2/12/11 SOULESS and or BODILESS...

(Kelantan, Pattani, Acheh, Sulu, Champa, dan Madura, apa keserasian kalian? Trengganu dan Kedah, di mana khilafnya? Bangsa kita, apakah yang telah kita tidak pedulikan? Perhatikan? Teruskan?)

For three days, from 2-5 Dec., 2011, with some friends, I traveled to the depth and breath, to really see the prospects for some Sarawak-based Companies to invest in Kelantan. This is a State where poverty seem to anchor hard into the heart of the soil, which seem as an accepted norm that the people in the State have to live with. Next door, the Pattani enclave, the scene is nothing more interesting than those suppression and rivalry. All carries the image of Islam, the back water Islam. My soul sunk to the very bottom of my gastro-intestine seeing and knowing all these. What should I do or least learn? Do I have the time? Should I ask?

(2) Nik Aziz Nik Mat, the Chief Minister (MB) of Kelantan, had been here for the last 20 years administering the State, the Islamic Ways as he perceived, suitable within the norms and demographic of the Kelantanese. I would say, he works hard to give his people the Islamic Soul in his political endeavor. Nonetheless, over the past 20 years or so, I have not seen much change in what I would called as the Islamic Body development of the State. To me, PAS, the political party whom Nik Aziz is the the Grand Spiritual Figure, the Mullah, over the past years, their struggle was nothing but merely to ensure the political rooting of the so called Islamic Soul. Unfortunately, his people, the subject of his administration are left alone fighting hard for their living. The standard of comparison that I use is against the same nature of the population of the Nation elsewhere, whom being administered by the National Front (BN) particularly under the UMNO. He had not able to build the Body of his State. The welfare of his people is left for them to pursue as they wish and affordability. The Survival of the Fittest is the norm. Thus, I would strongly say, Nik Aziz’s Kelantese State is a State with a soul, but without the body. The Nik Aziz’s Malays, are the Malays with the souls but without the bodies, a bodiless soul.

(3) Along the same line, for 20 years, Mahathir Mohammed, initially feared as the ultra-Malay, had been working hard to change the image of the Malays, from being a third class society to the advanced one. He in fact challenged the Malays hard. Since his student days, he had hard critiques about how his people being sidelined. He worked from six to nine. He travelled worldwide to search for the best ideas for the course of his Nation Building. He said his piece. He pushed everybody to deliver. To me, he really hard headedly build the Body of the Malays. Crafting is his hobby. Crafting the Body of the Malays was and is his blood. He wants to see the Malays having a respectful body. He wants them to Berdiri sama tinggi, duduk sama rendah with the rest of the first class nations of the world. He is determined. He set the time. 2020, everything must be in place. He was willing to do anything, everything even to cry for his people support.



(4) Mahathir, he succeeded to wrestled the Sime Darby-Gutrie from the colonial super master, built Daya Bumi in the midst of the global economic crisis, the Penang Bridge, the Highways, the KL Tower, the Twin Tower, the KLIA, the F1 Sepang, the LRT, the Monorel, breaking the Curse of Mahsuri of Langkawi and making LIMA a foundation of the future dreams, making PETRONAS an MNC, turning all those lukewarm agencies into vibrant GLCs, making Malaysia the only Muslim country that can produce cars, flourishing the country with private high learning institutions, at all times managed to steer the Malaysian economy from the global or regional turmoil, placing great foundation for the growth of the Islamic Financing and Economic system, all those not exhaustive to list. He turned his face and the nation to the East: Japan and Korea for the Patriotic Soul Building. His move was neutralized as Non-Islamic by Ahmad Sabu, Hadi Awang, and a shit to Shahnom Ahmad (?). His Nationalism is nothing different than the Pharaohs’ self-centric. And, he later cried. He realized, he had failed to give the Malays, the soul. He crafted them the bodies. The Mahathir’s Malays, are the Malays with the bodies but without the souls, a soulless body. He knew it. He wanted someone having the charisma to give the Malays the soul to take-on him. At least Mahathir is honest and brave to admit his weaknesses. A true charismatic leadership that he has.

(5) Mahathir popularity went down. He was deeply sadden. He searched for replacement, he thought, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was a person that could injected the soul and crafted the body for the Malays. The whole nation was in illusion. Everybody seem to accept his thought. He handed over his dream, his struggle, his vision to someone he believe the Nation really needed. The soft, the honest, the humble, the caring…. all those KPIs of a true leader, are seem to blend` in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi image. When he was at the realm, the Mr Clean, the rest, the than effects, the Nation knows best.

(6) My exploration in Kelantan, Pattani, Laos, Chambodia and Vietnam the last couple of months, and looking back to what I had officially fought over the past 26 years struggle and my characters, I could see, my search and hypothesis, the Malays need a person who could crafted them the Body and the Soul. Nik Aziz has the Soul Spirit but totally lacking the Body Build ability, while Mahathir, is a Body Builder Person yet missing the Soul Giving ability. My test case lies in Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The Malays and the nation gave him, as he claimed the strongest mandate ever given to any Malaysian leaders. With the nation expectation of Mr. Clean, Abdullah dreams to drive the nation into Glory: Cemerlang, Gemilang, Terbilang. In Kelantan, he was just short of a one seat majority to wrestle back the State into the National Front, yet he failed to deliver. While he was given the mandate, he reluctantly made fast moves to improve the wellbeing of the Kelantanese. He failed to the expectation of the Mr Clean image that initially he had. Kedah was even thrown out, into the arms of the Opposition, despite Mahathir heavy duty Body Building there. Another clear case of the soul hunger of the Malays.

(7) My three years in and out of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) strengthen my belief, turning my hypothesis into a theoretical thought. Looking at Sir Micheal Somare, the Independent Fighter, the Prime Minister of PNG: an aloft and people caring person but without instruments he have done not much to turn his nation into a rich one, though he has all the natural endowments. I have embarked on reading many biographies and ancient histories. It seem being soft (Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Saud, etc), being firm (Clinton, Thatcher, Rabbin, etc), being robust (Putin, Suharto, Mahathir, etc), being shrewd (Deng Zao Peng, Sadam Husein, Ghadafi, etc), being anything, even as holiest as claimed by Ayatollah Khomenei, Pope John Paul, Mother Teressa, etc nothing much really have changed. The wheel just turning, spinning as it used to be. The top, the periphery, the bottom are just alike. But interesting to note, both Lee Kuan Yew and Ho Chii Minh managed to implant some soul to their nation building effort. The Japanese, the Korean, the German seem to be successful in this, how and why? Would there be a statistical correlation among all these? Could statistician and management gurus come with Statistical Leadership Theories of Y=a(i)X(i) where Y is the theory, a is the co-efficient, X takes the normative values, i=1, ∞ , of all these. To keen followers of MyBlog, my journeys the next three to four months would be to search for such hypothesis if not a theory. Nonetheless I’m not going to do a soul searching journey, as some may suggest or anticipate, I’m firming my coming back route to greater success for some to if not all to model.

(8) Definitely, I’m also keeping close watch on personality such as Toyoda, Bill Gates, Jack Wells, Steven Job, the Starbuck, the Apple, the MyDotCom, and many others. I do also hope to get as close as possible to the learning and teaching places of Muhammad SAW, Abu Bakar, Umar Al Khatab, Ali Abi Thalib, Bukhari, Muslim, and Ibn Khaldum. All those, I hope I could formulate a mathematical theory on Nation and Corporate leadership traits for this robust evolving world, especially to make the Malays to really be participants and able to stand to their feet, walking tall. I do realize the saying of the Al Quran: …this world is for the infidel, Heaven is for the Muslim… and I don’t believe to take its meant literally. May Allah help me in this search. SubhanaAllah. You are the Glorious.

(9) Today, I woke up at 04.00 hours, rushed to LCCT, and off for Surabaya. My all these while critique of the Pondok and Pasantren institutions had made our Islamic Thought being decepted and narrowed. In this journey, I want to feel and experience with my own body and soul of such outliar thought of mine. My arrival at the LCCT KL terminal was surrounded by thousands of ladies, in veils, the Malay’s head scarf. The ladies, most were middle ages. They are on home going to Indonesia, mostly. My mind spinning hard. This scene, slowly disturbs my heart. These women, mothers’ of the youngs if not the wives of the lonely or abandoned husbands. They in the eyes of Nik Aziz, should be at home to care for the families, yet they are now the bread winner not only for the families but as well as the Main Income Generator for the Nation. The Indonesian women are their prime most nation economic asset. Sharizat, a lady Minister charged to care for the women, applauded this, the women power phenomena. She fought like a bull to get the men to realize this, but glazed cynically by Bung Mokhtar. A nation, the men, supposed to protect them, now prey on them. The world had turned to where we seem to be 1,500 years ago. Jahilliah. Why?

(10) Now, at 1500 hours, 6 December, 2011, in a nice cool raining mode, in a Tourism District, Pacet Mojokerto, East Java, three hours winding drive to the hinterland of Surabaya, for the next couple of days, I’ll be the guest to Kiai Mahfudz the owner of the Ayam Bakar Wong Solo, Quick Chicken, M2M, Rijan Chain Groceries, and DapuRia enterprises. He is also the one who named his special fruitose as Jus Poligami, now changed to Jus Buah Empat Rasa. He has four wives with 20 kids and 11 grandchildren, all staying in one roof. From the balcony of his Pasantren Riyadlul Jannah Guest House, sitting facing the vegetable valley, in the distance, I glaze at the lining of rolling mountains. The rain misted the whole backdrop, giving the cooling panoramic scene. The mountains’ green turning blue. The dry green leaves of the trees drip with crystal rain drops. The swiflets roam the sky. Slowly the sky brighten up. Cool and lazily, the landscape turning slowly back greenish. Echo of prays and reading of the Al Quran taking the sound drops of the rain. The santris, next door, sang in the wavy sound Tasbih to the Rasullullah. The sulfuric smoke of Mount Belirang, slowly trail the skyline. Looking down the balcony, fish ponds collecting the mountain run off, cascading, making a waterfall sound effect, blended nicely with the whole nature. These scenes, romantic as some may visualize. Enlightening to some may think. Tranquil to some may feel. Touching as some may say. To me, thousand and one wonder in my mind. The fishes in the pond, the santri at the Pesantren, what are their similarities and what would they be? The wonder goes on and on.

(11) Wondering, where do these santris come from? There are five hundred of them. At different ages. What would be their future? How does this Kiai finance his institution. He has one in Palembang, one in Pontianak, one in Makasar. His Mojokerto is the Hq. There are numerous villages down there at the Valley. A stone throw from my balcony. What have they earned from this institution? How much has this institution help to shape them? Those wonders, hidden in this, I would say the most serene endowment I have ever seen and feel in my whole life. Pasantren Riyadlul Jannah, is a semblance of the Shaolin Temple deep in the China Mountain High or the Shogun Palace in the Japanese Snowy seclude. Probably this is the Temple of the King that I used to sing while I was a boy many years ago. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Javanese, the nese probably have ingrained deep in the Buddhist culture, thus they resemble closely, traditionally.

(12) I was served by a typical Javanese young man. Culturally, superb polite. The tibits. The keropok. The special one, keropok tahu with sweet black Java Coffee. The hot coffee warms me up in the cool rain. After a brief discussion with the Kiai, later, I have my meal, with the Kiai in-law. Two persons, served with 10 dishes. The Kiai can’t join me because he is fasting. I ate a lots of the burung dara, the pigeons. Then I joined the santris for the Magrib, then Pengajian Hadiths and followed by the Isya. The rain continues to fall. The air getting cold. The prays, the zikir from all over the villages down the valley sound very soothing and pleasant. The sprawling glittering lights from the villages magnified the whole beauties. Only Allah knows, how my heart had expanded with joys. But how could I take this joy back home for some others to appreciate. At this moment, let me just write and you guys wonder. Great to wonder as long as we don’t get wandering too much, or we might be lost eaten by the tiger.



(13) Here, the Pacet district, in couples of months had been disturbed by rampant quarrying activities. Heavy machines had been deployed to the mountains, to extract the stone, and then crush at the nearby villages. The worries of the societies, all these operation are without proper approval and not environmentally friendly, far from socially considerate. The police, the Forester, the public offices, close their eyes, shut the ears on all these. It sounds like, the lately rampant FFB theft phenomena in Sarawak. The societies becoming restless. There may, especially in this rainy season, the expected landsliding problems. The Kiai took the matter into his societies hands. He organized his Pesantren followers and affected societies to face the public offices. He organized the local young to fight those illegal operations. They took the law into their side. What have I got here?

(14) Didn’t the polices, the foresters, and those public office barriers, come from the same societies. The societies that have long been imbedded with the soul? Culturally and spiritually, they had been taught to be with the societies. They must never turn their back from the societies. Yet now they betrayed their very own societies, for individuals and or groups gains. Some if not all. Now, they acted mere bodily with a loosing soul. They seem to have lost their founded soul. Why?

(15) It is not a co-incidence. Mahathir, Nik Aziz, Kiai Mahfudz, myself, (and you), we co-exist at this very volatile moment. Mahathir and me, stepped aside of our course. Nik Aziz, Kiai Mahfudz (and you), stay foot probably to their (your) death. Why? Let not look for the answer merely to make ourselves happy or at peace. Here from the balcony of this Temple of the King, I love to borrow the eyes of the gurus, the shaolin masters, the shogun, etc to see the future distance of my subject, the people, the societies, the bodies. In this cool serene water drop sounding place, I would love to borrow the heart of Muhammad SAW, Abu Bakar As Siddique, Umar Al Khatab, Ali Abi Thalib, Nik Aziz, etc to get to the soul, the roh that would make the Malays to participate, hold, stand, and to grow.

(16) My thesis, Islam = spiritual + material = soul + body = religion. Islam is the wholesome of the religion. Spiritual (soul) is half of it. Material (body) is the other half. Let have a test. What is a human? He has the body, he has the soul. What would he be, without a soul? A corpse, a death body, useless in fact. What if he has only the soul? Would he still not a human? Angels, satans, ghost, etc, they have soul, yet their physical forms are not definite, how do then we look at them, don’t we learn from such?

(17) Thus, my journey is to firm my hypothesis: Malays = soul + material = socio-religious structure + material = Society. Alhamdullilah, from this Temple of the King I could see, the initial conception on how to build a Malay Society. Building a Malay society, is the journey that I must work hard on. May Allah place me in the right track and help me most (and you) for this discovery.
(15) At 1600 hours on 7 December, 2011, I drove cross the SuraMadu Bridge, the green-pinkish Megawati built bridge. The bridge connecting the villages of Kadir and Doyok, Madura and Javanese jokkers. At the Madura end, after the shollah, I have the Sate Madura with Nasi Soto. In the midst of my eating, two tourist load bus stop-by. Just like the piranha rushing to the victim, the Madura small people on motorbikes, on foot, on bicycles, men, women, kids, rushed to offer whatever that they could sell to the tourists. Later, some keep pressing me to buy something from them as souvenir. They really push their ways. They really seem desperate for a sale. Later on our way back to Sidoarjo, for Mojokerto, the supir, the driver and an accompanying friend, we joke of the Madura as I have written some in my few years back articles. My mind wonder, why are the Maduras become the subject of jokes, particularly among the Javanese, just as the Scottish among the Briton. I was told, the Maduras they are religious and hard working people. But their first impression at the Landing-end of the SuraMadu Bridge, gave me some wonder that need some explanation. I decided to explore the Island on the next day, with my initial created joke ”Orang Madura pasti hebat. Orang lain membajak di sawah, mereka membajak di laut samudera”.

(18) On the drive back from Sidoarjo to Mojokerto, the Pesantren, I changed car to join Kiai Mahfudz. We talked on the history of the Kiais’ of Indonesia. Here in Surabaya, the initial struggle against the Dutch was first established. The spread of Islam in South East Asia in the 11-13th centuries had established communes of Islamic societies. These communes were initially lead by Kiai or Ulama, then grew into various small Government lead by the Sultans or Radens with the Kiai or Ulama to keep on spiritual matters only. Initially, the Arab and Muslim Indian missionaries had to culturally entrench into the Hindus-Buddish die hard Malays-Javanese lifestyle. Islam gave the Malays-Javanese the freedom from those feudalistic culture of the Hindus-Buddish system. Islam gave them a greater values that they need. But, the Crusaders, moved beyond Europe and Africa-Arab, crossing the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf of Arab, Indian Ocean and South China Sea to conquer the Wealth of the East. They want to colonize the Muslim states of the South East Asia. The Muslim communes then probably due to numerous constraints, remained as communes. Despite they evolved into numerous governments, their strength never expand beyond the keris, tombak, and pedang. To me their government were merely communal government just as they continue to exist to this days: Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu, Johor, Acheh, Pattani, Sulu, Cham, etc. The concept of greater and much universal government seem not their favor or not being well developed. All I would say, as I could see, just as the present operation of the Pesantren, Pondok nad Madrasah, even the State governments, their nature of operation are still commune, despite their out cries Islam, a universal religion. Politic seem not the right instrument to push for a true Islamic system. So what then? Economic, Finance, Trade, Cultural, or what? Education? Where did Muhammad SAW started, then?

(19) As early as 0800 hrs, I then drove up hill Pacet toward` the resorts area. I stopped by the road side to have durian. Real nice, volcanic durian, milky, dry and real tasty, with black coffee. Then, heading for Lapindo Project, at Porong Sidoarjo, which initially was an oil exploration, which turned into disaster effecting about 900 families and 1,200 hectares of village areas. The whole area turned into mud flow with sulfuric and methane gas release into the air. Effect of mosques, schools, housing, farms etc swept by continuous flow of mud instead of oil, that turned the flat land into a Plateau of Mud about 3-5 meters above the normal ground. To this day, the one can still see the smoke release at the center of the plateau just like the Ghost Giza of Yellow Stone, Utah.

(20) Porong Sidoarjo, in particular, Porong Mindi is the home place of Doyok the Indonesian Joker that used to act together with my favorite 1980s artist Benjamin S. I felt relieved, at least to have a visit to the place of my favorite artist, Doyok. Doyok has always being bullied by both Benjamin S and Kadir in all of their movies, just like P Ramlee, S Shamsuddin and Aziz Satar. Doyok is the S Shamsuddin version of the Indonesian star.

(21) The affected population had not been properly compensated. By the time I arrived at the place, stream of people flowing into the area. I though, they were tourists, but as the heat mounted by 11.00 hours, the crowd, women, men, kids, young, old, they, later I found were demonstrators. Both ways, the road was blocked. The speeches, the out cries lasted for six hours. Luckily, the driver knew the narrow escape through the narrow and numerous tolls alleys, we head our way later to Madura Island. At his chaotic situation, everybody seem love to be a vulture, preying. Why? Again, my thesis, the soulless bodies and the the bodiless soul. In fact, in this East Java, if one travel through the villages, I would say for every 300-500 meters, there will always be a mosque or musolla. The symbol of soul but we will also see, the rampant socio-economic disparity, the symbol of the lack of bodies.

(22) By 1500 hours, we crossed SuraMadu Bridge. We head for Bangkalan, the largest town in Madura. I have this illusion about Madura. The Island to me must have been flooded with human being in such that, huge amount of them are now all over Indonesia and Malaysia. I always think that Madura is over populated. To my surprise, the Island seem deserted. There are not much youngsters there. The Island still have plenty of forest, except, much of them are mangrove. The major problem of the Island, I would say, low lying, frequently flooded by salt water intrusion. Paddy farming and fishing seem to be their best expertise. The town is not well urbanized, only one to two storeys of shophouses. No big mall presence. I guess, the Chinese traders don’t do well here. All businesses probably run by the pribumis.

(23) What is unique about Madura? All the way, I have been asking both the driver and my accompanying guide. They can’t say anything. Nothing seem special about the Madura. We spent our time to visit few popular mosques. One is in the remembrance of Ustaz Cholil. This is a nice and elaborately decorated mosque. Here, the Grand Guru Cholil, was buried. He was the Grad Guru for most of the Javanese Kiai. Later we went over to Aer Mata Bunda, the graveyard of Princess Bunda, the Queen of Madura. Along the ways, I began to noticed, in Madura, as compared to any other placeses in South East Asian that I have visited, their mosques and musollah are well decorated. The Madura seem to have ample times to have their mosques and musollah nicely built and decorated. My guessed was that, the did all these while waiting for the sea to calm and the rice to ripe. They spent their in between waiting times to make their praying places look beautiful. Puposely, I took to the maghrib to gauge the extent of religious affiliation of the Madura. True enough, as the maghrib approaching, stream of people walked or rode to the nearby mosques or musollah. Since it was Thursday evening, they normally organized Tahlil for the death, and this clear can be seen both at Masjid Cholil and Aer Mata Bunda. The Madura are strongly religious affiliated. They seem to be real cool, good people on their own home Island. Sometimes ago, I have written: Leave religion to the Madura, business to the Padang, agriculture to the Bugis, and politic to the Javanese, the profession categorization of Bangsa Indonesia.



(24) Yet, out side of Madura, in Jakarta, Pontianak, and Surabaya they are real fighter. They really fight for their living. They are hard working. They are determined. They had thick face. They are aggressive. All as I could see, the Islam that they got is a mere spiritual Islam without the body. They adopted a spiritual Islam not Islam as a religion, the complete wholesome. Their Islam is a bodiless Islam. As Muhammad SAW had warned the Muslim; poverty could cause kufur. I could see this as the effect in Mojokerto, Surabaya, Porong Sidoajo, and Madura, Kelantan, Pattani, Laos (Cham), Chamodia (Cham), Vietnam (Cham), Mindanoa, in this short exploration of my later longer journey home.

(25) Nonetheless, I was please, at least my Surabaya visit have taken me to visit my favorite artists Kadir and Doyok paces of birth and now I know what turned them into shrewd and cynical joker. Most, at least I now have a hypothesis of my journey of my return , the struggle norms of struggle that may take the Malays to participate, stand and hold. I wish to have this done in the next three to four months.

Pesantren Riyadlul Jannah, Mojokerto, Pacet
9 Dec., 2011