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Mentega Terbang (Butterfly, Malay; 2021)
Writer, Director: Khairi Anwar

This release was released about two years ago and won international awards for its efforts. Unfortunately, it became famous in Malaysia only after the local artists guild decided to make a police report about it as they deemed that it offended the sensitivities of Malay Muslims in Malaysia. Many of its dialogues appeared like they were ridiculing Islam, it is alleged.

The Malaysian certification board had no control over Malaysians viewing it as it was broadcast online on a webpage. Since the recent brouhaha, even the said screening platform decided to stop having it on its accord.

We all grew up wondering about death in our formative years. With all the cultural-religious rituals associated with funerals and the stories related to the soul and the afterlife, we naturally assumed that God and religions give a kind of shield to protect us from untimely death. This internal squabble to choose the 'right' religion to fulfil our spiritual needs was important in my moulding into an adult.

Naturally, when Aisya, a 16-year-old Malay girl has an ailing mother with terminal pancreatic cancer, the thought that her mother may be gone at any moment must be daunting. The zest to save her mother from death or what would happen to her mother prompted her to venture into other holy scriptures to understand death. However, her parents, strict Muslims, were quite relaxed with their daughter reading other religious books about it. 

Aisya is excited about reincarnation and rebirth as preached in Buddhism and Hinduism. The idea of her deceased mother hanging around her as a bug or a butterfly in her next birth excites her. Her journey of discovery is eased with the presence of her neighbour, the dog-walking Auntie Esther, who helps with Christian scriptures. Then her classmate, Suresh, gives the Hindu-Buddhist perspective of life and death. To pour cold water into her burning passion is her busybody neighbour, Uncle Kassim, who is everywhere to remind her to stick to her religion and beware of the other practitioners who are out to sway her away from the one true path.

On her path to self-discovery, Aisya is seen patting and getting cosy with a dog, hanging around doing her school homework with her male classmate in her bedroom and saying that she has no qualms about eating pork. The scene that probably took Malaysians by storm must be the one where Aisya's father offers her the choice to embrace another religion if she pleases to come to terms with her mother's death. Even in the last scene at the mother's burial ground, Aisya thinks her mother is with her as a butterfly that lands on the tombstone. That is reincarnation.

History suggests the world of Islamic civilisation around Babylon and Basra was the envy of the learned. Its coffee houses with its intellectual discourses were to die for at the time when Europe was in Dark Ages. The Mutazilites' brand of Islam of the day encouraged such discussions in search of the truth. All that came to a grinding halt when the Ash'arites became the dominant force. Open Aristotelian type of arguments about religion was put to an end. A grown adult with his faculties intact has no willpower but to leave his life to a group of leaders who herd people into submission by invoking the name of God for their own nefarious intentions.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.