Bin Gregory Productions

There and Back Again

I’ve returned from my vacation to the US. I couldn’t get any critical distance from which to write or observe while I was there; I was too busy enjoying being back. I did manage to take a lot of pictures though. You can view them in this Flickr set, America 2007. The most pleasurable aspect of the trip, after reunion with loved ones, must have been hearing and speaking my native English. Effortless communication – How we take it for granted! My friends were kind enough to get me up to speed on contemporary slang that I may have missed during my absence. Like, what do you call that tattoo, usually of a butterfly, that women get on the small of their back just above their low-riders?

A tramp stamp! ………………………Ok, I’ll stop now.

The trans-pacific crossing went smoothly enough, but I was nervous about clearing immigration. Last time I was in country it was the INS at the border, so this was going to be my first time meeting the Homeland Security folks. The officer I got turned out to be of Chinese origin, and likely a naturalized citizen by his accent. He was civil enough as he stamped my and my daughter’s passports, though he asked me four questions about my time spent abroad, something that never happened before. That was ok, though. But when he swiped my son’s, he looked troubled for a moment and then told me he can’t authorize my son’s entry and that we have to follow him into the Back Room. I sure didn’t want to visit the Back Room, but of course I followed him. There were various unhappy, pensive looking people around the room sitting on benches, while a different officer at the counter was busy giving the third degree through a translating officer to a Mexican grandmotherly-type lady. It wasn’t coarse or abusive, but Lord it wasn’t friendly. He paused in his work to take a quick two-second glance at my son and the passport, stamped it, and said “there you go have a nice day”. I was really itching to know what had triggered the first officer to pass me back to this guy,

but I doubted he would tell me and my desire to get the heck out of there overcame my curiosity. I took my son’s passport and split. Looking back on it, Long’s record must have been flagged because my son is a) born abroad, b) living abroad, c) male and d) muslim. And clearly he passed second review on account of being a little kid. That’s great, this time. But I can easily imagine that 6-7 years down the road, Officer Friendly is going to want more than just a quick glance at him.

Once in the country, I didn’t feel like that much had changed, but I was struck by some differences I had forgotten about, most significantly the wealth that was in evidence at every turn. Money just dripped everywhere you looked. It wasn’t bling necessarily, but more often the little things that jumped out at me, like the two or three thick fluffy napkins given without asking at the restaurant or the triple-stitched, reinforced backpacks folks carried at the airport. Meijers was so dazzling I had to take a picture. It’s not that you can’t find such opulence in Malaysia – it’s that it is found only in the centers of town in the elitist stores.In the US, it’s at Meijers in every small town you pass.

My kids picked up on it right away. KakNgah walked down the hallway of my friend’s nice but by no means extravagant brownstone flat on the first day we arrived in Chicago, muttering to herself, Ini orang kaya ke ini orang kaya?!”.

Another difference had more to do with me. My blood had definitely thinned during my years in Malaysia. My children and I were wearing sweaters and jackets well into June, and I never felt hot, even when my companions were sweating. You can get used to anything, I guess.

Beyond that, the trip was uneventful in the extreme, and that was fine with me. I took great pleasure in meeting friends and relatives I hadn’t seen in years, soaking in the beauty of Three Roods Farm, and eating bread, real bread, bread with crusts.

I returned to Malaysia in time for the arrival of my new child, an armload of new books my biggest prize. Personal favorites have been both Sherman Jackson’s Islam and the Blackamerican and his translation and commentary on the Faysal al-Tafriqah of Imam Ghazali. In the former, Prof Jackson frequently cites the work of Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race. That turns out to be a two-volume academic tome that I would never get around to buying, so luckily I was able to benefit from the online annotated summary of Invention provided by Prof Allen himself. Other good ones include American Islam by Paul Barrett, which I liked so much I ordered a copy for my Grandpa and which includes a great chapter on the Naqshbandi Order; Gifts for the Seeker translated by Mostafa Badawi, a popular religious text in Malay; and Musa Furber’s translation of Etiquette with the Quran. There are so many good Islamic books coming out that I just can’t keep up.

All in all, it was a pretty exciting trip for me, but after visiting the Flickr site of Interplanetary Muslim Kenny Irwin, I kinda wish I could travel to the places he’s visited instead.

Thanks be to God for the Journey and for the Return.

Malaysia: Muslim or Islamic?

Ali Eteraz mused recently that the key to making Islam compatible with Mosque/State separation in Muslim countries is to declare Islam as the official religion, while retaining a lawmaking process that is not subject to theological review.

Great idea! That’s precisely the arrangement that exists in Malaysia. The government is predicated on a secular platform – there is no formal institutional method for vetting a law to ensure it’s compliance with Islam – but establishes Islam as the religion of the country, and backs this with funding of Mosques and so on. This has generally worked, although not without controversy since, among other things, Malaysia doesn’t have an overwhelming muslim majority (about 60% and growing). It’s a hot issue at the moment as the Malay-muslim dominated ruling coalition (UMNO-BN) continues to feel pressure from the opposition Islamic Party (PAS) to “Islamize” the country further. Our respected Deputy Prime Minister set off some debate a little while ago by declaring that Malaysia is and always has been an Islamic State. The contentious issue as I see it is not so much with calling Malaysia an “Islamic State” but with deciding what that means exactly and how that differs from what is meant by calling Malaysia a “Muslim Country”.

The point turns on what exactly is meant by “Islamic”. Prof. Sherman Jackson points out in his phenomenal book Islam and the Blackamerican that the term “Islamic”, a modern English-language designation that has no meaningful equivalent in the muslim world historically, does not mean “earning the pleasure of Allah” or even “fulfilling all the rules of sharia” but merely “a product of a traditionally muslim land”. Under that definition, our respected Deputy Prime Minister was perfectly correct. Malaysia is an Islamic state without the need to do anything at all. As a country full of muslims, who are choosing their national direction with Allah and His Messenger foremost in their hearts and minds, whatever the outcome may be can honestly be called an Islamic State, using that definition [1].

Perhaps that’s a bit jesuitical, but as Chandra Muzaffar points out in A Secular State or an Islamic State?, exemplifying the pragmatism that I would credit as Malaysia’s single most sustaining virtue, it is meaningless to argue over abstract titles the practical implications of which are not well understood by anyone, while ignoring the founding principles of the country that are clearly put forward in the constitution, are still in effect, and are still acceptable to just about every citizen around, namely:

1. A parliamentary form of government based upon the concept of one person, one vote.
2. A federal system of governance.
3. A constitutional monarchy.
4. The supremacy of the rule of law.
5. An independent judiciary.
6. Protection of fundamental liberties.
7. Malay as the national and official language.
8. The right to use and study other languages.
9. Islam as the religion of the Federation.
10. Recognition of the right of non-Muslims to practise their religions.
11. The special position of the Malays and other indigenous peoples.
12. The legitimate interests of the other communities.
(my emphasis)

Under this framework, the details that remain to be worked out, and of course these are innumerable, will need to be worked out by the totality of the citizenry regardless of what title like “Islamic” or “secular” is placed on it. Impressed by how far the nation has come in it’s first 50 years, I hope I’m around to see the next 50.

Photo Credit: Malaysia’s Flag, by Eric Teoh.

KakCik

I was blessed with the birth of my sixth child this past Thursday the 12th of July. She is a girl, my fifth; she gets the family title KakCik, sixth-born daughter. She was born safe and sound after less than an hour of labour. She and her mother are home and well. SR is enjoying the first week of her two-month paid maternity leave, courtesy of the Malaysian government. There has been discussion in Parliament of extending maternity benefits to three months but that bill has not yet passed. If it passes, we’ll have to have another baby to take advantage, I suppose.

Rough Neighborhood

My wife woke with a start just after 5, a few minutes before subuh prayer. The glow of her cell phone cum time piece was still on her face when she heard a loud sickening snap, crunch and pop coming from the backyard. Shortly, the chickens started squawking at DefCon 3 levels. That wasn’t enough to wake me up, but after some prodding and poking I mustered and stumbled out the door to investigate. In the early twilight, without a flashlight, I made my way to the coop. I passed my hand over the door – still locked. But what was that dark mass protruding out from the corner of the door? The cold, sleek, muscular body of a python, that’s what!

What a rough neighborhood to be a chicken. Cats and dogs were a constant threat and harried my poor flock, and I knew biawaks were a potential danger, but I never imagined I’d be up against a python in the middle of Kuching. Well, if he had swallowed poor Juliet, he wouldn’t be able to get out of the cage anytime soon. I went in to pray and get the kids off to school.

The sun came up as I returned from the madrasah and I reluctantly prepared to get my parang and do battle with the chicken rustler. When I got home though, I saw our neighbor’s handyman already at work. Apparently my wife had mentioned the situation to the neighbors and they thought, why let that good fortune go to waste? Some Chinese Malaysians prize python soup as a delicacy and are willing to pay top dollar for it. Good for men’s health I’m sure. The handyman thought he could get 20RM a kilo for a live specimen.

Armed with just a steel rod and a sturdy plastic rice bag, the guy coaxed and wrangled the python for a good 15 minutes. I imagine its total extended length was about five feet long, and solid muscle. When extending, the body would get as thin as an inch or two, but when it would contract, it would form a knot of muscle the size of a softball. Finally with a few well-timed thwacks to the head, the stunned but still very much alive python was wrapped up and secured inside the rice bag.

Now the three remaining chicks are orphaned. Romeo the Rooster abandoned them to their fate as the sun went down that evening. I don’t know where he roosted, but he clearly wasn’t going anywhere near the cage. Neither were the three chicks, who wandered around the yard in a daze as the sun went down, chirping plaintively, sticking together but steadfastly avoiding my efforts to herd them to the cage. Finally, desperate as the light faded, I gave chase to the orphans. I managed to catch one, and then another, but as I caught the second, the third little chick took off like a streak of lightening and disappeared. We’ll see if he makes it through the night.

Counting Chickens

Our flock of chickens had been cruelly bereft of it’s younger generation when last I wrote. Rooster and hen were the only survivors of cat attacks that carried off five promising young chicks. The two parents seemed to get over it and took to roaming about my yard, scattering mulch as they dug little holes around my ginger and turmeric in their search for bugs and other edibles. They began to wander farther and farther as they became comfortable with the territory, especially enjoying my neighbor’s vegetable plot, which covers her entire backyard. She would whoop and holler at the chickens whenever I would be in earshot, so I would know how perturbed she was at the intrusion, but since I’ve been patiently tolerating her hu-manure gardening technology within a stone’s throw of my dining room, I figured we’re even.

After spending the day foraging, the chickens would retire to their cage in the late afternoon and wait to be locked up for the night. Before too long, the hen began to make a peculiar kind of warbling that was followed by an egg! Learning to recognize the sound, I could predict when a egg would be arriving. Over the course of a week, she laid a clutch of three eggs. After the third egg, I locked the pair in the cage so the hen could concentrate on her duty. Yet something was wrong. She wouldn’t sit. I would put the three eggs together and add some dried leaves and grass for padding but when I returned from work, they would be scattered to the corners of the cage, cold to the touch. Then one day I looked to find an egg had been smashed. I declared the batch a failure and tossed the remaining two out. It occurred to me what has probably already occurred to you: you can’t leave the rooster in the cage. The hen wouldn’t sit not because of a lack of motherly instinct, but because the rooster was still pressing her for his own needs. I’m sure it was he who smashed the egg, too.

The next time our hen began to make her eggy warble, I evicted the rooster and put the hen on solitary confinement. The rooster, a derelict father, turned out to be a devoted lover. Morning and night he never left sight of the cage. During the day he would forage close by, and in the late afternoon he crawled into the narrow space between the back of the cage and the fence, where he could spend the night with his feathers touching hers. It was at this time that my daughters and I settled on the name Romeo and Juliet for our chickens. Maybe because of Romeo’s attentiveness, Juliet was still too distracted to sit. At times I thought I glimpsed her sitting on the eggs. She was at least being still for brief periods. But most of the time, she paced the cage, clucking pathetically as she probed the bars, looking for a way to reunite with her Romeo. After two weeks of that I gave up once again, released Juliet and chucked the cold eggs.

I decided next time she began to lay, not only would I lock up Juliet, but I’d quarantine Romeo in a separate cage on the other side of the house. Surely Juliet would be able to keep her hormones in check and sit on her eggs then! I never had to try. One day, KakNgah ran to inform me (before I could climb out of the car) that the hen had layed eggs – in our flower pot! Juliet found herself a little nesting spot right next to our front door, hiding in plain sight, as it were. Most importantly, she had found a place where cats would be unlikely to strike as she began her sitting. Romeo didn’t bother her either, since he’s skittish with people. Just to be sure though, I tethered him to the papaya tree in the back yard. Every day or two, we’d find another egg in the pot until finally there were eight. The next day she plunked herself down and sat quietly on those eggs for nearly three weeks straight. Once every day or two she would climb off and tear across the yard and then take flight onto a neighbor’s roof. Just stretching, I imagine. Before long, she’d be back on her clutch. Those brief breaks of hers were the only times we could count the eggs. When she was sitting, she was extremely agressive, pecking any hand that came close. She would puff up her feathers and spread out her wings over the eggs, appearing nearly twice as wide as she really is.

I heard a sqeak as I walked in the front door one day; a chick had hatched! I had to stand watch over Juliet for a little while before catching a glimpse of the newborn. She kept her baby well squirreled away under her feathers. She managed to keep them under her wing while they were few, but as one after another hatched, they became too many to keep locked down. I began to fear one would slip out of the pot and become cat food. Yet all the eggs were not hatched so I didn’t want to disturb the hen by transferring her to the cage. There was nothing for it: I picked up the pot and carried the whole thing in to the kitchen. That didn’t last long either though. Within a few days the chicks were spilling out onto the kitchen floor, where my normally well-behaved cats couldn’t help casting some hungry glances in their direction. Braving a few hen-pecks, I uprooted the hen and relocated her to the cage which I had reinforced with – what else? – chicken wire during the incubation period. We have five healthy chicks now, a black one, a yellow one and three striped ones. There are still three eggs as I write this. That should give me a grand total of eight, but of course, you don’t count your chickens before they hatch.

Previous chicken drama on Bin Gregory Productions:
Learning from Chickens

Other chicken-flavored ~~entrees~~ entries

Islamic Universities in Indonesia

A window into the intellectual evolution of Islamic higher education in Indonesia: an interview with the rector of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Prof. Amin Abdullah by Prof. Farish Noor of The Other Malaysia.

…what is happening in places like UIN SUKA: You have pious Muslim students who are practicing Muslims who nonetheless can actually read the Quran and Hadith using the methodology of discourse analysis; who can write papers about inter-textual interpretations of the Quran; who can write deconstructive accounts of Islamic history, politics and ethics. How is this possible? From a Western point of view one might even call UINSUKA a secular modern university, but would you accept such a typology?

AA: ‘No, we dont and we will not. We are not a secular or modern university in the Western sense of the word. UINSUKA is, after all a UIN, an Islamic university.
…
The misunderstanding arises, in my opinion, in the somewhat narrow definition of ‘secularism’ and ‘modernity’ in the West. It is true that secularism and modernity arose from a specific historical context in the West, but the evolution of Indonesia’s world of ideas is likewise specific to Indonesia: it cannot even be compared or transposed to Malaysia next door.

Read the whole thing.

Amman, Jordan

Have a look at a terrific set of black & white portraits from the streets of Amman, Jordan, taken by a Malaysian photographer.

In other news, this past Friday was the 10th anniversary of my marriage, walhamdulillah. I wouldn’t change a thing, but 5 (and a half) kids, 4.5 circumnavigations of the planet and 8 changes of address in ten years – whew! I hope the next ten are slightly less hectic.

Mawlid Barzanji

The Barzanji Mawlid, Manaqib Press

12 Rabi’ul Awwal has come and gone again. In the past, I’ve written about a famous book of poetry about the birth of Prophet Muhammad (s) called Mawlid Daiba’i. Actually the Mawlid poetry more widely read in Malaysia is Mawlid Barzanji, named after its composer, Imam Zayn al-`Abidin Ja`far ibn Hasan al-Barzanji (d. 1177) (r). Imam Barzanji was an Iraqi Kurd, a people with a rather surprising connection to Islam in the Nusantara. It is worth remembering that the author was no mere poet or singer, but rather the Mufti of Medinah al-Munawwarah, a position that could not possibly be held by other than an accomplished scholar and pure soul. Malaysians can read a biography of the Imam in Bahasa Malaysia at Bahru Shofa.

It is unfortunate that in our present day and age, our knowledge of and respect for our own ulama is so little that a contemporary young mufti of a much more modest part of the world can cast aspersions on such a luminary. Regardless, Mawlid Barzanji is widespread throughout the country, with copies to be found in just about every masjid or surau. It is so ubiquitous that it is common to hear people say they will do zikr, when they mean they will recite from Mawlid Barzanji. It is read not just on 12 Rabi’ul Awwal but on other occassions as well, most commonly after the aqiqah for a new child, after a boy’s circumcision or at wedding receptions. Members of our neighborhood gather at the surau to read excerpts between maghrib and isha prayers once a week.

I’ve recently been informed that an English translation of the Mawlid Barzanji exists. It is attributed only as a work of the Zawiyyah Qadariyyah, 1426 AH, but presumably they are connected ~~to the hosting website,~~ AbunaShaykh, an order connected to the African Shaykh Muhammad Ahmed al-Mahi. I’m not qualified to pass comment on the translation, but it reads very well in English and the production quality is quite nice. May God bless them abundantly for their work. If anyone is unable to download it from their site, contact me and I will email it to you. They also have the Mawlid of Imam Uthman al-Mirghani available for download, which I had not previously heard of.

UPDATE: The AbunaShaykh website is gone from the internet. As the translation appeared to be a public work for the sake of Allah, I’m hosting it here. Click here to get the English translation of the Mawlid Barzanji by the AbunaShaykh order of Shaykh Muhammad Ahmed al-Mahi.

Also, a lovely Islamic magazine was just released in the UK: Illumination Magazine. The topic of the first issue is Mawlid celebrations around the world. I am beside myself with pride that an article of mine was included alongside the many distinguished writers such as Sidi Aftab Malik and the charming and mysterious Tuan Awang Goneng. A few copies are still available – see the website for details.

Finally, rounding out a rather belated Mawlid posting is my first offering on YouTube, a brief clip of Nashid recitation from a mawlid gathering here in Kuching last month. I’ve just started fooling around with video recording so apologies for the quality.

Turban tip to Yursil for helping get YouTube working.