Tuesday, October 31, 2006


Legendary. Sure. Right. Whatever.

Assalamualaikum wrh. wbt.

I have heard many myths about the land I consider my hometown, Kelantan (or Pasir Mas, if you're into specifics).

Among them are that Kelantanese only enjoy sweet cooking i.e. substitute salt for sugar.

(Ardently agreed upon by many of my ukhti during our routine sojourns in the kitchen.)

Well. I can't tell the diff, since I grew up with a Kelantanese tongue, anyway. I still feel other states have sweeter foods, and that they're more obsessed with sirap (bandung optional), which I still can't understand to this day.

(Why sirap ros with everything?)

And another infamous one is that Kelantanese women are the depiction of the Malay ideal for beauty, i.e. fair-skinned, hidung mancung, nicely-figured, impeccable bone structure, etc.

Which I find completely ridiculous. Although I have photographic evidence that the following traits do lie in my bloodline. I just didn't get any of the genes. Or maybe I did, but they are all recessive, when compared to the more dominant alleles from my father's typically Chinese genome. Or maybe there's some sort of pleiotropy, or masking of the genes, involved in the makings of me.

Allahu'alam.

(My Genetics paper is first up next week. Do pray for me.)

I am quite syukur with what I have, thanks. Astigmatism, or no astigmatism.

But what I find disturbing is that as a nation, we're so obsessed with beauty. And I'm not talking about the deep-instilled, beauty from within kind. Oh no sirree.

I'm talking about the stereotypical kind aforementioned above.

It's sad and degrading, to want to be known, merely for how you look.
It's as if they don't even understand that women are not mere sex objects, and that we want to be acknowledged for what we do, and not what we look like.
Don't they know that the face can mask such ugliness that lies within?
How much can a person be satisfied by looks and physical charm?

Which is why I feel the hijab, and especially the niqab (for those who prefer it), is a tool for liberation. Because I've seen the effect it gives on people (esp. men) around me (i.e. in Australia, where donning the hijab actually earns you unspoken respect, unlike in LITW), who view it as a shield of sorts between me and non-hijabis. Because guys can't oogle over my dress size, they choose to sit up and listen when I speak.

(The politically correct ones, anyway)

Their view of me is based on what I can do, rather than how I look. Or at the very least, it does not overshadow my capabilities as a functioning human being. Which is very liberating for a teenaged girl.

Feminists should try it, instead of not shaving. Much more hygienic.

But seriously. I think that us hijabis also forget this underlying law of donning the hijab:

That it's only when we choose to not really care (as much) over what we look like, that others will do the same.

And yet we should always remember that as muslimah, Allah likes us to be neat and presentable and clean. And that we can be beautiful, but not in a showy kind of way.

"Is this too tabarruj?"

And when we understand what beauty truly means, we can work towards it, insyaAllah.

Wassalamualaik.

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this has been a rant by Syazwina Saw at 4:05 pm

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