Interview #5: Ms. Afra Alatas
The story of Arab Peranakans, the hidden community in Singapore
This interview features Ms. Afra Alatas, a Senior Research Officer who explores the history of Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and is a descendant of the Alatas Arab Family. Her background is rooted in the Arab Peranakan community in Singapore, where Southeast Asian Malay ancestry intersects with Middle Eastern/Nusantara traditions.
About This Interview
Ms. Afra Alatas dives deeper into Peranakan culture, specifically how this heritage is more commercialized than widely researched or discussed in the academic field.
Today’s interview centers on the question: “How can we (whether we are youths or the older generation, local or expats) raise awareness of the Peranakan community, a group that has coexisted with us for over 200 years, but has been overlooked?” As an Arab Peranakan herself, Ms. Afra Alatas provides a valuable primary perspective on her culture, heritage, and traditions.
Interview Details
Guest: Ms. Afra Alatas
Interviewer: Christine Oh
Date Recorded: April 6th, 2026
Location: Orchard, Singapore
Language: English
Duration: 20:26
Format: Video & Audio Recording
Interview Questions
Below are highlights from our conversation with Ms. Afra Alatas, a Senior Research Officer who explores the history of Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and is a descendant of the Alatas Arab Family. This excerpt captures her valuable point of view on the awareness and treatment of Arab Peranakan culture in Singapore.
In your experience, how has the urbanization of areas like Kampong Glam affected the Arab Peranakan community?
Ms. Afra Alatas: I think one thing people don't realize, because of the name of the neighborhood, Kampong Glam. It's a Malay name, right? So, people have historically associated it with the Malay community, but not many people know. Despite all the street names, I mean, we have Arab Street, we have Bisara Street, Bandet Street. These are all names, or rather, streets that are named after places from the Arab world or from different countries in the Middle East. So, many Hadrami families, especially those more prominent in Singapore's history, such as the Alatas, the Al Junids, and the Asagaps, had a presence in the Kampung Glam area because they were very involved in trade and philanthropy. They were involved in religious education. But then of course, when you have urbanization, and this is something that I think not just the Arab Peranakan community has been unhappy about, but even the Malay community, or even other Muslim communities in Singapore, is that a certain aspect of history gets erased, right, because of the gentrification. So the family presence is no longer there, or is no longer known, because the properties have been sold or maybe they've been redeveloped. So now, like, what's left of the textile presence we used to have is just in, like, two or three shops. I don't know if you know Toko Al Junid, the Bamadhad brothers, and the Basharahu brothers; these have historically been run by Arab families since the early 1900s, and even the late 1800s. But that's what's left, you know. Whatever else there is in the area, especially when you go to Hajj Lane, boutiques and bars. You know, like there's alcohol there, and I think this is a big pain point, especially for Muslims. So the Arab presence there is kind of erased, and you no longer see it as a place of community. You see it more as a place of history, but even then, you don't really. That history isn't really as apparent as we would like it to be.
How do you feel about the commercialization of your heritage?
Ms. Afra Alatas: It's good that it's still obvious on the outside, because at least it still honors that history. It still honors the original function and purpose of that particular establishment. But you know, it's just on the outside. It's just a facade. Apart from just honoring it, it's good because it might spark curiosity in people. Look at this place. They look at the facade, the architecture, and they wonder what, you know, the history behind this particular building or this particular design is. But again, that's limited to a certain group of people who are actually intellectually or culturally curious. But once you go inside, you know there's nothing for you to be curious about, because there's kind of a disconnect between the outside and the inside. As I said about Arab Street, it used to be thriving with trade in textiles, batik, perfumery, and religious garb. Haji Lane used to be the place where Muslim pilgrims would go before embarking on their pilgrimage to the Middle East, but few people know that about its history, despite its name. So I guess the thing that makes me, or rather, the thing that defines how I feel about this whole commercialization process, is the sadness with the sense of that disconnect.
What are aspects of your culture that can’t be replaced by a museum exhibit?
Ms. Afra Alatas: I should say first, museums are great. Museums are very important for helping us preserve heritage, encourage conversations about it, and be curious. Museums house a museum itself, which is a tangible place, and museums house tangible goods. What museums can't showcase is the intangible. For example, the nature of the interactions between the community, especially because the Arab community is very community-based in our interactions. So museums can't do that. Trade, for example, was very important in the community because it was passed down from generation to generation. Museums don't tell you that. You know, you can only experience that when you're in a particular family, when you see these interactions between father and son, the son who's learning how to take on the business from his father, or when you have religious gatherings, the spirit and soul of the gatherings, the smell of perfume, the scents, like all these intangible things museums can't have. So I guess that's what it is: the social networks and the defining atmosphere of communal life. Those are the two key things that I feel museums definitely can't capture.
How do you believe Singapore’s multiculturalism both preserves and blurs the ethnic nuances in your culture?
Ms. Afra Alatas: Singapore, obviously, as you know, the main categorization for race is CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others), right? And if you follow conversations about CMIO in Singapore, you would know that many people don't really find benefit in it. There is, of course, an administrative benefit, but this is also a remnant of colonialism because it was the colonizers who decided to clump everybody into one ethnic group, even though they might not necessarily identify as such. So it happened with the Chinese, it happened with the Malays, it happened with the Indians, and also with the Arabs. So Arabs, I mean, on my ICA, I'm indicated as other. Some because an intermarriage between Arab and Malay families may end up being identified as Malay or Malay Muslim, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that, especially when you're Arab Pranakan, because we're already integrated with the local Malay Muslim community, which gives us access to certain shared spaces with the rest of the Malay Muslim community. But because Arabs are identified or categorized from the government's perspective as an other, it means we're already a minority within a minority, and I think that's why, despite our long presence in Singapore, people don't really know about us, you know.
They think when I was growing up in school, my friends would ask me, "Oh, so when did you come to Singapore? You know, there's no realization that I was born in Singapore, that our ancestors have been here for like four or five generations before me. So I think that's one of the problems with Singapore's model of multiculturalism, but that's not to say that there's no recognition whatsoever. There is still recognition, especially from the state, because they have historically acknowledged that we have made contributions to Singapore at different levels, as well as conversations specifically about Pranakan identity. For the longest time, conversations about Pranakan identity or the Pranakan community in Singapore tended to focus heavily on Chinese Pranakans. It wasn't until recently in the last few years that people started to realize, be more aware of, and also to speak more of the different Peranakan communities in Singapore, and that's why Pranakan community closed for a while to do their own restructuring, so that they could expand and include a few more Parnagan communities, and that's how the Arabs came to be featured within the Peranakan Museum. I think Chinese Peranakans are the most numerically dominant and perhaps also culturally dominant, in the sense that we see more of their heritage in Singapore. That means other Peranakan communities may not have received the same attention. But the good thing about Singapore is that we are all given the space to do what we want, to showcase our culture, you know, to organize events and things like that. Sharing culture, like intercultural engagement, is strongly encouraged.
How can we make Peranakan culture better known, especially among young people?
Ms. Afra Alatas: When the Arab community first featured in the Pranakan Museum, we started more explicitly using the term Arab Pranakan to refer to ourselves. There were some people within the community who would not be very happy with the use of this term because for them, they see themselves as like pure 100% Arab, as opposed to Arab Pranakan who are integrated with local, you know, the Malay community and Malay culture, but I think what some of them don't realize, and what perhaps Singaporeans as a whole, in in the broadest sense, don't really realize, is that people were already having these conversations decades ago. So, in my experience, like when I do sharings with museum docents or with interested Singaporeans about Arab Pranakan heritage in Singapore, I realized that if you were to go onto the newspaper SG database and you search Arab Pranakan, some newspaper articles from the early 1900s will come up, and the term Arab Pranakan was in the news. So these terms were already in use in the early 1900s. It's not a new term because integration has been going on for generations.
My main point in sharing these is to show that every community has contributed to Singapore's national development, and the same goes for the Arab Peranakan community. They were an influential community not just across the Indian Ocean but also in Southeast Asia, the Malay world, and Singapore. To show how they contributed to interreligious dialogue and to politics, some of them were involved in politics. I mean, all of these things are so important to Singapore's national development that people don't really know about these stories. And if you want to talk about contemporary Singapore, the reality of Singapore is that so many more intercultural marriages are happening, right? The government has released statistics showing the extent of the increase in intermarriage. So I think that, in itself, is also a reason for people to be more curious about Arab Peranakan heritage, because it is a story of integration. It's a story of mixing and a celebration of cultures. So I think if we show these stories in fun ways, like we, for us Arabanakans, we like to do it through food. You know, to show people that Arab food isn't just kebabs. The palate is localized. We like to do it through fashion. You know, sometimes we have so-called fashion shows where people can see what our traditional attire is like. We have community-guided tours at the Corner Garden Museum. We have a dance performance where people can see our dancing and our music played on our traditional instruments. And these are all fun ways, I think, of showing people who we are.
What are some Arab Peranakan heritage that are not well known, but deserve more attention?
Ms. Afra Alatas: I mean, people don't know that we had leaders, community leaders, for example, who were part of the early expo of the interreligious organization in Singapore. They provided their homes for meetings among the ex. They were important in contributing to interreligious dialogue, and the interreligious organization in Singapore still exists today. It still promotes or does work to promote intubated dialog and has events in the Botanic Gardens, you know, the Orchid Garden within Botanic Gardens, the person who is responsible, you know, for setting it up, or rather for keeping it alive, but he is known as Mr. Orchid because of the work that he's done to upkeep the Orchid Garden in the Botanical Gardens. Today, we have many young entrepreneurs from the Arab Ganakan community. These are all heritage in the making. They're not heritage at the moment, but they're all heritage in the making. Because decades from now, hopefully, Singaporeans-not just Arab Peranakans, but Singaporeans in general-are going to look at them and say, "Hey, these are Arabs who don't just do work for their own community, but for Singaporeans as a whole”.
I guess the thing most people know about the Arab community in Singapore would be religious education, because we have two madrasas or religious schools, Madrasa Junid, which is also in the Kampong, or rather the wider Bugis area, and also Madrasa Asaga, because these were set up by the Al Jumid and the Asaga, apparently, and they continue to run today. I think people tend to know that or associate those more with the Arab community, and also the mosques, because these are more historical institutions, but yeah, the thing about Tantok Singh Hospital, the thing about the wells, the thing about even land for Raffles Hospital, Raffles. One of the Raffles institutions was also donated by In Arab, Saint Andrew's Cathedral. So many of these things-they're all on the internet. Some come from stories that are told within families. But a lot of it is online. It's just that it hasn't really been put together, which is why the Arab Network, the organization I'm part of, finally published the coffee-table book. It just came out last November, and this was a three-year project in the making, just to compile the different aspects of our heritage and our contribution to Singapore over the last 200 years, so that Singaporeans can know more about what this community does.
