Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Pronunciation Guide
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 On Being Tribal in the Malay World
- 3 Tribal People on the Southern Thai Border: Internal Colonialism, Minorities, and the State
- 4 Developing Indigenous Communities into Sakais: South Thailand and Riau
- 5 Organizing Orang Asli Identity
- 6 Traditional Alliances: Contact between the Semais and the Malay State in Pre-modern Perak
- 7 Forest People, Conservation Boundaries, and the Problem of “Modernity” in Malaysia
- 8 Engaging the Spirits of Modernity: The Temiars
- 9 Against the Kingdom of the Beast: Semai Theology, Pre-Aryan Religion, and the Dynamics of Abjection
- 10 Culture Contact and Semai Cultural Identity
- 11 “We People Belong in the Forest”: Chewong Re-creations of Uniqueness and Separateness
- 12 Singapore's Orang Seletar, Orang Kallang, and Orang Selat: The Last Settlements
- 13 Orang Suku Laut Identity: The Construction of Ethnic Realities
- 14 Tribality and Globalization: The Orang Suku Laut and the “Growth Triangle” in a Contested Environment
- 15 The Orang Petalangan of Riau and their Forest Environment
- 16 Inter-group Relations in North Sumatra
- 17 State Policy, Peasantization and Ethnicity: Changes in the Karo Area of Langkat in Colonial Times
- 18 Visions of the Wilderness on Siberut in a Comparative Southeast Asian Perpective
- 19 Defining Wildness and Wilderness: Minangkabau Images and Actions on Siberut (West Sumatra)
- 20 Gender and Ethnic Identity among the Lahanans of Sarawak
- Index
9 - Against the Kingdom of the Beast: Semai Theology, Pre-Aryan Religion, and the Dynamics of Abjection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Pronunciation Guide
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 On Being Tribal in the Malay World
- 3 Tribal People on the Southern Thai Border: Internal Colonialism, Minorities, and the State
- 4 Developing Indigenous Communities into Sakais: South Thailand and Riau
- 5 Organizing Orang Asli Identity
- 6 Traditional Alliances: Contact between the Semais and the Malay State in Pre-modern Perak
- 7 Forest People, Conservation Boundaries, and the Problem of “Modernity” in Malaysia
- 8 Engaging the Spirits of Modernity: The Temiars
- 9 Against the Kingdom of the Beast: Semai Theology, Pre-Aryan Religion, and the Dynamics of Abjection
- 10 Culture Contact and Semai Cultural Identity
- 11 “We People Belong in the Forest”: Chewong Re-creations of Uniqueness and Separateness
- 12 Singapore's Orang Seletar, Orang Kallang, and Orang Selat: The Last Settlements
- 13 Orang Suku Laut Identity: The Construction of Ethnic Realities
- 14 Tribality and Globalization: The Orang Suku Laut and the “Growth Triangle” in a Contested Environment
- 15 The Orang Petalangan of Riau and their Forest Environment
- 16 Inter-group Relations in North Sumatra
- 17 State Policy, Peasantization and Ethnicity: Changes in the Karo Area of Langkat in Colonial Times
- 18 Visions of the Wilderness on Siberut in a Comparative Southeast Asian Perpective
- 19 Defining Wildness and Wilderness: Minangkabau Images and Actions on Siberut (West Sumatra)
- 20 Gender and Ethnic Identity among the Lahanans of Sarawak
- Index
Summary
Against the kingdome of the beast Wee witnesses do rise.
From a song of the New Model Army (quoted in Thompson 1993, p. 23)
INTRODUCTION
This chapter deals with the construction of God by an Austroasiatic-speaking swiddening people of Malaysia, about 30,000 people known generically as Semai Senoi.1 They are now subjects of the dominant people of the Peninsula, the Malays, whose ruling class used them as despised slaves until the early part of this century. They are also famous in anthropology for their peaceability.
The chapter falls into three sections. The first is an attempt to evoke how Semais experience thundersqualls, the “natural symbol” (Douglas 1970) of Divine power; as an evocation, it requires a style that may be unfamiliar to some readers but seems appropriate to the task at hand.2 The second is a speculative reconstruction of Semai theological history, which suggests that serious students of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism need to pay attention to the indigenous religions of Peninsular Malaysia. The closing section involves hermeneutics and exegesis, treating Semai religion as an original and compelling way of dealing with the violence that troubles all peoples.
If you believe in God at all, you probably believe in one of the desert imaginings – Yahweh, the Trinity, Allah. When you think of God, you don't think about a God who condones slaving. Take a minute and imagine that God. This isn't God the Compassionate we're talking about here, not the innocent Jesus who loved children. This is the God of the Dark. This is a God for people whose children are stolen, again and again, by child abusers. This is a God for people who know their powerful neighbours have no more compunction about killing them than about killing rats. This is God the embodiment of slavers and of the slaver state. The Beast. You wouldn't like Him.
Come, look into this darkness with me, the way Semais seem to, look into the immense overhanging implacable shadows, rich with pointless recurrent menace and pain. In that dark maybe we can begin to understand what Semais seem to have created by love: in the depths of that darkness, hope and defiant mockery; in the maelstrom of that violence, peace. This essay is about the resistance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tribal Communities in the Malay WorldHistorical, Cultural and Social Perspectives, pp. 206 - 236Publisher: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak InstitutePrint publication year: 2002