“What does it even mean to be Malay?” A friend once asked me.
Growing up, I had assumed that there was only one uniform way of being a Malay-Muslim. Throughout these formative years, however, I felt an intuition that there must have been more to this question, one I had wrestled with throughout. I first found fragments of answers in regional popular culture, but it was travel that became my real education.
My eyes opened once I began travelling with a mind and heart that were open to the experiences the Nusantara1would provide. I noticed how the Malay-Muslim identity pervades everyday life in the region. This can take various forms; from civil servants dressed in batik2 having dinner after work, listening to the gentle cadence of Malay or Indonesian speech across coffee shops and cafes, jawi3inscriptions alongside their rumi4scripts displayed at shophouses, to listening to the call to prayer on the loudspeaker throughout cities, small towns and various kampung5. These are a few among the many forms of expressions I have observed on how the Malay-Muslim identity expresses itself in everyday regional life. The identity itself has incredible heterogeneity. The accent of someone from the Malaysian state of Kedah differs markedly from that of someone from the state of Selangor. The local cuisine in Bandung, the capital of West Java province, Indonesia, varies significantly from that in Jakarta, Indonesia. The variety is indicative of various cultural influences that people in each part of the region have come into contact with. At the time of writing, I have travelled across several cities and small towns across the region and even went on a cruise.Two experiences, however, stick out in my mind, as formative experiences in the region.
References
1. Parts of Maritime Southeast Asia, mostly the Malay Archipelago; a civilisational and cultural world encompassing present-day Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and parts of Thailand and the Philippines.[]
2. Traditional Malay/Indonesian textile art that uses wax-resist dyeing to create intricate patterns on fabric.[]
3. Arabic-derived script for the Malay language.[]
4. Romanised alphabetic script for the Malay language.[]
The spiritual aspect of the Nusantara: Tarawih prayers in Masjid Putra
The first experience would be the performance of tarawih prayers in Masjid Putra in Putrajaya, a federal territory in Malaysia geographically surrounded by the state of Selangor. Whenever I travel in the Nusantara, I make it a point to visit mosques in the places I visit, to live the faith communally with our friends in the region. This is part of a multidimensional effort to deepen the faith aspect of my Malay-Muslim identity. Our family trips during Ramadan spent in Putrajaya over the past two years are thus no exception, as we would pray in different mosques across both Putrajaya and nearby Kuala Lumpur. My personal defining memory from both trips, however, are the tarawih7prayers we performed in Masjid Putra.
Moonlight in the night sky glistened over our heads, as we walked toward the main prayer hall while listening to the call of the azan8. Entering Masjid Putra was like walking into an abode of paradise, its pink tapestries, walls, pillars and motifs a symbol of Malay-Islamic creativity. The use of pink granite, floral motifs, and wooden carvings echo Malay craftsmanship and the Nusantara’s love for softness and organic lines. The mosque has soft lighting, air flow and open courtyards, adapting Islamic architectural ideals to the local tropical climate.
Dome as seen from the interior of Masjid Putra
After praying tarawih, we walked out into the courtyard and seized the opportunity to take pictures. Children would be playing at the back of the prayer hall while other families would also be laughing and mirthfully taking pictures in the courtyard. Outside the mosque, families would be playing in the open area in various forms such as rollerblading, blowing bubbles, or flying kites. We even saw several running groups, and this was at 11pm! The sense of communalism surrounding the mosque added much to the spiritual experience of our tarawih prayers.
For myself, these Ramadan retreats have served as spiritual bookends that mark different phases of my growth and is a practice our family will continue well into the future. There was something transformative about these experiences which quietly but irreversibly expanded my soul. They provided lived texture to theories I read in Islamic books that otherwise might have remained abstract. It was within these moments that my mind generated insights regarding my direction in life that I might not have ascertained in the absence of such experiences. These are experiences the community could consider. Even beyond the spiritual experience, it is fascinating to explore different mosques that may have architectural motifs echoing local design philosophies rooted in Malay-Islamic sensibilities, which could appeal to people differently according to their aesthetic taste. The mosques also vary greatly in size and design, with the grand mosques in Putrajaya being very different from local neighbourhood mosques spread across different kampung in the region.
The relational aspect of the Nusantara: Visiting bibik in Cirebon
The second formative experience that I find highly memorable is visiting our family’s old bibik9 in her hometown of Cirebon, a city in West Java, Indonesia. Her kampung lies on the outskirts of the city. Whenever I travel to different parts of the Nusantara, I try as far as possible to incorporate meeting up with friends in the city or town I visit into the itinerary. Bibik had been with our family for 19 years before returning to Cirebon in 2019. While she may have been an employee while she was under our charge, after six years apart while remaining in contact, I see her as a friend as well.
When we visited bibik, she and her familywelcomed us with food and drinks. She then showed us around her kampung, including a vantage point from which we could view a nearby river as well as mountains. She also showed us the school she went to when she was younger, and I prayed in the local mosque. She offered an organic tour of her kampung, a meandering walk shaped by memory and familiarity, rather than itinerary; revealing stories woven into its people, spaces and rhythms of everyday life. Many villagers would greet us and bibik would strike quick conversations with each of them before continuing the journey. I had listened to stories of how in the past, in kampungs, there was a spirit of community in which everyone knows one another, but it was quite another thing to see this playing out in reality and happening in real time. After our visit, bibik shared about our visit on her social media and the post gained significant traction. The visit remains etched in our memory till present day.
My visit to bibik’s house is quite representative of how many of my interactions with friends in the Nusantara go. In my experience, they are very hospitable, and will take the time to show us around the places they grew up in; the houses they were raised in, the schools they went to, the eateries they frequented with their friends. I would then imagine how their lives must have been while growing up from piecing together the different aspects of their formative years they show. More personally, I would be moved listening to them as they opened up about their stories.
Zooming out from my personal experiences and looking at regional developments from a geopolitical angle, I have noticed a strong push for regionalisation at the government-to-government level. In the context of Singapore and Malaysia or Singapore and Indonesia, this includes the formation of Special Economic Zones10, increased financial integration11, and transnational dialogue on social issues12. Where I see further untapped potential is on the people-to-people relationships between Singaporeans and the region, including for our local Malay community. For example, for Singapore and Malaysia, I lament when people from either side of the Causeway paints the other with a broad brush which inadvertently leads to hurt feelings and resentment. Greater people-to-people relationships, in my mind, would go a long way in enriching our understanding of each other, and provide greater meaning to said regionalisation and shared regional aspirations. I believe also that these lessons for greater understanding can be gleaned anywhere. I have learnt just as much about the region from the generous sharings of my Grab and Gojek drivers as I have from policy discussions with regional delegates at curated official events.
My personal Malay-Muslim Identity
Circling back to the question asked of what the Malay-Muslim identity means to me, I found the Nusantara pivotal in my answer. The lived spiritual and relational textures of the region, along with its vast natural landscapes, irreversibly expanded my mindset. The diversity of how the identity expresses itself in the region, be it in mosque architecture, spoken language dialect, cuisine, urban design or any other forms, have added colour to my initial personal preconception of its uniformity. I see the identity now as a porous one adaptable to external influences and varying according to geography, and even these views are open to further evolution. Within national boundaries, it also takes on distinct local inflections, shaped by factors such as racial and religious composition and the prevaling socio-political ethos. Despite this openness and adaptability, the identity remains rooted in faith13 and a strong sense of community.
This sense of community translates into lived interpersonal relations. When chatting with a staff a few months ago at a hotel in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, he casually called me serumpun14. I find myself still touched at small gestures like these. Despite our different national boundaries, I am considered as part of the family. The treatment from regional friends reflect this attitude as well. I have noticed several others in the Singaporean Malay community who have opened themselves up and been embraced by the region, in their own ways. This could be in the form of collaborative artistic projects, research collaborations, or content creator meet-ups! There are faith-based cross-border projects as well. I hope that by sharing my own personal experience in embracing the Nusantara, others in our community can find their own paths to further exploring the region. This could be on top of the regular family trips or visits to relatives that many in the community might already engage in, or any other latent regional interests we might already harbour. I personally believe that the region will embrace such people back, and more broadly, that there is beauty in the Nusantara for those who open their hearts and souls to it.
About the Author
Aidan Bakti worked in data & policy in the public sector. A graduate in Economics from the National University of Singapore, he is currently exploring opportunities in regional finance. Outside work, he enjoys reading, investing, creative writing, running, hiking, and traveling. He is passionate about deepening his understanding and refining his embodiment of an all-encompassing Malay-Islamic worldview.
5. Villages, often referring to close-knit rural communities marked by strong neighbourly ties.[]
6. This is also because of different dominant ethnic groups in each region of Indonesia. In Bandung, there are many from the Sunda tribe while many in Jakarta are Javanese. In Singapore, ethnic groups such as the Sundanese, Javanese and Bugis are absorbed into the overarching Malay identity.[]
7. Special nightly prayers performed during the month of Ramadan.[]
9. An affectionate Malay term for a domestic helper or caretaker.[]
10. The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone will consist of nine designated flagship zones, aiming to combine Malaysia’s land and labour with Singapore’s investment and financial capabilities. []
11. In the region, one clear sign of integration is the ASEAN Trading Link, which allows investors in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand to access each other’s equity markets more seamlessly.[]
12. One example is the International Conference for Societies of Opportunity, which is an inaugural conference, held in Singapore, bringing together policymakers and practitioners from across the region to explore inclusive societies and opportunity-based development.[]
13.While I recount my experiences as a Muslim travelling in the Nusantara in the article, it is worth noting that the region has great religious diversity. Its population is predominantly Muslim, but it is also home to many Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and people of other faiths. This religious diversity and our relatively peaceful co-existence is itself a point of regional pride, in my view.[]
14. “From the same root,” reflecting the familial and cultural interconnectedness of the Malay world across modern borders.[]
