Say NO to domestic violence

With the case of Bridges TV founder, Muzammil Hassan, and Rihanna and Chris Brown, domestic violence is again on the forefront. Mr. Hassan is accused of murdering his wife, Aasiya Hassan, because she had filed papers for divorce. Chris Brown is alleged to have attacked Rihanna after a dispute. As these are high-profile cases they dominate the newspaper headlines and people all over feel the need to comment on them. On the typical gossip pages like Perezhilton.com to the comment fields following a revered newspaper article, comments range from showing full support of the victim of the domestic violence to faulting them for aggravating the attacker to attack them.

In the case of Mr. Hassan, commentators felt that the attack was a form of honor killing, citing Mrs. Hassan’s betrayal of her husband (by divorcing him) as the reason behind killing:

“Nadia Shahram, who teaches family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, explained honor killing as a practice still accepted among fanatical Muslim men who feel betrayed by their wives.

“If a woman breaks the law which the husband or father has placed for the wife or daughter, honor killing has been justified,” said Shahram, who was a regular panelist on a law show produced by Bridges TV. “It happens all the time. It’s been practiced in countries such as Pakistan and in India.”"***

Rihanna, on the other hand, had it coming as she too was perceived to be the aggressor in the incident. If she had not enraged Chris Brown, she wouldn’t have been beatened. Thus, it was her fault too. She should’ve known better.

 

The wonders of a 2-year old

Every day is a day of wonderment in our household as our little monkey continues to surprise us with something new. Today, this afternoon, as we were preparing for lunch he headed straight to the refrigerator door and demanded I open it for yogurt. He held onto the door handle with such might as his little hands could muster and I had to give in. I opened it, and he immediately reached for the baby yogurt perched on the second-topmost shelf. As he giggled away with the cup of yoghurt in his hand, I began searching for a spoon. Walking towards the utensil drawer I saw that I had been beat. There he was, our little baby, opening the utensil drawer, reaching inside, and pulling out a spoon. He handed it to me whilst saying, “spoon” as if I needed to be reminded that we need a spoon to eat the yogurt. I am still in bewilderment as to when this development began, when did he know where and how to find the spoon. We never openly taught him that as we thought it didn’t need to be taught to a 2-year old, maybe when he is 3. Resigningly I know that this may be just a freak occurrence, and might not happen again until he is months older, but the fact that it did happen shows to us, well to me especially, that babies are a heck of a lot smarter than we give them credit for and they all do develop differently and at their own pace, so there is no dire need to rush them to be able to do this or that just to “compete” with other children. Just give them ample space to explore their own natural curiosities and support their natural inquisitiveness. They will wow you in due time as all babies do, or should I say now, toddlers.

 

Why are we Muslim: Faith and Ramadhan (an introspection)

If we ask ourselves, or one another that question, how many of us can answer it without hesitation, without pause, and with conviction and certainty? Out of the three people I asked in my short field research (very short and very brief lol ), only one could provide the ready answer, without having to think for even three seconds why s/he chose Islam as the faith to follow. The eloquent response showed the depth of their knowledge and the sincere understanding they have found as to why Islam is the best path for them, why being a Muslim provided the enlightenment s/he needed to go on the journey of life with a brave face, no matter the obstacle presented before them. Does Islam provide the same enlightenment for us? Does being a Muslim enable us to stand up strong and proud or do you feel even more burdened? Do we follow the faith we are in because of unadulterated, sincere conviction or because of familial loyalty, of socialization, of an inherited tradition we dare not to question/challenge for fear of reprisal from respected authorities?

Why are we Muslim?

Embedded in the Qur’an is the belief that true faith comes from within. Faith is not just an accessory we put on whenever we deem necessary. Faith is not a blanket we use to cover ourselves from transgressions we oft repeat. Faith should not just be our facades but that innermost layer of ourselves whereupon we build our foundations on.

Faith, most especially the Islamic faith, calls for us to be patient, to be calm, to be persevering. Faith wants to help us brighten that inner light we have been blessed to have from the moment of our birth. Faith brightens, not dims. Faith forgives, not harbors contempt or resentment. Faith understands, not belittles or spread harmful gossip. Faith lifts us up, not brings us down.

There are a great many sins of this world, but the one that can slowly erode our inner light is the sin of harboring negativity. We do not realize it, we cannot feel its effect directly, but the ripples cast forth from our being and spread out affecting any and everything it touches with our inherent ill-will. As in the words of the Beatles, “ Let It Be“. The coworker who just wronged you, let them be. The friend who just belittled you, let them be. The boss who does not recognize you, let them be. The sibling who is annoying you, let them be. The car who just cut you, let it be.  “Let it be” does not mean, in any way, acquiescing to the maltreatment or frustrating behavior, but to look at it, the situation, the person with an eye and heart that is free from emotion: to see the other side of the story, to find an understanding and compromise and not fuel for a heated argument.

I write this not because I have 100% conviction in my faith, but because, in all honesty, I do not. I have let my inner light slowly dim as I allowed myself to be overcomed by life’s obstacles. That has led me everywhere but the path I hoped I would be on now. As I watch my son grow, every day he becomes less and less a baby and more and more a child, I realize that I have more than myself to think about, more than myself to care about. And I wonder: what shall I pass on to him?

As we are the future leaders of our communities, be it our immediate families or the society at large, we owe it to our future generations to introspect and endeavor to understand the very faith we use to build our life’s foundations on. Islam is not a weekly or yearly religion, it is one that encompasses all aspects of our lives, not to burden it, but to lift its soul. We should ask ourselves if who we are today, the path we walk this very day, is the person and path we hope our children and grandchildren would emulate and follow?

Will we pass faith that brightens their souls or faith that will slowly fade their light away?

As Ramadhan is before us again, that holiest of month, why not explore the question and challenge ourselves to understand our faith just a little more better, so when we are asked, we would not hesitate. If we can pray the sholat tarawih, fast, then surely we can dive into the religion we claim to embrace and strive to learn more about it.

I call and challenge all of us to this task. By the end of Ramadhan, let’s hope that we can provide the answers to the question, “Why are we Muslim?” and answer without hesitation, and with firm conviction as to why being a Muslim is the path for us.

May we all have a blessed Ramadhan!

 

Change

As softly as a wind rustling the grass, making them bend in place, or as fast and strong as a storm charging at trees forcing their once sturdy branches to twist and even break off, change happens, change is inevitable. But then is it change of who we are that we see or just a change in our priorities? Is the change that occurs manipulation, a change by force? Or a realization of what really matters? Why are we so afraid of change when we should embrace it, for it is through change that we grow, that we progress as individuals and as a collective society.

I fear that our habits as adults have put us in a place where any perturbations to our cycle sets us off on a tirade, at times a gossipy-hateful chastisement of whoever was unlucky enough to bother us. We are used to our ways, in synch with our rhythm, and don’t anybody dare to mess with it lest they desire our wrath. We forget how everyday, we encounter experiences that will move us just a little bit askew of the rhythm we have gotten used to. And this is not only theoretical, it is also biological. Our brain is more plastic than we know: all the wirings of our neurological system undergo changes every minute for as we learn a new thing our neurons become ablaze with excitement.

We are programmed for change.

 

In Memoriam: Tito Rico Ortanez

Coming home one afternoon, the Bee Gees’ “Words” warmly greeted my arrival. The gentle notes, the simple lyrics, reminded me of a time several weeks back where I spent an afternoon amidst rolling hills in Virginia in very amiable company, one in particular whose memory I will hold dear forever. I am saddened to say that I have only met Tito Rico Ortanez once. I met him a month ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Enderes. We were there to get to know one another, families that will be soon be united forever by the union of their loved one, coming together at last. There I met him and his beautiful wife Badette. Happiness bounced off the walls of the house as we shared stories, joined in karaoke, did a little cha-cha, and tickled the ivories of a grand instrument, the music wafting through the air like a cool, welcoming breeze on a hot, summery day. I remember asking him if he played. He remarked, ” a little”.

Despite having recorded many albums and performed all over, Tito Rico never allowed for boastfulness to seep in and taint his soul. After lingering in the background, watching my feeble attempts at the piano, he sat down and played. I had heard of his talents before I met him, but to watch him play and be in the presence of so beautiful a music, I was profoundly mesmerized and deeply touched. Emotion and passion flowed through his fingers to capture the notes of the piano and gently breathed life into them – the stories to be told by the notes are infinite. That day, Tito Rico told the story of life and its struggles and how we should try to overcome them. I wish I knew Tagalog so I can grasp a deeper understanding of his musical poetry, but the little that I know, the short moment that I shared with him, left an indelible impression of a man whose passion and love emanates not only from his masterpieces but from his being. He walked a path of togetherness, of unity.

At a time when conditions in the world strive hard to separate us, to sever any semblance of relationships we might have or can have, Tito Rico strove in the opposite direction: he strove for unity. He greeted his soon-to-be nephew-in-law, Adrian, with Bahasa Indonesia. He passionately discussed the issues of the world with his soon-to-be nephew, not for argument’s sake, but for understanding. Through his music and activism, he sought to bring together the cultures and faiths he grew to love: Filipino, American, Jewish, Christian, Islamic. A song on his new album, “In the Name of Religion”*, provokes us to question what faith really means for us and what kind of path will our faith lead us to. He was born a Catholic but moved on to the next world as a man of all faiths. He was able to find enlightenment in all of them, commonalities that should bring us together as we continue on our paths in this world.

Life is not an eternal matter, we are only here for a moment. What I have learned from Tito Rico is the importance of how we make of the moments we are so blessed to have here. When I met him, Tito Rico was already diagnosed with terminal cancer. He never let his ailment prevent him from enjoying the precious moments we all tend to take for granted and because of that, to me, he did not appear to be sickly at all. Instead, he presented an image of strength, of endurance, of vitality. He strummed the guitar like he always did. He sang his heart out during “Country Road” and “Words”.

Our paths here all intertwine, we do not journey alone, we all have stories to share that can enrich our visions and empower our dreams. If we create barriers against one another, on the basis of ethnicity, of religion, of culture: Indonesian, Muslim, Christian, Filipino, Padang, Jawa, Chinese, Jewish, American then we have severely limited our experiences, severely stinted our own growth. If God had wanted all of us to be the same, He would have done so.

Thank you, Tito Rico, for reminding all of us of the importance of unity and compassion. May you finally rest in peace.

Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Ilaihi Rajiun

To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return.

Please accept our deepest condolences and may God give strength to his family and friends who love him so dearly.

 

To rise above…

There will always be that someone, any one, who will find a way to bring down your day – and how you feel about yourself. No matter how much you have accomplished, how hard you have worked or toiled, they will only see and comment on the little faults, the little mishaps you do. Never ready for a good comment, every prepared to dish out a bad one.

What can you do when you are faced with such a person, or as I like to call them: a negative ninny?

Are you to take the punch they have given you and fall down, never to get up again?

Are you to charge at them with the same amount of derision?

What can you do? What can we do?

I still am searching for the answer, and maybe we won’t find the “best” way to handle such a predicament with so negative a person. Or perhaps, the best, and only, way is to simply rise above.

Rise above all that negative energy and refuse to succumb to their level. Take a deep breath, brush our shoulders (or bum off, if we have fallen), and rise above.

Those negative ninnies do not hold the keys for your success, they are just a stepping stone, or a bump, we need to overcome on the road we are on. And frankly, there will always be a negative ninny in our lives  no matter where we go or what we do. They will always exist. Therefore it’s not a matter or retaliating or succumbing to the emotions we feel at their charges against us, but a matter of rising above the hurdle they have put before us and succeeding. We can succeed.

Even if they are on our paths, they are not in our way – unless we let them.

 

When did you last see your parents?

As I browsed the upcoming trailers on Yahoo Movies, I came across a trailer for the film, “When did you last see your father?” The terminal illness and imminent death of the lead character’s father forces him to look back at “everything funny, embarrassing, and upsetting about his childhood” and “come to terms with his father, and their history of conflict, and learns to accept that one’s parent are not always accountable to their children”.

The trailer, with its snippets from the movie, moves the audience to transport themselves to the past and remember it in all its glory, all tears, all embarrassment, all the conflicts we have tucked safely away into that corner of our mind where uncomfortable memories are stored, in the hopes that they will never be brought up again. As key players in our lives, our parents undoubtedly have central roles in many of these uncomfortable memories, and whose actions may have unwittingly shaped who we are today – for better or for worse. As they endeavor to execute their roles as parents who become our teachers, our punishers, and at moments, our friends all at the same time, we have come to view them as one with their roles and actions, and have weighed our judgment against them accordingly. Their concerns, their stresses, their frustrations – that may be an understandable reasoning behind their actions that we feel have maligned us – bear no significance to our judgments, for they are no more an individual with human concerns who commit human errs, they are our parents – no more, no less.

The pleadings and advises have become nags and lectures – buttressing our growing annoyance everytime our parents open their mouths.

The very parent who have unselfishly raised us, provided us with all the assistance we need to mature into a self-sufficient adult have become a burden to our schedule, a meddling force in our lives that we are so quick to get rid of, so easy to lament against, so ready to be free from. When it is their time to need our help, we brush them away.

Could they not understand that we have to go to this new restaurant? Don’t they know we have to see that new movie? Can they not see that our hair needs a haircut and our nails needs a pedicure?

Mom, stop bugging me! Dad, stop lecturing me! Stop sending me those annoying emails, I don’t read them anyway! I don’t want to talk to you right now! Go away! You are so old-fashioned! You are so annoying! Just leave me alone! You don’t understand! Just shut up, shut up okay! Enough with your nagging, your lectures, your complaints!

As the writer of this article, I will admit that the phrases above have slipped out to be used against my own parents at one point or another. And as I write this very sentence, I am sorry the phrases above even slipped through my mind.

Whatever the offense our parents have made, however much their actions have humiliated or hurt us, they do have a right to be seen, to be heard, to be understood. Without them, we wouldn’t be here, our tomorrows would never occur, and our present could not happen nor would our past exist to learn from.

We are an imagination, a hope, a longing before our parents brought us into existence. Life is before us because of them. Before their time to walk this earth shall pass, let me ask you,

“When did you last see your parents?”

 

What’s in a name?

When I tell others of my little one’s name, I either get a lift of the eyebrow or a smug look. Both denote confusion at why I would give him such a name as I am 1.) Asian and 2.) Muslim. Have I been too brainwashed by American culture that I have to name my son such a Westernized name? Do I not love my culture, my background, my heritage?

What’s in a name, really?

I have heard that a name is a wish bestowed upon the child by his/her parents, a blessing with the hope that s/he will grow to be good and kind, or majestic and strong, brave and courageous, beautiful and feminine, all qualities of the child are thus dependent on the meaning of his/her name.

What if a name means “dog” or “green valley”? Would then the child become dog-like or green? Silly conclusions, I know, but isn’t wishing or hoping our child has the characteristics of a name-meaning also silly?

Our little one’s name is Noah.

Noah, though of Biblical and non-Asian origins, stands also for his great-grandfathers. The way we came up with it, may also bring about another round of raised eyebrows, but the practice is not so ridiculous for Indonesians. (Hey, if Southerners can traditionally give their children a last-name for a first name, then we Indonesians can do this too!) Before I digress further, let me explain.

I have always wanted to name my children after my grandparents. Having grown up without them, I have become too sentimental with their memory, and would like it to be passed on, albeit in a name. Memories, or names, cannot bring them back or establish relationships I once sought, but with the passing of their names, the familial connections can still continue on.

When my children are old enough to ask me what their names mean, I can share with them stories of their great-grandparents, of our ancestors, of our culture, instead of just saying that it came from a book or by chance (though there is nothing wrong with this either). I am enamored by history, fascinated by my own history of my own ancestors, and this fascination is something else I would like to pass down to them, especially since they are American by birth and attachment to their ancestral land dependent on our perseverance to keep it alive and fresh in our home and community.

Noah.

At first glance, images of the Biblical character are conjured up in our minds. “The patriarch of the great Ark who wandered the earth for 40 years after the Great Flood. All the world’s nations descended from his three sons”. A search of its meaning brings up “peaceful”, “comfort”, “wanderer”.

Noah to me also stands for: SoemarsoNO and Alwi Husein. Both were Indonesian war heroes, serving the island nation through the war for independence, now peacefully resting in Kalibata Cemetery, the final resting place of Indonesia’s brave. Both were men of strength, wisdom, and principle – preferring a life of honesty and simplicity in an era of corruption and collusion despite having access to a more comfortable living through possibly questionable means.

We don’t have allusions that our little one will be just like his great-grandfathers through his name, but we hope he will carry it well, carry it proud. As it is more than just a meaning, it holds a story – a story of great men; great men whose stories deserve to be passed down, whose memories should be preserved and kept alive. They may be long gone, just a name etched into the remembrance wall at the venerable cemetery, but not forgotten.

And that is how and why, Noah came to be – for us.

 

A smidgen of strength – a lesson from the impoverished

I, like many others, have bemoaned our unfortunate circumstances and how God must be angry with us for we are plagued with problem after problem after problem. We embrace this frustration so deeply that it has become ingrained into our minds, embedded deeply into the recesses of our consciousness until we cannot separate ourselves from these feelings of distraught and thus our every movement, be it physical or spiritual, become tainted with them.

Any little thing will set us off, somehow reminding us of our woes and pathetic circumstances, enabling us to plunge further into the black-hole of despair, rendering us unable to free ourselves from the vicious cycle of self pity.

If we really have time to ponder, to reflect on our circumstances, are we able to, for a moment, release the restraints of despair and introspect on the reality of our conditions:

Are we really that bad off?
Is life really that horrible?

Many of us forget, so caught up in our woes, how fortunate we really are.

On pages 250 and 251 of my Sociology book, there is a photographic essay on the city of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The photographs are not depicting normal touristy attractions, but a hidden place, so far off from the tourist map and one where many would not even venture to peek into, either literally or even vicariously. It is of the village within the city dump of Phnom Penh.

Yes, there are people living in the city dump, not just adults but also children.
There are photographs depicting their normal lives that revolve around carrying bags and bags of their newfound treasures from the trash of others; of children riding around in bikes, playing ontop of the road–which consist of nothing more than leveled trash; and of them eating and bathing amidst the mounds and mounds of garbage.

Now tell me, could any one of us really live like that?

The photographs also remind me of the conditions of my fellow Indonesians who live beside the foul-smelling river in Jakarta. I remember having to walk across a plank not even 5 inches wide, to get to this part of the city. Conveniently tucked away, underneath the numerous bridges, the houses are compact and close together. You cannot reach them by car, only by foot or by motorcycle. Inside, they mainly have one room as their living space. And this is shared by 4-5 people, sometimes more.

I wonder now if they ever cringe from the smell emanating from that foul river, so heavily infested with waste and garbage and maybe a mutant animal or two, or how they could withstand being flooded every time the rain comes down.

There is also this elderly lady who would, every morning, walk around the neighborhood of comfortable houses safely behind proudly erected gates and pick away at the trash left behind in the front, by the street. She would have with her this burlap bag, filled to the max and seemingly impossible for her to burden her small, tiny frame with. Somehow, though, she manages to do it, every morning, of every day, of every week, every month, and every year.

And then there’s the ‘Children of the Street’ (Anak Jalanan). They weave in and out of traffic–stopped momentarily by the red of the stoplight–and glance inside each waiting car to catch someone’s eye, hopefully a friendly eye. The clothes on their back are crumpled, wrinkled, and smudged with debris and mud from pollution. Despite their wretched conditions, they manage a smile, a big smile at either the occupants of the car or at one another.

Their playground is the side of the busy highway, beneath the toll road up above buzzing with cars going to and from the overly populated capital. Balls are thrown in the air to gleeful faces awaiting to catch them in return; a cluster of three gather to sit on the edge of the sidewalk engrossed in a conversation probably speckled with childhood imagination and tainted with the depressed state of their own realities.

I drove past them behind the gated comforts of my conditions back home and I wonder, with sympathetic curiousity, what are their lives like, what would it be like to be in their shoes for even one day, what would make me smile in those conditions? Would I be able to remain positive?

I may not know what life for them is like, and I may not be able to properly wear their shoes, but I do know that it does take more than a smidgen of strength to endure such hardships day in and day out–especially to endure it with a smile on your face and a positive spirit that refuses to be cut down no matter the obstacle facing it.

“..many great deeds are accomplished in times of squalid struggle…Hardship, loneliness, and penury are a battlefield which has its own heroes, sometimes greater than those lauded in history.

Strong rare characters are thus created; poverty nearly always a foster-mother, may become a true mother; distress may be the nursemaid of pride, and misfortune the milk that nourishes the spirits “– Les Miserables

- Fall 2007

 

Reflection: My awakening – the fall of a dictator and the rise of a voice

*written a few months back*

My memories of Soeharto are heavy with smoke and chaos, as it was during my first return to my country that Indonesia fell from its glitz and glamour into a cloud of erupted suppressed frustration, hurling itself at any passing target, wreaking havoc all over the archipelago with Jakarta, its capital, sustaining the most damages. The May 1998 riots are still embedded in my mind as I, at the mere age of 16, was right in the middle of it.
Soeharto was away in Egypt, if my memory serves me well, and it was the day following the deaths of the Trisakti students who fell at the hands of the authorities during a protest. Indonesia was suffering from an economic crisis (krismon we called it) and the dollar was ridiculously high at 12000 Rupiah for 1 US Dollar. Prices for the basic goods sharply rose, and Soeharto had been re-elected again as President.

The people would have no more. Students came out in throngs to protest the re-election results and the rising prices. They sat in hordes atop the Parliament building in Jakarta. I remember passing them one day and begging my mom to let me join. She, of course, denied my requests seeing how I was just 16 and a female, with an American accent no less! I would become prime target should anything happen.

And something did happen.