Journaling during Ramadan – notes from Malaysia’s coastal state of Terengganu
What a road trip with five young Malaysian Muslim women during Ramadan taught me about hospitality, freedom and everyday devotion.
When news broke of attacks on Iran and the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, I was in Terengganu, a coastal state of Malaysia along the South China Sea. In the global conversations about Islam that week, I saw many of its stereotypical portrayals. Yet the Islam I was witnessing around me looked very different.
Over 95 percent of Terengganu’s population is Malay – and by law, all ethnic Malays are defined as Muslims.
It was my first time experiencing the fasting month of Ramadan in an Islamic country. Ramadan had transformed the very rhythm of the state. It was a time not just to pray and remember the divine, but to reflect on the values of Islam -- what service and being a good human being feel like.
Five young women -- anak dara, in colloquial Malay -- mostly in their twenties, accompanied me on this journey. We discovered unexpected lessons along the way.
An interfaith lesson without the theory
We started on a Friday from Bangi, a town near Kuala Lumpur where the National University of Malaysia – Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) -- is situated, after the afternoon prayers and wrapping up our work.
The first stop and night stay was to be in Kuantan — a coastal city about two hours away but KL’s infamous traffic snarls delayed us by several more.
The young women, seated tightly together, remained joyful. When a big lorry pulled up next to us in the slow-moving traffic, Amirah, who took on the responsibility of driving us, laughed, looked at me and said, “See, now you have shade.”
Phones came out to connect to Bluetooth and share music. Bollywood was what they wanted. Something about my presence, my Indian roots, made the moment even sweeter – it was an instant glue between our cultures and set the tone for the rest of the journey.
They knew Shah Rukh Khan’s films by heart. They adored Kajol, sang Shreya Ghoshal’s songs, and had picked up Hindi along the way. Ayunni said she had watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gam six times, as she recollected many of those moments beaming.
I found myself discovering new joy in films I had long forgotten. The songs they played were an instant reminder of a life once lived in Delhi, and of the common threads and friendships now forming. I never knew Shah Rukh Khan could be such a bridge.
Differences in dress, age, religion, were instantly set aside.
Fatin, the youngest, sitting right at the back, suddenly shouted, “Hari Raya!” It was a new word for Eid for me. For them, hari simply means “day” -- festival day. For me, Hari is another name for God.
That was a signal to shift the music to the mood and solemnness of Hari Raya–themed songs. We shifted to Malaysian singers such as Aina Abdul, Anuar & Elina and Siti Nurhaliza; combined in these were solemn notes of prayer, of fasting, and also the joyful music of homecoming for Hari Raya -- a time when families travel to be with their loved ones.
A culinary adventure full of love and belonging
They were all conscious of my Jain vegetarianism -- no eggs, no meat, no fish. On the way, we stopped at a roadside stall making lemang, a traditional Malay dish in which rice mixed with coconut milk is packed into hollow bamboo sticks, lined with banana leaves, and slow-cooked over open flames.
When it is ready, the bamboo is split open and the rice -- fragrant and slightly smoky -- is sliced into soft rounds. It is usually eaten with meat dishes.
In Kuantan we settled into a large house right by the South China Sea for the night. It was here that they would break their fast. I would eat the lemang with peanut butter. They would watch, unfazed.
Shah Rukh Khan’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham kept them up for quite a bit of the night — their nth time watching, laughing and enjoying each bit.
As we headed out for Terengganu the next morning -- a beautiful drive with tall mountains and tropical trees on either side and a long coastal stretch -- we sang and hummed to Bollywood again.
I had hoped to get my coffee, little realizing that restaurants are closed during the day and open only later in the evening during Ramadan. It showed me how little I understood the rhythm of the month. But the young women would not give up -- calling up restaurants and finally stopping at a 7-Eleven for an instant coffee.
We walked through a coastal morning bazaar where women sold local food items from small stalls. Malaysians and others travel to Terengganu for its fresh fish and other coastal cuisine. With a largely meat-eating population, vegetarian options were not much of a choice.
They found for me Ketayap -- a roll filled with warm palm sugar – crunchy and delicious.
My culinary restrictions remained a priority for them. Later, on the highway, they kept peering into a row of roadside stalls that usually sell freshly boiled sweet corn, another of the small pleasures of Terengganu. Most were closed, but they refused to give up until they spotted one that was open.
At one point, they sat fasting in a hot car while another young woman drove me to a different market in search of tofu.
This, I thought, is what an interfaith exchange looks like -- without any theorizing on pluralism.
Global, devout and independent
In many Western media portrayals, women in headscarves are often depicted as oppressed. But the women I traveled with were confident, funny and entirely at ease in the world. They drove fearlessly across the highway for hours, went out late at night (much past my bed time) to Ramadan buffets that only begin after sunset, and bantered about American pop culture.
Shahadah’s cat is named Sam Winchester, after the younger brother of the lead character in Supernatural. In so many ways, they were no different from young women in the United States or anywhere else -- at once devout, educated, global and fiercely independent.
Evenings were for walking through the Ramadan bazaar — a vast food market filled with every culinary delight, though mostly meat. I held Zafira’s hand as we moved through the stalls, almost dizzy from the swirl of colors, smells, sounds and sights. It was very new for me and she held on to me.
Enticing drinks in all kinds of colors were lined up in large plastic dispensers; meat sizzled on grills; foods I could not recognize were being fried in large woks; and some stalls were making bread -- likely stuffed with meat.
I couldn’t find anything vegetarian and the group searched with me, scanning for what I could eat. “This one has no meat,” said one pointing to a dessert called ‘tako.’ I checked and re-checked. “You’re sure -- no animal fats?” And they answered confidently, “No, only coconut milk, corn starch and, pandan leaf water.” I also got Kuih Dangai – a dessert made with wheat flour, grated coconut, salt and sugar
Their care was in being vigilant about my vegetarianism and in so many other small ways. Shahadah, already light-headed from fasting, carried my bag despite my protests.
“What would my mother say?” she insisted.
Abraham and the Stranger
During that same week, I happened to be reading scholar Iqbal Akhtar’s reflection on a book about hospitality in the Abrahamic traditions, Welcoming the Stranger: Abrahamic Hospitality and Its Contemporary Implications.
He writes, “In an era increasingly defined by ‘Babel Syndromes’ -- where opposing sides of theological and political debates fail to listen to one another -- a timely new volume offers a profound corrective.”
The book shares that in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic tradition, the stranger is loved and that hospitality also means justice. In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad established the Suffa, a space adjacent to his mosque for strangers and the poor.
The book does not leave out faith traditions outside the Abrahamic. An epilogue in the book describes the dharmic traditions of India and a remarkable “positive history of welcoming religious refugees, such as Jews and Zoroastrians.”
I liked how Akhtar explained the history of hospitality -- as not a “merely a social nicety,” but as “an act of spiritual subversion against hatred.” He points out, “When we welcome the stranger, we do not just change their life; we encounter the divine in the face of the ‘other.’”
The writing resonated with me. My experience during the journey reminded me often of the Sanskrit phrase I grew up with: Atithi devo bhavo -- the guest is divine.
Batik and social class
It was an educational visit. My host Tan Sri Noor Azlan Ghazali, Director, Malaysian Inclusive Development and Advancement Institute (MINDA-UKM) had wanted me to learn, teach and also get a full experience of “Malaysia Truly Asia.”
Part of the visit was devoted to learning from Terengganu’s museums. The exhibits that stayed with me were about batik. The art of batik goes back to the pre-Islamic days of the Srivijaya empire that ruled the region. In later centuries, the downturn following World War II moved it to peninsular Malaysia from Java, and one of those places was Terengganu.
The threads of this story travel to India. The silk for the batik sarongs came from India and was mostly for royalty.
But there is more woven into the fabric. What was more illuminating was learning from the young women about how batik lives in social and devout life.
The women explained which side of the cloth faces outward, how certain patterns signal class, and how fabric carries unspoken codes. Families preserve their ancestral batik as treasures.
Batik is not merely aesthetic; it is social text.
We ended back at Kuantan at sunset – at an R&R – with vast, open green spaces, where families spread plastic mats on the grass. It was a beautiful moment -- serene, calm, reflective.
Everyone eats quietly. Eating feels almost like praying.
As a religion editor, my head was back in my job and planning the religion angles of Iran coverage. I slacked with my colleagues back in New York and Boston, as we headed back and I read up on the global conversations on Islam, identity, power, hijab and so much more.
Nothing matched. I had just experienced a faith in which piety and pop culture coexisted seamlessly; where women moved with independence while wearing their religious garb; where differences dissolved; and where affection replaced an overplay of politeness.
I had encountered something quieter but far more enduring: the everyday grace of lived faith.
And now I’m back at work and my work on misinformation continues. In an upcoming discussion, along with Professor Noor Azlan Ghazali and Malaysia’s well-known media personality, Nazri Kahar, I will share why we need scholars to write at a time of so much misinformation.
This is a lovely piece! In these times to receive such stories!
So much wisdom embedded in your telling about your Ramadan experiences, and I love how you brought us into the shared search for food that you could eat. And yes, such a contrast from your lived experiences in Malaysia to the rapid escalation to hatred of the "other" in the midst of war. Thank you.