Video: Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: Animal Stories, in Crisis

In this session, Teren Sevea discussed the question, “Can listening to these stories compel us to re-evaluate our academic approaches to religion and environments and the relationship of religious pasts and presents, in our time of crisis?”

Across the Indian Ocean world, communities have shared stories while encountering legacies of modern state-centrism, colonial capitalism, post-colonial environmental destruction, and religious reform. Muslim communities, among others, have shared stories of religious environments and animals that were inherited, transmitted, and reinterpreted in light of evolving ecological crises. These stories of multispecies ancestors and colonizers, Islamic conceptions of the environment, and narrative traditions of Islamic ecological care have confronted cycles of crises with visions of pasts and futures.

This is the third event is a six-part series that took place live on Zoom discussing religion in times of earth crisis.

Speaker: Teren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies

Moderator: Diane L. Moore, Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life

Teren Sevea is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Currently, Sevea is coordinating the project “The Lighthouses of God: Mapping Sanctity Across the Indian Ocean,” which investigates the evolving landscapes of Indian Ocean Islam through photography, film and GIS technology. For more information on the full series, "Religion in Times of Earth Crisis: A Series of Public Online Conversations," 

This event took place on February 12, 2024. 

SPEAKER: Harvard Divinity School. Religion in times of earth crisis, animal stories in crisis, February 12th, 2024.

DIANE MOORE: And welcome to our third in our six part series, religion in times of earth crisis. I'm Diane Moore. I'm the Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life here at Harvard Divinity School. And on behalf of myself and our Dean, Marla Frederick, it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's conversation.

This series is sponsored by Religion and Public Life, and co-sponsored with our colleagues at the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, The Center for the Study of World Religions here at the Divinity School, the Constellation Project, and Harvard X. I want to pause and give a land-- an acknowledgment of land and people.

So please join me for this. Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusetts the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge. We pay respect to the people of the Massachusetts tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself, which remains sacred to the Massachusetts people. Webinars like this have always multiple hands, minds, and hearts behind them.

And I want to thank my colleagues at Religion and Public Life, who behind the scenes, helped create this series, to advertise it, to help make sure that technical issues are taken care of. Rachelle Swe, Reem Atassi, Tammy Liaw, Natalie Campbell, from Religion and Public Life. Thank you my dear friends and colleagues. I also want to thank our Office of Communication, which have terrific job advertising this, and especially to the miraculous Kristie Welch who created the beautiful posters that animate our series.

And finally, Kama Lord, our IT specialist who helped make sure that we had the bandwidth to be able to run this program. This entire series was actually inspired, if you will, by our colleague, Mayra Rivera, who was the 2022 President of the American Academy of Religion, the professional association for scholars of religion. And she gave a remarkable presidential address entitled, what is the role of religion in times of catastrophe?

And Mayra offered the first in our series with some new work building on what she did in the presidential address, and also some new work. But I want to read from that presidential address, and also from a quote from Amitav Ghosh from the Nutmegs Curse, who also hasn't helped inspired our way of thinking about this series of conversations.

So this is from Mayra Rivera's 2022 presidential address. We need a more capacious sense of collectivity that can only emerge when we are willing to honor our stories and tell the truth about injustices that have shaped both environmental devastation and responses to it. A world of our many worlds. And this from Amitav Ghosh. This is the great burden that now rests upon writers, artists, filmmakers, and everyone else who is involved in the telling of stories, to us falls the task of imaginatively restoring agency and voice to non-humans.

As with all the most important artistic endeavors in human history, this is a task that is at once aesthetic and political. And because of the magnitude of the crisis that besets the planet, it is now freighted with the most pressing moral urgency. And now it is my great warm honor to introduce Teren Sevea, our speaker for the evening.

Teren is the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Assistant Professor of Islamic studies here at Harvard Divinity School. He's a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia, and he received his PhD in history from the University of California in Los Angeles. Before joining HDS he served as Assistant Professor of South studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps, and Guns in Islamic Malaya, Cambridge University Press 2020, which received the 2022 Benda Prize, awarded by the Association of Asian Studies. Sevea is also edited Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia. He is currently completing a second book entitled Singapore Islam: The Prophet's Port and Sufism Across The Oceans, and very relevant to our presentation this evening.

He's working on his third monograph provisionally entitled Animal Saints and Sinners: Lessons on Islam and Multispeciesism from the East. And now I will turn it over to you, Professor Sevea, to offer your presentation for the evening entitled Animal Stories in Crisis. and thank you so much for being with us.

TEREN SEVEA: Thank you so much, Diane, and wanted first to begin by thanking the organizers. I mean and please forgive me if I'm not naming all of you. Diane, Rachelle, Reem, who are here. Thank you so much for having me and putting all this together. I also want to thank my colleagues, partly, who spoke before me. Mayra Rivera and Dan McKanan for laying out for the matter what has been-- what would really-- I hope to carry on in this conversation.

I mean for the matter, Mayra Rivera's work, I think, as Diane pointed out really kind of reminds us of the need to rework our methods of even approaching the world. Reminding us of some of how some of our methods have fallen short, how our scholarly concepts or disciplinary structures in her words often extricate people from their environments.

Now one of the things that Dan's paper last week was really pushing us up into thinking of relationships with environments, relationships with more than human neighbors, relationships with ancestors, talking with sacred Groves, and how for that matter Groves, trees, for that matter were very much generational and needed to be understood in that way. Now I must say that coming after my colleagues, Mayra Rivera and Dan McKanan,

I feel quite daunted coming after their papers. But let me-- and especially, I'm going to start by saying that I'm also-- while the paper last week was really positioning us in our setting in the Boston backyard. Now I'm really going to take us to a different part of the world today.

And one of the things that I like beginning with, and I hope everybody's fine, is with maps. And with that I'm going to shift our attention to-- oh, sorry. I hope the-- excuse me. I hope the PowerPoint presentation is coming up.

DIANE MOORE: Yes, it is. You're good.

TEREN SEVEA: OK.

DIANE MOORE: This is great.

TEREN SEVEA: Thank you. Please do tell me if anything messes up in the process. Now, I'm going to take us, of course, I'm going to take us from the East Coast further East on this map, and hope the arrow is working. I'm taking us to the Malay Peninsula here, and partly to this part of the world. And our story today, I mean, the story I'm going to tell today is really beginning in this province of Kedah.

This region of Kedah in what is present day, West Malaysia. So in 1957, hundreds of believers were lining up daily in a village in Kedah to collect and drink the bathwater of an infant. Now this infant was believed and widely believed by these believers to be a Karamat. And the term, Karamat, itself comes from the Arabic term, Karamah. Now Karamat means miracle, miracle worker, saint.

Now it's believed in 1957 that this infant was a peculiar saint. And he-- this infant lived in a village that was 18 miles away from the capital city of the region of Kedah. Now the name of this infant is hard to trace at the moment but he was the grandchild of a human villager named Saad bin Haji Yusuf.

Now Saad's grandson was peculiarly miraculous in the sense that when he took a baths, the particles of his body that mixed into the water were believed to have such a talismanic quality that pilgrims from afar were lining up to collect this bath water for consumption, and for conservation, and for distribution later since it was talismanic water.

Now Saad's grandson was a three feet long snake. Now to be precise, it was a-- Saad's grandson was a three feet long reticulated python, a male reticulated python. Now the python, the reticulated python, had appeared to Saad, his grandfather, his human grandfather, in a dream and spoken to him about how his loss of habitats had led him to come to be adopted by this human family.

Now what the reticulated python did in this case would that he would appear to his grandfather, his human grandfather, in a dream and tell him that he was going to appear in his human mother's house, who was Saad's daughter. Now after appearing to his grandfather in a dream, the reticulated python appeared in the house of the mother he chose to be adopted by. A human mother.

Now upon-- now initially he would not be welcome, because the couple were debating about what to do with the reticulated python that appeared. Indeed Saad's daughter's husband, or Saad's son-in-law, would indeed chase the snake away but the snake would return, and upon returning, the family would confer and realize that the snake had already appeared to the patriarch in the family in the dream and spoken about its intentions to be adopted.

Now what would happen is that a family would readily adopt the snake, and very quickly, it would be realized by villagers and people beyond the village that this family lived in that the snake was miraculous and was a saintly figure. Now miracles stories of the snake started spreading, and that's why there were lines of pilgrims lining up to collect the bathwater of this miraculous snake.

Now what would happen at this moment of time was that not everybody was convinced by the saint's miraculous powers, particularly an Islamic judge would come and would criticize believers who were lining up and argue that, while scenes were central to Islam in his terms, he would argue that the figure of a saint or a Karamat was indisputably human one.

Now this Islamic judge, like some of his contemporaries, was the opinion that the believers were believing that caves, rocks, islands, whirlpools, volcanoes, trees, and a plethora of animals, were miracle workers and Saints himself. And this was something that he was theologically challenging. Nevertheless, I do want to highlight here that, in spite of his preaching and attempts that he made to circulate his opinions, he was very unsuccessful because of the fact that even rival

Islamic scholars and believers were challenging his opinion on this. Now eventually, quite desperately, this Islamic judge would collaborate with a policeman to steal the reticulated python from its parents' house, and take it away. Now shortly after his abduction, the Saad's grandson, the reticulated python, would be found physically dead.

Nevertheless, after his physical death, a shrine would be built in the village to commemorate the karamat or the Islamic saint. Now this Saad's grandson was not the only animal Karamat or animal saint to appear. Animal scenes would continue to appear, and as it did in the past. In 1965, a Muslim woman in Melaka, and would point that out on the map here, a Muslim woman in Melaka in 1965 would actually physically deliver a biological child that was a snake.

And this child was delivered together with a human twin. Now this woman was described as the wife of a man called Mokhtar Baba. Now nevertheless, the human parents would very soon be renowned as the parents, the biological parents, of an Islamic Saint or the Karamat. Within months, by August or September 1965, Mokhtar's snake child would be venerated as a popular Saint.

Now thousands of Muslims were described as visiting the house of this snake, Mokhtar's son, and basically providing votive offerings for the young Saint. Now Mokhtar would receive so much-- such an abundant amount of votive offerings that eventually, in November 1965, he used a whole bunch of this money to organize a huge feast in the main mosque of the town that he lived in.

Now this feast was reportedly well attended by a multi-species audience, not just human believers, but even animals in the vicinity who came to join the feast. Now I do want to point-- we have some newspaper reports on this feast that would happen. Also and here you have-- if you look on the ultimate left and on the right, the feast is being reported together with the Kennedy's visit to Malaysia here.

Right in the newspaper article. Now, as is probably clear from these examples, beyond the fact that I do want to point out here, that the one thing that struck me when I keep hearing of these stories, of these animal kin, be they adopted or be they biological kin, is kind of Donna Haraway's point on making kin. And one of the whole points that she makes the kinness perhaps the hardest and most urgent part of dealing with this earth crisis that we are dealing with now.

Now one of the things is that, kin making is making persons and I think she very strikingly says, go outside English, and the wild multiplies. Now beyond the kinship element here that I would return to later. One thing that is striking in many of these animal stories more, of which I would like to share here, is that these stories are clearly not about human spiritualizing nature. And much of the scholarship on religion, on Islam, very much is human centered at times.

Now these stories are beginning on animal stories. Animals as sources of Islam. Sources of religion. Now for the matter-- beyond that these stories are really opening up to connections, not only across multi-species plains between the seen and unseen, now one of the things that I will turn to. Now we're reading Amitav Ghosh's Nutmeg's Curse that Diane referred to very kindly earlier.

The one of the things that Ghosh leaves us at the end of the book is really speaking about islands like the Benda islands, As Tana Barakay or something like earth of charismatic religious authority, or Baraka, coming from the Islamic concept Baraka. Now these animals for that matter were believed to be bodies, or Baraka bodies, or charismatic religious authority. Bodies receptacles of this Baraka.

Now one of the things I also want to highlight here is to just point out here that-- is perhaps the studies I hope really conveyed, I hope I did them justice in conveying that, is that animals were possessed personhood individuality. They possessed souls, they possessed intentionality, they possessed genealogies, ancestries, and also languages, and even voices in participating in communications with humans.

And I think this will be very central to many of the stories I'd like to share today. But before I go ahead, one of the things that I just have to highlight, and go back to Amitav Ghosh's Nutmeg's Curse here, is one of the things that it is, as he highlights is how, there's a kind of idea here on something that has been inherited as Ghosh argues from European colonial projects of assuming that it's primitive.

That it's primitive communities that believe in the vital spirits of animals, landscapes, environments, et cetera. Now for that matter, I think, one of the things that Ghosh points out here is that this is really a point-- a philosophical premise that underlies many academic disciplines at times. Now of course-- now he says that the thing is to recognize that non-humans can do, and must speak.

The reason I'm just referring to this is that I want to turn us, since I'm working in the Malay context, I think one of the things that I want to begin with is some of the scholarship that emerged on the matter in the 19th century onwards on these charismatic megafauna, or even smaller charismatic animals from the Malay world. One of the leading scholars of Malay studies in the 19th century was a figure, WM Maxwell.

William Maxwell was, on the right, was the assistant resident of a state of Perak. Sorry, I'm just going to flip through slides to just point out here. We have Perak here on the Northwest of the Malay Peninsula. Now writing in 1881, William Maxwell would argue that Islam had failed to stamp out the deep rooted feelings which prompted the, open inverted commas, in the words of Maxwell. Very inappropriate words.

The savage to invest the wild beast with the character of deities. Now Maxwell was partly troubled by the fact that for him, wherever he went in Perak in the 1870s, he kept meeting individuals who were respecting animals as saintly, or possessing souls, intentionality, and voices. Now one of the things that Maxwell was-- one I encountered and Maxwell described indeed, was how once he had indeed had his own guns, in his words, his gun barrels locked up to fire at a passing crocodile in a village in Perak.

And he was ready for this hunt. But he was prevented from doing so by a number of his Malay Muslim intermediaries who begged him not to fire on the crocodile because they argued that specific crocodile was a Karamat or an Islamic Saint, and needed to be respected and could not be violated. Now Maxwell, as I said, was the assistant resident of Perak.

But Maxwell's son, William George Maxwell, would become the acting resident of Perak almost a decade later. The younger Maxwell would write this book here in Malay forest that I put up. And one of the things that he would describe in his book is, how he very proudly hunted a one-horned Javan rhino. Now for those of us familiar with rhinoceroses and in the Malay world for that matter, the one-horned Javan rhino is now extinct. Thanks to the efforts of hunters like Maxwell.

But in 1899, William George Maxwell actually hunted this rhino in a Valley called a Pinji Valley in Perak, Kinta district. Now what he would do, and I'm sorry, this is not an accurate image but just put up an image of a rhino, sorry about that. But one thing is that William George Maxwell would do is, upon hunting this rhino, he would decapitate the rhino and put the head of the rhino in the Selangor museum in a separate state in a museum for display.

Now strikingly, William Maxwell thought that he had dealt with this rhino in killing it, hunting it, putting it in the museum. But nevertheless, one of the things he would be struck by was, how for that matter, the rhino was venerated as an Islamic Saint, Akrama. The rhino's blood would be collected. The physically dead rhino's blood would be collected for coagulation. Now his other sacred body parts were preserved for medicinal purposes.

Beyond that, what struck a number of European observers, and for that matter, as believers stories recount was even when the decapitated head of this rhino was placed in a museum, it would become a pilgrimage site, where believers would go to the museum and in their words, place themselves, go and visit the museum for the divine presence or the Darshan of the Akrama or the Islamic Saint in the museum.

Now, Maxwell clearly was struck by the fact that in his words, staunch Muhammadans in his words, or staunch Muslims, continued to respect these wild elephants, crocodiles, tigers, rhinoceroses, as vessels of spirits or reincarnations of deceased celebrities. Now for him, he felt that this was simply something that, in his words, was very naive primitive way in his words, where a beast, an animal's ferocity, its daring, and its cunning, or its fortunes to escape a few ill directed bullets allowed it in a few years to be considered a Saint.

Now what was going on-- what Maxwell was almost eluding here was the fact that rhinoceros human-- you know rhinoceros human encounters. Now for that matter, Maxwell had spotted this rhinoceros, this Pinji rhinoceros, and heard about these encounters with humans. Now there are other megafauna that were increasingly, at this period of time, coming into encounters with humans.

Now animals like elephants for that matter, often trapped from the interior of Perak for that matter, were very much coming to human encounters. And at times, unpleasant human encounters because of the development in the late 19th century of roads, railways, the employment and exploitation of migrant laborers in large scale construction projects.

Now beyond that the colonial state was really encouraging development from Sweden to settle agriculture. There was leading to the depletion of forested landscapes, and even secondary forest landscapes that served as food sources for a number of these animals, including elephants. Now as an environmental historian, Faizah Zakaria's work, recently reminds us, and I'll come back to this,

That one of the things that would happen in this massive development in the late 19th century will find the elephants encroaching on rubber plantations that were coming up on to cultivate the fields that were appearing. Now this would lead the colonial administration for them in Malaya to encourage elephant killings for them and the elephant hunting.

Now indeed the colonial government, as we learn from these works and environmental historians in Malaya, would even encourage ivory market where the colonial administration would even award tusks to people who were shooting elephants in between the 1880s and 1900s, because of the fact that these animals were really appearing on plantations and agriculture zones. Excuse me.

Now one of the things that I do want to highlight here is that it's not-- I don't want to create a kind of simple radical alterity that, really it was Europeans promoting a hunting culture. There were native, there were for that matter, Malay trappers. There were Malay Muslim trappers, Malay Islamic trappers, non-malay trappers in the Malay Peninsula.

And what we have is a series of Islamic manuscripts here, and I've pulled up some Malay Islamic manuscripts. They really describe elephant trapping practices before these hunting practices that I just spoke about emerge in the late 19th century. Now one thing that was quite striking as these manuscripts really show us is that a number of figures were spirit mediums, or themselves miracle workers, were often called Pawangs.

P A W A N G. Pawangs were central to the trapping of elephants. Now as a couple of these manuscripts tell us, Pawang would go into forests, search for elephants, inspect them, use all kinds of trapping techniques including seducing male elephants, trap them, build enclosures, and then train these elephants. Now these texts are definitely-- these are not texts of conservationist or environmentalist.

These are texts of elephant trappers. But nevertheless one of the things that's crucial that was different with this hunting culture, was the fact that Pawangs interacted physically with elephants. In this world of even violence, there was interaction with the use of everything. From the use of elephant bodies, elephant souls were spoken to, beyond that even in building enclosures, trees, individually were mediated.

Now what was crucial as these texts show for every stage of elephant trapping or building an enclosure, these Malay Islamic trappers would speak to the spirits of animals they were trapping, speak to the spirits of trees they were cutting, et cetera. Now what we find here is that, as Radhika Govindarajan reminds us in her work on mountainous communities in North India, that even violence does not preclude attending to animals at times. And this was something that was central to these stories.

Now nevertheless, one of the things that we find is that-- it's really what changes as environmental historians remind us of Malaya, is with this hunting culture, the kind of engagement with animals really takes us away from that. Now as one of the things that we find is that it's really in this period, as I said of the colonial state promoting a hunting culture, be it of elephants, be it of rhinoceroses, be it of tigers as would turn to, that even in the scale of hunting that will lead to the extinction of certain rhinoceroses, they will lead to the large decrease of number of elephants in the late 19th century in the Malay Peninsula.

What we find according to Zakaria is that the stories from this period on, while the colonial state is promoting, that we can trace a number of stories that continue to be disseminated through oral traditions, or contained in manuscripts like this on for that matter the spirituality of elephants. Now for that matter of an image here of towns being named after charismatic elephants. Now one of the-- a prominent mining town and

I should probably point it out that late 19th century, Malaya was the largest producer of tin, alluvial tin. Now for that matter, tin mining towns would be named after charismatic elephants. Now on the other hand, the number of stories, and I should apologize here that one of the things that I was struck by in manuscripts and oral traditions, is the abundance of stories on these charismatic and saintly animals, and only be able to share some.

Now at this moment of time as hunting is going on, while mining towns are really clear mining, road construction, anything from coffee plantation to rubber plantations are really chasing, depleting habitats. What is emerging is so many animal stories of these charismatic elephants. Now from the mining town of Klang in Selangor, in also West Malaysia. West Malaya for that matter. In the 1890s one particular saintly elephant was shot down.

Now according to all miracle stories, it took about 50 to 60 bullets to shoot this elephant and to kill it. But nevertheless, upon its death, now no killing of a Saint was to remain unpunished. What it did, what they led to a major depletion in the value of the local coffee and the value of the coffee land that was something very driven by European planters.

Now nevertheless, as I probably have already pointed out, it wasn't just-- all animals had their Saints. Now in 1931, a celebrity crocodile hunter, Elias Jermaine, would shoot a 28 foot long crocodile in the Southern state of Johor. Now the crocodile was shot to the head. All right. But nevertheless, Jermaine himself would remark on the fact that how he shocked he was by the fact that the crocodile survived. And immense miracle stories would emerge on this crocodile.

Now I do, very quickly, but I can't get into this, that these manuscripts that I'm showing here, also beyond the stories I'm telling, contain genealogies of animals. Now in these manuscripts, elephants have a genealogy where they are linked to figures from epics like the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Beyond that many of these animals have Islamic genealogies.

The crocodile, for that matter, is linked to being a plaything of Fatima, the daughter of the prophet Muhammad. And very elaborate genealogies in this that remind individuals of the fact that they really can't take animals lightly, that beyond the fact that certain animals are Saints. Now of course, I can't speak about the fact that-- I'm going to very quickly summarize a few stories here.

But at the same moment of time since I was speaking about crocodiles, at the same moment of time that with the course of the late 19th century, early 20th century, really depletions of swamps, marshes in the Malay Peninsula and the rise of open cast mines. What we are finding here is we're finding multiple animal miracle stories of-- multiple stories of these charismatic saintly crocodiles. Described at times as going the lengths of about 30-feet long and living up to a century long.

Some of which were multicolored crocodiles by themselves. Now these crocodiles are often called Karamat Buaya or crocodile scenes, or crocodile miracle workers. And one of the things that was striking was that in both oral traditions, Malay Islamic manuscripts, and in European accounts, we find multiple records of a plethora of shrines that will develop around these figures.

Now indeed, in many of these in many of these stories of these crocodiles there was a clear recognition of the fact of the loss of habitat, and how lost of habitat, and poaching for crocodile skin would have environmental impacts. Now for that matter, according to reports in 1926 and 27, and miracle stories, a catastrophic flood-- there was possibly connected to La-Nina.

Was caused by one important reason. This was caused by the fact that a league, a pact, that had been made between crocodiles and humans in the past had been contravened. Now this pact had been contravened because of the fact that humans had started removing the crocodile habitats and started poaching crocodiles for the crocodile skin on a very increasing scale by the turn of the century.

Now this would result in widespread floods from Pera to Malaka, as shown in the map earlier. Now according to miracle accounts, after belligerent hunters started poaching crocodiles in the Perak river, the king of crocodiles, a Saint by himself, would crawl ashore and then plunge back to the river, and dig a hole in his bed, and allow the earth's center to well up to submerge human settlements from Petra to Kuala Lumpur, to Kelantan.

So basically half of the Malay Peninsula, as shown on the map earlier, was submerged by these catastrophic floods. And according to most, both miracle stories and newspaper reports, this was the reason why it was there. Now I want to move here to-- just keeping track of time, to really an animal that draws a lot of attention in these miracle stories and reports. Now tigers.

Now very quickly, and sorry if I may be happy to discuss this more in the Q&A but one of the things that I want to really very quickly round up, summarize, is the fact that tigers, the Malayan tiger, now really dwindled in numbers. We're speaking of a few hundred at times and optimistically, is that really tigers thrived in ecotones between forests and newly cleared land.

Now in the late 19th and early 20th century, we found agriculture expansion, road building, things that we've spoken about, really driving tiger human encounters. Now tigers , even in a city like Singapore, was by 1856, it was being described that not a day passes, I quote, without a destruction of one human being by this ferocious beast. Now tigers were appearing in urban settlements with the loss of habitat.

Now they were described as walking around towns at times. Now very much they were even losing their ecotones where they were fine and they were looking for other spaces. Now in response to the loss of habitat and increasing human encounters in late 19th century, to safeguard plantations and the economy. Now perhaps typically one of the things that colonial officials started doing and beyond that European planters really supported, was the capturing and killing of tigers.

It was being promoted as a trade of selling the hides of tigers. Beyond that tiger clubs, and particularly one tiger club was established in the Peninsula to promote the recreational hunting of tigers and giving hefty rewards to plantation owners who allowed-- who killed tigers who entered their properties. But there were other stories. This is one side of tiger human encounters that was celebrated by these tiger clubs and tiger hunts.

But there was another side of tiger human context that was told in other stories, in other Islamic stories that were turned to. In the 1920s, it was reportedly very common for Muslims in a state of Negeri Sembilan-- and I'm sorry. I'm just going to flip through slides here. And this is Negeri Sembilan. And for Muslims, it was in the 1920s, it was described as very common for Muslims in Negeri Sembilan to interact intimately with tigers because of the fact that tigers were believed to widely embody the souls of ancestors.

Now this really gets me to this anecdotes I started with on kinship. Now we have oral traditions and beyond that, we have the writings of a Malay Muslim scholar, Zainal Abidin, on this is from the 1920s. They really describe the fact very richly that in the region of Negeri Sembilan and beyond, it was believed that tigers had a post-burial metamorphosis.

That their souls transmigration-- that there basically what happened was there was believed that human ancestors, after their burial, had souls transmigrated into the bodies of tigers. Now these tigers, embodying the souls of dead human ancestors, would appear in human villages. So let me just very quickly recap this. This is a moment of time that the loss of natural habitats, the animals are really appearing, and these tigers are appearing in human spaces.

Now one of the things that's being-- these stories are really showing how communities interacted with these tigers appearing in spaces and understood them as embodying the souls of their ancestors. Now indeed, there are rich accounts of how individuals could telepathically communicate with their tigers, speaking to them in person, speaking to them through dreams, and beyond that how tigers could communicate with humans, displaying gestures, bodily features, including teeth types, including a gold teeth, that they inherited from their earlier human form.

Now indeed, one thing that was quite striking here was that these tigers after their death were being buried as family Saints also. I just want to point out, what else tigers did-- the tigers were being respected because they lived with their human families upon being adopted by them. They protected the human homes from rival animals that were hostile, and other humans, that were hostile.

Beyond that they would even be living with their human families they received all kinds of things. Food, clothes, accessories, ropes, turbans, napkins, and they stayed there. Now, one of the thing is they would strike [INAUDIBLE] English writing observers of these tigers, was the fact that on Islamic festivals like Eids for that matter, tigers would come and celebrate the festivals with their human relatives in their homes.

Now they were described by English speaking observers as the Malay equivalent of Santa Clauses. All right. Another thing that these tigers often did, and I want to very quickly skim through here for the benefit of time, is that they were also, not just festive, they were recognized as law givers throughout Malaya, and throughout the Malay Peninsula. There were tigers who were appearing at Sufi shrines.

And what they were doing at the Sufi shrines were actually ensuring that there were no transgressions of codes of conduct. They would, not only for that matter scare away, those who did not want to partake in the codes of conduct, they were terrorized transgressors. Now indeed, one things that we strikingly find beyond the oral traditions, is that one--

A civil servant of the Straits settlements called Charles Blagden, would start touring with Malay Muslims and following Malay Muslim pilgrims to many of these shrines of the Malay Peninsula in the early 20th century. Sorry, in the late 19th century. In the 1890s he left a series of unpublished books on these shrines, capturing the reports, traditions, testimonies of believers, at these shrines.

Now what we hear about is how tigers, not only regulated prayers at these shrines, but beyond that, ensure the norms of comportment were kept now this is not something new because, even today in many shrines we would find in the Malay Peninsula, how waters, animals, rocks, et cetera, are still believed to police transgressions at these shrine spaces. Now, I just want to add one more thing of tigers.

Tigers also, according to Islamic manuscripts like this one I've put up here, also described as peculiar beings because they were closely associated with a very important figure of Islam. Ali for that matter. Ali the prophet's companion, son-in-law, cousin, in Shia traditions, the first EMOM. Ali is often described in many parts of the Islamic world as the Asadullah, or the lion of God. Now in the Malay world and the Malay Indonesian archipelago, Ali is often described as the tiger of God,

The Harimau Allah instead. And therefore this idea of tigers, tiger's stories also often connect tigers to the figure Ali. And this really translates in the fact that certain tigers were very venerated as Saints. One of the most prominent tigers was venerated a saint. It was in the early 20th century was a figure called Dato Paroi. And this Dato Paroi basically means the elder of pario, and paroi was a village and a settlement in Negeri Sembilan.

Now the elder of paroi was a shapeshifting tiger and described as ever living Sufi master of origins who had migrated to the Malay Peninsula from Sumatra, Indonasia. Described in most accounts, most oral traditions, and written accounts from the early 20th century, describe this Sufi tiger, or this Islamic saintly tiger, as wandering across Malaya leaving sacred footprints that believers could dig up.

And use as talismans now beyond that what was striking was that by the 1920s and 1930s. Dato Poroi, inspired the fact there he was ever living and roaming across the Peninsula. This tiger, was venerated with a major shrine that was where there was regular practices of Koran, reading, rituals of recitation, incense burning, and other rituals. Now for that matter, lived in ecotones, as mentioned, tigers were largely roaming in ecotones of the Peninsula.

But he also had his own settlement in the upstream interior. In the interior. In the interior , presided over a settlement of tigers who were described as an ideal Islamic community because they were regularly-- they were described as reading the Quran regularly, partaking in Malay Islamic martial arts, thriving in a kind of ideal Sufi community. Now I just want to-- I just need a few minutes more if that's fine with the organisers. Am I good on time?

DIANE MOORE: You're fine. I'm sorry I was muted. You are-- don't rush. This is brilliant. So please, you're doing fine on time. You have plenty plenty of minutes left.

TEREN SEVEA: OK. Great. So one of the things that I want to point out is that as-- of course these practices were coming under attack. The first anecdote that I started with mentioned an Islamic scholar and judge who would criticize these practices. Now Dato Paroi shrine, the popularity of the shrine of this specific tiger and this word, tiger, would invite the rage and the diatribes of a number of Malay Muslim modernists who would argue that this was an open course.

And here they would be speaking the same language as a number of English speaking observers, and they would describe this as primitive practices or heathen practices. They were really not in line with their imaginings of Islam. One of the things that is striking though is that we find that, despite reformist denunciation Islamic tigers, tiger shrines, continue to be venerated in 20th century Malaya and Malaysia, even as the numbers of tigers declined from approximately 3,000 in the 1950s to 100 in the 1990s, to 152 in 2022.

Now rituals at the Sufi shrines, these tiger shrines, were occasionally impeded. Indeed, what we find is that one of the things that really stops many rituals at these animal shrines is the fact that there's a huge-- there is an anti-communist emergency, or darurat from 1948 to 1960. There were really restrict practices in many of these shrines. And that's really a period of time that we find a number of these shrines stopping their patronage patterns.

Now I do want to point out here however, that there are many oral traditions, miracle stories, and even newspaper reports because there's a whole archive of newspaper paper reports on these animals as I showed earlier with that slide on the Kennedy visit and the saintly snake, is that the altars or shrines been built for many of these animal Karamats would indeed frustrate developers and post-colonial officials in Malaysia and Singapore for a while. Because for a period of time, they would even restrict further urban redevelopment, encouraging the devotees to resist authorities pushing further development.

And on that note, I really want to shift to-- I really want to shift and conclude with two more miracle stories from Singapore. And I'm shifting-- and this image as I'm showing here of a shrine in Singapore might not be the image of Singapore that most of us associate with today. Now I'm really taking us back to Singapore in a space that I grew up in, and sorry to break in a personal anecdote, but I grew up in a Singapore that was rapidly developed.

For me, much of Singapore is very different from the Singapore I grew up in, unrecognizable at times. and it's strikingly my-- I came from a family with grandfathers who came to work as security guards at factories in Singapore, and they were very involved in this process of contributing to rapid development of Singapore. But one of the things that-- every trip to Singapore I find is spaces of Singapore, like West Malaysia, are dissipating in the face of urban redevelopment, and this is one of the sites.

This is a Sufi shrine devoted to a female Sufi master named Siti Miryam, who was buried at the site in 1853. This shrine was demolished in April 2010. Now nevertheless, and one of the things that I want to point out is, one of the figures that I had intense contact with at this shrine space was the caretaker of the shrine, Wak Ali Janggut. Wak Ali Janggut became a very close friend,

If I could say, then I was quite very saddened by the fact when he passed away in early October last year. But the story I'm telling here is not just of a human Saint, and a human caretaker. On the contrary, this is a multi-species story. The story I'm telling here is also one of Wak Ali Janggut. How did Wak Ali become the caretaker of the shrine? Wak Ali was delivered after-- excuse me.

I want to tell you-- let me begin with the story of Wak Ali's sister. Wak Ali's sister was named Siti Meymuna. Siti Meymuna was Wak Ali's elder sister and twin. The twin was delivered, Siti Meymuna, two hours before Wak Ali. She was delivered by Wak Ali's mother. Now Siti Meymuna was a snake. A reticulated python to be precise. Now at birth,

Wak Ali's sister, was Siti Meymuna, the radically radical python was easily distinguishable from common snakes through her navel and an umbilical cord, which connected her to a human mother's placenta. Siti Meymuna was also an elite being who could fend for herself on the 40th day of her birth when a human mother released her to the river and into the wild.

The snake would continue to visit her human brother, care for him throughout her life, and would eventually lead him to the Sufi shrine and make him start making-- laying his path out for him to become the caretaker of the Sufi shrine that would stand until April 2010. Now as Wak Ali would often speak to me and tell me and many believers at his shrine would mention, was that it was often very difficult to spot Wak Ali from his sister.

And for some believers they would only notice the difference between the two twins because of a more reptilian marks. Now I also want to-- I just want to put a quote here of Stefano Mancuso, whose Tree Stories books reminds us that every story, including the stories I'm telling of animals, they might sound about just human and non-human animals, but trees are always central to the story. And I'm sorry if I focused on the animals for this talk.

One of the things that I do want to point out here is this space that was being cared for by Wak Ali and his sister, all right, was one that was full of trees, landscapes, trees and other plants. Now indeed, as we see from this story, we have another one of these-- a caretaker of some of the trees of this site in Singapore until April 2010, was a man named Wak Aim. Wak Aim would describe these trees as supernatural trees, as abodes of multiple spirits.

Indeed, once on 14 September 2009, he told me about how he woke up and saw the faces of these charismatic figures from the Malakan sultanate that was that destroyed in 16th century by the Portuguese. He saw the five faces of these charismatic beings on these trees. Now therefore, as he said he would wrap these cloths in honor of them. Now these were supernatural trees. This was a sacred Grove to be presented. But most strikingly about this site was this tree.

This tree was at the site before the Saint was buried in 1853. This was a tree that had generations of history on it. As all the believers at the site would mention, Wak Ali and other believers at the site, this tree had constantly withstood development and attempts to remove it until April 2010.

According to oral traditions and newspaper reports in the 1980s when there were attempts to remove this shrine site and cut this tree, the tree bled. There was blood from the tree. Now indeed, if I quote from a Malayan newspaper article and I quote-- I'm translating it a Malay newspaper article on

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Basically, the blood emerged from the tree that was being cut. In the 1980s, when they tried to remove this tree, it will bleed. Beyond that, a human child would emerge out of the tree to scare away developers. Indeed, workers would be sickened, at times, even died according to this newspaper account when they tried to cut this tree.

In April 2010, I was fortunate or unfortunate to witness the demolition of the shrine. In the morning itself, I was called by Wak Ali to the site. And what happened was, I witnessed there with other believers, that laborers who tried to cut this tree kept getting injured. Eventually, Wak Ali had to pray for these laborers to the Saint and pray for their protection.

They approached him to pray for them, and to mediate with the Saint, and with the spirits of the tree to allow the tree to be cut. That was the only time that the tree was removed. So this was very much-- I just want to-- now I want to say something in conclusion about Wak Ali. Wak Ali was, like many other figure-central to the animal stories I've told today, was very much a product of multi-species space of Islam.

He was very much involved in the Islamic multi-species. He was protecting this multi-species space of the shrine. Beyond that, he was also dealing in his life, beyond the fact of caring for the trees, having a charismatic sister, and everything else. He was also dealing with the fact of environmental crisis on a regular basis.

He was a spirit medium in himself. Now with warming, with the rise of temperatures and with the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, the most lethal animal with the spread of mosquito-borne diseases in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and partly the spread of dengue, chikungunya. One of the things that Wak Ali would be partly approached for as a spirit medium, was that he be approached by devotees and believers to speak to the spirits of mosquitoes, to repel these mosquitoes, and to kill them individually if required.

Wak Ali, and I've had the privilege of recording this, some of the conversations that he would have with individual mosquitoes, his rituals of communications with mosquitoes before killing them if required. Now one of the things that Wak Ali-- in one of the last conversations I had with Wak Ali, and I want to end with this, Wak Ali Janggut said to me that one day we were all mixed into the soil.

He will mix into the soil, so will the trees, so will the animals, so will his sister, so will the insects he killed. And some people might be pleased with the fact that they are being mixed into the soil, but he said that, even as we mix into the soil, our stories will remain.

He spoke to me and told me, it is up to you to share these stories, or to think if they are irrelevant to share. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. Now he said, it's up to you to share these stories or think they're irrelevant to share. And he left me with a point saying that the stories you tell will have consequences. Thank you.

DIANE MOORE: I'm a bit speechless, Teren. That was just extraordinary. Incredibly, not only illuminating, but incredibly moving. The respect that you have for this arena of critical stories about life itself is really evident in the animated way that you shared with us, and the stories themselves are just so powerful and surprising.

I love how you started with the story of the infant and of course, we're all imagining a human baby, that actually turns into be a python and the consistency then of the story of snakes throughout, as well as the attention to other life forms. I have many-- there's many questions, which I want to turn quickly to the audience. But if you could, could you share and just-- the destruction of the Sufi shrine and all that represents is, of course, devastating.

And I wonder, what is your sense of the vitality of these dimensions of the multiple stories in Islam that preserve the animal stories, or other life, non-human, none-- what did you call it? The Karamat of non-human souls. Can you speak most of what you presented was historic, this devastating story at the end here.

What's your sense? Is there a revival movement here? Are all of these stories continue to be endangered themselves, and the lives that maintain them? Could you give us just a kind of sense of the contemporary landscape before we open it up for the audience questions. I think we'd all love to hear your sense of that.

TEREN SEVEA: Thank you. thank you so much Diane. I mean that. There's such an abundance of stories that I often feel, and one of the things I feel guilty about is whether I'm doing justice to actually sharing them and telling them. I think it's a great question. First, to specify the fact that the concept, Karamat, miracle worker, be it a living miracle worker or a miracle worker passed.

Strikingly, it's often assumed that Karamat, the humans, but if historically and in the present, always been-- they could be anything. It's something that comes up even in Ghosh's book actually. In the mention of Tana baraka, as he says, really an island could be a Karamat, the rock could be a Karamat, a human could be a Karamat, a technology could be a Karamat.

It's really how we're understanding a soul. And one thing that's quite-- I mean think it's-- going back to your question here, I think it's undeniable that clearly these shrines have depleted because of the fact of, and I think it's often assumed that it's because of Islamic reform, but there's definitely been-- there have been Islamic reformist critiques in the past and the present also.

But it's in a landscape of West Malaysia and the Malay Peninsula, and even parts that's really rapidly developed from the late 19th century onwards. From the plantations, to road constructions, to these cities that have developed. And what has come in its place is really this removal of these shrines. One of the things that I often found was that, nevertheless, it's easy to assume that this is a thing of a past and faded into folkloric oblivion because the stories are still shared and these figures are still there.

They're often inhabiting very different spaces. So the fact that-- so I wanted to end with Wak Ali Janggut story who passed last year. But the fact is that he's a living example of these spaces and shrines still being there in both the Malay Peninsula itself. Sorry. I hope I'm answering your question.

DIANE MOORE: Well, I think it's really, I am hearing you and I think the question actually isn't really, do the Karamat still exist? Because of course they do. It's the recognition of them, the celebration of them, the honoring of them that I think is clearly in jeopardy from multiple sources. And the resonance with Ghosh I think is very powerful.

So again, I have so many-- we have to go on a retreat together for days so I can talk to you about what you've presented, and I don't want to say just coffee or lunch. But because we have these great questions, I'm going to turn to some of them now. We have an attendee, anonymous attendee, who asks, it seems like there's a push to remove the complexity of Muslim Malay identity.

This relevant to the tensions within. Internal tensions within different interpretations of Islam. There's a capitalist push for development, a Marxist push for the same, and potentially explicitly hostile to religion. Muslim reformers who follow Protestant Christianity as a model of Islam.

Coincidentally, they seem to be creating a singular narrative of what it means to be Muslim or even perhaps just human, I would add. If you agree, do you think you could talk a little bit about how these three different systems arrived at the same point of a simplified Islam.

TEREN SEVEA: OK sure. Would you prefer I take a few questions together or answer them individually.

DIANE MOORE: Why don't you take that one? That one's pretty complicated. And then I think, we'll-- you can also see the questions but I'll point out a few others. But why don't you respond to that one because I think it speaks to the many strands you're representing here. Consistent with also what Mayra was also representing. So maybe tackle that one.

TEREN SEVEA: Sure, definitely. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. I didn't get the name.

DIANE MOORE: It's anonymous. It's an anonymous question. OK.

TEREN SEVEA: [INAUDIBLE] and I'm going to very-- I hope I do it justice. So I think I spoke of the capitalist development that has really come up in terms of the urban redevelopment. Not just in the spaces I spoke about in present day Malaysia, there's an island called Pulau Pasir. That's probably the largest collection of Karamat shrines that you still find in one island, You have the whole island is full of Karamat shrines.

The Malakan government has been pushing for urban redevelopment in terms of developing a resort, a golf course, and clearing shrines over the past few decades. Now these are shrines of multispecies Saints there. So we see increasing-- happening on a daily basis all over the Malay Peninsula. But I think your question in terms of how-- it's striking to-- I think it'd be wonderful for someone to study how Islamic reform and capitalism is really coming together at the sites.

Because one of the things that we do have is Islamic reformists on one hand of the orientation that Karamat veneration, or Karamat respect is un-Islamic, having a very different image of, and debates of Islam breaking out or whether Karamat shrines are part of Islam or not. But beyond that I think, and this would tie up with Diane's question also earlier, is on the other hand, even within Muslim communities, groups that believe that Karamat respect of veneration is inherent to Islam, that Karamat are integral figures of Islam.

Strikingly, the debate goes deeper into whether humans only are Karamat, or whether animals can be Karamat, whether non-humans can be Karamat. And began with that example because of that Islamic judge who was attacking the veneration of a reticulated python, was not attacking the veneration of Saints, he was arguing there was a human thing.

So that is where in, I think your question is wonderful in the sense of in this world of shaping a kind of modern Malay Muslim identity, we find capitalism, religious reform, really coming together and forging this identity and attacking the space of Karamat. But within that space, animal Karamat are being even further peripheries. Or tree Karamat, plant Karamat, are being peripheries because they assumed to even not inhabit that same space. So I hope I'm answering your question but thank you so much.

DIANE MOORE: It's wonderful. And again, as you identify Ghosh really is equating this diminishment of non-human life with the kind of, again, reification of the hierarchies of devastation. So connecting the murderous colonial ex-actions around the disrespect for other non-human life, and then the capacity for disrespecting other forms of human life.

So that this notion of, is it only human, or is it non-human Karamat. And it's just so powerful. The multiple stories that you share and the persistence of those stories. I think that's key. So I'm going to turn to Dan's really excellent question. Dan McKonon. What an amazing talk. I'm so moved by the people who responded to the arrival of potentially frightening animals. Not with fear and loathing but by treating them as kin.

What was it that made this response possible? And I'm assuming you're-- yeah python, tigers, crocodiles. Was it that Malays felt solidarity with the animals because both had experienced the disruption of colonialism? Was it an outgrowth of pre-colonial Malay culture or something else?

TEREN SEVEA: Should I answer that?

DIANE MOORE: Yeah. Let's just-- yeah. Let's just-- I think these are all so rich so let's do one at a time.

TEREN SEVEA: Great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dan. That's a wonderful question. It's really tough to answer because on one hand, it's the nature of the individual story, and the individual animal that's being dealt with. So at times, the tigers, according to, and I'm going to really-- I'm of the opinion that we take these stories at face value.

Now according-- there are stories of animals who are coming and speaking of depletion of habitats to their human family members for and arguing that they are depletion habitat happened and they needed to be adopted by the human family members. They speak to them in person, or in dreams. There are others of tigers appearing as miracle workers, performing miracles immediately, and on the other hand, being respected immediately as tigers associated with figures of Islamic history.

There are others of crocodiles at times appearing and actually even attacking individuals, and even killing them, and being understood as law givers in a sense of preventing transgressions. So I'm probably not doing any justice to your question, but it's kind of every story is-- what I know as a historian is, at this moment there's so much more contact within this megafauna and humans just because of the development and something environmental, historians have very, very richly pointed out.

But what I'm finding in the stories is everyone has a kind of individual account of them. One of the most striking stories I've found is a miracle stories of a tiger who returns to a village in Negri Sembilan and speaks to his human family, reminding them that he embodied the spirit that had transmigrated from a human ancestor.

And to prove it to them, he flashed a golden tooth that belonged to the dead ancestor. And he would eventually be very central to the family and be partaking in rituals in the house, et cetera. So sorry, Dan, I might not be answering your question but it's a wonderful question and I should think even more about it to give you a coherent answer.

DIANE MOORE: Wonderful. Wonderful. There's this question from Fatima Ahmadi. And she asked, does the position of these animals among Muslims in this area receive any influence, or are they in any way influence from Buddhism being prevalent in this same region? So there's another-- I've lost it. Now but there's also another reference from another attendee about influences of Hinduism as well, which is also-- so just wonder if you have any understanding of those cross connections.

TEREN SEVEA: Definitely, and thank you. Thank you for these questions. Wonderful questions. Indeed, there's been some intellectual speculation about the role of lions in this part of the world. Just giving an example. And how lions associated with certain Bodhisattvas, have been really been prominent in the naming of Singapore, with a whole historical tradition in Malay hikayat, or chronicles.

Basically arguing that a lion was spotted on the island. And it's very much-- many historians of Singapore have associated that with a certain image of a Bodhisattva that was prominent there that was seated on lions. Now beyond that, many of these animals are also strikingly at-- a number of these animals strikingly are also described in these Malay Islamic manuscripts as associated with Hindu or Indic divinities, as you rightly pointed out.

But what is striking here, and this is the reason why I'm referring to them as Islamic here, is that they're being fitted into Islamic cosmology. So even Shiva and animals associated with Hindu Divinity like Shiva, Shiva is being fit in these traditions and manuscripts into a strict Islamic cosmology, associated with Islamic prophets. Its described as a devotee and servant of God, Allah.

And so there's a very-- so what we're finding here at this, strikingly these stories, and I think this is what really makes it so interesting, is how we are finding Hindu, Buddhist traditions as being assimilated into Islamic cosmology. Now for a number of early Malay studies scholars, they kept struggling with this and saying, no, this is not Islam. It can't be Islam because there's a mention of that. But there's a very neat Islamic cosmology that's being put here, and that's really-- so I hope I'm answering your question.

DIANE MOORE: Yeah. Wonderful. Excellent. Excellent. So Janet Gyatso is asking, are there any images of tigers living with human families? And I would just expand that with the visual representations of these multispecies connections. And I wonder what your-- historically, so even without necessarily the explicit picture, but it's clear in the story. So the question is, is there other media that are representing them?

TEREN SEVEA: So I have a-- I just have a small collection of posters here. So there are Sufi of these animals and including some on my wall. Probably can't be [INAUDIBLE].

DIANE MOORE: Well, you're blurred. You've got the blur on. I don't know if you want to take the blur off to show.

TEREN SEVEA: Oh my, OK. One second. I'm just--

DIANE MOORE: Wonderful.

TEREN SEVEA: Just one, and the rest I haven't unpacked. Here are some posters that you would find of animals. There are many of these saintly animals and how they're associated with figures of Islamic history. They're mainly posters from shrines, et cetera, and shrine libraries and bazaars. But beyond that, you have a few photographs. Indeed, like that strikingly, a very prominent ethnographer in the Malay world, at the turn of century.

I believe in 1900 itself. I might be getting my year wrong. 1899, 1900, would follow the Cambridge expeditions across Malaya and indeed, he would interview and photograph a weretiger. And so we have a photograph of that. I'll be happy to-- I should have brought-- put that on my slides. I'm sorry, I didn't. But yeah, that's the only photograph I've come across of a weretiger. But other than that, it's a lot of these religious posters that are still very much available today. It speaks to your question, Diane of what's remembered of these.

DIANE MOORE: Wonderful. I just had another question about the-- which is, I'm finding myself feeling quite heavy hearted about the destruction of that beautiful shrine and the tree, and the loss of your friend who was the caretaker. And I just wonder, in your previous stories you spoke about different ways that life is preserved after death, both in other shrines and in potential different body parts.

And I wonder, with that particular shrine and how it might represent the destruction of other kinds of shrines through development, are there any common ways that local people are able to maintain the sacredness of the Karamat?

TEREN SEVEA: Sorry, Diane. I lost you in between your question.

DIANE MOORE: Yeah. So just the question of the multiple forms of being able-- given the destruction of the shrine of the female Sufi Saint, and of course, the loss then of the caretaker who was also a Karamat. Is there, in previous and the tree, there are previous stories that you shared where the either body parts or remains of the Karamat would be repurposed, essentially.

Or a shrine built to then maintain the capacity for that holiness to be able to be represented. I'm wondering if in that particular shrine, and other contemporary ones where development is overcoming and often destroying them, are there common practices in a contemporary way where the power of the Karamat is being preserved? Or is that also part of what's endangered right now?

TEREN SEVEA: That's a great question. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. Firstly, I want to apologize to Janet if I didn't answer a question fully earlier but I hope I did.

DIANE MOORE: You did.

TEREN SEVEA: So a couple of things. One is like, we find that all kinds of remains and relics are passed on. It could be soil from sites that's being passed on, that's being preserved. At times, dried plants from the site are being preserved, et cetera. Indeed, I should mention that one of the things that in my second last meeting with Wak Ali Janggut, he gave me a rock from the site, and he told me that this is to preserve it at home. That would be-- that is talismanic.

So we have collections of talismans from the minerals of the site that have been passed on. But the other part of this story is that when the site was exhumed and , destroyed they dug and dug for the Saint, but the Saint remains were never found. And miracle stories attest that she refused to move.

So the site is still, I mean, I'm thinking of since you spoke about Amitav Ghosh, I'm thinking Amitav Ghosh mentions that the populations could be cleared from the site, but the island still remains a site of Baraka. Whatever emerges here, this remains a site of Baraka and while the talismanic resources are being circulating from Singapore to Boston.

DIANE MOORE: Right. Right, wonderful. Wonderful. There's an earlier question that I will-- it's the second of the questions that are posed in the Q&A. The blessings of the crocodile remind-- this is also from an anonymous attendee.

The blessings of the crocodile reminds me of Mangho Pir in Pakistan. The Shrine Mazar remains important today and people go for the Baraka. Is this a regional connection to the animal or do you think independent rise of honoring a fierce predator? This is great question.

TEREN SEVEA: No, that's a great question. So the shrine [INAUDIBLE] in Sindh is Mangho Pir. It's such-- the crocodiles of Mangho Pir, it's such a wonderful analogy in terms of looking at both sides. And I think one thing that's really striking is that even in the case of, if the Karamat is human at a site, a shrine can be devoted to a human Saint.

I think one of the things that really forces people to recognize the religiosity of animals, at least within Islamic traditions, is the fact that throughout shrines, even human shrines, you find animals devoted to Saints and being respected as spiritually elite animals. So in the case of this shrine in Sindh, Pakistan, the crocodiles are believed to be spiritually elite and affiliates of the Saint.

And this is something you find across many parts of the Islamic world. It's often forgotten here with what has happened in many parts of the Islamic world with development, with the rise of regimes, et cetera. It's even in parts of West Asia, we know from the early ethnographic works that animals, landscapes, et cetera, were venerated as Karamat sites. I think I'm-- a wonderful question.

I'm a bit hesitant to say that it's a local, South, or Southeast Asian thing. Because, until the 19th century, we have multiple reports of all these saintly animals, plants, trees, rocks, from various parts of the world where we don't find them today. So, I hope I'm answering the question. Thank you all.

DIANE MOORE: It makes me-- I also-- that question just makes me wonder, it sounds like there are particular Karamat, either through particular lineages, and as you said that there's the lineage of the elephants, for example, of a particular genealogy ancestral that's often recorded.

So I'm assuming that you're going to say that, if I ask the question, is all life form a Karamat, essentially? Or is it something about the particularity of particular life forms, and how might that be addressed relevant to the incredible power of the life of life forms itself in all of its manifestation?

TEREN SEVEA: Great. Thank you, Diane that's helpful. So one thing I should clarify is that the Karamat are the elite.

DIANE MOORE: OK.

TEREN SEVEA: In this whole multi-species world, like the human world, the animal world, or the plant world, is divided in all kinds of lines. And only a certain spiritual elite are the Saints. But the rest too have souls, intentionality, languages. So in a number of the manuscripts I showed, many of them were about trapping elephants, were common elephants.

Common elephants who could be trapped. But even then, you involve speaking the souls and spirits of those elephants. They had different genealogies that cut them off from the genealogies of the elite elephants. So there was no-- basically, in one of a better way to put this perhaps [INAUDIBLE] there is no herd. Every animal is individually spoken to, attended to, mediated. The soul, spirits of animals are individual. They have individual genealogies.

DIANE MOORE: Fascinating. So, and some rise to an elite status because of the depth of spiritual power.

TEREN SEVEA: Exactly.

DIANE MOORE: That's amazing. It's beautiful. Teren, Tempest Williams, another speaker in our series has a question. Thank you, Teren. From your own perspective, with the loss of these animal and plant stories in terms of belief and consequences, do you see a revival of these beliefs with new consequences coming back into contemporary Islamic religious life?

TEREN SEVEA: That's a tough one. Thanks. I hope so. I hope so. I really-- I'm seeing that-- Let me first thank you for the question. I mean, I do see that within especially-- I'm going back to something that I believe and I might be misquoting Dan, said I believe in one of the group sessions we had after that. It's a kind of particular understanding of a certain space, or crisis, et cetera.

I think many Muslim groups, communities, that I've had the privilege of sitting with are recognizing the fact of a certain earth crisis in a peculiar individual way. There's no universal understanding of it. And and for some of them, the one way of going back to this is reviving these stories that were passed down across traditions.

Yeah, and I think for some of them, what's crucial to know is to really put that kind of multi-species back into conversations of Islamic sainthood, Islamic Rahman, et cetera, or recognizing the fact that every being has a spirit. I hope that's answering the question. I think I'm probably not. I failed to.

DIANE MOORE: No. I'm sure. A quick question. Craig asks if there are any mention of spiders in the mini miracle stories that you might have heard in your research.

TEREN SEVEA: Oh, yes there are. So think it's wonderful because-- it's a great question. Thank you. Because spiders are, in many of these stories, spiders are really believed to be really Noble creatures because of the fact that there's a popular tradition of them protecting the prophet Muhammad in a web, protecting prophet Muhammad ones.

Even before I recovered these traditions, I know that one of the many pantuns, or taboos, or prohibitions, was to kill a spider. But beyond that, at certain shrines I was introduced to specific spiders, and there was specific spiders that even were described as Pir Karamat, Babas, or elders, et cetera. I'm trying to keep an eye on the time. I don't want to start sharing some miracle stories but definitely there are a number of miracle stories on these elite spiders also.

DIANE MOORE: Well, we are almost against the hour here. I want to say, first of all, on behalf of all of us in the room and all of us who are following this series and will see this recording, thank you immensely for this incredibly moving, and illuminating, and animating, and generative conversation. So incredibly rich and you are an encyclopedia of these stories, and we're very, very excited about your new book that you're working on.

I also just have to say, I was so moved by your friend and the caretaker, and the Karamat himself, who you recently lost and his name escaped me. I apologize. But when he said, tell these stories. They have consequences. And you are such a tender caretaker of this important tradition, specifically through him. So Thank you for sharing with all of us that powerful particular story of this very rich encyclopedia of stories. Beautiful. Beautiful.

TEREN SEVEA: Thank you.

DIANE MOORE: So I want to also encourage all of you, we are taking next week off because it is a holiday here in the United States, and that's Monday. But two weeks from tonight at 6 o'clock, on Eastern time, Matthew ichihashi Potts will be sharing his interpretation of apocalyptic grief, reckoning with loss and wrestling with hope.

So please return two weeks from tonight, join us again, and thank you again. Incredible presentation, Teren, we're blessed for your presence with us. All right. Thank you, everyone. Have a lovely two weeks and we hope to see you back here at 2 weeks from tonight. Good night.

TEREN SEVEA: Thank you, everyone. Bye.

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