A taste of Asia in Ramadan
Cairo’s Nasr City has become a centre of Malaysian, Indonesian, and Thai cuisine
Some five years ago, Rahim and his wife Julia came from Malaysia to Cairo with the plan to spend eight years in Egypt while their daughter Aisha studied medicine at Assiut University. The family’s move was designed to spare separations and to economise on travel fares that would otherwise have been necessary for family gatherings.
Having left behind their small businesses in Malaysia, Rahim and Julia decided they needed a stable income to help eke out their savings. Cooking and selling inexpensive meals to the large community of Malaysian students attending Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Rahim said, seemed an obvious choice. His wife is an excellent cook, and he is skilled in business management.
Nasr City already had many stalls or small shops offering simple, low-budget meals for Southeast Asian students clustering in the dorms of their university or in small apartments across the neighbourhood. However, Rahim said that having taken a walk around Al-Hayy Al-Sabei (the Seventh District) he decided that the already existing restaurants or stalls were busy enough to allow for a new operation to be introduced.
Finding the ingredients for traditional Malaysian dishes was not always easy or affordable. It is hard to find the pandan leaves required for the Nasi Lamak dish, for example, which is made of rice soaked in coconut oil and steamed with pandan leaves and then wrapped in banana leaves with cucumbers, hardboiled eggs, fried anchovies, and shrimp paste, all with chili sauce.
Coconut oil and Malaysian spices are not easy to find in Cairo either. Rahim had to count on visits from friends and acquaintances to bring him essential ingredients for his small store for a couple of years. But then he and Julia got more acquainted with the range of vegetables and spices available in Egypt and started improvising with what was available, “something that all people do with all recipes,” he said.
Whatever he offered tasted authentic enough to please the palates of the young Malaysian men and women who sought a taste of home in Egypt. The dishes he made caused him to be in demand as the permanent cook at an inhouse restaurant in an apartment building dedicated to Malaysian students in Nasr City.
Rahim and Julia provide their services for those living in this building, as well as for other Malaysian students and Southeast Asian students, among them Indonesians and Thais. There are also some Egyptian students who attend Al-Azhar and want to get a taste of Southeast Asian cuisine.
Malaysian, Indonesian, and Thai food may seem quite similar to each other. Their mix of steamed or fried rice with chicken, beef, or fish simmered or stewed in aromatic spices could well be a feature of all three cuisines. Not many will instantly tell the difference between a Malaysian Nasi Lamak and an Indonesian Nasi Uduk. For Malaysians and Indonesians, however, the difference is very clear.
Youssef, an Indonesian student who arrived in Egypt to study Islamic Sharia law at Al-Azhar University in 2018, can tell the difference. However, for him opting for a Malaysian or a Thai meal is a favourited choice, even if they are different.
“Egyptian food is also about rice, vegetables, and chicken or beef, but the ways of cooking are very different,” he said. There are also differences not just between Malaysian and Indonesian cuisines, but also within Indonesia itself. The country is a vast archipelago of islands, and there is huge diversity among them, with each having their own dishes.
For Youssef, it is now easy to call up small restaurants offering Malaysian Nasi Lamak or Rendang, a spicy dish of meat cooked in coconut milk and chilies, or Indonesian Nasi Uduk and Pecel, a savoury vegetable salad. Another option is Nile, a Thai restaurant that serves these and Thai specialties including Wassermann curry, a dish of fried rice and chicken cooked with coconut cream and spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, and anise, that is very popular among Muslims in Thailand.
Haisham, a cook at Nile, said that using ingredients and spices common in the cuisines of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand was the key to the attraction of this restaurant among Southeast Asian students who like to gather for meals, especially in Ramadan.
“With rice, noodles, vegetables, and chicken and a range of spices, one cannot go wrong,” he said.
Haisham is a student who came from Indonesia to study Islamic Sharia at Al-Azhar and decided to get a job in order to help with his expenses while doing post-graduate studies. At Nile, he has had a closer encounter with other Southeast Asian cuisines.
Having come from Erbil in Iraq in 2015 to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar University, Idris has also learned more about Asian cuisines from Malaysia to Iraq. Putting aside the exotic dolma and other influences from Turkish cuisine, Idris saw similarities between the food of Erbil and that of the rest of South Asia and the Far East.
It was through the experience of frequenting the small Malaysian, Indonesian, and Thai restaurants that Idris came up with the idea of starting an unusual grill restaurant.
He opted for a model that all Asians could subscribe to in the form of Japanese takoyaki, essentially a setball-shaped Japanese snack made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special moulded pan. It is typically filled with minced shrimps, chicken, and green onion. “This is a favourite option for shared Ramadan meals, whether at a small restaurant or for deliveries,” he said.
This also inspired Suryana, another Indonesian student, who decided to start a small street food business to help with expenses while studying at Al-Azhar. Suryana’s Al-Haramine (two shrines) dish is made of fried chicken “in an Asian rather than the American version, as the spices are different,” he said.
Al-Haramine fried chicken is easy to match with local or Asian rice or noodles and vegetables, he said. It is popular with other students at Al-Azhar, including those from Europe or Africa.
According to Youssef, during the month of Ramadan there is always an appetite to share. Some go to one of the restaurants that have found the right mix to please everyone, while others eat at the dorm canteens or to the maaidat rahman, the Iftar meals set out for free at tables in the streets.
‘More than the flavour of Ramadan’
Al-Azhar professor of mass communication Mohamed Wardani talks about the need to better present Muslim communities across the world
On 11 April (10 Ramadan), the Muslim minority in India saw a new wave of persecution with the demolition of houses and shops that are mostly owned by Muslim Indians.
Members of this community have been complaining for years about the discrimination they suffer, and the international rights group Amnesty International has qualified the demolitions as unlawful and called for an investigation.
The report came fewer than two weeks after the US acknowledged that attacks on the Muslim minority of the Rohingya in the majority Buddhist Myanmar could amount to genocide and crimes against humanity.
The ordeal of Muslim minorities in India, Myanmar, China, and elsewhere have often been criticised by Al-Azhar, which has appealed to the governments concerned to end discrimination against and attacks on Muslim communities.
“Al-Azhar rightly refers to these people as ‘communities’ because this puts the emphasis on the fact that these are citizens of specific countries and they should be treated on an equal footing with everyone else,” said Mohamed Wardani, a professor of mass communication at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.
According to Wardani, perceptions are essential in improving the situation of Muslims in the many countries they live in around the world, whether in South Asia or elsewhere. To characterise these “communities” as “minorities”, he said, undermines the case for equal citizenship.
“The idea is to call for tolerance and coexistence of all people irrespective of their religion or race,” Wardani said. “Calling them minorities does not serve this cause of peaceful coexistence,” he added.
He said that the document on Human Fraternity and World Peace that was signed by top religious figures including Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb and Roman Catholic Pope Francis is designed to call for the peaceful coexistence of the followers of all faiths all over the world irrespective of the numbers of populations.
Al-Azhar has often issued statements condemning the attacks on and discrimination against Muslims in India, China, or Myanmar. According to Wardani, the wording of these statements has been inspired by the principle of coexistence.
This week, Al-Azhar reiterated the need for coexistence and respect of faith in a statement that it issued in reaction to riots that took place in Sweden upon an anti-Islam rally. The riots erupted after burnings of copies of the Quran by Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) Party.
Muslims who live in non-Muslim majority countries account for around one quarter of the over two billion Muslims around the world. They mostly live in India, Ethiopia, China, North and South America and Europe. The Muslims of North and South America are mostly immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants, from countries with Muslim-majority populations, mainly the Arab countries. This is not the case for the Muslims of Africa or Asia, who are mostly the descendants of converts who became Muslims centuries ago during the expansion of the Muslim world.
According to Wardani, there is a problem of perception if the word “minorities” is used for such people, especially if coming from a high-profile Islamic institution like Al-Azhar.
“As part of its overall commitments, Al-Azhar reaches out to Muslims all over the world in many ways, but this is done in view of the fact that these Muslims are citizens of their own countries,” he said. “The role of Al-Azhar is to bring awareness — not just of the problems that those Muslims could be facing, but also of the need of those Muslims to refrain from pursuing radical ideologies or behaviour that could be used by some as an excuse for Islamophobia.”
“As a result, Al-Azhar sends out delegations to many countries where there are Muslim communities, large or small, to help them get a flavour of the festivities of the holy month of Ramadan,” he added.
Wardani said that these delegations have a role beyond giving a colourful sense of the Muslim holy month. They also have a role in carrying the true image of Islam to the countries they go to.
“I think it is very important to stress that apart from the misconceptions that have been associated with the image of Islam, the essence of the religion is opposed to violence. Al-Azhar has produced a book of 100 questions about Islam in several languages to clarify any misreadings of Islam,” he said.
Carefully selected by Al-Azhar, the members of its delegations travel all over the world to present audiences with a taste of Ramadan through Quranic recitations and singing anashid, chants in which the singers express their love and admiration for the Almighty and the prophet of Islam.
These are designed to give a flavour of Ramadan to the populations of countries where the holy month is not widely observed.
Wardani said that the very thorough process of selecting the delegates was due to the need to present a correct image of Islam. “With all the harm that has been done due to extremist groups like the Islamic State (IS) group, Boko Haram, and other such extremists, there is a need to remind people that Islam is essentially about co-existence and never about violence,” he said.
He said that Al-Azhar has a large outreach scheme to communicate “its message of tolerance and co-existence” to Muslims all over the world irrespective of their populations. This should help in sharing the concepts of moderation and dispelling the calls for extremism, he added.
But “there is a real challenge” in seeing some Muslims listening to the call of radical groups who claim to be offering a true version of Islam. “Of course, there is also the disturbing challenge of Islamophobia that is often attributed to the extremist choices of some Muslims,” he added.
As part of this attempt to promote tolerance and moderation, Wardani said that Al-Azhar is offering Islamic teaching to over 38,000 students from over 100 countries. It also has delegations and institutes in over 60 countries that offer the teaching of moderate Islamic ideas, and it receives preachers from all over the world for training in Cairo.
“There is also the Website of Al-Azhar that offers information and a question and answer service and other forms of communication to all Muslims wherever they are in the world,” Wardani concluded.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 21 April, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Short link: