Azly Rahman's Blog, page 13

Fight Hysteria with Psychology, not Bomoh-logy

by Azly RahmanIt was reported last week that several schools in Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan were struck by  mass hysteria ; students possessed by demons and screaming and yelling and gyrating, seeing one particular Malay ghost called pontianak’. In Indonesia this evil half-dead woman is called ‘kuntilanak’. There were movies made of these two ugly-looking, foul-smelling, blood-dripping, and nail-stuck-in-the neck shrieking or ‘mengilai-ing’ female poltergeist.The case of girls in school dorms or dorm-like habitats in micro-chip assembling plants such as those in Penang is not new. Growing up, I recall elite boarding schools such as those Mara Junior Science Colleges experiencing ‘mass hysteria’ and group-dynamics demon possession as well.In Kuantan in the mid-70s, it was that one ghost that looked like an angry belly-rubbing monk from Thailand, that ‘bomoh-Siam-looking’ ghost sitting pretty on the rooftop of the girls’ dorm. On girl ‘saw him’ and the girls’ dormitory was humming and screaming and ghost-dancing and praying, and the bomohs were called in. He brought a live chicken as a tool for healing.The school, or ‘Bauxite High School’ based on the concept of the Bronx School for the Gifted in Science, was in chaos for a good two weeks.In Seremban during that time, it was the ‘green ghost’ the students saw. A half-dead lady perhaps from the Seremban Lake Garden who was half-dead and all green, with red-blood blood dripping, that was in the collective unconsciousness of the girls.And in Pengakalan Chepa Kelantan these past few days, all of them saw the same ghost - that daughter of the Demon Ponti - The Pontianak. But why? Why did they, in all the three cases above see the same evil half-human half-spirit grateful dead being?I think because when these girls were wide awake and congregating, huddling or perhaps cuddling in those dorms while outside it was ‘a dark and stormy night...’ for an opening scene of an Alfred Hitchcock Raven-like-story, they love to tell stories of ghosts.They would love scaring themselves to sleep, and add more vital statistics of these bad spirits not only to their own consciousness but also to the ‘sociology of knowledge’ of it. And hence, everybody agrees to the shape, characterisation of the ghost.When stress, which can kills brain cells and us, set in or when teenage love-sickness like a blanket of Kuantan Bauxite engulf the self and when one girl started screaming like the poor soul in Edvund Munch’s painting ‘Scream’, and when these happen a chain reaction is triggered. And when one screams bloody murder of that blood-dripping pontianak or the Seremban green ghost or that Siamese ghost, everybody got possessed and sees the same ghost. That is the logic.This is a psychological explanation of demon possession in Malaysia. Every soul possessed would tell the same story. Something like those possessed by the massive blood-and-money dripping ghost of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated case of the 1MDB. The demon of Malaysia’s capitalism and the ghost that is haunting the nation and killing the citizens.But Malays love to call the bomoh or the shaman or the pawing or the dukun or the tok batin or the Malay-Muslim ghostbuster when it comes to cases like the Kelantanese pontianak run amuck. Understandably, knowledge is power as French philosopher Michel Foucault would say; that these merry band of bomohs make comfortable livings speaking the language of demon banishment.Malaysia saw these bomohs in the news of late. We saw them attempting locate the missing Malaysian airplane MH370, we saw a federation of them pledging allegiance to the current regime, and we saw three decades ago a Mercedes Benz-driving TV-genic female bomoh from Perlis, Mona Fandey, brutally murdering a Malay politician by cutting him into 18 pieces.The poor politician was seeking help in winning elections and advancing his career and ended buried in 18 parts under a concrete slab behind the bomoh’s house. It was a sad and gory story.My adviceBut here is my advice to the Kelantanese, concerning the pontianak possession of the school girls.It is about repression and the way education is approached as well as human relations are perceived and most importantly how the human mind is nurtured throughout. This not new. The ghost and bad spirits are always unfairly blamed, Not their fault, They might not even exist. The bomohs will benefit from this crisis.Those who developed the anti-hysteria kit will benefit and make huge profits. It is a psychological, socio-cultural, and pedagogical issue. Don't blame everything on the polong and the pontianak. They are already retired - on a pension scheme, And with the invention of the electricity, the ghosts have all escaped through the electric cables poles and are probably dancing in those poles before they die of old age. But seriously, these girls in the dorms are repressed.Read Freud or study adolescence psychology. Probably too much control and telling them what to do, dumbing down teaching or simply a common case of love-sick or boy-sick en masse.Look at these and humanise the system and make the school a happy place. Make learning more active - the mind has a life of its own. It is more philosophical and cultural than religious. Understand this premise of the foundation of teaching and learning. Maybe that is the cure for mass hysteria in a mass-babysitting enterprise called schooling.I wrote this on my Facebook page:If you think the mass hysteria cases are about demon possessionyou will make the makers of the anti-hysteria kit richIf you start thinking there are about psychological repressionyou will make the system open up to dialogue on mental health and liberation... choose wisely your diagnosis and your treatment. You may even learn more about adolescent psychology in a religiously-repressive societyThe Malay mind is repressed. Depressed and possessed. Set them free. Using mental health technology.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/338635#ixzz46Qnvxl21

Fight Hysteria with Psychology, nor Bomoh-logy

by Azly RahmanIt was reported last week that several schools in Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan were struck by  mass hysteria ; students possessed by demons and screaming and yelling and gyrating, seeing one particular Malay ghost called pontianak’. In Indonesia this evil half-dead woman is called ‘kuntilanak’. There were movies made of these two ugly-looking, foul-smelling, blood-dripping, and nail-stuck-in-the neck shrieking or ‘mengilai-ing’ female poltergeist.The case of girls in school dorms or dorm-like habitats in micro-chip assembling plants such as those in Penang is not new. Growing up, I recall elite boarding schools such as those Mara Junior Science Colleges experiencing ‘mass hysteria’ and group-dynamics demon possession as well.In Kuantan in the mid-70s, it was that one ghost that looked like an angry belly-rubbing monk from Thailand, that ‘bomoh-Siam-looking’ ghost sitting pretty on the rooftop of the girls’ dorm. On girl ‘saw him’ and the girls’ dormitory was humming and screaming and ghost-dancing and praying, and the bomohs were called in. He brought a live chicken as a tool for healing.The school, or ‘Bauxite High School’ based on the concept of the Bronx School for the Gifted in Science, was in chaos for a good two weeks.In Seremban during that time, it was the ‘green ghost’ the students saw. A half-dead lady perhaps from the Seremban Lake Garden who was half-dead and all green, with red-blood blood dripping, that was in the collective unconsciousness of the girls.And in Pengakalan Chepa Kelantan these past few days, all of them saw the same ghost - that daughter of the Demon Ponti - The Pontianak. But why? Why did they, in all the three cases above see the same evil half-human half-spirit grateful dead being?I think because when these girls were wide awake and congregating, huddling or perhaps cuddling in those dorms while outside it was ‘a dark and stormy night...’ for an opening scene of an Alfred Hitchcock Raven-like-story, they love to tell stories of ghosts.They would love scaring themselves to sleep, and add more vital statistics of these bad spirits not only to their own consciousness but also to the ‘sociology of knowledge’ of it. And hence, everybody agrees to the shape, characterisation of the ghost.When stress, which can kills brain cells and us, set in or when teenage love-sickness like a blanket of Kuantan Bauxite engulf the self and when one girl started screaming like the poor soul in Edvund Munch’s painting ‘Scream’, and when these happen a chain reaction is triggered. And when one screams bloody murder of that blood-dripping pontianak or the Seremban green ghost or that Siamese ghost, everybody got possessed and sees the same ghost. That is the logic.This is a psychological explanation of demon possession in Malaysia. Every soul possessed would tell the same story. Something like those possessed by the massive blood-and-money dripping ghost of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated case of the 1MDB. The demon of Malaysia’s capitalism and the ghost that is haunting the nation and killing the citizens.But Malays love to call the bomoh or the shaman or the pawing or the dukun or the tok batin or the Malay-Muslim ghostbuster when it comes to cases like the Kelantanese pontianak run amuck. Understandably, knowledge is power as French philosopher Michel Foucault would say; that these merry band of bomohs make comfortable livings speaking the language of demon banishment.Malaysia saw these bomohs in the news of late. We saw them attempting locate the missing Malaysian airplane MH370, we saw a federation of them pledging allegiance to the current regime, and we saw three decades ago a Mercedes Benz-driving TV-genic female bomoh from Perlis, Mona Fandey, brutally murdering a Malay politician by cutting him into 18 pieces.The poor politician was seeking help in winning elections and advancing his career and ended buried in 18 parts under a concrete slab behind the bomoh’s house. It was a sad and gory story.My adviceBut here is my advice to the Kelantanese, concerning the pontianak possession of the school girls.It is about repression and the way education is approached as well as human relations are perceived and most importantly how the human mind is nurtured throughout. This not new. The ghost and bad spirits are always unfairly blamed, Not their fault, They might not even exist. The bomohs will benefit from this crisis.Those who developed the anti-hysteria kit will benefit and make huge profits. It is a psychological, socio-cultural, and pedagogical issue. Don't blame everything on the polong and the pontianak. They are already retired - on a pension scheme, And with the invention of the electricity, the ghosts have all escaped through the electric cables poles and are probably dancing in those poles before they die of old age. But seriously, these girls in the dorms are repressed.Read Freud or study adolescence psychology. Probably too much control and telling them what to do, dumbing down teaching or simply a common case of love-sick or boy-sick en masse.Look at these and humanise the system and make the school a happy place. Make learning more active - the mind has a life of its own. It is more philosophical and cultural than religious. Understand this premise of the foundation of teaching and learning. Maybe that is the cure for mass hysteria in a mass-babysitting enterprise called schooling.I wrote this on my Facebook page:If you think the mass hysteria cases are about demon possessionyou will make the makers of the anti-hysteria kit richIf you start thinking there are about psychological repressionyou will make the system open up to dialogue on mental health and liberation... choose wisely your diagnosis and your treatment. You may even learn more about adolescent psychology in a religiously-repressive societyThe Malay mind is repressed. Depressed and possessed. Set them free. Using mental health technology.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/338635#ixzz46Qnvxl21

Between Zakir Naik and our P Ramlee

by Azly Rahman

VIDEO ESSAY 





  “To let him speak or not to” - that is the question. One that is distracting Malaysians from focusing on the 1MDB mega-money laundering scheme, the revelations of the Panama Papers, and the question of who is going to take over the country when the time comes for a premature inevitable change in leadership.But let us put this Zakir Naik’s issue to rest. It is a simple matter.Let him speak. Maybe he has some good things to say but he has to understand how to speak well, with diplomacy, in a multicultural and multi-religious society such as Malaysia in which people are shunning any talk that can further divide the different races and faiths.Let him talk, as this is good for dialogue but make sure he is ready to talk sense and not blurt our partial nonsense, especially in matters of the history of science or even in the anatomy, psychology, and philosophy of major religions. Let the Malaysian audience do fact-checking as well to judge the credibility of this speaker. But he must not shout into the microphone when answering questions - that is rude and not the mark of a good speaker.The audience must be able to refute him in public at instances where he spit out and blurt and vomit answers that constitute misinformation especially concerning the faith of others. Zakir Naik must not agitate and aggravate and provoke his audience, like a preacher on a leash selling miracle snake-oils. Islam is a gentle religion and true Islam is philosophical, not dogmatic and punitive.Let scholars of comparative religion sit in his lectures. Let members of Hindraf and the Malaysian Indian Congress attend as well. Let it be a time for good and critical dialogue, a time to understand each other with civility by celebrating diversity and the beauty of pluralism.But on a similar note - the Malaysian government must also intellectual discourse to happen especially in our public universities - let Islamism, Liberalism, Marxism, Anarchism, Punk Rock-ism, Ya Hanana-ism, Sha na na-ism, Justin Bieber-ism, Ethical Humanism, Rock Kapak-ism and all kind of non-violent ‘isms’ be the varieties of discourse allowed - so that our students will not just be interested in making the biggest donuts, umbrellas of love, biggest dodol, biggest petai and jering floral arrangement or the biggest of anything just to get into the Malaysian Book of Records.Let big ideas be the big thing in our biggest universities - so that our future leaders will not grow up and old to steal big money - big-time.Let Zakir Naik talk - as long as he does not talk partial nonsense, like a seller. As long as he talks about other religions with deep respect and intellectual reverie, like a true comparativist of religion. If he cannot control himself and behave and angers Muslims and non-Muslims alike, he will have to be taken off the stage or his microphone switched off.I think Malaysians are now very tired of religious bigotry or any kinds of talk that amplify and exacerbate all kinds of religious phobia be they Islamophobia, Christianophobia, Hindu-phobia or even Pagan-phobia. We are already, as a nation phobic of what is going to happen to our debt-ridden beloved country run by those we voted into power yet turned into abusers, schemers, troublemakers, robbers, and oppressors. We are tired.Let Zakir Naik speak, he too needs to make his big ringgits and rupees before going back to Mumbai. Many Malay-Muslims adore him, anyway.After P Ramlee, an ironyWe are so fascinated by ‘Islamic preachers’ from outside even though they grew up in and continue to live in societies plagued with violent radicalism, chaos, intellectual shallowness, low rates of literacy, racism and bigotry, not mentioning how these societies view women and people of others religions as well as how they even view child marriage.Why?Because we fail to see that the Hindu-Buddhist syncretist Malay cultures that have existed centuries ago have shaped the traditional Malay culture into a more sensible, cultural, and enriching way than how the imported cultures of the land of the Bedouins have mis-shaped us.Even looking at contemporary colonising and reshaping of the Malay society, we have failed to appreciate the notion that the teachings of the Malay sage, artist of life, and messenger of peace, P Ramlee is better than any all the lectures of Mumbai preachers like Zakir Naik combined.Who needs people from the land of the Talibans or the Deobandis or the Wahabbis or sects strange to the Malays to tell the people here how to behave like Muslims, when these are the societies in which the leaders are not good models of progressive Islam themselves?Time to get out of this ideological mess we have imported lock, stock, and barrel - of teachings that are mainly interested in emphasising the length of one’s robe and beard and how to maintain the subservience of women.Fair comment, I hope I have made. And it is good to be back writing in Malaysiakini about the dearest thing to me - seeing this badly-wounded nation heal beautifully again.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/337736#ixzz45ko01jbD

State of Fear Murder and Money in Malaysia

Thesis on Cyberjaya (excerpt) by Azly Rahman

One Malaysia Under God, Bipolar by Azly Rahman

Of Marxist Informational Theory and Malaysian Airlines MH370 by Azly Rah...

Quantum Islam: Towards a new Worldview by Murray Hunter and Azly Rahman

Sleeping with those great books

  by Azly RahmanIf there were two very close friends in my life and especially during my childhood, they were: 1) An imaginary friend who had multiple personalities who lived up on a tree I frequently climb, and 2) Great books I slept with.I don’t know what fascinated me about the power of words and about imaginary friends I could run around with and have battles with behind locked doors. Books, books, books... how great books are.I slept with a world history book ‘Sejarah Dunia’, ‘Hikayat Bayan Budiman’ and ‘Hikayat Seribu Satu Malam’. I can still remember the delightfully musky smell of those classics. The history book was light green in colour, the ‘Hikayat Bayan Budiman’ light yellow, and the ‘Hikayat Seribu Satu Malam’ was light brown... light reading there were not.I read novels I found in my mother’s closet or ‘gerobok’ as the Johoreans would call it. The novels were in Jawi. My mother knew I loved reading and subscribed to Reader’s Digest for me. I looked forward to the postman delivering each issue of the book that opened windows to the American culture. I loved the feature sections as well as those that made me chuckle and laugh - ‘Humour in Uniform’ and ‘Laughter the Best Medicine’.I always had a pocket-sized encyclopedia in my schoolbag; one that has everything about serious and fun facts such as world’s longest, tallest, highest, lowest this and that, capital of cities, famous quotes of the English Language, and tons of information that I could ‘google’ by flipping the pages every time I want I would read my little encyclopedia I bought at an Indian bookstore in the Main Bazaar (Pasar Besar) of Johor Baru of the late sixties.I was happy that I knew so many things and I could quiz my friends on and be able to answer end-of-day questions on general knowledge my teachers in school would ask the class, the reward for the correct answer was to leave the class five or ten minutes earlier than everybody else.I could them start playing outside those extra minutes while waiting for my ride home. I could play my ‘bola chopping’, ‘sepak yem’, ‘gundu’, ‘superhero cards’, ‘chepeh’, or those games boys of that time played.Later when I was sent off to a boarding school in Kuantan at a tender young age of 12, I was introduced to a good librarian (and a homeroom ‘mother’).Coming from a kampong in Johor Baru and as a child getting chased out of bookstores almost daily for ‘just reading’ and not buying those ‘mini encyclopedia’ from which I tried to memorise the interesting facts, the Kuantan school was like the Library of Congress! There I read encyclopedia of Charles Manson cover to cover, a pictorial coffee-table book of ‘The Godfather’, world maps, American movies, story of rock and roll, and The Beatles. Some of my favourite books I read at fifteen were ‘Summerhill’ and ‘Dr Spock’s Radical Child Rearing’, and later ‘The Wanderers’.And I fell in love with the ‘Asterix’ and ‘The King is a Fink’ series.At that age of 12 or 13, too, I got hold of a book ‘Education and Ecstasy’ by the American social reconstructionist in education, George Leonard. I actually liked it and read it twice and remembered the part where he discussed the importance of the child, with the help of adult members of the tribe, to speak about what he/she dreamt of as important data to help members of society to move on.I though the sight of children sitting in their little ‘chawat’ or tribal hot pants talking about their dreams to adults in bigger ‘chawat’ interpreting dreams was cool. I suppose George Leonard was very much influenced by the idea of the sixties of which Anthropology was beginning to a break-away from its colonial mode’ with actually the influence of Margaret Mead as a ‘spokesperson of the sixties’.Later Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’ novel became a favourite, leading me to read more and more stuff from the gangster-movie genre; ‘The Don is Dead’, ‘Omerta’, ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, etc. Another favourite was ‘Papillon’, which was later made into a movie starring Steve McQueen.It was always a pleasure to be in the library stocked with readings on American culture. Whether influential or not, I read Dale Carnegie’s ‘How to Win Friends and Influence people’.No, I was not interested in influencing anyone, not interested in girls, too, because then I thought they were strange creatures, nor was I interested in becoming an influential politician. I was simply interested in the title of it! Sounded like how to see ghosts and communicate with them.Hanging out, hanging around and ‘chilling’The library sometimes feel like a Barnes and Noble cafe in New York city - there would always be those little boarding school children hanging out, hanging around, and ‘chilling’ with the librarian-cum-homeroom mother and one of my favourite English teachers! May God bless her soul wherever she is. I will write about my other English teachers later. It was also a gossiping joint.I still continue to read Greek and Roman mythology and my World History book (in Malay) every time I go home. The library of Sultanah Aminah in Johor Baru was another place I loved best.A deeply shining moment in one of my English teacher's effort to make teaching interesting was when she brought a friend of hers, I think from Universiti Malaya, to our English Club meeting and performed this short existentialist play concerning a corpse that kept growing and growing out of the closet, maybe Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Oriflamme’.It was such an effective two-woman performance that I got so scared towards the end and actually had a nightmare right there in the dorm.That was one of the many moments of effective teaching. Later in life I became very interested in French existentialist literature, reading more Ionesco, and obsessed with Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and finally immersed myself in Existentialism. I went on to read the major classics of English and World Literature.My English teacher taught me two words with which I can never forget how excited I was when I was in Form One; the words were ‘nocturnal incursion’. I got so obsessed with the words that they became part of me - I started sneaking out at, many nights and got myself free to roam the city of Kuantan at night and see what ‘nocturnal incursions’ means, and what freedom entails or escape from Alcatraz is about.I read the novel ‘Papillon’, about life in a French prison, three times when I was in Form Three. I read ‘The Godfather’ novel five times. Later I found out that Saddam Hussein’s favourite movie was ‘The Godfather’!She got us to read a novel, ‘Istvan Zolda’, about a soldier in Yugoslavia during the time of the war of the Partisans.When I was in Form One she told me that I had “perfect English”. I was thrilled, excited, flattered. But I found out later that it was not true at all. I still work with brutal editors for all of my writings, while as the same time editing other people’s work.May all the good work be blessed. Teachers like them are rare these days; they are now politicised.Such is the joy of reading back in the day - before Facebook, WhatsApp, iPads, and the culture of Mat and Minah Rempit.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/330042#ixzz3zsnRkcV6

"Where is our Messiah?"

by Azly Rahman
Will the time come when Malaysians refuse to go out to vote? I suppose that is a very American question as it entails one’s understanding of the ridiculousness of politics and the believe that voting has become a meaningless act, although one may quote Plato who might say that the punishment for not going out to vote will be to be governed by inferiors.But Malaysians are beginning to think like cynics, hopeless romantics, couldn't care-less citizens, and people having enough of lies and empty promises fed to them by their elected representatives.Maybe the young and the urban dwellers are beginning to feel that political life is hopeless and the future is bleak as we feel the country turning totalitarian. Maybe fear is also a factor, at a time when the government in power are threatening with arrests and jail those speaking about injustices, corruption, and abuse of power.Maybe Malaysians are now more concerned with survival issues and how to feed their family or put food on their table and of the rising cost of living and how not to work a third job.This past decade has seen that feeling of ‘dread’, as the Danish philosopher Soren Kiekergaard would term it as, engulfing.It is a feeling mental fatigue of being fed with stories of abusers of power not getting punished, a steady diet of news reports on massive corruption, new tax imposed, ugly fighting between the Najib Abdul Razak and Dr Mahathir Mohamad camps, political murders most foul and brutal covered and unresolved, increasing unemployment, failure of government-linked companies that have public investments gravely affected, the country made famous by the international media by stories of money-laundering and political murders, threats of succession by states such as Johor, Sabah and Sarawak - all these are making the people feeling the dread and will plunge them into depression.Malaysians are now living in an emotionally toxic environment. What will the coming elections mean to them, with the most recent revelation that their prime minister was given a generous donation by a Saudi king/prince to make sure that the government will continue to be elected?The most recent ‘Kedah Move’, i.e the replacement of the current chief minister perhaps because of vendetta and a ‘Godfather-movie’ plot of the Najib-Mahathir war is also an example of a national trigger of citizen depression created by endless conflicts.But these conflicts are largely between old money and new money, old school and new school politics, and one to settle old scores. For the common man and woman, it has no meaning except to cheer for this and that camp once in a while and of course a good current issue topic for kopitiam and warong talk.Julius Caesar and Brutus unpluggedHerein lie the new Malaysian predicament. We have always hoped that once new people are put into power to serve the rakyat, ideas should rule and move nations, not greed and the never ending political wars to get rich and get richer while the poor pay for the riches and to also pay for the popcorns or kuachi or dried watermelon seeds watching the wayangs and sandiwara of Malay Macbeths or Julius Caesar and Brutus unplugged.So, are we Malaysians now hopelessly devoted to the dread and drama of desperation of the politicians who do not have an ounce of care of the people drowning not only in the wave of globalisation beyond our control. but possibly eaten by sharks and piranhas in the new blue ocean of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?Have we become a nation of spectacles watching circuses all day long, yet hopeless from fear as well as schizophrenia we are feeling as a consequence of the continuing unresolved issues brought about by the unmediated politics of race, religion, class, and creed?Have we arrived a a point of no return, waiting for the complete restoration of a new government whose base and superstructure or commanding heights is a system hybridised by Oriental Despotism, Power Madness and Totalitarianism?Is Malaysia is now a basket case of our own design? How did we get here? Whose fault is it that we have all trapped ourselves, locked in this political mad and haunted house and forced to swallow the keys, by the owners?Is there a way out? Is there a Messiah hiding somewhere with a plan for an Exodus?I don’t know. Do you? For sure, the rakyat deserves the government they help put into power. But is there still hope for radical and positive change?Read more:https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/329528#ixzz3zJNJWFqV