For the eleventh monthly online Wacana Warisan Series (WWS) organised by the Malay Heritage Foundation (MHF), Dr. Azhar Ibrahim conducted a 90-minute webinar on the topic of Santri and Kitab Kuning: Intellectual Traditions of the Malay World. He is a professor from the Department of Malay Studies, at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Vice-Chairman of the MHF Board. There will be one final webinar by Dr. Azhar before WWS officially concludes for 2021. This session was delivered mostly in English with a few quotations in Malay.
Saturday, 27 November 2021 — Dr. Azhar opened the session with a quote to kickstart his webinar, titled, “Santri and Kitab Kuning: Intellectual Traditions of the Malay World” for the eleventh session of WWS. Elaborating on the roles of a “Santri”, a term generally used for someone who follows Islamic religious teachings in Islamic boarding schools, Dr. Azhar shared that the individual performs the role as a teacher and preacher, often involved in the production of religious tracts and literature and as well playing the role of a translator, adaptor and disseminator. These individuals are the ones who have contributed and written substantive works in Malay, Javanese and Arabic.
As for Kitab Kuning/Kitab Jawi, the prominent theme found is on Sufism but Dr. Azhar showed how there are many other themes found in Kitab Kuning. Such themes are, “The Origin of Man”, “The Creation of Adam & Eve”, as well as “The Role of Women/Wife”. He touched on where the name came from where ‘Kuning’ might be about the colour or cover of the book that is used by the Santri. These Kitab are not plain normal textbooks but they contain poetry, imageries that make the content interesting and different.
After showing examples of the different Kitab as well as some translated quotations from them, he pointed out the significance of this tradition of having Kitab. This explains the differences in the strong connection of Islamisation in certain areas compared to others.
He highlighted 7 points as listed below:
- Allows for the continuity and deepening of Islamisation throughout history
- Allows for greater coverage of Islamic corpus in the local community – to study, interpret and at least pre-copy.
- Established a firm tradition that promotes another knowledge production.
- Enable the continuing contacts with the Islamic heartlands, including amongst Muslim polities in the region.
- Infusing ideas of multi-disciplinary approaches (theological, legal, mystical, rational) in the understanding of Islamic message.
- Promote the learning and production of local/regional religious knowledge.
- Where varieties of sources of books are used, it allows for a plurality of interpretations offered, with no single source to dominate.
Before he ended the session, Dr. Azhar mentioned the problems that the community face today and these include the lack of critical studies on these texts where he observed that there are mostly biography summaries on them and also a reliance on exogenous Islamic Kitab without much production of endogenous ones. However, he pointed out that there are contemporary interests while recommending some readings based on his lecture. The webinar was followed by a closing Q&A, where Dr. Azhar addressed several questions from the virtual audience who tuned in via Zoom and Facebook live.
WWS is a series of lectures that aim to encourage the development of new and alternative approaches to the understanding of Malay history, economy, politics, society, and culture. Beyond the clichés and convenient mainstream narratives, lie many lesser-known facts about the Malay community in Singapore. It is a year-long programme (each lecture runs monthly), comprising 12 sessions from January to December 2021. Participants who register and attend via Zoom for at least 10 sessions will be given a Certificate of Attendance. WWS lectures will mostly be delivered in Malay. One more WWS webinar is scheduled before the first season concludes in 2021.
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