The Sun
19 June 2008

Remembering my friend Toni
by Ziad Haider

I REMEMBER the first time I met Toni Kasim. I had been in Kuala Lumpur all of three days and was racing around to get oriented. Having just finished watching a play, I chatted away in the parking lot, keen to immerse myself in a new land. When Toni (left) overheard me say I would be working with Sisters In Islam, she immediately came over. With her trademark warmth and ebullience, she introduced herself and welcomed me aboard. I rightly suspected then only that I had found a friend. Working with her at Sisters over the next few months left a deep impression. Her passion for women’s rights was contagious. As a South Asian male, I say that unabashedly. Toni had a way of eloquently impressing on every ounce of indignation she left about the injustices perpetrated on women in Islam’s name. And while she always spoke from the heart, she disarmed more than one guardian of female virtue with cool reason.

Her commitment and energy were boundless to the myriad causes she embraced. I never was able to keep track of her activities as she whizzed from Amnesty meetings to training sessions abroad to organizing workshops and conferences at home.

Whenever she came into the Sisters office, there was always a story, always something percolating in her mind, always some way in which she wanted to make her country Malaysia a better place. And she did it. She spoke out, marched, protested, argued, organized, mobilized, advocated and led. She gave her all.

And along the way, she had her moments, as we all do, when uncertainty and doubt gnaw at us. It always meant a great deal to me when she shared them and it made my admiration for her grow all the more. For while she wrestled her own demons, she never gave in; she always found the strength to continue giving to others.

The clearest indication of this was the love and affection she engendered among her friends. For among other qualities, she had a wonderful and witty sense of humour that cut me down to size on more than one occasion for some impudent remark. I remember sitting around her house one night strumming a guitar and belting out songs. Even as someone who knew her for so short her time, it took just one look around the circle on the floor to know her friends were family. She meant the world to them as they did to her.

Many have rightly paid rich tribute to her in the past weeks. One daily referred to her as “prominent activist”. But my recollections here are intentionally personal to convey that Malaysian has lost more than an activist. Like me, it has lost a friend. Full of life, always a cause, always a smile. That is how I will always remember my friend Toni Kasim.

The writer was a Fullbright Scholar in Malaysia. Comment: feedback@thesundaily.com