By day he is a BlackBerry-wielding computer analyst, but by night he destroys evil spirits using the Koran. Meet Mazlan Hakim, one of the new generation of Malaysia’s bomoh or witchdoctors.
A belief in the supernatural is widespread in Malaysia, but the practice has a different twist in the country where meddling with the occult is banned under Islam.
Mazlan Hakim is one of a new breed of bomoh who are educated, plugged-in to the modern world, and base their ghostbusting and healing on Islamic precepts instead of animist or otherworldly techniques.
PHOTO: AFP
The 56-year-old has been a bomoh for 30 years and unlike his non-Islamic counterparts who say they use demons known as jinn to do their bidding, he unleashes verses of the Koran to heal the sick and drive out evil spirits.
Mazlan looks like a typical executive as he sips a latte and checks e-mails on his cellphone. but his conversation is anything but routine.
“There are two types of jinn, the Muslim and the non-Muslim jinn,” he says. “The worst is the Muslim jinn as the other jinn come out of the body when I read passages from the Koran, but the Muslim jinn are immune to the Koran so I have to use my telekinetic abilities to pull the demon out.”
Mazlan says he has seen spirits since he was 15, but it was only after studying under religious scholars that he sharpened his mental powers and mastered telekinesis, which he claims to demonstrate by moving ping pong balls.
As he closes his eyes and his face scrunches in concentration, one white ping pong ball on the table somehow starts to tremble before moving slowly towards the other.
“This is not a parlor trick, I use my mind to chase out the spirits that have possessed people, this and the Koran give me success,” he says. “I have an almost 100 percent success rate and most of my clients are rid of the spirits or curses that plague them.”
Such claims would seem to be at odds with Islam, and the religious authorities in Malaysia who are notorious for their hardline enforcement of moral and spiritual rules.
Islamic bomoh are tolerated and even approved of, as an alternative to old-style black magic practitioners who still do a brisk trade with their concoctions and incantations. Magazines are filled with ads for “love potions” and elixirs to “stop wandering spouses” and “get even with the neighbors.”
Occult researcher Azizah Ariffin says Malays have long practiced the dark arts, originally derived from animist practices.
“Black magic has been a part of Malay life for many centuries as the village bomoh still held on to animist beliefs and rites of earlier religions to cure people,” she says. “Upon the arrival of Islam, the imam took care of the people’s spiritual welfare.”
“It was not until the 1980s that the Islamization of the bomoh began, and only recently have many witchdoctors begun using Koranic verses to cure people instead of rituals,” she says.
Azizah says old-style techniques like burning aromatic resin to summon the jinn and commune with spirits, and brewing up magical medicines, are now less in favor.
“The Islamic bomoh are the ones who use the Koranic verses and they do no harm but help to cure ailments and remove black magic spells. It is the bomoh who don’t use the Koran that are of concern because only some do good while others are the real black magic practitioners using animist rituals,” she says.
Cleric Mohammad Tamyes Abdul Wahid says although black magic is against Islam, it is widely used in Malaysia by those intent on controlling spouses or cheating others out of their possessions.
“We must differentiate between bomoh who use the words of the Koran and try to help heal people using these holy verses and phrases, compared to those who try to seek the help of jinn and ghosts to gain favor,” he says.
One example is Haron Din, a senior figure in the Islamic party PAS, who is one of the best-known bomoh and yet still part of the religious establishment. Three decades ago he opened a clinic outside Kuala Lumpur where he and a group of faith healers exorcise demons and spirits using Koranic verses, and hundreds still flock there every day.
RALLYING CRY: Former US president Donald Trump has raised suspicions about why Chinese migrants are going to the US and advocacy groups worry about his rhetoric The US Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday said that it sent 116 Chinese migrants from the US back home in the first “large charter flight” in five years. The flight, which happened over the weekend, comes as Chinese immigration has become the subject of intense political debate in the upcoming US presidential election. “We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. The department said it was working with China to “reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt
SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTE: The Philippines prefers to handle operations on its own, and would exhaust all possible options before asking for help, the military chief said The Philippines has turned down offers from the US to assist operations in the South China Sea, after a flare-up with China over missions to resupply Filipino troops on a contested shoal, its military chief said. Tensions in the disputed waterway have boiled over into violence in the past year, with a Filipino sailor losing a finger in the latest June 17 clash that Manila described as “intentional high-speed ramming” by the Chinese coast guard. The US, a treaty ally, has offered support, but Manila prefers to handle operations on its own, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief General Romeo Brawner told
Georgian student Elene Deisadze was browsing TikTok in 2022 when she stumbled across the profile of a girl, Anna Panchulidze, who looked exactly like her. Months later, after chatting and becoming friends, they both separately learned they were adopted, and last year decided to take a DNA test. It revealed they were not only related, but identical twins. “I had a happy childhood, but now my entire past felt like a deception,” said Anna, an English student at university. Far from an innocent case of separation at birth, the sisters are among tens of thousands of Georgian children who were
Prominent activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) yesterday asked for a lesser sentence in court after he earlier pleaded guilty in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case. Wong was one of 47 activists charged in 2021 under a Beijing-imposed National Security Law with conspiracy to commit subversion for their involvement in an unofficial primary. The activists were accused of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and topple the territory’s leader by aiming to win a legislative majority and using it to block budgets indiscriminately. Wong and 44 others admitted their liability or were convicted by the court. They could be sentenced to life in