More Muslim women wear the hijab (a head covering also known regionally as the tudong) today than, say, 20 years ago. In 2011 a young Muslim filmmaker, Norhayati Kaprawi, made the documentary Siapa Aku? (Who Am I?), which examines some of the reasons behind this, interviewing a spectrum of Malaysian women from across the country.
Islamic Festivals
ARamadan The high point of the Islamic festival calendar, Ramadan is when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. It always occurs in the ninth month of the Muslim calendar and lasts between 29 and 30 days, based on sightings of the moon. The start of Ramadan moves forward 11 days every year, in line with the Muslim lunar calendar. Fifteen days before the start of Ramadan, on Nisfu Night, it is believed the souls of the dead visit their homes. On Laylatul Qadr (Night of Grandeur), during Ramadan, Muslims celebrate the arrival of the Quran on earth, before its revelation by the Prophet Mohammed.
AHari Raya Aidilfitri Hari Raya marks the end of the month-long fast, with two days of joyful celebration and feasting – this is the major holiday of the Muslim calendar.
AMawlid al-Nabi Usually in March and celebrating the birth of the Prophet Mohammed.
AHari Raya Haji A two-day festival usually in November marking the successful completion of the hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – and commemorating the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (the biblical Abraham) to sacrifice his son. Many shops, offices and tourist attractions close and locals consume large amounts of cakes and sweets.
AAwal Muharram The Muslim New Year, which falls in November or December.
Islam in Malaysia: Perceptions & Facts, by Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, the former Mufti of Perlis, is a collection of articles on aspects of the faith as practised in Malaysia.
Chinese Religions
The Chinese communities in Malaysia usually follow a mix of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Buddhism takes care of the afterlife, Confucianism looks after the political and moral aspects of life, and Taoism contributes animistic beliefs to teach people to maintain harmony with the universe.
But to say that the Chinese have three religions is too simplistic a view of their traditional religious life. At the first level Chinese religion is animistic, with a belief in the innate vital energy in rocks, trees, rivers and springs. At the second level people from the distant past, both real and mythological, are worshipped as gods. Overlaid on this are popular Taoist, Mahayana Buddhist and Confucian beliefs.
On a day-to-day level most Chinese are much less concerned with the high-minded philosophies and asceticism of the Buddha, Confucius or Lao Zi than they are with the pursuit of worldly success, the appeasement of the dead and the spirits, and seeking knowledge about the future. Chinese religion incorporates elements of what Westerners might call ‘superstition’ – if you want your fortune told, for instance, you go to a temple. The other thing to remember is that Chinese religion is polytheistic. Apart from the Buddha, Lao Zi and Confucius, there are many divinities, such as house gods, and gods and goddesses for particular professions.
The most popular Chinese gods and shen (local deities) are Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy; Kuan Ti, the god of war and wealth; and Toh Peh Kong, a local deity representing the spirit of the pioneers and found only outside China.
Hinduism
Hinduism in the region dates back at least 1500 years, and there are Hindu influences in cultural traditions, such as wayang kulit (shadow-puppet theatre) and the wedding ceremony. However, it is only in the last 100 years or so, following the influx of Indian contract labourers and settlers, that it has again become widely practised. Hinduism has three basic practices: puja (worship), the cremation of the dead, and the rules and regulations of the caste system. Although still very strong in India, the caste system was never significant in Malaysia, mainly because the labourers brought here from India were mostly from the lower classes.
Hinduism has a vast pantheon of deities, although the one omnipresent god usually has three physical representations: Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer or reproducer. All three gods are usually shown with four arms, but Brahma has the added advantage of four heads to represent his all-seeing presence.
Thaipusam
Each year in late January or early February, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converge at Batu Caves for the Hindu festival of Thaipusam. This is at once a moving, raucous and sublime display of devotion and community spirit. Lord Murugan’s silver chariot takes pride of place as it makes its way from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple in KL’s Chinatown. The slow procession begins around midnight and arrives sometime in the early morning at the caves. Thousands of pilgrims follow the chariot, many in various states of trance.
As with Thaipusam festivals around the world, devotees of Murugan carry a kavadi (literally ‘burden’). This burden, often a jug of milk, is an offering to Murugan for his blessings. On arrival, pilgrims carry their kavadi up the 272 steps to the Temple Cave where their burden is relieved by Hindu priests. Those who have pierced their flesh will have the barbs removed and the wounds treated with ash and lemon.
Tens of thousands may be at the site at any one time. It’s crowded but not intolerably so, and you can easily move through the masses for a picture of the procession.
It’s good to arrive at the cave area before 8am (best is to follow the whole procession from Chinatown). If you wish to see the activities within the Temple Cave, you should be there by 5am. Food and water are available outside the caves and from numerous stalls and shops (though if you are planning to be in the Temple Cave, bring your own).
The exact date of Thaipusam is usually announced in the local papers, and you can also contact the Sri Mahamariamman Temple.
Animism
The animist religions of Malaysia’s indigenous peoples are as diverse as the peoples themselves. While animism does not have a rigid system of tenets or codified beliefs, it can be said that animists perceive natural phenomena to be animated by various spirits or deities, and a complex system of practices is used to propitiate these spirits.
Ancestor worship is also a common feature of animist societies; departed souls are considered to be intermediaries between this world and the next.
Religious Issues
Freedom of Religion?
Islam is Malaysia’s state religion, which has an impact on the cultural and social life of the country at several levels. Government institutions and banks, for example, are closed for two hours at lunchtime on Friday to allow Muslims to attend Friday prayers.
Government censors, with Islamic sensitivities in mind, dictate what can be performed on public stages or screened in cinemas. This has led to Beyoncé cancelling her shows when asked to adhere to strict guidelines on dress and performance style, and to the banning of movies such as Schindler’s List and Babe – the themes of Jews being saved from the Holocaust and a cute pig star are not to Muslim tastes. In 2008, Malaysia’s leading Islamic council issued an edict against yoga, fearing the exercises could corrupt Muslims.
Sharia law (Islamic law) is the preserve of state governments, as is the establishment of Muslim courts of law, which since 1988 cannot be overruled by secular courts. This has had a negative impact on Muslims wishing to change their religion and divorced parents who cannot agree on a religion by which to raise their children. The end result is that Malaysian Muslims who change their religion or practise no faith at all hardly ever make their choice public.
Those who do, such as Lina Joy, a Malay convert to Christianity, face insurmountable difficulties. After battling for nine years through the legal system, Ms Joy failed in 2007 to be allowed to have her choice of religion recognised on her identity card. Malaysia's high court ruled that she first needed permission from the syariah court – an institution that would treat her action as apostasy to be punished.
It's believed only one woman – 88-year-old Wong Ah Kui (legally known as Nyonya Tahir) – has ever been officially allowed to leave Islam in Malaysia, and then only after she had die
d in 2006 and her family wanted to have a Buddhist funeral.
Malaysian politicians have been known to call in a bomoh (a traditional spiritual healer and spirit medium) during election campaigns to assist in their strategy and provide some foresight.
Anti-Semitism
Penang once had a Jewish community large enough to support a synagogue (closed in 1976) and there’s been a Jewish cemetery in George Town since 1805. Elsewhere in Malaysia, Jewish life is practically unknown.
Sadly, anti-Semitism, ostensibly tied to criticism of Israel, is a feature of Malaysia. In KL's bookshops it’s not difficult to find anti-Semitic publications like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Former prime minister Mahathir is the most infamously outspoken Malaysian anti-Semite: in 2003 he made a speech to an Islamic leadership conference claiming the USA is a tool of Jewish overlords, and he once cancelled a planned tour of Malaysia by the New York Philharmonic because the program included work by a Jewish composer.
A 2014 survey by the US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that nearly two in three Malaysians admit to being prejudiced against Jews, the highest proportion by far in the region. Israeli passport holders are not permitted to enter Malaysia without clearance from the Ministry of Home Affairs, and very few local Muslims differentiate between Israelis and Jews generally – something worth noting if you’re Jewish and travelling in the region.
Sisters in Islam (www.sistersinislam.org.my) is a website run by and for Malaysian Muslim women who refuse to be bullied by patriarchal interpretations of Islam.
Women in Malaysia
Malaysian women take part in all aspects of society, from politics and big business to academia and the judicial system; in 2010 Malaysia appointed its first two female Islamic-court judges. However, women in all communities, particularly those with conservative religious values, face restrictions on their behaviour despite the general openness of Malaysian society. Arranged marriage is common among Muslim and Hindu families, and the concept of ‘honour’ is still a powerful force in internal family politics.
Although the wearing of the tudong (headscarf) is encouraged, Muslim women are permitted to work, drive and go out unchaperoned, though the religious authorities frequently crack down on khalwat (close proximity, ie couples who get too intimate in public), which is considered immoral. Full purdah (the practice of screening women from men or strangers by means of all-enveloping clothes) is rare – if you do see this it’s likely to be worn by women visiting from the Persian Gulf.
Recent changes to Islamic family law have made it easier for men to marry and divorce multiple wives and claim a share of their property. Muslim parties are also campaigning to remove the crime of marital rape from the statute books and bring in new laws requiring four male witnesses before a rape case can come to trial. In response to these moves, Marina Mahathir, the daughter of the former prime minister, compared the lot of Malaysia’s Muslim women to that of blacks under apartheid in South Africa.
Arts & Architecture
The suggestion implicit in the naming of the Cooler Lumpur Festival is that the creativity of KLites in the arts and culture is not just 'cool' but 'cooler'. Take a close look at the city's contemporary art scenes and it's difficult not to agree. Mirroring the eclectic range of artistic pursuits is the city's built environment, which segues from elegant, traditional kampung houses to soaring, postmodern edifices endowed with Islamic flourishes.
Literature
A 1911 scandal involving the wife of a headmaster at a KL school who was convicted in a murder trial after shooting dead a male friend was the basis for Somerset Maugham's short story and play The Letter. Anthony Burgess picked up the thread of the dying days of British colonial rule in the region in The Malayan Trilogy, written in the 1950s when he was a school teacher in the country; it was Burgess who coined the phrase 'cooler lumpur'. The Malayan Life of Ferdach O'Haney is a fictionalised account of author Frederick Lees' experiences in 1950s Malaya; Lees was uniquely placed to observe mid-20th-century life in KL in his role as a top-ranking civil servant.
The literary baton has long since been passed to locally born writers such as Tash Aw (www.tash-aw.com), whose debut novel, The Harmony Silk Factory, won the 2005 Whitbread First Novel Award; Man Booker Prize–nominated author Tan Twan Eng (www.tantwaneng.com), whose literature fuses a fascination with Malaysia’s past and an exploration of the impact of Japanese culture; and Preeta Samarasan (http://preetasamarasan.com), whose novel Evening Is the Whole Day shines a light on the experiences of an Indian immigrant family in the early 1980s.
Samarasan is one of the writers whose work features in Urban Odysseys, edited by Janet Tay and Eric Forbes, a mixed bag of short stories set in KL. An excellent collection of locally penned short stories about different aspects of sexuality is Body 2 Body, edited by Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik. This anthology has a story by Brian Gomez, whose comedy-thriller Devil’s Place is fun to read and very evocative of its KL setting. Kam Raslan’s Confessions of an Old Boy is another comic tale, this time following the adventures both at home and abroad of politico Dato’ Hamid.
A snappy read is Amir Muhammad’s Rojak: Bite-Sized Stories, in which the multi-talented artist and writer gathers a selection of the 350-word vignettes, many of them comic, that he penned as part of the British Council–sponsored creative-writing project City of Shared Stories.
Dance
There are several tourist-oriented dance shows in KL at which you can see traditional Malay dances from the peninsula; the main one is at the Malaysian Tourism Centre.
Traditional Indian dance is taught and performed at the Temple of Fine Arts in Brickfields. Malaysian dance legend Ramli Ibrahim founded Sutra Dance Theatre in 1983, a troupe that also takes Indian classical dance as the basis for its choreography. It has its own small dance theatre in Titiwangsa and also puts on shows at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC). This is the venue at which you're most likely to catch other contemporary dance performances by local troupes such as Nyoba Kan (www.nyobakan.blogspot.com), which specialises in the Japanese dance form buto.
Although traditional dramatic forms such as wayang kulit (shadow-puppet theatre) remain popular in Malaysia, it's rare for such shows to be performed in KL.
Drama
Local playwrights have to tread carefully when dealing with controversial topics such as race and religion, but you'd be surprised by how much they can get away with compared with what's acceptable in the cinema, on TV and for popular music performances.
Musicals, particularly those about national heroes – from the sultanate-era warrior Hang Tuah to former prime minister Mahathir – are very popular; you'll likely find them staged at the Istana Budaya and KLPAC. There is also a strong interest in English-language theatre, as well as in Malay, Indian and Chinese languages.
The most interesting productions are generally staged by the Actors Studio (www.theactorsstudio.com.my), and at KLPAC and the Five Arts Centre (www.fiveartscentre.org), the latter based in the Taman Tun Dr Ismail neighbourhood of KL. The Black Box at Publika is another venue that's popular for alternative and cutting-edge performances.
Music
Traditional & Classical
Traditional Malay music is based largely on gendang (drums), but other percussion instruments include the gong and various tribal instruments made from seashells, coconut shells and bamboo. The Indonesian-style gamelan (a traditional orchestra of drums, gongs and wooden xylophones) also crops up on ceremonial occasions. The Malay nobat uses a mixture of percussion and wind instruments to create formal court music.
For Western-style classical music, attend a performance by the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas at the base of the Petronas Towers.
Chinese and Islamic influences are felt in the music of dondang sayang (Chinese-influenced romantic songs) and hadrah (Islamic chants, sometimes accompanied by dance and music). The KL-based Dama Orchestra (www.damaorchestra.com) combines modern and traditional Chinese
instruments and plays songs that conjure up 1920s and '30s Malaysia.
Wayang
During important festivals for the Chinese community, such as Chinese New Year, there are street performances of wayang (Chinese opera) in KL. Shows feature dramatic music, high-pitched romantic songs and outrageous dances in spectacular costumes. Performances can go for an entire evening, but typically you don’t have to understand Chinese to follow the simple plots.
Popular Music
Snapping at the high heels of demure Malaysian pop songstress Siti Nurhaliza are Zee Avi, who was signed by the US label Bushfire Records for her eponymous debut album, and Yuna, who has also cut a US record deal and is one of the talented vocalists and songwriters from the new generation of musicians. Also look out for Najwa, whose slickly produced album Aurora has garnered positive reviews; the MIA-style rapper Arabyrd; and the more retro guitar jingly pop stylings of Noh Salleh.
In 2015 indie rock band Kyoto Protocol, which has been steadily building its reputation since forming in 2008, finally released a full album, Catch These Men. A great resource for catching up on other up-and-coming local bands and singers is The Wknd (http://the-wknd.com). Generally, though, KL's indie music scene is erratic, with artists not always able to go the distance to achieve local let alone international recognition.
Cinema
The heyday of Malaysia’s film industry was the 1950s, when P Ramlee dominated the silver screen. This Malaysian icon acted in 66 films, recorded 300 songs and was also a successful film director. His directorial debut Penarik Becha (The Trishaw Man; 1955) is a classic of Malay cinema.
Lonely Planet Kuala Lumpur, Melaka & Penang Page 36