It’s been a mad, mad few months. The SilatMelayu.Com (SMC) website has become a crawling baby. We currently have more than 160 members. Not much, I know, but it is a start. So far, I’ve uploaded 82 articles about silat and generally made my administrator and partner’s (Norazlan Abdul Wahid) life a living hell.

SMC has members from all over the world. Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, America, Canada, United Kingdom, Ukraine… the list just keeps growing. What’s interesting is that although the site is getting close to 900 hits a day, there’s only one website that’s linking to us.

Being an SMC member has its benefits, as they have already discovered. Early on, I felt that visitors need good reasons to register as members. So, I thought, maybe they like free stuff, just like me! So, I started sending out ebooks at the end of every month.

The first sendout at the end of 2006 was the Silat Melayu Ezine (all four issues!) and the second was the PENDEKAR Magazine Covers Issues 1-10 at the end of January 2007. And waiting in my inbox, is the SILAT TUA: THE MALAY DANCE OF LIFE preview which will be sent out to all SMC members tomorrow. So, if you haven’t registered yet, do so quickly!

Anyway, take your last looks at SMC because in a couple of months, the layout will be drastically different. The design change we’ve been promising for months is finally going to take place.

The latest issue of SENI BELADIRI magazine has hit the stands! Of interest in this issue include:

Feature
Haji Ismail, better known as Tok Sidang demonstrates the Tari Pedang (Sword Wardance) and reveals the life of his master, Haji Hamid Hamzah. Although a small man, Haji Hamid was hot-tempered and feared no one. In Tok Sidang lie many of his secrets…

Ultimate Warrior
A change of heart from the Ministry of Youth and Sports? A ring battle that culmianates in a Tomoi win.

Keris Anak Alang or the Keris Bahari
The Keris Anak Alang was once used for execution. Read an account of one such execution.

A couple of months ago, a local skeptic named Syed Abdullah Al-Attas (or better known now as ‘Uncle’ of Seekers fame)who does research into the paranormal issued an open challenge (under his terms) to martial art masters in Malaysia. He dared anyone who claimed to have ‘pukulan jauh’ or spiritual attacking abilities to ‘throw him’, if they were truly sincere. ‘Throw me’, he said defiantly. ‘I have no doubt this ability doesn’t exist as they say it does’.

Uncle initially made his challenge to all spiritual healers to magically attack him (or as the Melayu call it, ’santau’) and later repeated the ultimatum to silat masters within the pages of SENI BELADIRI. Several months passed without any word. However, just before Aidilfitri, I received a curious SMS from one ‘Pembela Melayu’ (Defender of Melayu) asking for the contact information of Azlan Ghanie, the publisher of the magazine.

Pembela Melayu explained that he wanted to accept Uncle’s challenge, but under his own conditions. I replied to him with the information he wanted and thought nothing more. A few weeks later, I SMSed Pembela Melayu again to inquire what the progress was and he replied with, “InsyaAllah, negotiations are under way”.

A week later, I asked for an update. After a long silence, he replied that it was never going to take place because Uncle couldn’t agree to his terms. His exact SMS follows:

“Syarat berlawan tidak dapat dipenuhi olehnya.kerana utk mempelantingkanya tanpa syarat.sedangkan bagi pihak saya utk merasai pukulan jarak jauh(jurus) semestinya berlawan(musuh). Kalau sekadar duduk diam tanpa bermusuh tidak menjadi.kerana hakikat ilmu ini melawan musuh agama,negara,diri dsbnya. ‘tanyalah pada org2 tua ttg 13 may’!. Terimakasih.”

Translation:
“He couldn’t meet my condition to fight. He wants me to spiritually repel and throw him without any condition. On my part, in order for him to feel my ‘jurus’ or distance attacks, it has to be in opposition (an enemy). If he simply stands there with no intention of being offensive, it will not work. The truth of this knowledge is to defend against the enemies of religion, the nation, the self and so on. ‘Ask the elders of May 13th!’ Thank you”

For those of you who want to know more about the 13th May Incident, click here. The insinuation is that much of these types of methods were used by silat masters who were involved in the Incident. For those who are still confused as to what is being alluded to by ’spiritual defence’, here are some video clips that claim to depict it (the videos that follow are NOT those of ‘Pembela Melayu’, just a generic example).

If you haven’t registered for membership at SILAT MELAYU.COM, better do so quickly and get your friends to do so too. To thank our registered members for their loyalty and patience in waiting for the improvements to the website we’ve promised, on the 18th of November 2006, all members will receive SILAT MELAYU Ezine Issues 1-4 which we published late last year for free.

Next FREE sendout to all members: A free 16-page primer to Silat in Malaysia, a good beginner’s guide to anyone wanting to know about Malaysian Melayu martial arts.

I’ve always wondered who reads my blog entries. I know TuanWujian is a mutual supporter. We often comment on each others’ blogs just to keep out esteem up I also know quite a few of the Bukit Mas group drop in once in awhile. But other than that and the comments sections, I don’t really know who likes the torture of reading Silat Melayu: The Blog [SMB] (I’m considering a name change after Aidilfitri. Rest assured, there will be a competition and I’m wondering what to offer as the sole prize).

To quench my curiousity, I installed a statistics tracker and got a nice map detailing where you guys are. Today, I even got a visit from Norway, I think.

To all SMB fans and visitors, Ramadhan al-Mubarak and Eid al-Mubarak. I implore your forgiveness for any wrongdoing or if my writings have hurt any of your feelings. I’m going to balik kampung and aim to drop by a few silat masters’ homes in the process. Maybe I’ll have some new stuff to share with you when I get back.

Wassalam!

Many of my conversations with pesilat overseas center around the lack of reading material on Silat Melayu and the Melayu culture. Well, to address that, we have planned a product section for the Silat Melayu.Com (SMC) website. However, it will take awhile to set up since we’re still waiting for our various products to be confirmed.

In the meantime, we’ve set up a temporary site at Silat Products. For now, it only contains referrals to other sites that sell the items in question, but soon, SMC will have its own shop and its own products for Silat Melayu fans.

Visit Silat Products here.

Between the 15th and 17th September 2006, there was a martial tournament festival titled Ultimate Warrior which was held at Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur. Although I didn’t get to go, but several friends did, who reported that it was a dismal outing. There were separate tournaments for Karate, Silat, Taekwondo and Aikido (?!!) and one ‘freestyle’ one that employed kickboxing regulations.

Someone recently uploaded a clip of one of these freestyle bouts on YouTube. I’ve included the video below and added a commentary on the whole tournament, translated from http://silatmelayu.blogspot.com (our namesake on another blog provider) written by its blogger, Mat Silau. Enjoy.

“I  was fortunate enough to watch this tournament on the second day. The prelimenary bouts were held the night before. Although it was drizzling, the martial arts fans who crowded Dataran Merdeka wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“Approximately 16 fighters made it through the prelims. Some even pulled out because of injuries. None of them were in any identifiable style uniform except for the Muay Thai fighters who had boxing shorts on. Some fighters who were probably from kickboxing and wushu styles wore them as well. Two fighters who could have been pesilat wore black silat-like trousers. Some even wore white taekwondo/karate-like trousers.

“There wasn’t much information offered on the breakdown of the tournament. From my observations, there were no weight categories. In fact, in one of the bouts, one fighter actually pulled out because of a weight mismatch. Elbows and knee attacks were also barred which led to one elbower being disqualified.

“The fights were pretty uninteresting since the fighters were hesitant and some of them were equally winded. Most of them resorted to leg attacks even though quite a few fighters employed takedowns. I saw little of hand attacks, probably because of the discomfort of wearing boxing gloves.

“The Muay Thai fighters seemed to have an advantage since more often have experience in full contact bouts wearing boxing gloves. This advantage saw that the last two fighters who moved up to the final round were Muay stylists”.

Speaking of Buah Pukul and numbers in the names of arts, here’s a video taken from the Seni Silat Gayang Lima blog.

Just click on the picture below to stream the video.