Writing Freely,
Living Fearlessly

Marina, you need no introduction — but I am going to let you give one anyway. What are you into right now?

I describe myself primarily as a writer. I have been writing a column in The Star for more than thirty years — which does age me, I know. I have written a memoir. I am trying to write more books, if I only had the time. Writing is my great love. Beyond that, I run a travel website for women called Zafigo. I do a great deal of NGO work — I am a member of Sisters in Islam, and I sit on the board of Musawah, which is a global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family. And I try to support progressive and human rights causes wherever I can.

Thirty years writing a column — and speaking very freely about race, religion, everything that is Malaysia, including its difficulties. If you were not who you are, if you did not come from the family you do — do you think you could still do what you do?

I genuinely do not know. In all that time, I have probably been censored by the newspaper itself four times at most — usually just before an election when they wanted me to tone it down. And I would say: I do not know how to tone down. I write what I want, and you do what you want with it. That is not my job.

Whether my name protects me in some way, I cannot say with certainty. What I can say is that I have always tried to say things in a way that gets the point across without naming names unnecessarily, without being gratuitously provocative. I try to be diplomatic without compromising what I actually think. And the fact that it resonates with a lot of people — I genuinely find that a lucky coincidence. I am not trying to be a voice for anyone. I write what I believe, and it seems that many people believe similar things.

Where do those beliefs come from? Have you always had strong opinions?

Not as a young girl. I was just like everyone else coming out of school. My views formed over time through what I read, what I was exposed to. My parents instilled certain values from early on — truthfulness above almost everything. Lying was the worst thing you could do. Honesty, consideration for others, helping people. And they modelled these values. They were not just principles spoken at the dinner table; I saw my parents actually live them. That was formative in a way that no amount of instruction alone could be.

Then I went to University of Sussex, one of the first red brick universities, very radical. It was the late seventies — Margaret Thatcher was arriving, student protests, a lot of upheaval. I joined Amnesty International. I did not necessarily participate in demonstrations, but things seeped in. You cannot spend your formative years in an environment of people thinking critically about power and society without some of it becoming part of how you see the world.

You have marched in BERSIH 2, 3, 4, 5. Did you ever feel unsafe? Did you ever feel pressure to comply, to stay quiet because of who your father is?

No. I just did what I wanted to do. I was not involved in Reformasi 1998 — that was a different, more complicated moment for me. But from BERSIH onward, and the Pakatan Harapan rallies leading to 2018 — I was there. And I never felt unsafe.

What I find interesting is that I later discovered that some political figures' children would actually check with their father's office before attending events like these. Whether what they were going to say was sanctioned. I never did that. It simply was not part of how my family operated. I barely knew anyone in my father's office. That was not our dynamic.

I do feel more watched now than I did before. Being a member of Sisters in Islam creates a certain pressure that comes from scrutiny. And sometimes on social media, I receive unpleasant things. But I have yet to meet anyone who would actually say those things to my face. On the contrary — everywhere I go, people have been enormously kind, from all races and backgrounds. I have great faith in Malaysians. They talk a great deal online, but they do not actually behave the way online discourse would suggest.

Sisters in Islam — now SIS Forum. The 2014 Selangor fatwa labelled the organisation as deviant. Eleven years of legal battles. How do you carry something like that?

We went to the civil court because these are human beings making judgments, and human beings can be challenged. We wanted to show that they can be challenged — and that it is worth doing. We fought at every level: High Court, Appeal Court, Federal Court, High Court again on different points. It took eleven years. The process itself was a form of harassment — every postponement, every delay, is taxpayers' money being spent, and our time being consumed. We are very fortunate that we have lawyers willing to do pro bono work, though court expenses remain.

On the removal of the word Islam from our name — I want to be clear that Sisters in Islam has always been our nickname. Our formal registered name has always been SIS Forum Malaysia. The name started because we originally wrote letters to newspapers and needed a pen name. Sisters in Islam stuck. When the pressure came to formally remove Islam from the name, some of us pushed back because we felt it implied that what we do is not Islamic — when precisely what we are trying to do is uphold Islamic family values of justice, equality, kindness, and compassion. But ultimately, we use our formal name. It does not change what we actually do.

What gives me complete clarity — and has always given me complete clarity — is knowing who I am answerable to. It is not the people who want to label me. I know what I believe in. I know the truth of the work. And that is what matters.

HIV advocacy — you were president of the Malaysian AIDS Council until 2005. Where has it gone since? And where is it still stuck?

There has been significant progress. In the early days, people genuinely knew very little, and the silence was profound. What we did in those early years was bring it into the public sphere — get people talking, whether positively or negatively. And we achieved real things: we got the government to provide free first-line medicine to Malaysians with HIV. We stopped mother-to-baby transmission. We pushed consistently on the message that HIV is manageable — not curable, but manageable, like diabetes. Nobody has cured the common cold either. I know people with HIV who have survived more than twenty years in Malaysia, and that is partly because of the work done then.

Now, I go to the Red Ribbon Gala and I see celebrities singing, companies donating, associations with the cause being treated as a badge of pride. When I started, no one would touch it. The prejudice was that total. So yes — progress has been real. But on the ground, for people living with HIV, fear and stigma persist. And we still have situations where police raid HIV workshops because they serve vulnerable communities — and those raids create the very discrimination and shame that makes effective public health work impossible.

And child marriage — you have been campaigning to raise the minimum age to 18. Where does that stand?

Currently the age is 16 for girls, and there are provisions for younger in some states under certain conditions — we have had cases involving ten and eleven year olds. This is a children's rights issue, full stop. Some states have raised the age to 18 — Selangor, I believe, has done so — but getting it standardised across all thirteen states and federally is the challenge. The authority rests at state level for Islamic marriages, which makes a uniform national standard legally complex.

We need to address the underlying causes too. Poverty is a significant driver — in some contexts, marriage is seen as a form of economic security for a family that cannot support a child. But marrying a child off is not a solution to poverty. It is the perpetuation of it in another generation. We need better sex education, frank conversation about teen pregnancy, access to contraception for young women who need it, and we need to stop treating teen sexuality as something criminal when we have never given young people the education to navigate it safely.

There are fake advertisements and scam posts circulating with your face. Articles purportedly written by you saying things you would never say. How do you deal with that?

I am just tired of it, honestly. People send them to me and I think — I hope people realise these are scams. The scam ads using my face, the WhatsApp messages with fake articles attributed to me — anyone who has read my writing over the years would know it is not my style. I do not write in capital letters. I do not write in the style of someone who needs to shout to be heard. My writing has a particular voice. If you have followed it, you know it.

But I cannot chase all of it. It keeps recurring. It is like a bad penny. I flag it when I can, I ignore it when I cannot, and I trust that the people who know me know what is real.

Last question — if you had one wish to make the planet a better place, what would it be?

More common sense. Which I know is not that common — that is the irony of it.

If you think about it — what does it actually serve to destroy? To polarise? To spend years in court harassing an organisation that is simply trying to help women? Even if you get to the top of the heap and you have all the power and the world is in pieces around you — what is the point? A world where everyone is safe and comfortable and has enough is better for everyone — including the people at the top. Common sense would tell you that. And yet, here we are.

I am hoping for more common sense. From everyone. From our leaders, from each other. It is a tall order. But that is my wish.

Common sense. Thank you so much, Marina. It was an absolute pleasure having you on The Centered Edge.

You are very welcome. Thank you for having me.