Nothing better than to have a couple of wizened old locals agog at a tale from their own parts, their own community and culture.

 

Fine pair of sitting ducks they made there too beside each other at the Mr. T. T. table that Sunday, soon after lunch.

 

Ramadan of course both were fasting, one a former diabetic who had cured himself with a range of natural remedies; the other a few years younger recently diagnosed.

 

Two or three months before the younger had revealed privately that he had been sleeping around the corner at the mosque on Joo Chiat Road, rather than making a nuisance of himself at his married daughter’s flat. Therefore the man must remain nameless.

 

Fetching mid-sixties, baseball cap screwed tight over a bald pate, dark sunglasses morning and night.

 

A man of few words, quietly flitting through the shadows of the walkways. Like many Malays his age, the chap without a name was always a good deal over-dressed for the climate. Other than the occasional sit at Zainuddin’s table, the man was invariably alone.

 

Zainuddin Ismail Mohammad himself was fetching his mid-sixties now, recently retired editor of Voice of Islam.

 

Author of a number of books; self-described Singaporean fundamentalist. (Only partly tongue-in-cheek.)

 

Zainuddin was the guiding spirit of the IRO (Inter-Religious Organization); the chief ecumenical movement on the island.

 

Both men here found themselves more than a little struck and wondrous listening to the tale received from a Javanese informant a couple of days before.

 

Faced with a fidget like Zainuddin, it was not easy capturing the man and having him hear you out. On this occasion listening quietly and focused.

 

Both men grew more than a little aghast as the matter was unfolded. Zainuddin shook his head at a number of points.

 

The other felt the need to state at the end that what he had just then heard out, none of it was Islam; that nothing whatever in the Holy Book supported such a thing.

 

….In Singapore, a Muslim drinker or eater of pork received no special, or particular attention.

 

Of course there were Muslims who did drink in various watering holes, usually, but not always, hidden away in the dark corners up in the Chinese end of Geylang.

 

In some cases a number of groups sat at the Haig Road tables before their green and brown bottles, their voices echoing within the cavernous walls.

 

Consumption of pork would be no different. Some Malay Muslims would perhaps have acquired a taste by some means or other. One might guess pork would be much the lesser problem; perhaps received as a somewhat greater outrage too.

 

Babi in Bahasa, which was strange to Slavic ears. (Babuska, Baba, Babi—venerable grandmother.)

 

This pair of chaps was given a glimpse of measures taken in other parts against malefactors; specifically on the neighbouring island of Java, Indonesia, in a time not so remote from the present.

 

Java Timur to be precise; the Eastern side of the island, where the Christian missionary activity had been more forceful. More penetrating indeed than Batavia/Jakarta.

 

In a kampung there in recent memory, in the Java Timur region, a young adult blowhard who had evidently run off the rails more than a little, drank his alcohol provocatively in public.

 

As often happened in such cases, as if this was not enough, the fellow’s shamelessness reached further depths too.

 

Public and boastful consumption of babi, pork….

 

Possibly the fat had dribbled from the corners of a rudely gaping mouth in defiance, in the present case.

 

—Makan babi. Makan babi. Ra-ra-ra!...

 

Stuffing himself greedily. The poor pitiful dolt.

 

One recalled here another Babi from another, distant part of the world. One who would often quote the Montenegrin saying:

 

—Od cega se pametan stidi, budala se ponosi. What arouses shame in a wise man, will for a fool prompt boasting.

 

A Christian Montenegrin that one, but no doubt the Muslims said something similar; in Montenegro and likely in the Tropics too.

 

How it happened that the chap concerned here submitted to his punishment did not come down. The matter remained unknown; unmentioned by the Javanese source.

 

Suffice to say the punishment was meted out in what appeared to have been the established form in that particular kampung; that East Javan village. And not only that one, single kampung, according to the informant.

 

In the case of a married woman, the responsibility of disciplining would fall to the husband; otherwise the father of the miscreant.

 

Here in the present case the foolish young man was firstly beaten by the father. Again no details specified by the informant.

 

“Beating” sufficiently understood: man beaten by his own father.

 

….Minor twitches immediately from Zainuddin as he listened quietly here, head tilted to one side.

 

Imperturbable the other man beneath his cap; the sleeper at the mosque. Settled and fixed as if turned to stone.

 

To be beaten by one’s father as an adult: the men at table were of the generation and culture where this was known. Grievous. Rare and exceptional. (That it was so rather surprised in an old culture.)

 

Deeply disturbing of course; perhaps difficult to comprehend for some.

 

This is the Abrahamic world in focus. (Ibrahamic for Muslims.) A world of the distant past, centuries before even Kierkegaard.

 

In the case of many cultures that shared our present moment in time, known to occur in the present.

 

Following the beating that had been administered, this drunkard immoral son was either ordered, or forcibly brought down to his hands and knees.

 

In such posture the young man then driven by the father to the family bathing place, the near-by pond.

 

Hands and knees crawling like the beast the chap had made of himself. Onward to the water.

 

....Two locals listening hard, immobile in their chairs.

 

Zainuddin had tilted a degree further; the mosque dweller perhaps added a still further measure of imperturbability. Subtle shifts in demeanour.

 

Presumably once arrived at their destination, by the pond the father and son, it was only at that place that the miscreant was stripped entirely of his clothing. (Mention would otherwise surely have been made.)

 

Once naked, thorough cleansing ensued.

 

Son submitted to thorough cleaning and scrubbing at the hands of the poor, unfortunate father.

 

Soil was used as the cleaning agent: the soil of the kampung. Smeared over the befouled, naked body.

 

Thoroughly, thoroughly cleansed by the father’s hand, the son. (In many corners of the world dirt was in fact used in precisely this way. In dirt poor, mountainous and rocky former Montenegro, for one.)

 

It was said further here too that this particular young man subsequently went on to live a model life. Become a shining example to his community. Born anew no less.

 

An urbanite like Zainuddin had been taken aback.

 

Shocked. Shaking his head. Rendered speechless initially.

 

It was not easy to respond to such a tale.

 

….This was the work of the local Imam; not the Qur’ran. Nothing in Islam to support anything of the kind.

 

It was the other man, the mosque-dweller, stoutly declaring the case.

 

The humiliation struck the pair equally and most particularly. Rather unexpectedly the sharpness in response.

 

Zainuddin had always emphasised the independence of mind available to every Muslim.

 

“I am my own Pope,” Zainuddin had insisted on more than one occasion in his usual jocular manner. (Behind which of course lay the important matter of autonomy and self-governance according to one’s own lights and understandings in Islam, where there was no ecclesiastical order.)

 

In Wahabi Saudi Arabia, even in the present time, no government or religious official, Zainuddin wanted it known once he had collected himself, no civil or any other kind of authority, was permitted to enter a man’s house on the suspicion of some kind of transgression of Islamic law.

 

Alcohol. Fornication. Consumption of pork. Whatever the case may have been.

 

Despite the commonly mistaken belief, Islam did not have a strict policing of the flock, Zainuddin, almost his old self again, further underlined.

 

This was followed, again from Zainuddin, by the reference to the passage in the Hadith where the Prophet had leapt to the rescue of a piglet in danger of being trampled by a cart, or some-such.

 

In compassion and warm humanity, Zainuddin’s Mohammad was outshone by neither Christ nor Buddha.

 

 

Geylang Serai, Singapore 2011–2020