14 September 2026 — At ISTAC-IIUM, Prof. Farish A. Noor led us to Bachok, Kelantan, and into the world of the late master carver Nik Rashiddin Nik Hussein, where wood became more than material—it became a philosophy of life.
For Nik Rashiddin, timber was never inert. It once lived, and within it remained semangat kayu: a spirit to be understood rather than subdued. The carver’s task was therefore not to impose his ego upon the wood, but to read its grain, respect its nature, and reveal the beauty already dwelling within.
Through this intimate world of craft, Prof. Farish invited us to rethink decoloniality beyond academic abstraction. Nik Rashiddin’s knowledge—rooted in observation, patience, inherited tradition and rational agency—revealed an indigenous aesthetic that required neither Western validation nor the logic of the market to give it meaning.
His life reminds us that tradition is not a relic of the past, but a living way of knowing.
Perhaps to decolonise the mind is first to learn, like the carver, how to see what is already alive beneath the surface.
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