Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 30 November 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
Let’s forget Malaysian politics for a moment. Seen any good films lately?
Movie fan

I recently watched a press screening of a documentary about the teenage Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. As you know, she was shot in the head by the Taliban because she had been campaigning for education for girls. She was rushed to life-saving surgery in England where she and her family now live. The documentary was very good and is definitely worth watching, but be prepared for an emotional experience and very little critical analysis. It’s made by Americans and they do not shy away from squeezing out the tears. The cinema was filled with the sound of sniffles and I was wiping away manly tears throughout. He Named Me Malala can soon be seen on Astro. For this free publicity, Astro might finally hear my call to add the TCM channel which shows classic Hollywood movies from the 1930s to 1950s.

Although Malala has been elevated to virtual sainthood outside Pakistan, inside Pakistan, it is a different matter. Popular with some, she is equally unpopular with many who are suspicious of her celebrity status in the West. And then there’s some very old-fashioned sexism. Malala is a Pashtun and, generally speaking, women have it tough in Pashtun society. The rights to an education and inheritance for women are not a given, and at its absolute worst there are the so-called “honour killings”. I don’t want to be accused of making sweeping generalisations (although I am) but the values of traditionally conservative Pashtun society of Afghanistan or the Tribal Areas of Pakistan are culturally completely alien to the values here. It would be interesting to see what would happen if a Malay man attempted to do such things in, say, Negeri Sembilan.

I was listening to an interview with Anthony Reid, one of the most (probably the most) esteemed historians of Southeast Asia, and he was describing an observation that was made by all visitors to the region in pre-colonial times (let’s say the 16th century). Reid said that Chinese and Europeans all noticed that women played an immensely important role in society, in running businesses and in the family. This was a seafaring society in what Reid has called “the age of commerce”, and when men travelled far away, the women would run the business. Outside early observers were very disparaging of the power of women because they came from societies where women had no legal rights and were essentially the property of their men. Reid believes that the status of women declined during European colonialism because of, well, reasons. But has the status of Malay women declined?

Many, many years ago, I visited a certain ministry and I felt among the civil servants a palpable sense of fear of their particularly forthright female minister. I’ve met many civil servants and almost all of them live in fear of their ministers. Actually, they live in fear of trying to second-guess the capricious minds of their ministers. But there was something different here. Having lived in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, I had grown up with, and been shaped by, a fearsome woman, but I understood the historical and cultural roots of Thatcher’s image. British men and women saw in Thatcher echoes of Queen Boudicca who had fought the Romans on her chariot (there’s a big statue of Boudicca outside the Houses of Parliament), the evil stepmother of fairy tales (an actual phenomena because plagues and childbirth killed so many mothers), the stern nanny (a real turn-on for upper-class men) or Imperial Britannia with her shield and spear. Thatcher’s historical imagery was of a warrior-like woman, a woman being a man. After all, she had won the Falklands War and her legions of fans particularly loved a picture of her driving a tank.

But the war-like imagery doesn’t exist here. Here, I think, the deep cultural roots are about an assumption of capability. I think that is what I saw in the Malaysian civil servants. They feared her because they respected her capability. She may not have been capable, I don’t know, and I’m not saying that all Malay women are always right, but I do wonder if Pashtun men would offer women such a courtesy. I find it very strange when I hear stories of Malaysians rushing to the defence of people who think it correct to shoot a girl because she wants an education.

Dear Kam,
I want to have a healthy diet. Do you have any ideas?
Turning over a new leaf

In my pursuit of healthy eating, I’m always trying the latest diet fads. But I’ve given up on the paleo diet because I can’t find any wooly mammoth steaks, and I don’t do the Atkins diet because I’m bored of only eating people called Atkins (they taste like chicken). So I’m considering the VIP diet but I don’t really like the idea of turtle eggs and scissors salad.

Reprinted with the kind permission of