Prosiding Konvensyen Seni Silat Melayu Antarabangsa 2025

Dengan sukacitanya kami kongsikan e-Prosiding KOSSMA25 yang kini boleh diakses secara dalam talian. Penerbitan ini menghimpunkan kertas penuh yang telah dibentangkan dalam KOSSMA25, menampilkan penyelidikan semasa, wacana kritis, serta perspektif rentas disiplin yang mencerminkan kekuatan dan dinamika intelektual persidangan tahun ini. Kami menjemput para sarjana, pengamal, dan masyarakat umum untuk meneliti serta memanfaatkan dapatan dan idea yang diketengahkan dalam penerbitan ini.

We are pleased to share the official KOSSMA25 e-Proceedings, now available online. This publication compiles the full papers presented at KOSSMA25, showcasing current research, critical insights, and interdisciplinary perspectives that reflect the strength and intellectual energy of this year’s conference. We invite scholars, practitioners, and the wider community to explore the contributions and engage with the ideas shaping our field.

Sila klik pada gambar di atas untuk muat turun Prosiding Konvensyen Seni Silat Melayu Antarabangsa 2025.

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Imamludin bin Raja Kamala - the hidden heir

 YM Raja Imamludin ibni Raja Kamala (d.1914)

A silent figure in the history of Hulu Selangor. A wise aristocrat and a religious leader of Gumut and Kalumpang, he was the sultan's agent in the land. His brother, YM Raja Jilis ruled over Gopeng and Tapah, at a time when modern Perak and Selangor have not been established. They have a younger sister, YM Raja Tanesah Raja Kamala. 

They are the true heirs of Raja Kamala of Kubah. Their story needs to be heard...

Raja Imamludin bin Raja Kamala

Raja Imamludin's grave in Gumut, Kalumpang.

Konvensyen Seni Silat Melayu Antarabangsa 2025

 Konvensyen Seni Silat Melayu Antarabangsa 2025 akan menjadi titik pertemuan bersejarah antara dunia persilatan dan dunia akademik. Pada bulan November 2025, tujuh orang sarjana dan pakar tersohor akan membentangkan kertas kerja mereka, memperkaya wacana tentang seni silat Melayu dari pelbagai sudut ilmu. Acara ini bukan sekadar pentas penghimpunan, tetapi sebuah wadah penyampaian, pengembangan, dan pelestarian warisan agung silat Melayu yang merentasi generasi.

Lebih daripada setengah abad selepas Konvensyen Silat Melayu Kebangsaan yang bersejarah di Universiti Sains Malaysia pada tahun 1973, konvensyen kali ini menandai kesinambungan sebuah tradisi keilmuan yang luhur, dengan semangat memperteguh kedudukan silat Melayu sebagai warisan budaya dan disiplin ilmu yang relevan di persada antarabangsa.

#KonvensyenSeniSilatMelayu2025

#MatraSilat

#AppliedSilat

Breaking the Bystander Effect Through Applied Silat

 Most of us like to believe that when crisis strikes, we’d be the one to step forward. The truth is less flattering. Social psychology has shown, again and again, that when people witness an emergency in a group, they are less likely to intervene. This pattern is called the bystander effect, and it’s one of the most sobering realities of human behavior.

The classic experiments by Latané and Darley in the late 1960s made this clear. In one setup, smoke filled a waiting room while participants filled out forms. Alone, most people raised the alarm within minutes. But when surrounded by others who stayed calm, the majority sat there until they could hardly see across the room. They assumed, “If no one else is worried, maybe it isn’t serious.”

Fast forward to the digital age, and we see the same thing - sometimes in even harsher form. In 2011, a two-year-old girl in China, Wang Yue, was struck by vehicles and left on the road. More than a dozen people passed by without intervening, until finally a street cleaner stepped in. Many of those witnesses likely rationalized their inaction in the moment, but the result was tragic. In less extreme cases, we see people recording assaults or accidents on their phones instead of helping. Filming feels like “doing something,” but in most situations, it does little for the victim in real time.

So where does Applied Silat come in?

Applied Silat is about more than combat techniques or weapon ergonomics. It’s about conditioning the mind and body to respond with clarity when hesitation is the default. Training in biomechanics, tactical awareness, and embodied practice gives practitioners both the skill and the confidence to act. And with that competence comes a sense of responsibility: if I can step in, then I must.

This flips the psychology of the bystander effect on its head. Instead of diffusing responsibility into the crowd, the practitioner internalizes it. Rather than waiting for a cue from others, they become the cue.

Think of a silat practitioner witnessing a car accident. Where an untrained bystander might freeze, unsure whether to approach, the practitioner recognizes the scene for what it is: a crisis that requires immediate action. Even basic preparedness - knowing how to secure the area, check for breathing, or call for emergency support - can make the difference between life and death.

Or take the modern problem of online harassment. Most scroll past or stay silent, another form of the bystander effect. Applied Silat thinking asks: how does one intervene - safely, responsibly, effectively - so that silence doesn’t become complicity? The principles of responsibility and decisive action apply as much in the digital realm as on the street.

In the Malay tradition, this ethic is not foreign. The concept of jaga kampung - to guard the village - captures the expectation that individuals carry responsibility for the safety and dignity of the community. Applied Silat translates that cultural value into a contemporary practice, where science, art, and philosophy merge into readiness.

The bystander effect reveals a weakness in human psychology: the tendency to hesitate when help is most needed. Applied Silat offers a way through - not by promising heroics, but by building clarity, competence, and the courage to act.

Because when the moment comes, the crowd might freeze. But if you’ve prepared, you won’t.

Applied Silat | Ilmu Ruang – The Science of Space

In Silat, every step is a negotiation with space.

Every angle you cut, every distance you close, every circle you draw - it’s all part of a dialogue with the unseen geometry around you.

This is ilmu ruang: the science of space.

To the untrained eye, ruang is just distance. How far your opponent stands, how close your blade comes. But to the silat practitioner, ruang is alive. It is potential. It is safety, leverage, opportunity, and danger - all coexisting in a single breath.

The old masters mapped ruang not with rulers, but with langkah - triangles, diamonds, circles traced by the feet. These patterns weren’t just choreography; they were living equations. Step here, and you create an opening. Shift there, and you disappear from sight. Collapse space, and you overwhelm. Expand space, and you survive.

Modern science calls this spatial intelligence, geometry of combat, even game theory. Physics reduces it to vectors, momentum, and lines of force. But silat elevates it: ruang becomes philosophy.

Your stance is your claim to territory. Your reach is your horizon. Your ability to shrink or stretch the ruang defines whether you command the fight, or are swallowed by it.

Ilmu ruang teaches that combat is never chaos. It is architecture. And every silat player is both builder and demolisher, creating space to live, and erasing space to win.

It’s time to reimagine space not as emptiness, but as the most powerful weapon you already hold.

#AppliedSilat2026 #IlmuRuang #SilatReimagined #KonvensyenSeniSilatMelayu2025

Ilmu Gerak: The Knowledge Behind the Strike

In Silat, a strike is never just a strike.

Behind the graceful motion of a langkah or the devastating arc of a parang lading lies a deeper framework – one that combines intent, awareness, biomechanics, tradition, and metaphysics. This is what the old masters called ilmu gerak – the knowledge of motion.

But what exactly is it?

At its core, ilmu gerak is the embodied understanding of how and why we move. It goes beyond muscle memory. It is the silat practitioner’s ability to read rhythm, to manipulate timing, to channel energy, and to feel the battlefield before even making contact.

This is not just instinct. It's trained intuition – sharpened over years of discipline, spiritual clarity, and cognitive growth.

In modern terms, ilmu gerak mirrors what scientists call proprioception, kinesthetic intelligence, and situational awareness. But while science reduces motion to mechanics, Silat elevates it to meaning.

A movement carries your story. A stance reflects your state of mind. A strike, done with ilmu, becomes an extension of your will.

This is why Silat was never just a martial art. It was a complete theory of motion.

It’s time to remember that.

#AppliedSilat2026 #IlmuGerak #SilatReimagined

Knowledge isn’t always taught. Sometimes, it is given...

Sometimes we think of lineage as something you can only trace physically. Teacher to student, master to disciple, one hand passing to the next. But Malay cosmology has always entertained another possibility – that lineage can also arrive through the unseen. Not learned step by step, but diilhamkan, “downloaded” into the heart and body of a practitioner.

This isn’t as alien as it sounds. If the universe itself is written in patterns and principles, then the human mind and spirit are not merely storage devices – they are receivers. Just as a radio picks up frequencies, some silat masters have long claimed to pick up entire sequences, jurus, even philosophies of their art, directly from that hidden layer of reality.

Science is slowly catching up to what tradition has long intuited. Biologist Dr. Douglas Youvan once suggested that humans are not only transmitters of culture but receivers of deep, coded patterns in nature. His work explored how biological systems absorb information from their environment in ways we don’t yet fully understand. If our cells and senses can respond to subtle signals, then why not our higher faculties? What silat masters call ilham might be an expression of this same principle – information carried not by books or voices, but by resonance.

Skeptics might call this fantasy. But then, how do we explain the uncanny similarities of movements across different schools that had no contact? How do we explain a guru who never trained under a particular lineage yet produces forms almost identical to it? In the Malay world, such phenomena are often not questioned but recognized as part of the larger cosmological order.

And here’s the crux: authenticity isn’t determined by whether it was “downloaded” or “taught.” It is tested through practice, verified by peers, and measured against the principles of tauhid. If it aligns with truth, uplifts the soul, and strengthens the body and community, then it is real enough.

Lineage, then, may be both horizontal – from human to human – and vertical, from the unseen to the seen. The question is, are we ready to accept that knowledge, like silat itself, doesn’t always walk the straight road, but sometimes descends from above, like rain.

Pak Ku Nara
17 August 2025

#SilatLineage #WarisanMelayu #AppliedSilat #IlmuBatin #SpiritualTransmission #HiddenKnowledge