Project Muhibbah

For my Project Muhibbah I interviewed my mom. Her name is Jamnah bt. Jaafar and she was born in 10 May 1955. It is very common for her to celebrate alot of festive season at her kampung with alot of people from different races.

Q: What is muhibbah?
A: Oh, it is simple. Muhibbah is the spirit of different races living in harmony. No hard feelings lah.

Q: What do you think about different races living together in your kampung during you were young?
A; Well, during my times, there were not really many chinese and indian living in my kampung. Majority were Malay. There is some places that have different concentration of races. The chinese in Perak are always concentrated at Bota Perak, and the indian were always at the estets. Well, this is because during the 60's, the effect of British's invasion were still felt.

Q: Then, what builds up the spirit of muhibbah if none of the different races cannot meet each other?
A: Who said like that? We can always spend our time at school together because school is the place where every people from different races come to learn. School is the main element that develop the spirit of muhibbah. We always celebrated alot of cultural festival together in school for example 'Gong Xi Fat Choi Peringkat Sekolah','Hari Raya Peringkat Sekolah', and 'Deepavali Peringkat Sekolah'. Well, we only celebrated it in a moderate maner between us including the pupils and teachers. But the climax of the muhibbah spirit is the Independence Day that is always celebrated grandly.

Q; Talking about Independence Day, how was it during the old days?
A; Since I have celebrated day 54 times in my life I would say during the old days it were always celebrated with high spirit. Every races will join together and come to the venue where the Independence Day were held to shout 'merdeka!!!!' gracefully. And what makes me really happy is to see many different races grouping up like there were no differences betweenn us. That is nuhibbah. During the declaration of Independence in 1957, my father would buy a radio just to hear the live broadcasting when during that time I was only 3 years old.

That is all for my interview.

Thank you,

by Muhammad Takwa b. Amir