Its intensity caused several umbrellas to break and drove the small crowd gathered at the Bukit Kiara Muslim cemetery here to dive under a white marquee and huddle around the freshly-covered final resting place of Datuk Ilani Isahak.
It seemed that the petite woman who had spent her life embracing people of all colours and creed was doing that still.
The former lawyer had been specially handpicked by the Cabinet to head a national committee that saw, for the first time, Muslim leaders at the same table with leaders of other faiths to talk over how to end quarrel and misunderstanding among their followers.
Ilani, who would have celebrated her 58th birthday on March 18 this year, succumbed to cancer after a five-year battle.
She passed away shortly after 6am yesterday at the Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM) here, after spending the previous evening surrounded by family.
Ilani left behind her husband, Adam Camille Rustum, and four children.
Her eldest son, Adil Akbar, 27, recounted reading the newspapers as she lay in the hospital bed fretting about her work on unity.
“I hope someday, I can be like her and do good,” Adil said.
Despite criticism and a rocky start to its first meeting on April 6 last year, Ilani was convinced the fledgling Committee to Promote Harmony and Understanding Among Religious Adherents would work.
“She was a fighter,” Ilani’s brother, Dr Amir Farid Isahak, said.
The Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship (Insaf) chief who also sits on the national faith panel related how his sister had stubbornly refused to be admitted to hospital despite the pain until January 23, claiming she had much work to do.
“She was dedicated to see the interfaith committee work in Malaysia,” Dr Amir said, adding that she had reminded him to tell their colleagues on the panel work to make it a success.
Reverend Thomas Phillips who heads the Malaysian Consultative Council for Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) said he and his colleagues were saddened by Ilani’s death.
“We’ll really miss her and her leadership,” he told The Malaysian Insider.
Thomas said he and other members of the non-Muslim faith panel had dropped in to visit Ilani at HUKM on Monday, but she had been too weary to greet them personally.
He said they had received Dr Amir’s message from Ilani and vowed to fulfil her last wish.
However, he was unsure what will happen to the panel now, adding that it will be a challenge for the government to find a suitable replacement.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon described Ilani as “the epitome of moderation and inclusiveness, in accordance with the 1 Malaysia spirit” and said her death was a great loss to the cause of interfaith harmony.
Koh — who is in charge of overseeing the committee together with Muslim affairs minister, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom — said Ilani’s replacement will be decided by the prime minister after meeting the Cabinet and religious leaders.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak arrived last night after an official visit to Turkey.
He had mooted the Committee to Promote Harmony and Understanding Among Religious Adherents in January last year, in response to growing tensions that saw a series of attacks against houses of worship nationwide.
Ilani was appointed by the Cabinet to be its special co-ordinator in February last year.
Born on March 18, 1953 in Kota Baru, Kelantan, Ilani received her early education at a local school before being sent to board at the elite Tunku Kurshiah College in Negri Sembilan.
She was classmates with PKR president Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail.
She went on to study law at Universiti Malaya, where she met her husband. They both married soon after graduating.
Ilani joined his law firm in 1976.
She joined Umno in 1980 and became a member of the executive council in the women’s wing, until Umno was dissolved in 1988.
She joined Semangat 46 after that and was elected Kota Baru MP in 1990, which she defended at the next general election in 1995.
She became a member in Umno Baru in 1996 when the Kelantan-based party merged with it.
In previous interviews with The Malaysian Insider, Ilani said she had always been drawn towards the spiritual from a young age.
She jokingly attributed it to the 15-minute long walks from her home to religious class at night where she would often look up into the starry sky and ponder the meaning of life, the universe and everything in it.
Ilani, who had a voracious appetite for reading and travel, started adding books on different cultures and religions when she became a national youth council leader in the 1980s.
Her interest deepened and she enrolled at the International Islamic University where she read comparative religion and earned a diploma in Islamic Studies in 1992.
But her work on inter-religious affairs truly began when she was picked by then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to head the National Unity Advisory Panel in 2004, which she had once described as being the precursor to today’s interfaith committee. She held the post until 2008.
Ilani had once intimated to The Malaysian Insider an idea to set up a corps of “peace ambassadors”.
She said she was inspired after meeting Pastor James Wuye and Imam Muhammad Ashafa at the interfaith committee’s two-day brainstorming workshop in November last year.
The duo are Nigeria’s celebrated co-directors of the Muslim-Christian Interfaith Mediation Centre who are leading task-forces to resolve conflicts across the African nation torn apart by civil war.
She believed that Malaysia, too, could one day be a role model for peace. - Malaysian Insider
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