Enriching Life: Pride & prejudice
By Anandhi Gopinath
Bizedge

I was an impressionable, aspiring feminist in college when I first heard of Toni Kasim. She was running for election as an independent MP in Selayang and I recall feeling utmost respect for this amazing woman, who had dared to take such a bold step in our largely patriarchal political society. She must be really tall, I thought innocently, with a really husky voice so people could hear her.

This notion stuck with me somehow, so when I finally met Toni Kasim, I was stunned at the person in front of me. Toni Kasim is petite, with thick curly hair and a sweet voice that belies her age. Tucking a stray curl behind her ear, she bestows me with a 100-watt smile and tells me her story, which is truly inspiring.
Toni (short for Zaiton) Kasim is of course activist extraordinaire, best known for her work in the advancement of gender equality in Malaysia.

As she speaks about her childhood, it becomes clear that her choice of career is a reflection of her upbringing. A compassionate animal activist as a child, she recalls a trip to the Taiping Zoo, which resulted in a small-time SPCA exposé. “These two poor chickens were fed live to a python, and as the python wasn’t really ready to eat, the chickens just huddled in a corner, visibly terrified. I was furious — there must be a better way to die, even for a chicken!” relates Toni.

So the SPCA was called and after that, feeding times at Taiping Zoo became more humane.

Toni never quite grew out of that sense of needing to protect because she took on the job of fighting off boys who picked on girls in school too. This feisty girl eventually spread her wings to Adelaide to continue her studies, and her career in activism gradually found its footing. Living in a student house, she attended a talk on Third World debt situations and was hooked. As a member of Community Aid Abroad, Toni eventually became actively involved in its efforts to eradicate poverty.

As her sense of activism grew, her sense of ethnicity flourished as well. “I’ve always been a little lost ethnically — I was never Indian enough because I was Muslim and I was never Muslim enough because I was Indian. It was only as an adult that I learnt discrimination came from a lack of understanding what the blend meant. I gradually understood it and became intensely proud of the exotic blend of ethnicity and nationality I possessed,” says Toni.

She returned to Malaysia after 10 years, ready to start making her contribution to her homeland. Upon returning, she joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where she tackled land issues — a throwback to her days with Aid Abroad. Women’s rights, however, increasingly took centre stage and it was matter of time before she joined the services of the All Women’s Action Society (AWAM).
It was a fulfilling 3½ years for Toni as her encounters with other women, NGOs and policymakers pointed to the same gaping need for some sort of regulation to protect the rights of women and children. It soon dawned upon her that pursuing the cause from a political perspective would allow her to make a stronger stand.

This path that she took was possibly the most talked about in her career because she chose to stand as an independent candidate in the Selayang constituency in 1999. “God, that was an experience and a half! It’s what I’m most famous for, and what people still remember and ask me about,” she says, and I bashfully admit I’m guilty of the same thing.

Fighting from a gender platform, Toni drew a lot of attention to discriminatory laws, health issues, employment and wealth distribution. “I think my arguments were most unusual because it wasn’t electoral politics I was discussing — it was issue management and a lack thereof,” she says.
Her issue-based candidacy was what she says made the most difference to her because as an independent candidate, she had negotiating power and was standing for her own issues, not that of a political party. At a time of such political, social and economic vulnerability, making her decision to stand made it even more poignant and inspiring.

Toni admits she was occasionally terrified yet exhilarated at the same time, but it certainly paid off.

Issues she raised during her run also became hot topics — some of the more interesting ones were that of town planning, very much related to the constituency she ran for. “Girls I spoke to had the largest problems because of the lack of accessibility to the area. Boys were allowed to use motorcycles but girls had to walk, sometimes on lonely stretches, to catch a bus that may or may not come. When they are impeded like that in even getting to work, how can they be expected to excel? And honestly, roads and township are planned with motorists in mind, who are just 30% of the population. The remaining 70%, consisting mostly of women, children and senior citizens, are ignored,” she says.

She tells me of cases where girls crossing overhead bridges were raped or assaulted because they were invisible from the road. Fair enough. Few of us today would willingly allow a grandmother or a pregnant wife to climb all those steep stairs just to cross a road.

By raising such topics, Toni changed a lot of minds and gave politics a new face although she did not win the seat or stand in subsequent elections. “It became too much about money the next time around and I felt advocacy rights shouldn’t come with a price tag. In which case, the real victory for me was much larger — I had given so many people a voice. The lady who owned a stall at the market took my posters to stick them on the walls, as did the lady selling nasi lemak. They all felt empowered and appreciated and acknowledged. That, I think, is my greatest possible victory to date and the best thing I’ve been able to do,” she says proudly.

But her “victory” did not come cheap. “Even though I am a devout Muslim and I knew exactly what I was talking about, it didn’t stop a lot of people from trying to belittle me and my faith. The issues I fought for, especially from a woman’s rights perspective, were on a religious platform. The fact is the Islam I know is fair and equal. The Islam I saw being practised was very different. And once I said this in public, I was censured by all sorts of quarters, saying I was betraying my faith,” she says, clearly saddened by this part of her journey.

Toni now serves this cause under the Sisters In Islam (SIS) umbrella, which welcomes Muslim women who turn to it for protection. Every day, she sees women who are forcibly made second wives, who are raped and who are denied access to their children. SIS remains a safe place where they can talk and be heard and protected. With 800 women a year coming through her doors with such stories and many more too scared to do so, Toni is angry that people still say there aren’t any problems.

To correct this situation, Toni, who is now a freelance gender trainer, works with various community-level religious leaders like ulamaks and ustazahs in dealing with social issues that affect their communities. “As community leaders, they can’t afford to be indifferent to or unaware of AIDS, abuse or marital misconduct. They need to see the realities and how to address them in accordance with Islam,” she says.
Doesn’t sound like an easy job. “It’s not,” says Toni.

People tend to label and discriminate against based on appearance, so in jeans, shirt and dangling earrings, it’s obvious that Toni faces some level of resistance. “They start off like that, obviously wondering what someone who looks like me could possibly tell them about Islam. They come around eventually because they’re so distracted by what I have to say — they forget the colour of the face the information is coming from.”

It’s not always difficult, however. Toni also trains children and teenagers on how to identify symptoms of abuse or assault and how to go for help and on sex education and other essential living skills, which she says the public school system fails to teach. She says youths are generally more open to learning these skills and are far smarter and ahead of adults than we give them credit for. Reaching out into the heart of estates and cities, Toni finds young people with similar problems and a common disability to deal with them. Which explains her role of creating awareness of the network of support that exists and how to stay out of trouble in the first place.

She has also kept up with lobbying for gender equality and fairness on social, ethical, legal and economic platforms.

This sort of public education has been going on for years yet it’s well known how long it takes for mindsets and policies to change — or for their effects to be felt on the ground. Toni agrees, saying she may never see the fruits of her labour. “I’ve done the short-term contributions, taking raped girls to the hospital, battered wives to the clinic and calling the police on abused children. Although that definitely serves a purpose, the reward lies in its immediacy — when the affected woman or child says thank you right then, you know you’ve made a difference. But with public education, it’s long term and the effects are felt by a larger section of society. Sort of like treating the symptoms versus treating the disease,” she analogises.
I am by now speechless. I had no idea one woman could achieve so much or do so much for so many causes. “Women’s rights remain my key thrust because of something I learnt a long time ago. If women are empowered, the whole community eventually moves forward. It’s that simple because as the nucleus of a family and community, it makes no sense to sideline or ignore women. Why should a man make all the decisions?”

Toni remembers some teachings from her days with Aid Abroad: “When the women have to walk to a well to draw the water, why are men deciding where to dig the wells? Even Islam preaches fairness, and it bothers me that we’re forgetting to practise that tenet of the faith. As a Muslim, it’s a personal duty for me to fight this battle.”

Battles like this are commonplace, stemming from a lack of understanding both of Islam and the situations in which it should be practised.

After the interview is over, The Edge photographer Abdul Ghani Ismail, who was there listening, starts a discussion with Toni. I step out of the room for a moment and when I return, I find them engrossed in a theological discussion of the Hadith. They are clearly on opposing sides of the discussion, but Toni handles the exchange with aplomb, even when it is apparent that her knowledge of Islam is being put to the test. Ghani eventually leaves, satisfied that they’ve agreed to disagree.

Toni’s final comments tell me all I need to know about her convictions: “It’s not what you look like but what you think like. For all my modern values, I am deeply spiritual, and I do enough for what I believe in to sleep comfortably enough with my conscience at night. People who censure me should ask themselves if they can do the same thing.” That’s telling them.