistently shame and stigmatise people who seek a divorce? Just because their partners or themselves don't 'womanise, drink, or gamble' it is merely a case of 'differing expectations' and that they can definitely get along?

I'm pretty sure the Prophet was not 'bewildered', he was ashamed when he knew men were beating their wives.

So you can't just erase the entire cultural archive of how Islamic teachings can be used to justify domestic violence by saying 'Islam has never condoned domestic violence'. Are all these merely 'small pockets' when they are taught by our religious leaders themselves? 

Or am I actually talking about another religion?

Racism: a collection of 'negative' views.

The topic of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam came up at lunch at work, so I raved about Miguel Peres Dos Santos's film 'Voices' and how some of the things you see in the film in the 70s/80s are still uncannily being seen and heard in the media of contemporary Dutch society.

For example, the film has excerpts from news interviews of a White Dutch man in the streets, saying that he doesn't think it's fair that "Mr Foreigner [from Curacao]" should get a house before him.

A White Spanish colleague (married to White Dutch) at the lunch table starts getting agitated.

WSC: You cannot say 'Wow, things like that are being said in the 70s', this is how we are brought up in society and this is what we learn from our parents".

[Right about here I'm hoping she meant that therefore it's an subconscious narrative that should be changed]
Me [confused]: "No, my point is that these things are still being said today. They still talk about immigrants like this."
WSC [getting agitated and getting up to put her things away, ready to leave the room]: You keep saying "they", "they", who do you mean??
Me: The White Dutch! And the media.
WSC: Well you seem to have a very negative view of White Dutch people.
[Nope, I was wrong! Racism is something natural, socialised, and merely a faulty perception of a POC.]

WSC refuses to believe that I have heard White people say these things to my face. Woman, you are White. It's impossible for you to see this 'negative' side and hear such 'negative' comments directed to you or people that share your religion, skin colour, hair colour or dress code.

Just a couple of days ago, I was also describing an incident that happened when I was at the film screening in Amsterdam. I had no choice but to bring Nootje along (and just hoping for the best). He ended up sitting through the 20-minute film just about okay, but he was getting restless and needed to sit on the floor with his toys during the Q&A. I wasn't too optimistic about being able to stay the whole way, so I was ready to leave -- having already picked a seat close to the exit and given weary smiles to the kind-faced host who wished me luck when I walked in with Nootje -- if he needed to.

Nootje started to talk ("Airplane is taking off!") during the Q&A, prompting a series of Very Dirty Looks from 3-4 White women just in front of him. One old woman made a big fuss, after turning around pointedly to stare at Nootje, of moving to a different seat. It wasn't loud (a 2-year-old talking, seriously) but I left the theatre after that.

When I described the incident on Facebook, an acquaintance commented that the same would have happened even if I were white, since the problem, according to her, is that Dutch people don't like playful kids.

That's the two main issues right there: she spoke of "Dutch people" when she really meant White Dutch, because Dutch POC are usually friendly to kids. And then there's the obvious thing, I'm NOT White, am I?

While I don't expect her to be able to empathise that I faced such a hostile situation, she expected that I would know what it feels like to be White/the norm. And with one sentence she had managed to turn the whole situation upside down: now I was supposed to feel sorry for her and her unappreciated playful child too.

Openseam - "Teacher, are you Chinese or Malay?"

This article was first published on Openseam.

--

Happy Teachers' Day!

Today's post comes from Aliya Yeoh, an English teacher in Penang, Malaysia. She previously wrote about how she celebrated Chinese New Year. A Chinese Muslim, she reverted at the age of 35, after postponing her earlier plan to do so for 10 years. You can read more of her experiences and thoughts in her blog, Musings of a Mualaf.


"Teacher, do you understand Tamil?" asked Revathi.

I was with a small group of Indian students, on relief duty for an absent teacher.

"No, I don't understand Tamil," I smiled. I knew they just wanted reassurance that I would not eavesdrop on their conversation.

"Would you understand if I speak Chinese?" I asked. Revathi's turn to smile.

"Teacher, you can speak Chinese?" 

"Teacher is Chinese la," Ramanan answered for me.

"Really? I thought you're a Malay."

"I am a Chinese," my smile grew wider. She looked puzzled.

"But... you are wearing tudung?"

"I am a Chinese Muslim... born in Malaysia. I grew up as a Chinese and later..."

"You converted?" Shanti chipped in.

"That's right. I wear the tudung because I am a Muslim woman. But I am still a Chinese and I can speak and understand Chinese." I explained slowly.

"Ohhh..." Revathi nodded slowly.

I've been in this school since 2010. I taught these same students two years ago and strangely, they have not realised that I am a Chinese lady. The reason? I am wearing a hijab, or tudung.

Students, like most Malaysians, associate this garb with Islam and being Malay. In many minds, if you wear a tudung, then you must be a Malay.

And in their minds, if you happen to wear a long tudung, then you must be an especially religious Malay. They associate our clothing with religion.

It's bad enough that Muslim and non-Muslim students are always separated during religious activities. It would be havoc among other non-Muslim teachers if a non-Muslim student were to sit in the hall with other Muslim students, listening to a ceramah (sermon) by an ustaz.

So I can't blame them for their lack of understanding of Islam. They don't know much because we, the Muslims, don't do much. Sometimes we, as adults, are not allowed to.

Students learn best when they mix with their own friends. Which is why our teenagers need to be exposed to doing Islamic dakwah work, and not be scolded nor discouraged just because they 'lack knowledge'.

I wouldn't be surprised if non-Muslim students think that China is made up of only Buddhist people. I used to think that way too, when in reality there are more Chinese Muslims in China than there are Malay Muslims in Malaysia.

Once, I was told, in hushed tones, that there was a Chinese student who was interested in Islam. The ustazah didn't know what to do. Till today, I'm still waiting for her to approach me.

It's always fun watching how Chinese students react when I speak Chinese dialects or Mandarin to them. One day when I scolded a sleepy Chinese lad in Hokkien, his mother tongue, and he was so surprised that he actually sat up straight.

And the Malay students?

They might suddenly realise that it's a fact that there are other Muslims in this country who are not Malay or Mamak.* That there are other once-kafir (non-Muslim) people who have embraced Islam and are now their brothers and sisters in Islam. Because I'm living and walking proof among them.

"So teacher, are you a Malay or a Chinese now?"

"I am a Chinese... and my religion is Islam. There are more than 60,000 Chinese Muslims in Malaysia today, did you know?"

Ahhh, life is never boring as a Chinese Muslim. Xie xie, wo ai ni,** Allah.

*Mamak: local slang to refer to people of Indian ethnicity.
** Mandarin for 'Thank you, I love you'.

Mouthpainter shares story of love at first sight (Part 2)

This article was first published on AbleThrive. Read Part 1 here!

--

One evening when they were working late in the office of their organisation, the Bandung Independent Living Centre, Indonesian mouthpainter Faisal Rusdi finally confessed his feelings to his childhood crush, Cucu Saidah. He had been keeping his feelings for his colleague and soon-to-be-wife to himself for 24 years.

When asked to describe what he loves most about his wife, he said candidly, “I liked her thick eyebrows. She is beautiful, very intelligent and she loves me.”

A year after dating, they decided to marry. But first, they had to break the news to their parents. “My mother and my family were surprised, overwhelmed and happy,” said Faisal, who is based in Bandung, Indonesia.

However, Cucu’s parents did not like the idea of them being together. “They tried to keep us apart, to the point of keeping her at home,” said Faisal. “I think they considered me severely disabled and unable to take care of myself.”

Through one of her brothers, Faisal tried to communicate to her parents. “My uncle and my family approached her family to ask for her hand many times but we were refused.”

Increasingly stressed and frustrated, Cucu grew distant from Faisal, who struggled to accept the reality of his situation. “But her love for me became stronger, and for me as well. We kept trying, and praying and consulting with many people,” he said.

Eventually, they decided to solemnise the marriage through a legal procedure that overrides the bride’s need for a wali, or guardian – the closest male relative – since her father was against the marriage. Finally, the religious court granted them a wali hakim, or a judicial guardian.

“We still invited her parents and family to the wedding, but not one of them attended. Only my extended family and our friends,” said Faisal.

Faisal and Cucu in traditional wedding outfits from Padang, West Sumatra, enter the accessible reception hall on their power wheelchairs during their wedding in Bandung.

After the wedding, the couple continued to reach out to Cucu’s family and their efforts eventually paid off. “Eight months later on Idul Fitri [a celebration after the fasting month of Ramadan], her parents started to accept us slowly,” he said.

Faisal and Cucu were married on 30th November, 2008 in Bandung. As his parents were originally from Padang, the couple chose to follow West Sumatran customs and traditions for their wedding. Naturally, since both Faisal and Cucu are electric wheelchair users, the event hall and wedding dais were designed to be as accessible as possible.

The wedding was just the start of a relationship with unique challenges, which widens the common but narrow conception that the daily work of marriage only involves two parties. For example, Faisal hires a regular caregiver. “The role of assistants/caregivers who help me in my activities is extremely important, and I do not deny it,” he said.

“An assistant [knows] the technical and ethical aspects of accompanying a person with disabilities. He is a good friend who understands me well, and is part of my life. The presence of an assistant completes my independence.”

While the couple strongly promote a definition of independence from their perspective – that includes the presence of an assistant and not solely the ability “to manage oneself” – they still have to deal with society’s misconceptions of their relationship.

“[People think] that we are not able to manage a household, be physically and financially independent, or not able to have or raise children,” said Faisal.

As for their marriage goals, Faisal and Cucu look towards helping their broader community as well. “Both of us want to own or start an art restaurant or cafe where people can come to not just eat but communicate, educate and advocate about an inclusive community.”

Mouthpainter shares story of love at first sight (Part 1)

This article was first published on AbleThrive

--

For professional mouth painter Faisal Rusdi, 41, who was born with cerebral palsy, love at first sight isn’t simply a cliché.

Faisal first saw his wife, Cucu Saidah, on his first day at a special education school in Bandung, Indonesia. It was 1983, and back then there was a flag-raising ceremony every Monday. Cucu was standing just a few metres in front of him – she was leading the ceremony.

“In that moment, I knew I liked her immediately,” said Faisal. “Perhaps we could say it was love at first sight, at nine years old.” However, Faisal’s nine-year-old self was “shy, reserved and quiet.” Throughout the four years of elementary school, he never even greeted or spoke to her. Later, Cucu continued her secondary education at a mainstream school, while he remained at the same special school. They occasionally met each other at school reunions, where they had brief conversations. “I still felt the same as I did. I liked her, but I kept it to myself,” said Faisal.

To take his mind off her, Faisal threw himself into drawing and painting. In 2002 he was part of the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists (AMFPA). The next year, Cucu returned from 10 months in Japan, where she had been following a leadership training on independent living. She began to apply this philosophical knowledge through events and workshops. Faisal found himself at one of these events, at the insistence of a friend and fellow painter.

‘Why, Faisal jealous ya?’

“I met Cucu after such a long time. I greeted her with a smile and at long last, we became friends,” said Faisal. Together with her friends, Cucu invited him to work in her organisation, the Bandung Independent Living Centre (BILiC). Faisal soon replaced Cucu as the head of the organisation as she had accepted a job in the US, although she soon returned in 2004 to BILiC as a consultant. As they continued working together, Cucu had no idea that Faisal’s feelings for her were growing stronger by the day.

One day in 2007, they were working late in the office – long after their colleagues had left. “As we worked, Cucu chatted with me and I don’t know why, but I told her that I had once dreamed of her walking with some guys that I knew. She replied jokingly, ‘Why, Faisal jealous ya?’”

“I was a bit scared. Slowly, I turned off my computer and told her everything,” said Faisal. Cucu was surprised, because he had been keeping his feelings from her for the past 24 years. “I made her promise to not get angry, to not make fun of me, or to tell our friends because I felt embarrassed.”

Confessing his feelings to Cucu was the easy part of their courtship. Faisal soon had to overcome many other obstacles before he could marry the woman for whom he had fallen at first sight – at nine years old.



Read more about what Faisal had to overcome to marry the love of his life in Part 2 next week!

Leaping over language barriers

This article was first published on Aquila Style.

Adventures in picking up a new language doesn’t have much to do with meeting new people.

Image: Pixabay

At this moment, I live unwillingly in the Netherlands. I didn’t move here because I loved the language or the culture. After three and a half years, I can understand most of what people are saying, but since I haven’t had (read: couldn’t afford) any formal lessons and I’m not particularly fond of the language, the Dutch language requires the activation of a whole other part of my brain.

I’ve nothing against learning new languages. Or European languages for that matter. I stuck through French lessons in middle school before I finally realised how I actually loved speaking it when I participated in an immersion programme in a sleepy French town (and later, studied there for a year). I still speak decent French and try to not lose my skills by watching French films. And because I already speak English by virtue of being born and bred in a former British colony, I think two imperialist languages are enough for me, thank you.

The thing about speaking Dutch in the Netherlands is that… you don’t have to. Most people in the big cities speak decent English, which is enough to get by if all you want is to buy groceries at the supermarket, or find your way with public transport.

But there’s a double standard when it comes to speaking the local lingo. If you’re a Caucasian or European, you’re not expected to speak Dutch. Laws that allow free movement in the European Union also mean that for Europeans, learning Dutch is merely voluntary. However, for me as a non-European permanent resident, I have to take a language exam in the next two years or risk a severe fine.

Here, there are two types of people who are usually assumed to be unequivocally Dutch: White or Brown (thanks to colonial history). Because my appearance is typically Javanese or Indonesian, I’m often mistaken as being Dutch. Many Dutch people also have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who came over from the former colonies. These women often attempted to integrate totally by adopting the local language and ways of life.

At one point in time, I figured I’d similarly integrate by forcing myself to speak and listen to Dutch. I decided to start in a prenatal yoga group that I had just joined. I figured that I would do okay since I could understand most words relating to movement and parts of the body. Plus, it was a good opportunity to learn the relevant vocabulary for labour and delivery.

It turned out to be a very lonely 10 weeks. Even though I tried my best to speak a little bit of Dutch each lesson to the yoga instructor and to the other participants, I never got around to actually striking up a semblance of a friendship with the other mothers. Perhaps it was our age difference: Almost all the other women were well into their 30s, and some in their 40s. Perhaps we lived in different places: They live in the suburbs and I live in the city. Or perhaps I was just the only non-White person in the whole group.

I had a very different experience in a postnatal Pilates class I’m currently attending. It’s a small and cosy studio not too far from where I live, run by an English woman and attended by many English-speaking people (even though most of the instructors are Dutch). I take two different classes, and both instructors willingly carry out their lessons in a mix of Dutch and English to make sure I can understand.

I’ve also met some kindred souls in this class – a total change from awkward attempts at conversation in my previous yoga class. Whether it’s because women are more sympathetic when they can bond over how bad their hospital experience was, or whether it’s just a friendlier group of women, I haven’t needed to speak Dutch at all. (Besides, my go-to excuse is that my brain is too sleep-deprived caring for a baby to string together a sentence.)

I realised then that it’s not about the language we speak, but about our willingness to know the other. Now when someone speaks to me in Dutch, I don’t feel obligated to reply in the same language to prove I’m a “good” migrant. I’m perfectly happy to speak what is most comfortable to me because what is more important is our effort to communicate, not the language we communicate in.

Fatal sedition: Noor Farida Ariffin kept in line with rape threats

This article was first published on Muslimah Media Watch.

I recently became aware of rape threats made on social media towards Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin, a well-respected former Malaysian ambassador to the Netherlands. Also a lawyer, she was the co-founder ofSisters in Islam, a local non-governmental organisation for women’s rights, and is the spokesperson of a local group of prominent Malays called G25.

In December 2014, G25 published an open letter to the Malaysian government calling for, among other things, “a rational dialogue on the position of Islam in a constitutional democracy“. Signed by 25 former high-ranking civil servants, including directors-general, secretaries-general, ambassadors and prominent individuals, the letter demands a second look at the position and application of Islamic laws in the country, as well as the jurisdiction and limits of the powers that religious authorities can have.

Why then, is her dissenting opinion not even tolerated, but considered an invitation to threats of murder and rape?

Among other points, the letter focused on a minister’s response to a recent court ruling that transgender women in Malaysia have the right “to dress according to their identity”. Even though this state ruling is in favour of a marginalised group — and therefore should be seen as justice, the main objective of Islamic law — the fact that it is related to women, their sexuality and/or their appearance makes it a favourite target for being a threat to Islam and society at large.

“… [Minister Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom] viewed the right of the transgender community and Sisters in Islam (SIS) to seek legal redress as a ‘new wave of assault on Islam’ and as an attempt to lead Muslims astray from their faith, and put religious institutions on trial in a secular court.”

The letter also highlighted the need for marginalised populations (like the poor) to feel safe from state intrusions of an individual’s privacy. One Shariah Criminal Offenses law in particular targets low-income unmarried couples who are found to be guilty of the crime of khalwat, or ‘close proximity’. Noor Farida says that “personal sin” should not be considered a crime that is punishable by the state.

The Department of Islamic Advancement of Malaysia (JAKIM) conducts regular ambushes to catch those engaged in khalwat, which have sometimes resulted in injuries or even death. Many of these ambushes are posted on YouTube to serve the sordid purpose of a public hanging. MMW writer Alicia sums this up in her piece on sexual immorality in Malaysia:

“Too often, sexual immorality is intertwined with class: cases of close proximity (khalwat) involve couples caught in budget hotels, in cars parked in quiet places, and in public parks, couples who cannot afford to marry or hire a room at an expensive hotel, a place very rarely ventured by the moral police.”

The letter invited scornful responses from two Malay rights NGOs, Malaysian Muslim Solidarity (ISMA) and right-wing Perkasa. ISMA, a group known for its Malay-centric voice, resorted to “personal taunts” such as suggesting that the letter’s “expired” authors should “go back to masjids and repent“, while Perkasa’s secretary-general merely questioned if the authors had done anything at all for Malaysia.

During a talk on “Fighting Religious Extremism in Malaysia” in London recently, Noor Farida gave a review of recent incidents of rising religious extremism in Malaysia, as recounted by Mariam Mokhtar of Free Malaysia Today:

“But the current reality, she said, was a disturbing picture of Islamic NGOs and religious authorities wielding power over a cowed population, with the Malays being watched by a brutal and unapologetic moral police who act like thugs and the non-Malays and non-Muslims subject to intense provocation.”

She gave a laundry list of vile acts which involved body snatching, the conversion of minors, the ‘Allah’ issue, the seizure of Bibles and the actions of born-again Muslims. She also spoke of Muslims being persecuted through mindless acts perpetrated by the religious authorities.

The threat of rape serves to intimidate, and showing women their ‘proper’ place in society simply contributes to the preservation of patriarchy as the status quo

In early December this year, Noor Farida was at a G25 forum on Islam and democracy. The forum aimed at creating an inclusive Consultative Committee of Experts to advise the government on amending state shariah law, within the requirements of the Federal Constitution and National Principles (Rukun Negara).

Her call for a review on the crime of khalwat was met with threats of murder and rape on social media. Facebook user Al Mujahid Arman posted “[her blood is halal]” while another Facebook user Sharul Nizam Ab Rahim threatened to break into her house and rape her.

Despite lodging police reports, the police were slow to investigate and to date, the two men have neither been caught nor convicted. Meanwhile, Noor Farida herself is under investigation for sedition. The Sedition Act, an “outdated colonial vestige”, has been increasingly used to “suppress legitimate offline and online dissent in Malaysia“. Put simply, as her opinion is contrary to ‘official Islam’, she must be silenced.

Looking through the lenses of age, gender, class and race is essential. Since Noor Farida is Malay and Muslim, being a high-ranking government official (and an elderly woman who does not wear hijab) means that she upsets notions of a proper Malay woman. (Although being a young hijabi politician in Malaysia brings with it another set of stereotypes.) As such, she must be ideologically disciplined by both the state (Sedition Act) and the public (Facebook).

Noor Farida has many important points on religious extremism and how religious laws can coexist with secular ones. Why then, is her dissenting opinion not even tolerated, but considered an invitation to threats of murder and rape? Because the threat of rape serves to intimidate, and showing women their ‘proper’ place in society simply contributes to the preservation of patriarchy as the status quo.