‘A Malay,” the 1911 Encylopædia Britannica calmly informed its readers, “will suddenly and without reason rush into the street armed with kris or other weapon, and slash and cut at everybody he meets until he is killed.” Or, the entry might have added, until he kills himself.
The Britannica’s rather dry description, although almost certainly the consequence of both early-20th-century British imperial understatement and the insipid nature of writing that was destined for Edwardian reference works, is notably lacking in moral judgment. This turns out to be appropriate, for the Malays shared its phlegmatic approach toward those who visited death and destruction upon their communities. The perpetrators of “amok,” it was believed, were as much the victims as those whom they killed or maimed. Having been entered by an evil tiger spirit named “hantu belian,” a host was powerless to resist, and would be mourned in death like any other. No stigma. No disgrace. No opprobrium. Just mourning, and the sincere prayer that it wouldn’t happen again any time soon.
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