Grub’s Ready

In Sarawak, if someone invites you to come get some grub, be careful. They may be intending to serve you these lovely morsels. What you are looking at is a beetle larva that feeds exclusively on sago trees. They are about the size of your finger, though they may shrink a bit when fried up. It’s not widely eaten actually. The Melanau ethnic group are the main consumers of it, and I get the feeling it’s not a staple food for them either, but more of a delicacy. The Melanau are only a few percent of the total population here in Sarawak. They are an interesting tribe because they are pretty evenly split between muslims and christians.

  

If you’re wondering about the halal-ness of stir-fried sago grubs, I can only say that the muslim melanau I know all say it is halal, and quite delicious besides. I have yet to be offered any, so I can’t speak for the deliciousness. There is a giant grasshopper that is eaten in West Malaysia, and a locust of the desert that is eaten by the Arabs if I’m not mistaken, likely the same one that the Bani Israil ate while lost in the desert. So there are grounds for halal entomophagy. I think the ruling for the permissibility of an insect to be eaten has to do with the diet of the insect; maybe someone can shed more light on the subject?

On the subject of Islamically risque dining, a kind of snail is also for sale in the market. It is presumably entirely aquatic and therefore halal, but I have even less confirmation of that beyond the vigorous head-nodding assurances of the salesman, who is far from impartial.

The last item for your cautious consumption is a variety of crab very popular here. My brother-in-law from West Malaysia refused to eat it, saying that it was a dua-alam creature, that is, inhabiting water and land, rendering it haram. Some time later, I was invited to lunch by a dear friend who is a lawyer in the sharia courts here. He took me to a restaurant, run by a Chinese convert to Islam, that specializes in that very crab. The restaurant had a large full color display showing the natural history of the crab, which appeared to be entirely aquatic. My friend explained to me that the crab was in fact once widely believed to be haram by the two-environments rule, but the crab was later studied in detail and our mufti declared it to be halal. Thus, to demonstrate our obedience to the superior learning of our mufti, we forced ourselves to eat a fantastic crab-in-chili-sauce lunch. Amin, and pass the pineapple steamed rice.

[Update: A detailed explanation of the Shafi’i position on eating crab by Sidi Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti]

Maulid Daiba’i

I had lamented previously that I can’t seem to find any translations of Maulid Diba’i on the web. I do have a translation that was published as part of the wonderful CD performed by the Royal Malaysian Haqqani Ensemble. I used to link to the CD using this scan of the cover art.
mawlid diba'i
Unfortunately stocks of the CD must have run out and it is no longer available. The translation booklet was already long out of stock. I thought I had lost my copy, and that’s why I attempted to translate a few lines myself last I wrote. Happily, I found a backup photostat a few weeks back.

Then, thanks to a kind brother who wants to remain anonymous, I received last week a copy of a wonderful new edition of the Maulid Diba’i called “Maulid Eulogy”. I didn’t find it when googling around before because the author’s name is transliterated as Shaikh ad-Daiba’i. That’s arabic for you, a hundred ways to transliterate any one word: Deebai, Diybaee, mawlid maulud maulid mevlood etc. The book is a fairly new production by our brothers in Singapore, led by Sidi Abdulkader Ali Esa Alhadad, may Allah reward him for his effort. There’s no date of publication inside, but the forward mentions Shaykh Hamzah Yusuf’s 2002 Burda translation, so it must be quite recent. It is published by the good people at Warid Press.

Mashallah, it’s a great book! It has Arabic and translation side by side, with each line of text numbered on both sides for easy reference. The Arabic is large enough to be read easily, which is a big plus. I have at least two Quran translations with microscopic Arabic text, Muhammad Asad’s being the biggest (smallest?) culprit.

It is a complete translation. The RMHE version left out a few sections (on purpose: it was called Part 1). Maulid Eulogy also has a lot of added material. There is a section on the history of the author, Al-Hafiz Shaikh Abdul Rahman bin Ali ad-Daiba’i. He was Yemeni, which I didn’t know. That explains it’s prevalence here in Malaysia. There is also a section explaining and defending the practice of Maulid and clarifying references in the text that might by unclear to the reader. There are even lovely pictures of the Shaikh’s home town of Zabid and some architectural notes.

One thing I’ve come to know about the Maulid is that the parts attributable to Shaykh ad-Diba’i are only the spoken poetry, not the nasheeds that are interspersed with it. I’ve now encountered at least four different versions; in each, the spoken portion is the same, but the nasheeds are often very different, or are sung with very different melodies.

The book is available from Wardah Books in Singapore. I highly recommend it.

If there is anything disappointing about the book, it is that the English translation doesn’t do justice to the beauty of the Arabic. I don’t think this is the fault of the translation team. There just isn’t any way to render the English that would keep the rhythm and flow and force of the original. The text must be fairly tough to translate too due to its poetical nature, because the two translations are sometimes so different you can hardly believe they are translating the same lines. Once you add my amatuer attempts in there it really gets silly. Here are three translations of a verse from the nasheed that begins “Salatullahi malahat kawakib”:

Transliterated:
“Falaw anna sa’ayna kulla heenin/
‘Alal Ahdaqi la fawqan najaib/
Walaw anna ‘amilna kulla yawmin/
Li Ahmada mawlidan qad kana wajib”

Mine:
“And verily though we rushed to do it at every moment/
We could see around us nothing more noble/
And verily, even if we did it every day/
For Ahmad celebrating his birth is nigh unto obligatory”

RMHE:
“If only we could visit him every day/
with physical eyes and not the eye of the heart/
And if every moment we celebrate in his remembrance/
It might even be said to be obligatory”

Maulid Eulogy:
“If every day we seek him/
Searching in our minds and not on a vehicle/
And if every day we do this deed/
This maulid as a reminder of him, it is like a duty”

You can see where relying on translators gets you. An incentive to go out and learn some Arabic for yourself if ever there was one! All joking aside though, Maulid Eulogy has the better credentials even if the english is sometimes awkward, since they had a whole team of translators and even sent it back to Yemen for vetting, according to the introduction. The Arabic version is also impeccable I’m sure, since the Arabic manuscript on which it was based was also vetted and a list of non-standard usages found in the manuscript is included amongst the many appendices. I’m including a graphic link to the Wardah Books listing in my sidebar. Just click on the Gubba…

maulid_eulogy.jpg

Previous entries related to Mawlid Nabi:
[1],[2],[3],[4],[5]

Visit the Gulf

I’ve come across two weblogs by American muslim expats that are wonderful complements to each other, Nzingha’s Soapbox from Saudi Arabia, and Life in Exile from the Gulf nation of Qatar, best known as home to the indispensable Al-Jazeerah network. Side by side, they are a great introduction to a part of the world I haven’t been to yet but hope to visit one day, inshallah. They also show the significant differences that exist amongst the gulf nations, which I might have assumed to be more or less the same before now.

Life in Exile shows life in Qatar to be a pretty enjoyable experience. The country is modernizing in its own way and diversifying its economy as best it can. Dervish of Life in Exile explains why he doesn’t dwell on controversy or on unpleasant aspects of life in Qatar. He has several reasons, including

According to the Qur’an, we are not supposed to speak of an evil unless we are a victim of it. There are exceptions to this when a problem affects society at large, however. An example of this is as follows. Say someone else commits a sin, and I become aware of it. If I tell others of his sin, I am committing a sin probably more grievous than his. On the other hand, I can speak in general terms against the type of sin that he commits, or, I can speak of his sin specifically, if society as a whole is harmed by it. I generally will not speak of negative things that do not affect me or society as a whole, as it is unislamic.

I’ve been holding to a general “speak no evil” policy for the same reasons here on this site. I have one more reason to keep silent on local controversy: I have no idea what is going on. It’s not that I don’t try to keep informed. It’s that the coverage of issues in the local media is remarkably superficial. It’s remarkable because the press is not actively censored here. It’s more like it is neutered to start with. If you thought the American press just passively repeats government press releases, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Front page headlines will often read like, “Get Act Together, People Told” or “Industry Must Raise Standards, YB Says” accompanied by glamor shots of politicians grinning and shaking hands. Our local top politician proudly calls it the “Politics of Development”, which basically seems to mean, as long as everyone’s fortunes are rising, nobody better rock the boat. And since everyone’s fortunes have been rising since indepedence, albeit perhaps not at uniform rates, the press seems content not to dig too deep.

Meanwhile, the news is less than encouraging from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Nzingha writes that now the religious police are forcing women to cover their faces in the two holy places while they pray! I’m no religious scholar, but I’m certain covering the face invalidates the prayer for those following the shafi’i madhhab. Not content to vandalize our sacred architectural heritage and prevent us via truncheon of receiving baraka at the Propet’s door, they are now compromising the performance of our sisters’ salat. Subhanallah. I was advised years ago to make my hajj as soon as I could, before they wreck anything else. I think I need to start taking my preparations more seriously.

An Annotated List

Ethnicities, Nationalities and/or Socially Constructed Identities That I’ve Been Mistaken For

Put on a kufi and grow a beard and it becomes harder and harder to take advantage of institutionalized white privilege.

Middle Eastern

  • I’m sure all the converts have gotten that one before.

Turkish

  • The late Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani (q) emerged from a doorway. Huge smile on his face, he gave me a heavy pat on the chest, spoke to me in Turkish, and laughed out loud. He, of course, knew English and this was in Chicago.

Arab: unspecified

Arab: Syrian

  • On the flip side, a Syrian I ran into at a gas station looked at me and said, “you’re Ukranian, aren’t you?” My mother’s side of the family is in fact from Ukraine. He explained that he had met a number of soviet engineers who were in Syria offering technical assistance, the Baathist government being soviet-aligned in those days, and I looked just like them. Huh.

Arab: Lebanese

  • When I lived in Dearborn, home to tens of thousands of Lebanese, I had to memorize the Arabic for, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Arabic”, to which a lady once cocked her head at me and said, “Eh? Why not?”

Iranian

Afghani

Pakistani

  • When Malays guess this, I can understand. I was more surprised when I went into a store last week and asked the Pakistani uncle “Adakah jual songkok disitok?” (Do you sell malay hats here? …in Malay.) He cocked his head to the side as if to wonder why I would speak Malay to him and answered gently, “Nai, beta.” (No, my child.…in Urdu.)

Bosnian

Chechen

  • The boiled sheepskin hat I was wearing at the time contributed enormously, I’m sure.

Malaysian

  • Back when I was barely aware of where Malaysia was, and had not yet sprouted facial hair. In fact it was about 12 hours after I had taken shahada.

Black

  • I was working this temp job and had been there several weeks when a few of the Black guys I worked with started telling this white girl that I was Black. I don’t know what they could possibly have presented as evidence besides the fact that Islam is the Black Man’s Religion ™ but they had her fooled.

In Malaysia, the response I’ve gotten most often when I clarify that I’m actually an American is,

“Aren’t you kind of short for an American?”

To which I reply:

“I’m an Asian export model.” 

 

Books Lost and Found

If I have one piece of advice for my sister who is in college right now, it is “Don’t Sell Your Books!” I regret selling off my books. I regret that in a general way; I wish I still had every book I once had, if only to have a library that resembles the libraries of well-educated people I know and admire. But sometimes, I will find myself in a situation where I need a specific particular book that I once had. It is a terrible feeling. I’ve felt that with at least a dozen books now. I clearly remember staring at my big expensive general entomology textbook and saying to myself, this is one book I will never, never need again. It took 11 years, but sure enough I did need it again. The feeling is worse when it hits me here in Malaysia because so many books are out of reach or expensive enough in Ringgit to be prohibitive.

If I live long enough I think I will have cause to regret each individual book I have owned and lost. The most recent book I’m missing is my old Elementary Modern Standard Arabic Textbook. It was a great big heavy orange book from a class that I was hostile towards to begin with, so somewhere amongst my dozen changes of address and/or times of financial need I sold it. Now that I’m finally studying Arabic again, I miss it sorely. So I was thrilled to come across a pdf of an ancient (1890’s?) Arabic Grammar textbook in English available online. I strongly suspect that it is way over my head, but I’ll take what I can get. Thank you very much to Ghazali.org for making it available. I found it by way of Seeker’s Digest, by way of Alexandalus. Ghazali.org has a huge number of other texts available as does its sister site, Muslim Philosophy.

Taking Over the Street

The most common forms of housing for the urban Malaysian middle class are the terrace house and semi-detached house (semi-d for short), which we would call a rowhouse and a duplex respectively in the States. Malaysia is a relatively small country, and land is at a premium. The common rowhouse unit will be built on 6/100ths of an acre, of which almost the entire space is taken up by the house. The front yard is walled in, and functions as the car porch. Often it will be entirely cemented, though some people will maintain a bit of green to the sides of the driveway. The streetscape outside the gates is often quite bleak. Sidewalks are not common. Between the perimeter and the street is the monsoon drain and sometimes a patch of grass between driveways where a tree may be planted.

At the same time, Malaysians are fond of entertaining, and have large extended families. So what happens when somebody living in one of these tightly built subdivisions wants to throw a party? They take over the street. Wedding receptions, children’s graduations, what have you, will be catered right out in the road, with a rented canopy pitched over the whole affair. In the picture, you should be able to see the dotted road median disappear into the middle of the party. You can make out the half a lane I managed to squeeze through just prior to taking the picture. It could be a minor inconvenience to some, but it doesn’t bother me. There’s a neighborly spirit that comes from throwing a party in the street that I would not trade away.

One story I’ve heard a dozen times about parties like these goes something like this: “I’m driving around a winding subdivision trying to find my second cousin’s wedding reception. I spot a big tent and a crowd of cars, so I park and head in. I take a seat, eat a big plate of food, and finally ask the uncle I’ve been sitting with, “So how is good old Yusop anyway?” “Yusop who?” Wrong Party! I was looking for the second great big tent down the lane on the left…” It hasn’t happened to me quite like that yet, though I have stopped and gotten out of the car at two different street parties before finally finding the one I was invited to, the third one happening in the neighborhood that afternoon.

This muslim votes Green

I’ve mentioned before how ridiculous it was for the major Islamic organizations in the US (CAIR, MPAC, etc.) to endorse Bush in 2000. I could only imagine that they did so out of fear that the US might get a Jewish VP. How they expected the Golden Child of the Oil and Guns businesses to have a fairer dealing with the Middle East I don’t know, but the real crime is that they completely ignored Ralph Nader and the Green Party. Nader, an Arab-American, who promised to eliminate all aid to Israel if elected! Remember, justice in Israel is the one single issue that the Bloc Vote Mafia ™ has always urged Amercian muslims to vote for. That’s water under the bridge now, but I bring it up because I just read an interesting article called Islam and the Greens. It’s an article by a Green Party strategist who is

suggesting the possibility that Greens and Muslims might somehow collaborate as parallel, overlapping movements of liberation from the dominance of capital.

[via Planet Grenada, the archives of which I’m still poring over]

Islam in Detroit

The University of Michigan Graduate School has a project on the web called Building Islam in Detroit: An Interdisciplinary Study of Muslim Institutions & Collective Spaces. The site is not fully developed yet, but it sounds like a great project, with case studies planned for a number of masajid around town including Muath bin Jabal near Hamtramck. They have a list of masajid around town, plotted on a map. I’m fond of telling people that Detroit has as many masajid as Kuching; now I have proof. The most fleshed out part of the site is the section that has photographs of various mosques, taken by a photographer visiting from Sudan. Well worth a look.

[via Islamicate]