One group of kids was dressed in gym clothes, with a red baseball cap turned sideways on their head. Can you guess what they are dressed as? Americans! They were the only group of children to do their skit in English! You could write a book about what American youth culture means to Malaysians through that cocked-sideways baseball cap, but I’ll just note the fact of it here for you and move on. American Garb! The event dragged on, as official functions tend to do, into its third hour, and the children milling around in the

holding area grew more frenetic, and the loud murmur rose to a dull roar until finally a pair of teachers whipped out their kompang and dumbek and began to play. The kids immediately started singing along to the hymns and things grew if not quieter, at least less chaotic until the time came to start walking the stage. My daughter, Kak Uda had a great time. I may not have caught all the skits this time around, but that’s OK. I’ll be back next year with Kak Andak.

Other posts about Taski ABIM:
Berjayalah Taskiku!
My eldest child’s graduation

Wild Honey

In the long interim periods, I used to make do with whatever was on the supermarket shelf. Priced out of the premium Australian and New Zealand raw and organic honeys on the top shelf, I was always surprised to find a large selection of common honey produced in Malaysia, with China and Australia common honey alongside it, the Australia common honey commanding double the price. I’d heard of local Malaysian honey, but I couldn’t see how jungle-gathered honey could come in at the same price as China industrial beekeeping honey, or how there could be such a large and plentiful supply such as to keep a supermarket shelf stocked.

At the same time, I had seen at the open markets and roadsides wild honey for sale in simple glass bottles, but I had been warned that it was likely watered-down or inauthentic and would taste funny. Considering it was half the price of the supermarket stuff, and it seemed less viscous when I tipped the bottle, I figured it must be watered-down and never bought it.

Little did I know the dark secrets that lay beneath… Honey Laundering:

The honey business is plagued with international intrigue, where foreign hucksters and shady importers sometimes rip off conscientious packers with Chinese honey diluted with cheap sugar syrup or tainted with illegal antibiotics.

There are a dozen amazing stories in that link, with titles like “Don’t let claims on honey labels dupe you” and “Tainted product still slips easily into U.S.” It turns out that honey is one of the least regulated food products on earth, and its trade is caught up in smuggling, adulterating, false marketing and other criminal activity. The FDA doesn’t even have a straight definition of what honey is, and so water and sugar can be added without telling anyone. Honey is often imported from one country, mixed, cut and rebranded as it exports from another. Thus Malaysia turns out to be a major exporter of honey, but it’s all China honey in disguise. That’s why the supermarket China and Malaysia honey looked the same and cost the same: it was the same honey!

If you really want to get your hands on honey the way God intended, the solution is to buy your honey local from people you know and trust. If you’re in Michigan, you know where to go. For me, I took a chance on the anonymous glass-bottled stuff in the open market that had seemed so shady before.

It was clearly a different product. It was darker yet much thinner, and the taste was odd: it had a significant bitter aftertaste. No doubt it was these qualities that had generated the rumors I had heard. But I put it on the breakfast table and my children all thought it was just fine.

Poking around a bit, I’ve learned that the reason wild Malaysian honey looks, tastes and pours different is because it is made by different bees. The European honeybee, Apis mellifera, is used worldwide in commercial honey production. This honey is produced by Apis dorsata, the Rock Bee. The bees build their massive, meter-long hives high up in the Tualang tree (Koompasia excelsa), where it is retrieved by honey gatherers through methods you can scarcely imagine. (pdf) The gatherers scale the 100′+ trees in the middle of the night, distract the bees with a flaming torch, cut down the combs with a wooden knife and haul it all down in a cowhide bucket, all while singing soothing songs to the bees. One day I’ll have to go see it – until then that report is worth reading.

Al-I'tiraf, courtesy of Anak Alam, who advises that ' for the first star *, the correct lyrics is: wa dhanbi zaa-idun kaifah timaali; for the second star *, change it to: fa in taghfir fa anta lidhaaka ahlun'

Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la

fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi

This doa has been put to song, together with a lovely malay translation, by Junied, a nasheed group from Singapore associated with the Madrasah Aljunied Al-Islamiah. Madrasah Aljunied is a famous madrasah, having produced many notable scholars over the course of its nearly one hundred years, including the present Mufti of Sarawak, if I’m not wrong. It is now absorbed into the national education system, so the national curriculum is taught together with the religious sciences. You can learn more about how Singapore has absorbed the madrasah schools into their national model here at MUIS.

You can download the Doa Taubat from their website, along with several other songs. There are video recordings available on YouTube as well. According to their site, they have a new album called “Hijrah” available in stores. Unfortunately, googling around did not readily turn up a merchant site. Anyone who knows where to get a copy of the album can let me know in the comments.

The group’s recording of the Doa Taubat can be found all over, but the website of the group itself I couldn’t find after half an hour of searching. It’s puzzling too, because I found it once before a few months ago. A recording of the Doa Taubat is available to download on the site, but since I can’t locate it, I’m putting my copy here for download. It’s very nice; you should listen. I’ll take it down and link to theirs as soon as I locate their site again or some kind soul sends me the link.

The song is in Arabic and Malay, so I decided to do a rough English translation which you can find below. It’s not an exact translation: I tried to keep to the flow of the original so it could conceivably be sung in the same tune, but that meant I had to play loose with the meaning. Here it is; comments welcome as always.

Arabic:
Ilahi lestu lil-firdawsi a’la

fa innaka ghaafiru dhanb il-adzimi

Malay:

tuhanku aku tidak layak / untuk syurga mu

sesungguhnya / engkaulah penggampun / dosa dosa besar

English:

Oh my Lord I know I don’t deserve / your heaven

And yet your blazing wrath / I could never defend

So Lord rain down upon / this lowly soul / your forgiveness

Lord you and you alone / forgive and wash away / the most greivous sins

Update

Anak Alam has graciously provided the full dua, which includes two more stanzas, in Arabic and Malay. A translation of the second two stanzas would be something like:

My sins are countless as the sands on the shore /
Accept my repentance, O Lord of Majesty/
For my life grows shorter with each day/
While my sins increase with each passing moment

O my Lord, Your sinful servant approaches You/
Continuously sinning while steadfastly beseeching You/
If You forgive, You are most capable of doing so/
And if You forsake me, then to whom else can I turn…

English Translation and Photography by Bin Gregory Productions

Datuk Hakim Keramat, or the Miraculous Judge, was the title given to a religous scholar of Sarawak well known for his miracles and mystic knowledge. His real name was Abang Haji Abdul Rahman bin Abang Haji Brahim. He was born in Kuching, Sarawak and returned unto the Mercy of the Lord on the 9th of Ramadan 1309 AH (1890 CE). He was buried in the cemetery on the grounds of the Kuching District Mosque.

Datuk Hakim Keramat began his formal religious studies under a preacher from the holy city of Makkah al-Mukarramah, one Shaykh Ahmad al-Makkawi (alternatively, al-Makki). According to some, Shaykh Makkawi passed away in Kuching and was buried in a village on the banks of the Sarawak River. Other versions claim he returned to Makkah and passed away there. In either case, Datuk Hakim Keramat continued his religious education by traveling to Makkah al-Mukarramah in the 1840′s. After years in Makkah, he returned to Sarawak after receiving news from a pilgrim performing his Hajj. It was Datuk Patinggi Ghafur, a Sarawak nobleman, who related that his homeland of Sarawak had fallen under the control of the heathen White Rajah. Thus sometime in the 1850s, fearing that the White colonizers may try to change the faith and beliefs of the Malays of Sarawak, Datuk Hakim Keramat returned to his native land on the Island of Borneo. His return was to spread devotion and to safeguard the faith and his people.

Faced with the rule of the White Rajah, Datuk Hakim Keramat took a diplomatic approach because he knew armed resistance would not yield any positive result for his people. He knew that declaring a jihad before the religiously established rules and conditions for it had been met would cause it to be unacceptable to God as an act of worship, thus only bringing disaster to their cause over the long term. Therefore, he instead focused his attention on preserving the foundations of Islamic faith and belief to prevent it from damage or destruction by the White Rajah. Thus, Datuk Hakim Keramat pursued a resistance strategy based on religious knowledge, strengthening and solidifying the faith and commitment of his people to Islam. Datuk Hakim Keramat tirelessly spread knowledge, calling people to the faith ceaselessly and selflessly. He built a musallah or surau in the village of Bandarsah as a center for Islamic outreach and as an Islamic courthouse.

In an effort to win the the support of Datuk Hakim Keramat, who was well-respected as a religous leader in the community, James Brooke appointed him as a Judge for the affairs of the Muslims in Sarawak. To care for the religious needs of his people and to safeguard the religion, Datuk Hakim Keramat took the position, although his spirit of anti-colonialism and resistance to the Brooke regime did not change. He taught his people their religion through the teachings of Sunni Islam, following the Shafii School of jurisprudence. He sent many of his students to further their religious studies in Makkah al-Mukarrramah. Among those sent by him were his own children, Datuk Hakim Haji Muhammad Azhari, Datuk Hakim Haji Muhammad Ash`ari, Datuk Imam Haji Suhaili, Shaykh Shibli, Datuk Hakim Haji Muasli, as well as his adopted son nursed by his own wife, the brilliant scholar Shaykh Uthman as-Sarawaki.

Datuk Hakim Keramat was famous for his piety. It is related that when he would teach a class of women, he would sit beneath a mosquito net so that he could not see them clearly. In those days, when they wished to leave the house, Malay women of Sarawak would always cover their aurat. Moreover, they would margok themselves, meaning that they would use a sarong to cover their head and face, such that only their eyes and a small portion of their face was visible. Unfortunately, this tradition of using the margok is no longer practiced today.

Datuk Hakim Keramat can be considered a leading scholar who preserved and strengthened Islam in Sarawak, and educated a generation of religious scholars in Sarawak. He was an innovator who started a new chapter in the building of a learned and intellectual culture among the greater Sarawak Malay society. Directly or indirectly, he prepared a strong foundation for Islamic knowledge and the propagation of Islam in Sarawak.

Although he was appointed to a high position in the state, his passion in opposing the colonists could not be extinguished. His appointment was used to the best possible degree as a means to raise the position of Islam and the Malay people. He and the scholars he educated struggled mightily to preserve the sanctity of Islam from the meddling of the colonists. Under the leadership of these scholars, the Muslim peoples of Sarawak succeeded in minimizing the effect of colonial interference in religious affairs. When the colonists began to proselytize in Sarawak, it was the diplomatic intervention of these scholars that convinced the colonists to desist from missionary work amongst the Malays. Their efforts and their sacrifices will always be remembered by the Malays of Sarawak as long as there are people who value their own culture and respect the efforts of their religious scholars.

In truth, it was Datuk Hakim Keramat, known for his miracles and his spiritual knowledge, and his students among the religious scholars of Sarawak, who preserved and safeguarded the faith of Sunni Islam under Shafii jurisprudence that has been the faith of the Sarawak Malays, and who never abandoned their homeland during its subjugation to the heathen White Rajah. The blessed outcome of their sincerity and their efforts was that the White Rajahs were forced to respect the sanctity of Islam as the religion of the Malays of Sarawak. Perhaps this was his greatest miracle of all.

May God shower them all with His Good Pleasure and Mercy, and let us lift up to them a recitation of the Fatihah.

[Datuk Hakim Keramat: Original Malay Text]

[Annotated Slideshow of Kuching District Mosque and Grounds]

The varieties of bananas here are amazing: there are about a dozen different types available in the market, and they’re all quite different. We’ve got Pisang Emas (Golden Bananas), Pisang Embon (Dew Bananas), Pisang Berangan (Dream Bananas), Pisang Awak (Your Bananas?), Pisang Tanduk (Horn Bananas), Pisang Keling (Indian Bananas, though careful, keling is a derogatory word for indians), Pisang Serendah (Shorty Bananas), and my personal favorite name, Pisang Pisang (Banana Bananas)! The only banana you can’t find is the chiquita banana they sell back home, the Cavendish variety. In the yard, the giant Pisang Tanduk is ripening. It’s a cooking banana, like a plantain, but sweet when fried. My previous harvest was a pisang serendah. It only grew about four feet tall, not counting the terminal leaf. We couldn’t eat it all fresh, so we gave some to the neighbors, and the rest became banana fritters (cucur) and banana bread. SR makes a mean banana bread.

Bananas are a funny plant. They’re not really trees. The trunk is a green bundle of juicy leaf stalks, with each new leaf emerging all the way from deep inside the plant, kind of like blades of grass. Each plant only produces one clump of bananas before dying. Often the trunk will topple over from the weight. As it is dying, new shoots sucker up from the base. The fruiting body first emerges as this deep purple heart-shaped thing that can be eaten as a vegetable by the way, though noone’s served it to me yet. They sell ‘em in the market. The heart slowly opens up and elongates, revealing itty-bitty little bananas.

Beyond the fruit and the heart, the other useful product of the banana is the leaf. The leaves are huge, from 2 to 7 feet long. The leaves are used as wrappers for cooking and sweets. The leaf isn’t just a wrap though: it’s an ingredient. Lots of kuih-muih get a certain flavor from the leaf that is essential to the dish. SR claims the old people in her kampung even discern among different varieties of banana for the flavor the leaf imparts on the dish. There’s an Indian restaurant in town that has weekly banana leaf specials, where for an extra price, you can eat your lunch right off a banana leaf. It’s very popular. A personal favorite banana-wrapped treat is pulut udang, glutinous rice stuffed with spicy dried shrimp and toasted in a banana leaf. One of those units warming up in the picture will do you right for breakfast. Or minum pagi. Or minum petang. Did I mention I’ve put on five pounds since moving here?

[Update] Bananas can be used in the ornamental landscape as well. There are number of ornamental varieties that have been developed, including Pisang Derhaka, the bananas of treachery, or maybe, the bananas of rebellion, or maybe even, Uppity Bananas. The poor banana’s crime to deserve a name like that: the heart that points up to the sky instead of bending toward the ground like a good banana.