Unexpected Hero in the Eyes of the Arabic World

Iraqi journalist Muntathar Al Zaydi, 29, witnessed the American invasion of his homeland.  He reported the war on Iraq with anguish and anger.

He hated what was happening in his country as he witnessed the daily death of many innocent Iraqis.

Montathar, a correspondent for the independent Iraqi TV station Al Baghdadiya, went to sleep every night praying and dreaming about his country’s freedom - and the freedom of all other occupied countries, such as my own.

He was against the American presence in Iraq and thought that it was the wrong path to freedom. Rather, he felt it was the path to violence and bloodshed.

We all heard about the American president’s visit to Iraq and the press conference that was scheduled. All the journalists were invited to hear George Bush - including Muntathar Al Zaydi.

The press conference aired live around the whole world.  We were all glued to our TVs, radios, or computers to follow it - including myself, a journalist in Gaza.

Suddenly — out of nowhere — we saw a shoe thrown at Bush, which made us all gasp in shock.  Was it real or fabricated?  All cameras moved from Bush to the Iraqi journalist who threw the shoe at America’s president.

I was very worried about the journalist when I saw the whole security apparatus grab him while he was cursing Bush.  I thought to myself, “Poor guy, he won’t see the sun rise again.”

As we all expected Muntathar was immediately jailed. We tracked the daily news for updates on his well-being.  One day we heard he was going to be released and we couldn’t believe it.

On the day of his release, my friends and I were happy.  We watched him, live, talking about his experience.  About how his emotions had built up during the conference until he felt he need to let out his anger by throwing his shoe at aggressor.

The shoe-thrower said he did not regret it, and that if time rolled back he would do it again.

Muntathar was released sooner than we expected.  Perhaps the election of a new American president allowed the Iraqis to do that?

Unexpectedly, this journalist is considered a hero in the eyes of the Arabic world today.  Everyone now loves him and respects him.

The shoe thrower was even offered money, gold, houses, marriage, and even employment from leading royal Arabic personalities and political personalities.

He was even offered an enormous sum of money for his shoe, but he refused to sell it, saying “You cannot sell dignity because it doesn’t have a price.”

Welcome back to freedom, Muntathar Al Zaydi.  The world needs more people like you to take a stand.

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About the writer: Omar is a 22-year-old journalist living in Gaza – Palestine.

Goodbye Malaysia

Breakfasting on roti canai, kayaking on the lake in Shah Alam, squeezing into train compartments at rush hour, and saying “lah” at the end of every sentence.

These are just a few of the things that come to mind as we reflect on our two months of work and play in Malaysia. Driving to the airport to go back home to Dubai, Nour realized with a start that she had been living in this Southeast Asian country for one-sixth of a year. She was far beyond the status of tourist and had started settling into the comfortable and quirky role of expat – Malaysia was, surprisingly, becoming home. She’d made different groups of friends, fallen in love with the local cuisine, started picking up the language, and even established a family base through Khalisah. But as the cliché goes, all good things come to an end, and it was soon time to leave. It had been two months of unexpected self-discovery, for both Nour the newcomer and Khalisah the returning resident. And they had their time with MERCY Malaysia and the Malaysian social scene to thank for it.

When we started our internship with MERCY Malaysia, we didn’t know what to expect. What greeted us at the office in downtown KL was a group of the friendliest staff members you could find in a 6000 mile radius. We were enthusiastically shown the ropes by the HR department, and gently nudged in the right direction whenever we went astray with the work we were given. We found that MERCY Malaysia is at the crux of the Malaysian humanitarian field. Donations from big companies like Patronas and collaborations with the likes of award-winning film director Yasmin Ahmad not only kept this small but powerful NGO going, but also powered the medical relief missions to places like Palestine and Bandar Aceh. Talking to fellow passengers at train stations or bus stops, they only had positive things to say about what they consider their national NGO. Supported by the donations of thousands of individuals and companies as well as being run by big-hearted professionals, we saw that MERCY Malaysia is truly aid delivered with care.

Work wasn’t all we did in Malaysia, of course. We tried packing in as much fun as we could into the precious few hours we had off each week. We made new friends, connecting with a group of local activists in the Young Muslims Project, and attending the Knowledge and Arts Tour that they put together for the summer. We also met up with Khalisah’s older friends from Sunway University College, and attended local gigs and scenes as well as doing what Malaysians do best—hang out at Mamak stalls. For Khalisah, this time was well spent on catching up with local pop culture. Like most third-culture kids, she suffers from the guilt of knowing all the intimate details of American pop singers and their second husbands and illegitimate children, but draws a blank when it comes to naming any popular Malaysian song.

This neglect of her other cultural identity was something she intended to correct, and this summer’s SHOUT! Awards and the kids from Sunway managed to correct that. Malaysia, she discovered, has a vibrant music scene that isn’t garnering the attention it deserves. From soul jazz singers like Zee Avi to indie-rock bands like Estranged to R&B masters like Joe Flizzow, Khalisah found herself spoilt for choice amongst the range of talent that came from her motherland. Her wallet could barely keep up with the CD’s she purchased in her last weeks.

Blazing through a whirlwind of music, mamak dinners and train rides, our time in Malaysia ended much earlier than we would have liked it to. Just as we were getting comfortable in our roles as Malaysian residents, our internship came to a swift end. Nour was surprised at how quickly this country, so different from what she’s known between America and the Middle East, welcomed her into the fold, while Khalisah was happy to find her weak Malay language skills flourish and grow alongside her appreciation of Malaysian pop culture.

Leaving Malaysia and its mamaks, where we spent our time discovering different ways of viewing and living in the world, is difficult. But we leave knowing that we have a road back there, and Malaysian experiences that we will take with us, wherever else we may go.

The changing face of the news media

The morning of September 11, 2001 I was in my Brooklyn apartment getting ready to go to class and then it happened. The need to be informed as events unfolded that day could not be greater. People turned to any and all available news media to get that information and journalists, reporters, and anchormen valiantly fulfilled their roles as informers.

It was a rare moment of an ideal news mediasphere realized. Sure, there were moments of blatant sentimental storytelling and sensationalism in the media at the time, but we can all recall the solemn, stoic voice of those personalities whom we chose to listen to narrating our collective thoughts and emotions as fellow eyewitnesses to a national tragedy.

With the recent passing of Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” a legend from the golden era of news media has passed. News anchors and journalists like Cronkite were synonymous with trust. It was a time when they stuck to the truth, asked the hard questions, and had no qualms with introducing their opinion when it mattered. Some would argue they were often more knowledgeable than even our own politicians in office. Newsmen like Cronkite weren’t interested in policy-making, however. They were more interested presenting accurate and balanced information on the big issues affecting the country.

Compared to the run-up to the Iraq War, the news media often acted more like a PR mouthpiece for the Bush administration than reporting accurate and balanced information. Of all the personalities in contemporary news media, only a small minority were actually questioning the rationale, morality, or legality of preemptive war. Most outlets were relying on polls that showed popular support for the war in 2003 in making a conscious decision to feed and feed upon popular opinion rather than to examine objectively what our leaders were getting us into and on what justifiable evidence.

In 2003, Cronkite, speaking at Drew University and guided by expert knowledge of the political atmosphere surrounding the Vietnam War, openly dissented against popular support for the Iraq War, against overconfident army generals, and an arrogant president. He was one of the few journalists who knew exactly how a government uses deception and manipulation to trump up support for war. The news media is no less a victim than the individual, however unlike the individual the news media has the ability to shift popular opinion and put pressure on our elected leaders to do what is right. In this respect, they failed.

Much of the country, including the news media, could only speak in the past tense when we finally said, “Wait a minute, what exactly did our leaders get us into? Why didn’t we listen to voices of reason?” By then it was too late. We were waist deep.

After all I’ve seen, heard, and read in the news media since 2001, I’ve become a more conscious and selective news consumer. I’ve realized a few things: One, there are no wrong or bad stories in the media as long as it appeals to someone’s intellect and moral or political values; two, most news is biased reflecting on news consumers’ own biases.

There are fundamental divisions in our country and the lines run deeper than ever before. The philosophy of accuracy, balance, and unbiased news was lost to the ideologues on both sides some time ago. The people have taken their sides and their rallying points are who they turn to for their own version of the truth.

A show of hypocrisy as Republicans bash Sotomayor

Republicans have a great knack at 1-upping Democrats in every unethical thing possible. Take, for example, Mark Sanford’s extravagant affair with an Argentinean woman. It makes John Edwards look like an amateur. Or former Vice President Dick Cheney’s approval of torture – while Al Gore was too busy hugging trees. In the realm of political pundits, Republican Ann Coulter remains unchallenged. And now, Alabama Senator Jeffrey Sessions’ racial history is making Sonya Sotomayor look like, at best, yet another victim of the “white privileged male” mentality.

Sotomayor is being revered as potentially the first Latina justice to take a seat in the United States Supreme Court. But she is also being assaulted by right-wing conservatives over her 2001 comment regarding the role of her ethnicity in the United States: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”.

To resolve the paradox: Why would it be an important milestone in US history that a Latina judge sits on the Supreme Court, if race didn’t matter?

This hypocrisy of racial politics is being perpetrated by a charming top GOP pick: Mister Jeffrey Sessions. The same senator who believes the ACLU and NAACP are “Communist-inspired” and “un-Constitutional”, that the Ku Klux Klan was “OK”, minus the “pot smokers”, and that white civil rights lawyers are a “disgrace to his race.” Despite this, Sessions believed he was fully entitled to interrogate the Supreme Court nominee on the racism charges last week.

Why the fury over the wisdom of this accomplished señora? Sotomayor’s comment sparked a row in Washington because it is a reality that most Americans refuse to publicly acknowledge. The experience that Sotomayor was referring to runs parallel to a deep and turbulent racial disparity in this country’s history. Let’s take, for example, a recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center comparing home ownership rates between whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.

The study quotes that “in 2007, blacks and Hispanics borrowed higher amounts than did whites with similar incomes, exposing themselves to greater debt relative to their incomes.” What are the socio-economic repercussions of this blatant inequality? While the majority white population (including Sessions and Roberts) enjoy luxuries like vacations and the ability to afford higher education, struggling blacks and Hispanics are barely making ends meet. For aspiring Supreme Court justices like Sotomayor, this means working much harder to attain the same level of merit as their white counterparts.

Despite the figures putting her at a relative disadvantage to her white counterpart Sessions, how wise did the Latina manage to become? Ms. Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and attained her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. After which George H.W. Bush himself nominated her to the District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1991.

Yes, that’s right folks; a Republican president has already previously nominated Sotomayor to a federal court.

Also, 1991 is the same year that George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nomination John G. Roberts was fighting hard on the side of the Oklahoma Board of Education to ensure the re-segregation of its schools. Roberts, a current Supreme Court justice, was also quoted in 1983 saying, “I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their [Hispanic-Americans] illegal amigos.”

As expected, Sessions wasn’t up in arms about his fellow Republican’s concerning comments at the time of Roberts’ nomination in 2005. His selectivity in addressing potentially racist Supreme Court justices seems to indicate a preference in minority women over white males. How ironic.

But perhaps Sessions has a right to harass others about racism.

He seems to be more familiar with it than the rest of us.

Knowledge and Arts Tour 2009

Spray paint, skate parks, baggy jeans and Zoo York caps aren’t usually what comes to mind when most people think of the word “Islam.” But that’s exactly what was on display at the Islam-inspired event Khalisah and Nour found themselves at two Sundays ago. Girls in all colors of headscarves covered every surface around them with paint, skaters skidded to a stop to join in, even a few kids scrawled their names on the boards set out for the participants. At the center of all the commotion, a big bearded man draped in Timberland apparel from head to toe worked steadily on a wall in front of him. Slowly, an image started materializing through the paint: an explosion of cement and light surrounding the calming blue-shaded word “Truth.”

This was the first day of the Knowledge and Arts Tour 2009 (K&A). A local group of grassroots activists called the Young Muslims Project (YMP) had organized the tour, which lasted from July 5th to July 15th, to serve their community. All in their twenties, these young organizers had three objectives behind bringing this tour to life: 1) Inspiring Malaysian Muslim youth to have confidence in their religion and identity, 2) Connecting Malaysian Muslim youth to scholars, role models, and artists who’ve played exemplary roles in their respective communities, and 3) Educating Malaysian Muslim youth so that they have the tools to address the multitude of challenges the future has in store for them.

The YMP planned to accomplish all this by combing traditional, lecture-based talks with film screenings, mural paintings and meetings with local graffiti artists – an approach they hoped would appeal to the youth in their community.

Judging from the enthusiastic turnout on the first day, it looked like the YMP hit on the right formula. The audience was captivated by Suhaib Webb, the dynamic American imam who can speak about the latest Batman film in one sentence and 11th century Muslim scholar al-Ghazali in the next. Later, Mohammed Ali, the English graffiti artist described above, took the floor and gave a short talk about the history of graffiti in cultures around the world – including Islamic cultures. Then the audience moved out to the neighboring skate park to take part in their own graffiti art (on plywood boards provided by the YMP of course, not on the actual neighborhood itself). Nour rolled up her sleeves and got down to some art while Khalisah leaned back and took in the fumes, watching the people milling around with spray cans. Amin, the founder of the YMP, found the slightly dazed Khalisah and sat down with her to discuss art, culture, and how the light-headed feeling from the spray paint is probably the death of several brain cells.

Over the next ten days, the YMP hosted over ten events that focused on the themes of being young, Muslim and modern. The talks took place at venues all over Kuala Lumpur, from university lecture halls to art galleries. And at every event, people of all shapes, sizes and colors came to participate. Although the events were geared specifically towards issues relating to Muslim youth, it seems that they resonated with people far outside that demographic. There were non-Muslims, new converts to Islam, elderly grandparents, toddlers, and foreigners – not to mention all of the varied races and ethnicities that make up Malaysian identity. At these talks, you could see Islam at its best: open, dynamic, caring, and accepting. A nice contrast from the Islam usually shown in the news and mainstream media.

The K&A, ultimately, was a week-long success and the YMP has done what many small faith-based organizations often fall short of doing: They’ve made religion cool. And not “cool” in a way that requires the endorsement of a rap star to nod and say “don’t do drugs yo,” but cool in that Malaysian youth can attend these talks and activities as a part of the lives they lead. They aren’t invited to sit in a mosque and be lectured on how their lifestyles are going against the grain of Islam, but rather they make plans to go do some graffiti and learn an interesting thing or two on Islamic calligraphy. The older youth have a place to meet others their age while tackling the question of being a Muslim in university and how this might set them apart from other students.

In a world where it is increasingly difficult to address values with youth (without coming across as stuffy and old) as well as identify oneself in a multi-religious and multi-cultural society, the YMP has provided a much-needed space for discussion. Psychologists and child-experts point to ADHD pills or juvenile correctional facilities to help urban youth, but what the YMP has shown is that sometimes, all they need is an interesting speaker to listen to, a sympathetic ear to speak to, and a group of friends to mess around with at the local skate park.

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To learn more about the Young Muslims Project and the speakers, check out the following links:
http://young-muslims-project.blogspot.com/
http://www.suhaibwebb.com
http://www.aerosolarabic.com

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

All Roads and Rails Lead to KL

Seven different hands, of different shades and different sizes gripped the grimy silver pole of the morning commuter, and Khalisah’s hand was lost in the middle. Bodies pressed against each other with every jostle of the train, and Nour struggled to pull her own hand out of the awkward position it was in – squashed between a pole and another woman’s stomach. Everyone stood as still as possible, almost holding their breath to maintain their personal space. Sweat beaded people’s foreheads, turned their collars dark and made the poles slippery to hold. We looked at the clocks on our cell phones: only half an hour to go.

This is a typical journey for us now, starting any time from 7.15 to 8.30 - depending on how punctual our train decides to be. After a series of trial and error, this claustrophobic commuter was deemed champion of the Malaysian public transport system. For weeks, we had been searching for the “Sweet Spot”— the correct combination of transport to get us to and from work as efficiently as possible. To find the perfect way to work and back home, we had to try every mode of public transport available to the average Malaysian.

The first thing we tried was the KL Rapid, the air-conditioned wonder of the streets of Malaysia. After over a week of different bus trials and combinations, we now know that 5.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. are the worst times to be on the road, because we’ve sat on those KL Rapids for hours, watching their public service commercials play on loop from the high plastic chairs. We know that to escape morning gridlock, we need to leave the house at least a quarter to 7 a.m., unless we want to spend hours stopped in front of a school watching little Asian kids bounce around in their white sneakers as their parents drop them off.

This means waking up at 6 a.m., getting breakfast to go from the nearby mamak (ice coffee in little plastic bags with a straw to drink out of), being on the correct street corner before the bus arrives, sitting through anywhere from one-and-a-half to two hours of traffic (if we’re lucky enough to not be forced to change buses halfway through our trip), trugging from the KL bus stop to our office building, and still getting to work ten minutes late. It also means leaving the office at 6 p.m. to retrace our morning steps, often getting home at 8 or 9 in the evening.

We quickly realized that this system wasn’t exactly efficient. Next, we tried car pooling with a neighbor, but our schedules were too different to mesh well. After that, we tried to take a bus to the nearest train station, but a trip to the station that should have taken no more than ten minutes took over half an hour as we shuttled from stop to stop before getting to our destination. That’s not worth it, we decided. We’ll give up the irresistible one-ringgit-thirty-cents bus fare for an eight ringgit cab ride to the station - which was worth it. We made a deal with a soft-spoken pak cik (uncle), who would pick us up every morning at 7 a.m. in his battered yellow taxi, entertaining us with everything from Quranic verses to the latest Katy Perry hit on his radio.

Once we started taking the train, we found ourselves right in the middle of the claustrophobic scene we described above. But after a few days on the KTM, we discovered a little trick that offered some comfort: by getting on the last carriage of the train, we could avoid the jam-packed front carriages in favor of a place where we could each have a few precious inches of air to ourselves – something we’d never previously considered as a privilege.

In the end, we don’t consider all those hours on the road and rail a waste of our time, but an investment. We’ve come out of our dizzying first four weeks in Malaysia as experts of KL. We know that there’s a Church of Our Lady Fatima opposite the La Salle school; that Chow Kit looks like a red light district, even in the day; that graffiti is surprisingly popular on just about every available wall in the city; and that the ponds and grasses that cover Malaysia can be beautiful even at the sleepiest hours of the morning.

We know even better the kinds of people you meet (or jostle by or crash land into) on the country’s trains and busses. Usually they’re just people who want to get to work without hassle, but sometimes they’re the guy with the earphones blasting Rihanna, or the tattooed Chinese gangster with the freshly stitched cuts on his face. Other times they’re two rough-looking travelers who, in our minds, can be nothing but Indonesian pirates – or very convincing Jack Sparrow look-alikes. Still other times they’re school kids in uniform, mothers taking their toddlers to see grandma, or a band of traveling musicians.

No matter how lost or delayed we got on our trips, we soon discovered that all roads and rails lead to Kuala Lumpur. With that in mind, we stopped worrying about when we’d get to wherever we were going and learned to enjoy the trip, watching people, places and life pass through our train or outside our window. On the Malaysian public transport system we realized that, sometimes, the journey is just as important as the destination.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

Celebrating Freedom for America and Iran

This Fourth of July, I spent the day in solidarity with the people of Iran. I added a touch of green in honor of the fiercely brave and yet everyday people of Iran.

A lot of people lost their lives last month. Even more are in prison. I don’t see the point of celebrating American freedom if it does not include honoring the Iranians who have sacrificed for their freedom.

My Fourth of July was in honor of an Iranian blogger who wrote to the world believing it would be her last post. In the face of death, she spent her last night doing the things she loved. Her last prayer. She made her hair look pretty one last time. She painted her nails. And then she danced one last time to her favorite song before she walked out to the street ready die for her vote.

My Fourth of July was in honor of the Iranian who video-blogged from the rooftop of a night-darkened Tehran. I sat in prayer and remembered the silence between the cries of Allah-o Akbar (God is of most value) that pierced the night. I remembered how the people’s cries sounded like the soul of Iran moaning in frustration.

I remembered her voice as it cracked with emotion and tension.

I remembered watching people beat, pulled from their cars and then a women named Neda dying on my TV screen. I remembered the man screaming over her. I remembered Neda’s eyes rolling into the back of her head. I remembered the thousands of people that bullet passed through before landing on her chest.

I remembered the beatings becoming more brutal as the Iranians chanted in the streets to not be afraid.

The police would grab protesters while other protesters would attack the police and save their countryman from being taken away.

I remembered the militia driving down the street on their motorbikes only to have people from a bridge above throw bottles - trying to save the trapped crowd below.

This year on the Fourth of July, I honored Iran and how they are scratching at the walls of freedom with bloody fingertips.

This Fourth of July I honored Iran for they have yet to succeed. I did not celebrate 1776. I celebrated bravery and freedom and the ideas of freedom that connect America and Iran through the everyday people who today make up a worldwide nation of my patriots.

A Day in Shah Alam

No matter how much you love your job, after days of an endless cycle of work, traffic and failed attempts at getting enough sleep, you need your day off on the weekends. A day without working overtime or worrying about cleaning the house or making appointments with important contacts. That’s why this week, we had our day off by leaving the busy neighborhood of Subung Jaya for the sleepy suburb of Shah Alam. There, we alternated between the doting comfort of grandparents and joining the homey bustle of morning markets and Malay weddings. It was a day far removed from our rush of aid work, and we needed it. But it was also a day that opened our eyes to an aspect of Malaysia that we were too busy to pay attention to before: the globalization, or perhaps Westernization, of Malaysian culture – especially outside the cosmopolitan capital of Kuala Lumpur.

At about nine in the morning, we stepped out of the car and into the parking lot that led to the Pasar Tani, or the Farmer’s Market. This Sunday morning tradition involves people setting up stalls with items as varied as traditional Malaysian clothes and shower curtains. Row after row of stalls led us through worlds of second-hand t-shirts, bright red prayer rugs, fake Guess jeans and traditional batik cloth in every color imaginable. The stalls reminded Khalisah a little bit of Iowan farmer’s markets, except instead of apples there were guavas, and instead of deep-fried ice-cream there were fried noodles. It’s amazing how two different markets – from Iowa to Shah Alam—can be equally unhealthy for the under prepared stomach.

The rest of the food in the stalls, like just about everything else in the market, completely fascinated Nour. There was kuih, a word that encompasses just about any sort of local sweet that involves coconut made gooey; durian, the overwhelmingly strong-scented fruit that should be made the symbol of Malaysia; and all sorts of rotis, the Indian word for bread. One of the most interesting rotis we came across was Roti John, which is the Malaysian version of a chicken sub. According to Khalisah, this particular food specimen was an attempt at copying “Western” cuisine, but with all the sauces and spices that were added to it over the years, it is now a fiery chicken sandwich that few Western palates can handle.

Although Pasar Tani is a typical Malaysian tradition, it was interesting to see how much non-Malaysian culture has seeped into it. We made a similar realization at the Malay wedding we attended later in the day.

We had hustled into the banquet hall just in time to hear the drums beat, a signal that the wedding couple are ready to walk together to the persandingan, a raised dais with two gilded chairs and a cloth canopy. Two little girls dressed in white with small green wreathes propped up on their white hijabs took the fore of the procession, scattering flower petals on the floor. This was a little surprising to Khalisah, whose previous exposure to Malay weddings assured her that these affairs don’t usually include flower girls.

But then the crowd parted and the wedding couple took a step forward in true Malay style. The theme of this Malay wedding was a soft peach beige, and though it sounds decidedly unmanly, the groom looked impressive in his delicately patterned pants and shirt, with an intricately sewn samping wrapped around his middle like a sarong and a kris knife secured on his hip. As each couple is celebrated as king and queen on their wedding day, the groom adorned his head with a Tengkolok, a folded piece of cloth that serves as a crown. The bride wore a crystal tiara over her beige hijab, and lace cloth flecked with gold thread cascaded down the sides of her peach wedding outfit, a baju kebaya.

A voice over the loudspeaker soon distracted us from the bride’s and groom’s outfits. “Salla allahu ala Muhammad,” the speaker said as he began to read a few select pieces from the Quran. Then the couple walked forward towards the dais, with the flower girls tossing their petals all over the floor (much to Khalisah’s annoyance). By the time the couple made it to their “thrones,” the speaker completed his reading and proceeded to recite different prayers to bless the couple and the new life they would share together. Later, the drum procession had settled down at the foot of the dais and began to play traditional Javanese music where lots of gamelans (brass chiming instruments) came into play. Khalisah pointed out that this isn’t a traditional aspect of the wedding, just like the flower girls, and Nour accused her of being a purist.

Being new to the experience, Nour enjoyed the Malay wedding and the slightly fermented rice served as a dessert. For Khalisah, the experience was pock-marked with adages from a western wedding: the flower girls, the alien-sounding gamelan dinner music, and the division of the hall into a groom-side and a bride-side (something she later discovered from her grandparents). It took away the more homey feeling of tradition Malay weddings used to evoke. These weddings were held at either the groom’s or bride’s driveway just outside their house, and tents would protect the buffet and the guests that pattered in off the streets. The drums would beat in tune with Malay wedding songs that were interspersed with Quranic verses and kids would run in between (and sometimes under) the tables throughout the whole ordeal.

Maybe the banquet hall wedding was a sign of shifting local culture, where the basics are given a new twist to keep the event from being another day in someone’s driveway, making it a truly unique affair. The same could be said of the “Western” products that were making their way into the Sunday morning market. What was boring and ordinary to Westerners was exciting and exotic to the people who lived here. We decided that as long as the batik cloth in the pasars and the kris and tiara in the weddings stay untouched, we can be comfortable with this changing culture that is emerging to accommodate a new generation of Malaysians. With this bizarre mix of new and old, local and “other,” who knows what will identify Malaysian culture in a few years’ time.

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The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

Iranian-American protesters debate Obama’s stance

The Fall of Khomeini and Co.

One of the fundamental responsibilities of a state government is to secure the well-being of its citizenry. A government’s failed to protect its people when it starts killing them. And consequently, that’s when it needs to go. Following this weekend’s tragic murder of 16-year-old Neda Soltani, one can see clearly now that the Iranian government is starting to falter. Violence and voluntary armed forces, it seems, are all that the Ayatollah and his cronies have left. And they aren’t using these on outside forces, but their own people.

Could this bloodshed be a sign of the Iranian push toward civic freedom?

According to Ian Bremmer’s J Curve theory, it just might be. Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, argues that all non-democratic countries must go through a period of an ultimate low before they surface as civic democracies. This low is fueled by years of increasing domestic unrest (e.g government policies, economic woes, etc) that hit a final tipping point. Following this climax is the kind of revolution we’re seeing in Iran. So what was Iran’s tipping point? I believe it was the mistake the regime made when it deluded itself into thinking that its citizenry would accept a blatantly fixed election (word is now emerging that the government fixed election results in over fifty cities – reporting over 100% votes cast in attempts to boost Ahmadinejad’s popularity). White lies may water down domestic unrest, but an obvious one is often enough to blow the tea kettle.

At first sight of the video, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Was Neda simply a number to be added to Iran’s infamous execution list?” But second thought made me realize, she was anything but. Here I was, sitting thousands of miles away from Tehran, watching the Basij sniper its own citizen.

As the gruesome videos of her death continue to replicate on YouTube, the pressures of globalization are plunging the fragile regime into deeper waters. And the more it so desperately attempts to quash these forces, the further the country moves up the curve. Maybe the regime should have spent the few hours it would have taken to read over Paul Collier’s, The Dictator’s Handbook, before starting to execute its own people.

What we’re seeing now is the manifestation of years of domestic discontent starting to unravel –and the exposed weakness of the Islamic oligarchy. A weakness that is a hop, skip, click away to watch, thanks to the Internet and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube.

But to some, this unraveling may still come as a shock. Didn’t the Iranians put the regime into power in 1979?

Sure, thirty years ago. Globalization is thought to have begun shortly after, too. With the end of the Cold War, collapse of the USSR, and the spread of ideologies at T1 speeds - much has changed since, for one thing. This social misconception that the people of such countries have remained politically stagnant for decades is also apparent in other states, like China. The same could be applied to North Korea or Burma, where oppression remains key to survival. But reality is quite the opposite. Due to the lack of majority support, heads-of-state like Khomeini, Jintao and Jong-Il often have to perfect the art of looking better than they really are - or the facade can turn against them. This is where propaganda and tight restrictions on information across state borders become central to a setup like Iran’s Islamic regime.

But unlike 1979, proxy servers and cyber manipulation of time zones can easily get by feeble censorship attempts.

It also doesn’t matter if Iran is religious or not. Non-democratic states come in all shapes and sizes. What matters is that the Iranian oligarchy failed to represent the people. This includes economic downturn and a sense that Iranian national pride has been severely compromised at the international level. And with this, the government turns to the two things that will eventually lead to its collapse. The last Czar of Russia was foolish to trust his army, too - one that would later turn against him. Perhaps the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad should look over this history before too heavily depending on the Basij.

Assassinations are the ultimate form of censorship, true. They may even be inevitable in the case of statewide revolution. But Neda Soltani symbolizes the explosive and progressive nature of the current revolution. She was a young adult, a philosopher and most strikingly – a woman. Alongside a loving family, she is survived by a progressive ideology that is incapable of destruction by physical silencing. This ideology has contributed to the rise and establishment of many secular and prosperous states today, including post-colonial India, Brazil and post-Franco Spain.

With time, I believe, we will also see Iran climb up from the abysmal nature of Bremmer’s curve and emerge as a civic democracy.

And in that light, Neda’s death was not in vain.

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