Red-flagged story wins award, thanks to my buddy Jamil

Feb 07, 2025

By Joseph Masilamany
In the first week of 2025, I lost a dear friend, Jamil Sidik. We had been friends since Standard Four. And that was way back in 1967.

We became friends because of our common admiration for boxer Muhammad Ali who was the rave of the day back then.

Decades later Jamil and I touched base again, via our school WhatsApp Group called “Tarsian”. Tarsian is the acronym for Tuanku Abdul Rahman School, our alma mater in Gemas.

However, it was now a different Jamil standing before me. He looked like a true blue Mohammedan and was wearing a white kopiah. Jamil told me he had three wives. In his demeanour he emanated certitude and conviction about his Muslim faith — just like Muhammad Ali, who exhibited Islamic values in his daily life.

Jamil ran an Islamic-based early child education centre. He also doubled as a parttime ustad – while I was a reporter for an English daily.

Jamil told me, he had spent some time in New Zealand, hired by a local beef importer. His job was to slaughter cattle according to Islamic rites. Jamil’s passion for competitive sports was legendary. He told me he had the opportunity to play rugby with New Zealanders, Fijians, Australians, and Samoans.

From time to time, when Jamil and I talked on the phone or met casually, we would exchange notes on world religions. We spoke so much on Islam, Christianity, and other faiths, not realising, we were actually delving into the study of “comparative religion”.

The azan
Jamil once played an anonymous role in helping me write one of my stories. He transcribed for me the Arabic words of the Muslim call to prayer or the azan, as we know it. I had planned to use the words of the azan as the opening lines, for my special Merdeka feature story which I was assigned to write in 2007. It was the year when Malaysia celebrated 50 years of Independence, and my newspaper embarked on publishing a series of feature articles as a “run-up” to the big day.

The subject matter given to me was “the demographic face” of the country. Malaysia, as we know is a cacophony of diverse races with each race professing its own faith – everything from Islam to Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, the Bahai faith, Jainism, and Atheism.

Atheism? Yes! Even an atheist will scream “OMG” when he or she sees a white figure around the window at night … no?

In my story-telling, apart from the azan, I included the liturgical chorales from the other vibrant congregations of Asia’s living faiths; the sedate drone-like chanting of Buddhist monks, the resonant ringing of pooja bells in Hindu temples, the oceanic echoes from conch shells, and of course — the organ’s microtonal strains lending fervour to the quaint and upbeat Ave Maria.

I attempted to tell my story as lived and celebrated daily by the people of Malaysia, through the chanting of their sacred anthems and canticles: the beating of Indian drums and Oriental gongs and the sight of spiralling plumes of incense and camphor rising heavenwards.

And amid all these renditions and redolence — the azan’s rallying cantor from the minaret, rising to a crescendo and symphonising a combined potpourri of invocations from a multi-religious and spirited citizenry.

Satisfied with what I had written, I dispatched my story to the editor’s desk. Of course, there was this gnawing sense that any foreign word or paragraph in the story would beep red on the editor’s radar.

It did!

Editor: What is the azan doing in your story?

Me: Why, is anything wrong with that?

Editor: Precisely, that is the point. I do not read Arabic and I will not know if everything is right with it.

I then took out Jamil’s photo in which he was dressed in his ustad attire and donning a white skull cap.

Showing it to him, I said: “This guy wrote it. He is a part-time ustad and a certified slaughterer with a beef-exporting company in New Zealand.

No further questions were asked. And the story went to print.

It was published under the heading “Enduring Expressions of Faith”. I liked the headline.

However, the long odyssey of my “azan story” did not end there. It continued to endure, creating a little ripple by winning an award offered by the Europe-based International Union of the Press. My story earned the laureate position under the “Interfaith Category”, beating all other entries that were submitted by the rest of the world.

Of course, I am grateful to Jamil for this little “award-winning triumph”.

Just as I was concluding this eulogy, the call to the day’s Zohor prayers rolled out from the TV. That gave me an opportune moment to raise a fitting salute to Jamil. In the hushed stillness, I hailed: “May God look with favour upon your soul. May it be placed among His favoured saints in Jannah. Rest in peace my friend, Jamil”.

Joseph Masilamany is a veteran journalist residing in Borneo. He is very much an interfaith person at heart. His favourite Gospel story is the encounter between Jesus and the chucklesome, self-confessing Samaritan woman. He finds their debate at Jacob’s well deeply engaging. But when real-life debates get too hot, Masilamany retreats to writing compelling poems on socialist persuasions.