Tom Pepinsky

Author: tompepinsky

  • Banana Leaf Rice and Other Food Pictures

    When our friend Lindsey was visiting we took her to one of our favorite types of restaurants, a Tamil (southern Indian) restaurant that serves food known here as “banana leaf rice”.  What it is, you see, is a big banana leaf covered with rice and other foods.  The restaurant that we took Lindsey to, in a part of town known as Bangsar, was good, but we are sad that we didn’t take her to another one that we found yesterday.  This one is in Petaling Jaya, a neighboring city outside of KL proper but well with the metro area.  It’s a place called Raju’s, and it has a loyal following.  We think that it easily beats the place in Bangsar, the trendy area where we took Lindsey (sorry, Lindsey!).

    We have heard that sometimes you can see VIPs there, and that the current PM Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi used to go there a lot when he was still only Foreign Minister.  No VIPs there this time though.  But we shouldn’t talk the place up too much because Malaysians have very strong opinions about what the best banana leaf rice places are.  Some people love Raju’s, some people think it’s good but too expensive, and some dismiss it as not spicy enough.

    We got some pictures and have posted them in our Culinary Delights folder, along with some others.  These others include pictures of our attempts of popiah and cap cai, two dishes whose recipes we posted last week, and a bunch of others whose recipes we have not yet posted.  Our pictures from Raju’s start here, and you can scroll forward to see what banana leaf rice looks like and to watch me (TP) give a demonstration of how to eat curry with your hands.  Please excuse the hair style: we decided to take showers after we went out into the heat of the day for lunch and errands.

  • MUI vs. JIL

    The big news in Indonesia these days–so far not reported in the West, as far as we can tell–is the issuance of a set of fatwas by the Council of Indonesian Islamic Religious Teachers, or MUI (Majlis Ulama Indonesia).  The big doozy is this one, the translation of which we quote from the Jakarta Post: "Religious teachings influenced by pluralism, liberalism and secularism are against Islam. The fatwa states that Muslims must consider their religion to be the true one religion, and to consider other faiths as wrong." Despite its name, the MUI does not actually represent all or even most Islamic religious teachers in Indonesia, rather it is a conservative group well known for its intolerance.  It started out as a government body under Soeharto’s New Order, and was relatively moderate, but has since gotten out of hand.

    Indonesia is a plural place, so this fatwa has caused a bit of an uproar.  Every government that has ever ruled Indonesia (that’s not too many, but still) has mandated that ethnic and religious pluralism is a fact of life in Indonesia that the government will protect.  Although governments have times oppressed certain ethnic communities (most often the Chinese), governments have always been tolerant of minority religions (except for Confucianism and animism, and even this was more like just pretending that they don’t exist or don’t count as religions).  Condemning Islamic religious teachings influenced by pluralism as anti-Islam throws down a big challenge to most Indonesians about their relationship to their religion.  These teachings have a long history in Indonesia.  Is Islam in Indonesia going to move towards the Middle East?

    Happily (so far), the public reaction to the MUI ruling suggests otherwise.  Muslim scholars and Muslim public intellectuals have sharply criticized the MUI’s fatwas in the past couple of days, calling them "heretical" and "anti-Islam" themselves.  Others have attacked the fact that the MUI could have issued a fatwa that says that violence against other religious communities is forbidden, but did not–the reference is on an attack by some fundamentalists on the compound owned by a deviationist Islamic sect (Ahmadiya) in West Java last month.  Some of these public intellectuals include former President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid, current VP Jusuf Kalla, and other well-known Islamist thinkers, including our acquaintance Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, whom we know from the Freedom Institute, and who runs the influential Liberal Islam Network, or JIL (Jaringan Islam Liberal). They have been joined by leaders of interfaith groups, a surprisingly strong element in Indonesia’s crowded post-Soeharto civil society.  A number of groups have called for the government to ban MUI, or at least stop giving it financial support.

    Want to know more?  Unfortunately, the Jakarta Post’s online edition has a dynamic link-changing thingy that makes directly linking to articles a bad idea, but you can browse around and find related articles.  You can also check out Ulil’s writings at the JIL website, which expouses an attractive version of religious Islam that is strong in Indonesia and getting stronger with Ulil’s popular commentary.  You’ll see Ulil’s picture too; he was always smiling like that.