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).

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.