Cultural Taboos

I am proud to be Malaysian

 People live in peaceful life although as we know we have a lot of ethnics here that provide the variety of culture for us to explore every culture from the major ethnics in Malaysia which are Malay, Chinese and Indian. Together we can share the experiences that we have with others and at the same time we can learn from their culture too. First and foremost, I would like to share a little bit about Malay’s cultural taboos.

According to the old people such as our grandparents are still practice the taboos in everyday life especially when pregnancy. Starting from the beginning of the pregnancy,
grandmother will advise her daughter or grandchildren not to pick up heavy load to prevent exhausted that can affect the unborn baby. Besides, we cannot eat pineapple during the period; the adults believe that fruit risk to the abortion especially during the first two month of pregnancy.

Not only pregnancy persons practice taboos in order to prevent bad luck to their babies, people also said that it is not proper for the girls to sing while taking bath, because usually they will get marriage with old people. Moreover, girls must learn the proper way to pick the rice from rice cooker to transfer it on the plate, to prevent that girl become disrespect to her biological father. The old people also believe the existence of bad spirit at the big trees, that is why they told us not to play around the big trees or during dusk when we were kids.

At Sabah, there are many races that have their own taboos. For example Bugis, they have to burn something like rubbish every Thursday night. It is believed to avoid any bad luck entering the house. As a logic, its actually to prevent the mosquito :)

Another example ,when their daughter get married before the eldest siblings (langkah bendul ) he or she needs to give a ring each of them. 

For food taboos, we have been told not to passed the chilies sauce by hand to others. We need to put it on the table then the they will got it by themselves. This is to avoid any fight from each other.

Basically, not all the taboos are nonsense, sometimes some of that is true when we related that with science. We decide what the better is for us especially for Muslims that are compulsory to refer to the religion first before practicing the taboos; only practice things that allowed in Islam. 

Thanks for reading our entry :)