ICH Courier

cross Malaysia’s villages and towns, the pulse of living heritage still reverberates in the beat of the rebab and gendang , in the dance of spirit and shadow. These traditions are not relics of a vanishing past; they are living expressions of artistry, memory, and belief. Within them dwell the soul of communities, the dignity of craft, and the continuity of meaning.

Yet their vitality is fragile. In recent decades, it has been weakened not only by modernisation and globalisation, but by something more insidious: the politics of culture and religion that decide which expressions are permissible, and which are not.

The Weight of Prohibition
Kelantan, once celebrated as the cradle of Malay performing arts, has long felt the chill of control. The Entertainment and Places of Entertainment Control Enactment of 1998 imposed sweeping prohibitions on Mak Yong , Wayang Kulit , Main Puteri , and Manora . Enforced in the name of moral discipline, the enactment declared these centuries-old performances un- Islamic. Rituals once held openly in villages were driven into silence. Artists who had carried ancestral lineages of song and story found themselves exiled from public life.

Two decades later, the ban on Mak Yong was officially lifted—under strict conditions. Performances had to be “syariah-compliant”; certain rituals were removed; performers and audiences segregated by gender. The art that re-emerged bore little resemblance to the form that once embodied myth and healing. What remained was performance without potency—beauty drained of its breath.
This contest over these traditions mirrors a deeper struggle: the meaning of Malayness itself. Will it remain plural, porous, and creative, or be confined within preive notions of purity? The erosion is not merely artistic; it is existential. A social fabric in which art, belief, and daily life once coexisted is slowly unravelling.

Faith, Fear, and Fatwa in Johor
Far to the south, another tradition bears the same weight of scrutiny. In Johor, Kuda Kepang —a trance dance of Javanese origin—has long been performed to honour the Wali Songo, the nine saints who spread Islam across Java through the arts. The dance embodies the syncretic spirituality of the Nusantara world.
Beginning in the early 2000s, a series of fatwa branded Kuda Kepang as haram , dismissing it as khurafat — superstition incompatible with Islam. These edicts do more than curtail performances; they cast a long shadow of hostility toward the tradition.

A form that once celebrated the spread of Islam now stands condemned in its name. The contradiction exposes a deeper disquiet: the uneasy boundary between religion as a source of cultural depth and religion as a force of erasure.

Misrepresentation and Moral Panic
Few traditions have been so persistently misrepresented as Kuda Kepang . Popular media often frames it through the language of fear: mistik and the supernatural. Such portrayals blur the line between mystery and menace. The word mistik, flung carelessly in sensational headlines, bears little relation to mysticism in its truer sense. It strips away the cosmological sophistication of the practice and replaces it with spectacle.
When the media sensationalises traditional arts such as Kuda Kepang , it feeds a cycle of fear and moral panic that justifies suppression. Over time, this distortion has given cover to religious authorities seeking to outlaw an art that once served as a vessel of Islamic teaching.
In truth, Kuda Kepang embodies the creative wisdom of Nusantara Islam, a tradition in which devotion and imagination were never at odds. To dismiss it as un-Islamic is to sever Islam from its own regional heritage—to deny a history in which faith and culture evolved together.

Cultural Politics and the Economics of Survival

Every prohibition carries an economic cost. When performances are banned, entire ecosystems collapse. Musicians, dancers, and storytellers lose not only their livelihoods but also their sense of worth. Apprenticeships fade. Craftsmanship declines. Micro-economies once sustained by village celebrations fall silent.
PUSAKA’s work in Kelantan and Johor grew out of this silence. Our principle is simple: safeguarding must begin with the people who embody the tradition. It must restore their dignity, agency, and right to benefit from the arts they keep alive.
Through long-term partnerships, PUSAKA supports living masters of Wayang Kulit, Mak Yong, Main Puteri, Manora, and the Javanese performance traditions of Johor. We combine ation with performance, research with community revitalisation, and create new avenues for income through cultural tourism, craft-making, and intergenerational training. To safeguard heritage is not to indulge nostalgia; it is to sustain a living economy rooted in knowledge and artistry.

Towards a More Inclusive Cultural Future
What is at stake in these struggles is nothing less than Malaysia’s cultural future. When traditions are censored in the name of faith, what is lost is not only art but the capacity for wonder, empathy, and plural ways of seeing. Each silenced performance represents a form of unlearning—a fracture in the continuity of memory.
True safeguarding demands more than preservation. It requires rethinking how religion, law, and governance relate to culture—not as rivals, but as partners in nurturing diversity. It calls for recognition that culture, when allowed to flourish, sustains both spirit and survival.
In the revival of living arts across Kelantan and Johor, one can sense a quiet defiance. Each performance is an act of remembrance and renewal. Heritage does not endure by being frozen in time; it endures through those who continue to shape it with imagination and courage.
The future of Malaysia’s intangible heritage depends on such acts of persistence—on reimagining safeguarding as a continuum of faith, creativity, and community. It is, finally, a living dialogue between past and future, between what we inherit and what we choose to become.