This Christmas holiday along with the New Year break I was supposed to drive over with my eldest son to Phuket via Sungai Golok plus minus on towards Cheingmai. Sort of a non structured holiday between father and son. In fact we initially planned a 'tail/head' kind of thing. If the coin shows 'head' we will head for Singapore, if 'tail' we head for Bukit Kayu Hitam and beyond. But we have already decided it would be 'hell' if it is 'head' since both of us cannot stomach Sinapo, so we decided to be more rational.
But providence had it , mid way in Tak Bai, Thailand, I met a long lost relative who for the last 10 years has embraced the 'tabligh movement' in Patani. I end up sleeping in a mosque by the beach in Patani for 2 nights. Cut short my trip to Phuket. Spent a night at the border town of Tumpat, near Kampong Rhu Tujuh [ my god ! Kelantan has very few public amenities and beaches and all of them are dirty like shit !....one of these days when I have time I would write to YB Datuk Husam...a few heads of our municipalities need to roll...they seem to work without imagination and with a total lack of passion. ].
Drove to Slow Temiang to see my boys, then at 7 pm, took the 110 kilometre trip from Felda Ciku to Kenyir dam. The Kelantan side was full of potholes and is narrow and almost estate-like,but once I entered Teganung it was almost magic...new highway,dual carriageway and all the works...[ .Tok Pha has been warming his backside for ages in the cabinet, one wonder what he is doing there, probably just getting fat !? ].
Kenyir Resort run by DRB HICOM, and Kenyir itself is a haven for nature lovers and holiday people but it is currently a well kept secret. Very few people visit Kenyir and fewer Teganuans stay at the resort. It is a wee bit pricey.
But for those who drive all the way from say KL, my advice is say at the resort. It is worth it. Stay a minimum of at least 2 nights and preferably book the lakeview chalets ..you would not be disappointed. Kenyir is for 'philosophers' and thinkers from amongst us. Be mesmerized by the beauty of the lake for hours on end. Be wokened up by the birds chirping. Listen to the wind passing by. A great place for prayer and dzikr and introspection. I revisited Sherlock Holmes' Hounds of Baskerville on the veranda overlooking the great lake. The last time I read him was when I was in form three, some 45 years back ! Masha allah !
"Does Tan Sri Syed ever visit this place ? ", I asked the assistant manager.
" No Sir.."
My god ! These corporate raiders, they are too busy 'raiding' and making 'money', places like this belonging to them they don't even bother. IT IS A GEM of a place. If I run it I would talk to Tan Sri Lee of Palace of Golden Horses and have a seaplane plying the place from these two great hotels and fill it up with rich Arabs and tourists
From Kenyir to Kuantan via Bukit Besi, Muktafi Billah and Paka it is TDM TDM TDM everywhere. Miles and miles of TDM palm estates !
We , Kelantanese have to salute the Teganung chaps for being one up. At least their lands and palm oil are not being raped fully by Chinese taukehs from Sinapo, Johor or Banting flaunting their seven mistresses, with little contribution back to Kelantan apart from their annual contribution which is pittance!
They are nothing special, all lived on borrowed money, the one from Banting get 7k RM back from the World Bank for every hectare he plant with rubber wood. They termed it 'reforestration.'.
We in Kelantan have missed the boat. From Loging to Gua Musang, and right thru to Kuala Krai, it is all gone ! ALL GONE.
When will these ustazs [ and I am being very polite here because I count YB Husam et al as one of my friends ] ever get beyond their 'proverbial' kopiah ?!
I am still very angry.
My only consolation from this short but memorable trip is when I reach Karak. Stopped by to have some durians : The KING.....Musang King in December, mashaalllah !
The KING IS BACK at just 15 RM per kilo.
Used to be 30 RM but Singaporeans this time decided to forgo the 'King' this year because of too high price. So even the lowly Ahmad, Maniam and Ah Kong can have it here.
Other related articles in ' Diary' :
Ramadan in KB in the 60's,
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2009/08/ramadan-1960.html
Bersih.........
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/07/bersihbersihbersihbersihbersihbersihber_11.html
Of Slow Temiang and Tales from Yala
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2009/04/tales-from-yala.html
Prayer of the Cicadas
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/04/gunong-stong-revisited-prayers-of.html
Alone In The Crowd........
http://drnikisahak.blogspot.com/2011/11/alone-in-crowd-looking-back.html
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Case History ....The Most Successful Lorry Driver in Malaysia.
The most successful lorry driver in Malaysia is not Tiong Nam [ i am here just assuming tiong nam, the transport giant starts as a driver, i think definitely i am awfully wrong ].
The most successful lorry driver in Malaysia in my humble estimation is my patient, Encik Eddy Warman of Shah Alam, aged 56.
He walked into my clinic some 10 years ago complaining of shortness of breath and easy fatiguability. His chest xray showed a heart as big as a football. His echocardiogram revealed a 'heart contraction' of only 25 %. In our linggo we termed it as LVEF [ left ventricular ejection fraction ] of 25 % ! You and me , normal mortals would be somewhere in the the region of between 55 to 80 %. He had dilated congestive cardiomyopathy, a disease affecting the heart muscle, reducing it's innate elasticity and contractility. I 'mentally' gave him a year, at the most 5 years, if god is especially kind to him.
25 % in real term should mean a chap should be even feeling breathless lying inclined on the bed. Eddy that time was still driving his 3-ton lorry, single-handedly.
"When is your medical student daughter coming back from Dublin, Eddy ? ", I asked.
"No Sir, she do not plan to come back yet, she will be a houseofficer there next year and plan to finish her MRCP before she comes back".
Wow ! how do I tell this simple chap that he may not have that 5 to 6 years for her to complete her exams !
Now 10 years on Eddy is still going strong, still plying his lorry trade and his daughter is already a specialist in training in one of the numerous medical school in KL and two other daughters have graduated as doctors from overseas.
He just saw me in my clinic yesterday.
Eddy , in my estimation , the most successful lorry driver in the world !
.
I consider myself priveledged to be given a 'peep' by Allah into the life of simple people like Eddy, to be inextricably involved in some small ways...
That is the surprise 'elements' in my daily practice that continue to keep myself 'ticking' and 'trotting' along.
The most successful lorry driver in Malaysia in my humble estimation is my patient, Encik Eddy Warman of Shah Alam, aged 56.
He walked into my clinic some 10 years ago complaining of shortness of breath and easy fatiguability. His chest xray showed a heart as big as a football. His echocardiogram revealed a 'heart contraction' of only 25 %. In our linggo we termed it as LVEF [ left ventricular ejection fraction ] of 25 % ! You and me , normal mortals would be somewhere in the the region of between 55 to 80 %. He had dilated congestive cardiomyopathy, a disease affecting the heart muscle, reducing it's innate elasticity and contractility. I 'mentally' gave him a year, at the most 5 years, if god is especially kind to him.
25 % in real term should mean a chap should be even feeling breathless lying inclined on the bed. Eddy that time was still driving his 3-ton lorry, single-handedly.
"When is your medical student daughter coming back from Dublin, Eddy ? ", I asked.
"No Sir, she do not plan to come back yet, she will be a houseofficer there next year and plan to finish her MRCP before she comes back".
Wow ! how do I tell this simple chap that he may not have that 5 to 6 years for her to complete her exams !
Now 10 years on Eddy is still going strong, still plying his lorry trade and his daughter is already a specialist in training in one of the numerous medical school in KL and two other daughters have graduated as doctors from overseas.
He just saw me in my clinic yesterday.
Eddy , in my estimation , the most successful lorry driver in the world !
.
I consider myself priveledged to be given a 'peep' by Allah into the life of simple people like Eddy, to be inextricably involved in some small ways...
That is the surprise 'elements' in my daily practice that continue to keep myself 'ticking' and 'trotting' along.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Christopher Hitchens, Anwar Al Awlaki and DEATH
Kk and Doc Nik,
Christopher Hitchens died yesterday, Friday, at 62 of cancer. Death has silenced a powerful, sane voice in an insane world. He will be sadly missed by his readers.
AC
.......................
AC
Yes very sad. He was very gifted & insightful, a true intellectual, but very down to earth & unpretentious. He had a very simple style which could be easily understood. Did you read his best seller "Hitch-22", or his piece on Saddam's execution in 2006?
> > In many ways he reminds me of an old time journalist: follows his conscience when he writes, fearless, hard hitting, very driven. But typical of most dedicated journalists, you can sense a deep cynicism that had become ingrained in him. He admits that he drove himself to cancer by his excessive smoking & drinking.
Kk
...........................
Kk,
Yes, it is a loss of a sane voice. His readers will miss him. Yes, I read all his books, and his articles in the Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, IHT, etc. His death reminds me of a heart-breaking observation, "After this lifetime, we will not see each other again." I try to enjoy as much time as I can with my family. Right now, I am in Bali, having breakfast with my Mrs and the boys by the pool, and catching up with my emails. Oh dear, the Internet here is so slow!
Cheers.
AC
.......................
Dato',
With Christopher Hitchens's demise I am reminded instead of our own fate not too long from now with that inevitable 'hole in the ground'.
But unlike you Dato' ,I do not share the bleak pessimism that ' after this lifetime, we will not see each other a gain'. On Richard Dawkin's scale of things 'agnostic' he would rate Hitchens at a hardcore 6 / 6 . A true and true hardcore atheist [..and a bloody racist too ].
'After this lifetime, we will not see each other ' is the motto and the crux of agnosticism and atheism.
We are Muslims, may I remind you guys....
Hitchens in his lifetime, used the media and the internet to demonise Islam and Muslims to the max. I do not certainly miss him neither do I celebrate his death. From my perspective he is an ..sshole.
Life is a continuum Dato.
It started in Loth Mahfuz, at a 'time before time', in the 'spirit' world when HE asked,
" Am I not your Lord ?"
and we, all in unison, said,
" Yes , YOU are Rabbul alamin"
In utero, life is pretty basic...it is all black and darkness, a one cellular world multiplicating into a morulla, with tissues multiplicating and systems forming.
In this life, some of us become 'pig headed' and questioned HIS existence and significance. Some just become heedless. Very few stick to the primordial,
'Yes YOU are'.
In the 'Alam Barzark' life as we currently know is suspended. Al Ghazali though wrote volumes on its very nature in 'Remembrance of Death and Life After Death , beautifully translated by T J Winter of Cambridge U.
'Alam Barzark'is a long respite before 'the sirat'
It is only when 'the second horn' is sounded' that 'we all will meet again' and we can rediscuss about 'Hitchens and all his friends, porsches and ferraris, and kampong chaps like me , mull and ponder on the best d24 and musang kings' to our heart's content with the proviso that we are not with Hithens and his friends. Some of us may though may be unfortunate enough to join Hitchens and his friends in the furnace as 'firewood for hell' and would probably be too busy to discuss other things. Allahualam.
Yes, my friends, do not be too dismissive about this life. Don't be too pesimistic.
You Dato, and your sons, could still meet.
Where we meet remain our choice.
A' Happy New Year to you , Dato'.
Nik Howk
.............................
Doc,
Of course, I would devoutly wish to be reunited with my parents, and my wife and children, some day! But reason tells me it will remain an unfulfilled dream. And, I agree it is a non sequitur, many fellow Muslims piss me off.
And a very Happy and Healthy New Year to you, and your family, too. I hope it is not too Un-Islamic to wish you on a Christian New Year!! I may have JAKIM coming after me!!
AC
........................
Dato',
You over-rate your importance too much.
From JAKIM's perspective, you are not worth their overtime !
Consider these:
..At 70 plus, and you rate Hitchens, an atheist, a Muslim -Islam basher of the 1st order, as your hero !
..Believing that there is no tomorrow after your 'last curtain'
..Not changed a wee bit 'to the right' or to 'the left' even after a massive cancer scare in the family
..and feeling many 'fellow Muslims doing their 'religious' job,, pissing you off', etc etc and etc......
No Dato',in my reckoning JAKIM would certainly be not interested at all in you. You are beyond them. The French would term you ' les terrible, chronically invalide and permanently head damaged'
As for me, you are different.
My only interest in you is because you are very 'influential'
You and your people churn out hundreds of young elites, future leaders.
We want them to be 3 times more brainy than NTR or Dr M
Malaysia need that kind of stuff with something extra.
We need people with 'islamic' software too, inbuilt in them.!
People who do not believe in the existence of a tomorrow after today is an anomaly in Malaysia.
People who just got 250 millions 'super-soft' loan from the government and has the cheek and the gall to ask for another 200 from EXIM Bank loan at 1 % interest rate, has no place in the realm of things Malaysian in 2012.
That, Dato' is why I am working on you. I am not exactly truly all altruistic. There is a selfish element in the corner !
Now I am spoiling your Bali holiday already !
Nik Howk
........................
Doc Nik,
Ouch! My, you are in a bashing mood!
No, you have not spoilt my Bali holiday. You are a decent guy, and I like you (not in the MCKK sense!). I am enjoying the evening, though a rainy one, watching Man United leading QPR.
AC
.......................
No Dato',
just having too much of Tariq Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson lately.
I am just in a pensive and 'daawah' mood, thinking mainly of my very own mortality.
I was in bali some 15 years back, attending some cardiological conference.
Went to a 'makan' place for a spot of lunch, the owner wearing a songkok.....
'Bapak mahu babi guling ?'
It was a cultural shock for a kampong chap like me to be asked by a man in songkok such question !
Now whenever I am in Bali and thinking about food, my oesophagus go into reverse 'peristalsis'. My wife always wonder I stuff a lot of maggi mee in my bag when I head for Bali.
I guess our 'constitution' back here in Malaysia has spoilt my way of thinking :
'Melayu mesti Islam.............it is a permanent head damage of sort and at the political- sociological level if academicians were to write phd's on this, the overall impact on the quality of Islam and Muslims per se in Malaysia would actually on the whole be negative. We take Islam as per joining a club. We behave and think like Jews of Mosses timw : I am holier than thou !
Enjoy your much needed holiday Dato' and a 'Happy New Year to you'.
Nik Howk
..................
Doc,
My stomach cannot take even the thought of any part of babi. Yes, a Malay in songkok and babi guling are incongruous indeed!
But Bali has changed, doc, for the better. I was first here when I was in the NOC in 1969, when indeed babi guling was ubiquitous. After all, only 20% of the population are Muslim. I have been here about a dozen times since, and the range of good restaurants has expanded to beat any in KL. I was at Matisse last night. It was a combination of art gallery and fine dining. Tastefully donsuperb had a superb seafood dinner. Exquisite. My Mrs and the five boys loved it.
Tariq Ramadan? Sorry. I don't think much of him. Inconsistent in argument, and makes too much of his father's Islamic Brotherhood background. No, he and Hamza Yusuf Hanson do not repel me at all. I just have an honest divergence of opinions on a few points. That is all. And I respect, and am comfortable with, your dakwaah position. You have every right to it. And you are polished about it. But I AM pissed off by the local religious department zealots, the know-alls and their intrusions into others' private lives, and peeping toms and salacious religious bullies of couples and women.
Re my family's modest attempt in private education, you are being more kind than accurate. We are not influential to any significant degree. But I think we teach our students to think for themselves, to distinguish fact from opinion, policy from propaganda. We give emphasis to Math, Science, research and essays, and debates. Students are NEVER smacked down for their opinions, but asked to explain them clearly and logically. This prepares them well for a university education. Most of them go abroad to decent universities. Half my English essay class last year went to Oxbridge, London, Edinburgh, Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Monash, and Melbourne. Last week, one was invited for an interview at Somerville College, Oxford, for the 2012 admission. A straight A-star student, plays in the school orchestra, and Grade 8 on the piano. I wrote my evaluation of the candidate, and expect the tutor for admission at Somerville will let me know the interview result by the end of this week.
Yes, Doc, a few thousand of our students, of all races, went abroad, but only only a fraction return to develop this country. Those who return send THEIR children to us, the second generation This is a source of some satisfaction to us. But the sad thing is that many of the educated Malaysian children, privately schooled at our institution do not return...
So, how "influential" are we? In the lives of the students we teach, yes a lot. They are independent minded. A number are high in UMNO, in the DAP, PKR, etc. They are not sheep, they are diverse in their thinking and convictions. In the numbers that come back? Not much, I am afraid...
Salam. Happy New Year.
AC.
...................
Dato',
You just need one 'Umar Abdul Aziz' to change the whole political-economic and sociological landscape of Malaysia. When will we ever get that 'Umar Abdul Aziz' from your institution, if you , the founder, do not take seriously that there indeed is a 'tomorrow after today ! '.
We have too many 'clowns' up there now crowding the cabinet and the supreme council who do not actually seriouly comprehend that '. Their lips and mouth may say 'yes we do' but their hearts are hardened, void and empty !.
With respect to Tariq Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson, under the circumstances they are doing a marvelous job speaking for Islam and the Muslims. We need more ulama' of their calibre speaking for us in the English speaking world. I know their level of scholarsip and probably piety could probably be not any where near compared to their seniors in the Arab world but this is 2012 : connectivity, 'marketing' ability and the need to be heard loud and clear in the current lingua franca of the world is paramount to the spread of the DIN. Even if it does not spread, it is OK, at least it must be heard. Truth should not be bottled up in books and kitab collecting dust somewhere in some obscure libraries. It must be argued vehemently and heard. If it moves mountain , alhamdullillah ! If it does not, we have done our 'job'. Changing hearts is not our preorgative . It is Allah's.
I salute them because at the end of our time, we would not only be asked as to how we get that Jaguar in the garage, or that expensive holiday house on a meagre government stipend, or that 25 million ringgit diamond from SA for our dear wife [ some clown tells us she has been saving since she was in standard two ! ],or how do we pay for that sexy, alluring trophy wife at home.... we would also be asked why we did not spread HIS good words to Mr Lee, our next door neighbour or to Mr Karupiah, the nice morning newspaper vendor or Mr Johnson, the First Secretary of the US embassy.. Why we allow them to remain in disarray, godless and rudderless etc and etc and etc.
Mr Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson, under their situation and constraints, I feel sure can account themselves fairly well.
CAN WE ?
Nik Howk
.................................................................................................................................
now let us hear anwar al awlaki's advisory on DEATH :
Part 1
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Addendum :
20 / 12 / 11 Mohamad 'Mustaffa' in memorium..........
This article is dedicated to the memory of my late uncle, Mohamed bin Jaafar aka ' Mohamed Mustaffa', one time Kelantan champion at 400, 800 metres and 400 metres hurdle in the early sixties before the likes of Asir Victor and A S Nathan took centre stage. He died yesterday at 11 AM in IJN from intractable heart failure aged 81.
In the late 60's he had to give up his ' cushy ' Royal Custom and Excise job because he refused to join the rest of his 'friends' from taking 'double' salary when posted to Penang free port. ' Double salaries' in some sensitive places like entry points, ports and tols areas,within the PDRM , Immigration and Royal Custom were the norm then, I do not know whether it is now ! There was the standard government stipend , and the was the 'swasta contribution' divided pro rata from top to bottom as per necessary...........
Had the single distinction, I think , of 'meeting' Nabi twice in his sleep. Never confided this fact to his friends or even his brothers. I came to know because I asked him a direct question which he could not avoid.
When I asked him 'why he think he was bestowed such honour and gift'.
He told me he was not scholarly or gifted with great mind or a cut above the rest but as an afterthought he confided probably his unfailing attempt and love of the 'night prayer' [ tahajjud ] probably did it...He ardently loved 'tahajjud' since youth.
My God !, 50 to 60 years of 'tahajjud'.
Yes, Mohamad Mustaffa was just an ordinary man, a failed custom officer, a champion middle distance runner in his youth, a small time gold smith in Kuala Krai.
50 to 60 years of daily 'tahajjud' sets him apart from us mere mortals.
One can be a Tan Sri, a Datuk Sri or a failed 'lembu entreprenuer'. These are not important to 'the people of the higher' circles, the malaikats. They do not discuss him. Tahajjud, sedekah and zikir, that sets you apart.
May his soul be amongst the blessed by Allah the Most High.
Al Fatihah.
..................................................................................
22 / 12 / 11
Doc.
Please accept my deepest sympathies on the passing of your uncle Allayarham Mohamad bin Jaafar. Al Fatihah
AC
.....................................................
22 / 12 / 11
Dato'
tq dato. you are very kind.
Christopher Hitchens died yesterday, Friday, at 62 of cancer. Death has silenced a powerful, sane voice in an insane world. He will be sadly missed by his readers.
AC
.......................
AC
Yes very sad. He was very gifted & insightful, a true intellectual, but very down to earth & unpretentious. He had a very simple style which could be easily understood. Did you read his best seller "Hitch-22", or his piece on Saddam's execution in 2006?
> > In many ways he reminds me of an old time journalist: follows his conscience when he writes, fearless, hard hitting, very driven. But typical of most dedicated journalists, you can sense a deep cynicism that had become ingrained in him. He admits that he drove himself to cancer by his excessive smoking & drinking.
Kk
...........................
Kk,
Yes, it is a loss of a sane voice. His readers will miss him. Yes, I read all his books, and his articles in the Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, IHT, etc. His death reminds me of a heart-breaking observation, "After this lifetime, we will not see each other again." I try to enjoy as much time as I can with my family. Right now, I am in Bali, having breakfast with my Mrs and the boys by the pool, and catching up with my emails. Oh dear, the Internet here is so slow!
Cheers.
AC
.......................
Dato',
With Christopher Hitchens's demise I am reminded instead of our own fate not too long from now with that inevitable 'hole in the ground'.
But unlike you Dato' ,I do not share the bleak pessimism that ' after this lifetime, we will not see each other a gain'. On Richard Dawkin's scale of things 'agnostic' he would rate Hitchens at a hardcore 6 / 6 . A true and true hardcore atheist [..and a bloody racist too ].
'After this lifetime, we will not see each other ' is the motto and the crux of agnosticism and atheism.
We are Muslims, may I remind you guys....
Hitchens in his lifetime, used the media and the internet to demonise Islam and Muslims to the max. I do not certainly miss him neither do I celebrate his death. From my perspective he is an ..sshole.
Life is a continuum Dato.
It started in Loth Mahfuz, at a 'time before time', in the 'spirit' world when HE asked,
" Am I not your Lord ?"
and we, all in unison, said,
" Yes , YOU are Rabbul alamin"
In utero, life is pretty basic...it is all black and darkness, a one cellular world multiplicating into a morulla, with tissues multiplicating and systems forming.
In this life, some of us become 'pig headed' and questioned HIS existence and significance. Some just become heedless. Very few stick to the primordial,
'Yes YOU are'.
In the 'Alam Barzark' life as we currently know is suspended. Al Ghazali though wrote volumes on its very nature in 'Remembrance of Death and Life After Death , beautifully translated by T J Winter of Cambridge U.
'Alam Barzark'is a long respite before 'the sirat'
It is only when 'the second horn' is sounded' that 'we all will meet again' and we can rediscuss about 'Hitchens and all his friends, porsches and ferraris, and kampong chaps like me , mull and ponder on the best d24 and musang kings' to our heart's content with the proviso that we are not with Hithens and his friends. Some of us may though may be unfortunate enough to join Hitchens and his friends in the furnace as 'firewood for hell' and would probably be too busy to discuss other things. Allahualam.
Yes, my friends, do not be too dismissive about this life. Don't be too pesimistic.
You Dato, and your sons, could still meet.
Where we meet remain our choice.
A' Happy New Year to you , Dato'.
Nik Howk
.............................
Doc,
Of course, I would devoutly wish to be reunited with my parents, and my wife and children, some day! But reason tells me it will remain an unfulfilled dream. And, I agree it is a non sequitur, many fellow Muslims piss me off.
And a very Happy and Healthy New Year to you, and your family, too. I hope it is not too Un-Islamic to wish you on a Christian New Year!! I may have JAKIM coming after me!!
AC
........................
Dato',
You over-rate your importance too much.
From JAKIM's perspective, you are not worth their overtime !
Consider these:
..At 70 plus, and you rate Hitchens, an atheist, a Muslim -Islam basher of the 1st order, as your hero !
..Believing that there is no tomorrow after your 'last curtain'
..Not changed a wee bit 'to the right' or to 'the left' even after a massive cancer scare in the family
..and feeling many 'fellow Muslims doing their 'religious' job,, pissing you off', etc etc and etc......
No Dato',in my reckoning JAKIM would certainly be not interested at all in you. You are beyond them. The French would term you ' les terrible, chronically invalide and permanently head damaged'
As for me, you are different.
My only interest in you is because you are very 'influential'
You and your people churn out hundreds of young elites, future leaders.
We want them to be 3 times more brainy than NTR or Dr M
Malaysia need that kind of stuff with something extra.
We need people with 'islamic' software too, inbuilt in them.!
People who do not believe in the existence of a tomorrow after today is an anomaly in Malaysia.
People who just got 250 millions 'super-soft' loan from the government and has the cheek and the gall to ask for another 200 from EXIM Bank loan at 1 % interest rate, has no place in the realm of things Malaysian in 2012.
That, Dato' is why I am working on you. I am not exactly truly all altruistic. There is a selfish element in the corner !
Now I am spoiling your Bali holiday already !
Nik Howk
........................
Doc Nik,
Ouch! My, you are in a bashing mood!
No, you have not spoilt my Bali holiday. You are a decent guy, and I like you (not in the MCKK sense!). I am enjoying the evening, though a rainy one, watching Man United leading QPR.
AC
.......................
No Dato',
just having too much of Tariq Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson lately.
I am just in a pensive and 'daawah' mood, thinking mainly of my very own mortality.
I was in bali some 15 years back, attending some cardiological conference.
Went to a 'makan' place for a spot of lunch, the owner wearing a songkok.....
'Bapak mahu babi guling ?'
It was a cultural shock for a kampong chap like me to be asked by a man in songkok such question !
Now whenever I am in Bali and thinking about food, my oesophagus go into reverse 'peristalsis'. My wife always wonder I stuff a lot of maggi mee in my bag when I head for Bali.
I guess our 'constitution' back here in Malaysia has spoilt my way of thinking :
'Melayu mesti Islam.............it is a permanent head damage of sort and at the political- sociological level if academicians were to write phd's on this, the overall impact on the quality of Islam and Muslims per se in Malaysia would actually on the whole be negative. We take Islam as per joining a club. We behave and think like Jews of Mosses timw : I am holier than thou !
Enjoy your much needed holiday Dato' and a 'Happy New Year to you'.
Nik Howk
..................
Doc,
My stomach cannot take even the thought of any part of babi. Yes, a Malay in songkok and babi guling are incongruous indeed!
But Bali has changed, doc, for the better. I was first here when I was in the NOC in 1969, when indeed babi guling was ubiquitous. After all, only 20% of the population are Muslim. I have been here about a dozen times since, and the range of good restaurants has expanded to beat any in KL. I was at Matisse last night. It was a combination of art gallery and fine dining. Tastefully donsuperb had a superb seafood dinner. Exquisite. My Mrs and the five boys loved it.
Tariq Ramadan? Sorry. I don't think much of him. Inconsistent in argument, and makes too much of his father's Islamic Brotherhood background. No, he and Hamza Yusuf Hanson do not repel me at all. I just have an honest divergence of opinions on a few points. That is all. And I respect, and am comfortable with, your dakwaah position. You have every right to it. And you are polished about it. But I AM pissed off by the local religious department zealots, the know-alls and their intrusions into others' private lives, and peeping toms and salacious religious bullies of couples and women.
Re my family's modest attempt in private education, you are being more kind than accurate. We are not influential to any significant degree. But I think we teach our students to think for themselves, to distinguish fact from opinion, policy from propaganda. We give emphasis to Math, Science, research and essays, and debates. Students are NEVER smacked down for their opinions, but asked to explain them clearly and logically. This prepares them well for a university education. Most of them go abroad to decent universities. Half my English essay class last year went to Oxbridge, London, Edinburgh, Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Monash, and Melbourne. Last week, one was invited for an interview at Somerville College, Oxford, for the 2012 admission. A straight A-star student, plays in the school orchestra, and Grade 8 on the piano. I wrote my evaluation of the candidate, and expect the tutor for admission at Somerville will let me know the interview result by the end of this week.
Yes, Doc, a few thousand of our students, of all races, went abroad, but only only a fraction return to develop this country. Those who return send THEIR children to us, the second generation This is a source of some satisfaction to us. But the sad thing is that many of the educated Malaysian children, privately schooled at our institution do not return...
So, how "influential" are we? In the lives of the students we teach, yes a lot. They are independent minded. A number are high in UMNO, in the DAP, PKR, etc. They are not sheep, they are diverse in their thinking and convictions. In the numbers that come back? Not much, I am afraid...
Salam. Happy New Year.
AC.
...................
Dato',
You just need one 'Umar Abdul Aziz' to change the whole political-economic and sociological landscape of Malaysia. When will we ever get that 'Umar Abdul Aziz' from your institution, if you , the founder, do not take seriously that there indeed is a 'tomorrow after today ! '.
We have too many 'clowns' up there now crowding the cabinet and the supreme council who do not actually seriouly comprehend that '. Their lips and mouth may say 'yes we do' but their hearts are hardened, void and empty !.
With respect to Tariq Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson, under the circumstances they are doing a marvelous job speaking for Islam and the Muslims. We need more ulama' of their calibre speaking for us in the English speaking world. I know their level of scholarsip and probably piety could probably be not any where near compared to their seniors in the Arab world but this is 2012 : connectivity, 'marketing' ability and the need to be heard loud and clear in the current lingua franca of the world is paramount to the spread of the DIN. Even if it does not spread, it is OK, at least it must be heard. Truth should not be bottled up in books and kitab collecting dust somewhere in some obscure libraries. It must be argued vehemently and heard. If it moves mountain , alhamdullillah ! If it does not, we have done our 'job'. Changing hearts is not our preorgative . It is Allah's.
I salute them because at the end of our time, we would not only be asked as to how we get that Jaguar in the garage, or that expensive holiday house on a meagre government stipend, or that 25 million ringgit diamond from SA for our dear wife [ some clown tells us she has been saving since she was in standard two ! ],or how do we pay for that sexy, alluring trophy wife at home.... we would also be asked why we did not spread HIS good words to Mr Lee, our next door neighbour or to Mr Karupiah, the nice morning newspaper vendor or Mr Johnson, the First Secretary of the US embassy.. Why we allow them to remain in disarray, godless and rudderless etc and etc and etc.
Mr Ramadan and Hamza Yusuf Hanson, under their situation and constraints, I feel sure can account themselves fairly well.
CAN WE ?
Nik Howk
.................................................................................................................................
now let us hear anwar al awlaki's advisory on DEATH :
Part 1
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Addendum :
20 / 12 / 11 Mohamad 'Mustaffa' in memorium..........
This article is dedicated to the memory of my late uncle, Mohamed bin Jaafar aka ' Mohamed Mustaffa', one time Kelantan champion at 400, 800 metres and 400 metres hurdle in the early sixties before the likes of Asir Victor and A S Nathan took centre stage. He died yesterday at 11 AM in IJN from intractable heart failure aged 81.
In the late 60's he had to give up his ' cushy ' Royal Custom and Excise job because he refused to join the rest of his 'friends' from taking 'double' salary when posted to Penang free port. ' Double salaries' in some sensitive places like entry points, ports and tols areas,within the PDRM , Immigration and Royal Custom were the norm then, I do not know whether it is now ! There was the standard government stipend , and the was the 'swasta contribution' divided pro rata from top to bottom as per necessary...........
Had the single distinction, I think , of 'meeting' Nabi twice in his sleep. Never confided this fact to his friends or even his brothers. I came to know because I asked him a direct question which he could not avoid.
When I asked him 'why he think he was bestowed such honour and gift'.
He told me he was not scholarly or gifted with great mind or a cut above the rest but as an afterthought he confided probably his unfailing attempt and love of the 'night prayer' [ tahajjud ] probably did it...He ardently loved 'tahajjud' since youth.
My God !, 50 to 60 years of 'tahajjud'.
Yes, Mohamad Mustaffa was just an ordinary man, a failed custom officer, a champion middle distance runner in his youth, a small time gold smith in Kuala Krai.
50 to 60 years of daily 'tahajjud' sets him apart from us mere mortals.
One can be a Tan Sri, a Datuk Sri or a failed 'lembu entreprenuer'. These are not important to 'the people of the higher' circles, the malaikats. They do not discuss him. Tahajjud, sedekah and zikir, that sets you apart.
May his soul be amongst the blessed by Allah the Most High.
Al Fatihah.
..................................................................................
22 / 12 / 11
Doc.
Please accept my deepest sympathies on the passing of your uncle Allayarham Mohamad bin Jaafar. Al Fatihah
AC
.....................................................
22 / 12 / 11
Dato'
tq dato. you are very kind.
quite uncanny dato, 12 hours after our discussion and my write up on 'death'.
he was just on the verge of being discharged from intensive care at ijn......such is the uncertainty related with any 'death'....we cardiologists are always aware of these uncertainties but if tested in a court of law, may look like a clown infront of a 'clever' lawyer and a judge lacking wisdom.
my uncle, he had a good clean life alright,insyaallah
simple, relatively uneducated folks like him refusing a good 'double pay' in the 60's is something......choosing the huge indignity of working under a father in law in the uncelebrated and lowly paid job as a goldsmith apprentice instead....... rather than face HIM later ,and unable to explain for that pittance of a pay taken unrightfully.
i write up on him just as an example of many other clean living, simple , ordinary folks who go unnoticed in this world of facetiousness and false facades.
totally faceless people like him ...and in the main with no 'story to tell and be told' because 'we' as a people are attracted to 'stories about celebrities , 'sultans' of industry, politics and power. their lives of hediousness and heedlessness and plenty.
people who shakes society and often times [ as we are unfortunately reminded from time to time ] breaks.....daylight robbers, failed 'lembu traders' and pirates etc and etc.
' people of the higher circles' [ the malaikats ] though look at us from a different light and angle....only we don't seem to care.
and if you are in HIS position, and have some 6 billion souls to judge from time immemorial, and having to decide where to place these 6 billion 'clowns' after their planet earth's sojourn. a great of majority of these 6 billion clowns : ungrateful, unschooled, ignorant and downright heedless.
your KPI must be quite simple, constant and broadly defined under a major' heading' : TAQWA.......
under which there will be subheadings such as solat, zikir, doa, remembrances, sedekah etc and etc and etc....
and leaving in some small print, for good measure , the possibility of a 'grand pardon' if some clowns at the right old age of 70 to 80, suddenly after a long life of heedlessness decides to do a taubat nasuha....
beyond 40, if one still do not touch base, very few at 70 or 80 do turnaround but those small print are meant for the very few that does....'.pintu taubat sentiasa terbuka'.
so dato' for guys like us, don't ever give up hope !
the 'door' to HIM is always open.
your KPI must be quite simple, constant and broadly defined under a major' heading' : TAQWA.......
under which there will be subheadings such as solat, zikir, doa, remembrances, sedekah etc and etc and etc....
and leaving in some small print, for good measure , the possibility of a 'grand pardon' if some clowns at the right old age of 70 to 80, suddenly after a long life of heedlessness decides to do a taubat nasuha....
beyond 40, if one still do not touch base, very few at 70 or 80 do turnaround but those small print are meant for the very few that does....'.pintu taubat sentiasa terbuka'.
so dato' for guys like us, don't ever give up hope !
the 'door' to HIM is always open.
very philosophical this morning
death is quite commonplace to me.
inwardly i do not mourn his passing actually, as i think i roughly can guess the general direction where he is 'going'.... it is my own mortality and my offsprings which pricks and bothers me.
too much 'karat2 jahiliah' and attachment to this 'duniya'.
too much 'karat2 jahiliah' and attachment to this 'duniya'.
allahualam
nik howk
Saturday, December 10, 2011
The Man Who Came to Dinner... or 'F#ck You America
The Man Who Came to Dinner
John Swinton, the doyen of the New York press corps, upon his retirement , made the following speech:
“There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty four hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting of an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
I do understand that you have to eat like all of us and therefore must keep your mouth shut. You are Jewish and so am I. (Sephardic).
For the sake of truth, I will give you here another side to the Libyan story. Just imagine a country where there is no electricity bill. Electricity is free to all its citizens. There is no interest on loans, banks were state owned and loans given at zero percent interest by law. Having a home was considered a human right. All newlyweds received US$ 50 000 from the govt to buy their first apartment and to help them start a family. Education and medical treatments were free. Before Qaddafi, 25 % of the population were literate. Today this figure is 83 percent. Should Libyans want to take up farming, they would receive land, a farmhouse, equipments, seeds and livestock to kick start their operation, absolutely free of charge. If citizens could not find the education or medical facilities they needed, the govt would fund them to go abroad, free of charge, and would get some US$2,300 per month for accommodation and car allowance. Cars were government subsidized to the tune of 50%. Fuel prices were $0.14 per litter. The country had no external debt and its reserves amounted to some $170 billion, now frozen globally plus some 27 tons of gold, which the new regime found safely in the National Bank. Any graduate unable to find a job would get the average salary for the profession, as if he/she was employed, until employment found. A portion of oil sales were credited once a year to every citizen bank account. A mother who gave birth, immediately got some $5000. Forty loaves of bread cost $0.15. 25% of citizens have a university degree. An immense project bringing water from aquifers in the south made it available all over the country, free of charge.
That is what that “tyrant” Qaddafi gave to his people. There are some 150 tribes in Libya and a strong hand was necessary if the country was to remain in one piece. Every citizen was in possession of a military weapon. Qaddafi was not frightened of his own people. The so called rebels who took over, so we are told, would not have lasted a few days without NATO air power, British and French commandos and thousands of mercenaries. Those are the winners.
Now another Karzai has been installed in Tripoli, and the country can be plundered at the victors’ whim and fancy. It takes $1 to extract a barrel of Libyan oil and today’s price is over $100. Total the French company has already grabbed some 30% of the Libyan state oil company. BP is starting exploration. And of course massive contracts for the reconstruction of Libya will be handed over to US and European companies. Of the sovereign fund, only some 1.2 billion have been released out of the $170 billion. With the state of the European economy, I doubt very much if Libya will see the rest any time soon. Now Libyans are free as you say, but as Janice Joplin used to say…freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose, as Libyan queueing for funds at their bank’s door are finding out. Qaddafi is gone and so are the perks. What will be left is a terrible civil war. The price of democracy!
“It is the joyous jiggling dance Americans do –USA! USA!- when their government slaughters someone illegally. It is primitive, but it is positively Libyan”. Wrong. It is positively American! Just saw a movie on the training of the US Army before going to Iraq. Soldiers running and singing:”Kill the women! Kill the children! “Then we are shown the results when civilians are gunned down in the streets by those braves. All on film. When they come back home, realising what they have done, they just commit suicide! These are ordinary Sunday soldiers with families.
We can hide the truth with prison sentences, but the truth eventually come through, and unfortunately for us we cannot plug the dyke any longer.
I told you guys when they are at it in libya........it was for cheap Libyan oil, it was because Ghadaffy has grown too big for his shoes; it was because Ghadaffy himself had become cleverer and gone into Africa, Chad and all to compete for oil.
Same thing with Saddam. He was getting to big. But at least during his time Shia was not slaughtering Sunnis and Sunnis , Shia; people did not live and eat where they shit.
Yes Saddam and Ghadaffy by Western standard can be called 'tyrants' but where are we now ?
Nik Howk
..............
Yes doc, you did, and you were absolutely right. Many of us felt the same way.
But dictators, "elected" or otherwise, tend to ignore the rule that a leader must have the cachet of legitimacy. This legitimacy must be demonstrated institutionally by transparent, fair elections. Such elections not only serve to establish the cachet of legitimacy, but it also provides the mechanism of a peaceful change of government. We live in the 21st century industrial state, not a 9th century tribal society. Elections are an indispensable institution of a modern state.
In the absence of such a basic institution, rulers tend to believe that they are there permanently by divine right. In such a situation, change can only be affected through violence. Pressures build up internally. A situation is, thus, ripe for foreign intervention to lance the boil. Case in point - Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
In Islamic countries, there is often the romantic yearning for a 'benign caliph' to lead the country, and dictators often view themselves as this benign caliph. This is the seed of their own destruction. This is the lesson that Hosni Mobarak of Egypt, and Zainal A'bidin of Tunisia, demonstrated. This is a lesson that the generals in Egypt have yet to understand.
DC.
.......................
Dato',at least in Saddam's time people had their decent meals and they did not have to live within their own sewer and Sunnis were not killing Shia and Shia killing Sunnis..
When will we 'stupid Muslims' ever going to learn that the so-called 'secular' descendents of the old days ahlil kitabs are not our friends ? And I am putting this too mildly.....
Where is my friend, Nadzru....he is being too quiet now. I wander whether his construction business in Libya picks up with the new regime ? Good luck to him.
Nik Howk
ps : ...and by the way if you have to deal with 150 tribes, all hard core jahiliah type, typical of Arabs of the desert and Northern Africans, it is not easy to rule. If you are 'lembik' like NTR or Pak lah, and not spilled some recalcitrant 'brains and blood' on the tarmac, you cannot run countries like Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.
A million Muslims, men, women and children have died in Iraq since the 'crusaders' took over. So what is the meaning of 'democracy' Dato , if I may ask ?
What price 'democracy' if that damn place is not yet ready with institutions and people for i ?.
Let us not join the bandwagon of parrots longing for 'democracy, democracy, democracy....
...............................
from Grand pa :
You right doc Nik Howk.if the philosophy in your life is to have 4 square
meals every day without fail: Perhaps Iraqis should wake Sadam up from the
dead and rule again and flog Iraqis and instill fear into the people of
Iraq again so that they can have that 4 square meals every day in the
living hell of their life.
In the first place he is known to have killed hundreds if not thousands of
Kurds- Kurds are Muslims. That is genocide. I would kill Sadam even if I
was not an Iraqi (Figure of speech)
Wassalaam.
Grand Pa
.......................
From Ruslan,
GPa,
Always remember that the news we get internationally are from ''intellectual prostitutes''.
At least locally, we have two ''versions'' of newspapers to read, but internationally, we have no choice but to read & rely on what were given to us, whether they are from Arabic or non-Arabic sources.
Salam,
LanK
......................
My sentiment exactly like yours Doc.... Countries like that need strongman rule.... what we leant in history as 'benevolent despots', ... except after 20-30 years in power they dropped the 'benevolent'. and add 'ruthless'.
But I agree with you... Iraqis under Saddam or Libyans have 4 square meals... maybe 3... but they are not at each others throats.
Dato' Nik Sidek
................................
Other articles on the blog :
A world gone mad, click here
The Ugly American, click here
Noam Choamsky Interview, click here
'.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
morning has broken..................
From an individual perspective, each man is the center of his own universe.....
Once his conciousness temporarily cease through sleep [ minor death ], and 'permanently' [ at least from the secular, non spiritual perspective ] through death, his 'universe' literally ceased.
One trick out of the handful of spiritual 'tricks in the bag' to making and feeling ourselves very special is to change our paradigm, relook at our 'very own small universe' through an entirely different prism :
When morning has broken, the Lord of the Universe, ya Rabbul alamin, reorientates and realigns all HIS billions of stars and planets in HIS galaxies in the Milky Ways, to give each individual man yet another day to start afresh, to repent for the heedlessness and corruption of yesterday, to look forward with the freshness of an unblemished, clean sheet of white cloth.
GOD"S RE-CREATION OF A NEW DAY !
One need to just, with utmost sincerity and humilty, doa the following :
1 .‘All praise is for Allah who gave us life after having taken it from us and unto Him is the resurrection.’
2 .‘All praise is for Allah who restored to me my health and returned my soul and has allowed me to remember Him.’
3 .La ilaha illal-lahu wahdahu la shareeka lah, lahul-mulku walahul-hamd, wahuwa AAala kulli shay-in qadeer, subhanal-lah, walhamdu lillah, wala ilaha illal-lah wallahu akbar, wala hawla wala quwwata illa billahil-AAaliyyil AAatheem. Rabbigh-fir lee
‘None has the right to be worshipped except Allah, alone without associate, to Him belongs sovereignty and praise and He is over all things wholly capable. How perfect Allah is, and all praise is for Allah, and none has the right to be worshipped except Allah, Allah is the greatest and there is no power nor might except with Allah, The Most High, The Supreme.’
And then supplicates:
‘O my Lord forgive me.’
If he then performs ablution and prays the fajr prayer, his prayer will be accepted, insyaallah.
However, The Key to the Garden is :
How many of us do this with sincerity and humility every morning ?
How many of us do comprehend fully what we say and pray ?
How many of us put our 'hearts' into our prayer ?
Similar articles in the blog:
Light, click here
Key To The Garden, click here
Once his conciousness temporarily cease through sleep [ minor death ], and 'permanently' [ at least from the secular, non spiritual perspective ] through death, his 'universe' literally ceased.
One trick out of the handful of spiritual 'tricks in the bag' to making and feeling ourselves very special is to change our paradigm, relook at our 'very own small universe' through an entirely different prism :
When morning has broken, the Lord of the Universe, ya Rabbul alamin, reorientates and realigns all HIS billions of stars and planets in HIS galaxies in the Milky Ways, to give each individual man yet another day to start afresh, to repent for the heedlessness and corruption of yesterday, to look forward with the freshness of an unblemished, clean sheet of white cloth.
GOD"S RE-CREATION OF A NEW DAY !
One need to just, with utmost sincerity and humilty, doa the following :
1 .‘All praise is for Allah who gave us life after having taken it from us and unto Him is the resurrection.’
2 .‘All praise is for Allah who restored to me my health and returned my soul and has allowed me to remember Him.’
3 .La ilaha illal-lahu wahdahu la shareeka lah, lahul-mulku walahul-hamd, wahuwa AAala kulli shay-in qadeer, subhanal-lah, walhamdu lillah, wala ilaha illal-lah wallahu akbar, wala hawla wala quwwata illa billahil-AAaliyyil AAatheem. Rabbigh-fir lee
‘None has the right to be worshipped except Allah, alone without associate, to Him belongs sovereignty and praise and He is over all things wholly capable. How perfect Allah is, and all praise is for Allah, and none has the right to be worshipped except Allah, Allah is the greatest and there is no power nor might except with Allah, The Most High, The Supreme.’
And then supplicates:
‘O my Lord forgive me.’
If he then performs ablution and prays the fajr prayer, his prayer will be accepted, insyaallah.
However, The Key to the Garden is :
How many of us do this with sincerity and humility every morning ?
How many of us do comprehend fully what we say and pray ?
How many of us put our 'hearts' into our prayer ?
Similar articles in the blog:
Light, click here
Key To The Garden, click here
Friday, November 25, 2011
Fundamentals of Tassawwuf..............[ part 1 & 2 ]
[ of Tassawwuf, Aqidah, and the kalimah Shahadah.....a Ma'al Hijrah special ]
I have always been curious and open-minded about a particular group of Muslims labelled as sufi/ tasaswwuf / tarekat [ ter- ikat, to their Malaysian detractors as per 'tied by the necks', an unfair labelling no doubt without firm basis and without any scholarly dissection ! ] etc etc.
To be frank, personally , beyond the straight 'jacketing' and dry stuff of the 'fuqahas',[ who oftentimes resort to serious name-calling ] I do find these 'travelers' have more to offer to millions of ordinary people like you and me who want to get beyond the level of practising Muslims, towards love for HIM, improved spirituality and Ihsan.
But this is just a personal opinion. This is still a free world, even within the realm of faith and Islam.
They called themselves, 'travelers in this life'.
What make these 'travelers'/ salik/ lovers, tick ? How they 'thinks'? What moves them ? etc etc and etc.
They come under many labels but as we already know, labels are pretty misleading. Let us examine a 'traveler',Dr 'Shakyh' Hussien Abdul Sattar. By most standards he seemed pretty young, 39 or at the most 40. He lectures here on 'The Fundamentals of Tassawwuf. Give him say 3 hours of your valuable time, just listen to him. Make your own judgement on Tassawwuf after that. The 1st lecture is quite didactic but I find the 2nd part very meaningful. If we can 'tolerate' him I will publish his remaining discourse later, if we can't, we will throw him into the dustbin of obscurity, and forget about him.
About the speaker :
........................
"Shaykh Husain [may Allah preserve him] was born in Chicago (USA) in 1972. After completing his primary education at schools in his hometown near Chicago, he joined the University of Chicago where he studied Biology, Arabic and Islamic Civilization. It was during this period that he began his study of sacred knowledge, studying Arabic grammar (nahw), Hanafi Fiqh and Usul al-Fiqh under ulama (scholars) in Chicago. In 1994 Shaykh Husain also began training in tasawwuf (Islamic spirituality) under Shaykh Zulfiqar Ahmad, one of the leading shaykhs of tasawwuf.
After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Shaykh Husain enrolled in the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Along with his medical studies, he continued his studies of sacred knowledge. In his final year he took leave from medical school to focus on his religious studies, traveling to Syria and then Pakistan, where he studied a traditional curriculum for a number of years under some of their greatest scholars.
Throughout his years of study, Shaykh Husain continued his training under Shaykh Zulfiqar Ahmad. He was blessed with the close company of his Shaykh, learning the science of the purification of the heart. The deep taqwa and firm adherence to the sunnah and Shariah that characterized his teacher were eventually transferred to the student and Shaykh Husain was formally authorized in tasawwuf by Shaykh Zulfiqar in July 2001.
Shaykh Husain has completed medical school and currently works as a Physician at the University of Chicago Hospitals. During his free time, he teaches and lectures across the United States on various subjects of Islamic knowledge, including purification of the soul.
Shaykh Husain is presently engaged in editing and publishing the translations of his teacher’s books into English. In addition, he is completing his own written works including the popular series, “Fundamentals of Classical Arabic” and a manual on Hanafi fiqh entitled, “The Stairs to Bliss.”
Introduction to Tassawwuf:
click here
2nd part:
Allowing the soul to blossom; Looking for that 'one moment in time'
click here,
It is imperative and goes without saying that, a 'traveler' need a very firm, unshakeable foundation of faith [ Aqidah ] and this had been discussed previously by Dr Abdullah Yasin in this blog.
Dr Abdullah Yasin was in my neighbourhood last night giving a scintillating lecture, as typical of Dr Abdullah yasin, on Aqidah, Tauhid Rabbibiyah, Tauhid Maksud etc and etc.
Down here I load a previous lecture of his on Foundation of Aqidah. Please give him some time and listen. Aqidah is foundational and of prime importance. It is a difference between eternally gravitating as the living firewood and fuel of Hell or gracing the High Heaven, despite a life full of prayer and ignorant piety :
click here,
Shaykh Yasir Qadhi, dealt in great length and depth on the meaning and ramification of The Shahadah, "La ila haillllalah, Muhamadarasullallah "
A 6 hour lecture altogether. We Muslims in this Nusantara take lightly our understanding of the kalimah and thus our aqidah, stressing too much on the details of the solat etc and etc, to the point we as an ummah are easily mislead into the greater error of 'syiriq' and 'bidaah'.
click here,
Today is the eve of Ma'al Hijrah. I am presenting to you guys a soothing symphony of 'Bach & Mozart' equivalent for your souls. Do listen and ponder.
Islam is for those who THINK!
May Allah give us all blessing and Rahmah in the Here and the Hereafter....
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Al Ghazali, The Man and His Teaching : The Beginning of Guidance
Before we embark on Part 1 of this highly rarefied theological discourse, cut and dry stuff of 'The Beginning of Guidance' by Al Ghazali , let us revisit him in a documentary, ' The Alchemy of Happiness '
click here
What triggered Al Ghazali's existential crisis was in part due his sufi-poet brother, Ahmad Al Ghazali, who challenged his relative 'bookish' and non-experiential approach with respect to faith.
click here,
'The Beginning of Guidance' is a compendium of short treatise written by Al Ghazali for seekers of knowledge. A road map of sort.
While the IHYA is his magnum opus, 'The beginning of Guidance', much less voluminous than IHYA, is no less important. Beginning this week I would 'insert' once weekly this 30 or so segment of the book, discussed by Mufti Abdul Rahman Yusuf, of Darul Uloom, UK
Part 1,click here,
click here
What triggered Al Ghazali's existential crisis was in part due his sufi-poet brother, Ahmad Al Ghazali, who challenged his relative 'bookish' and non-experiential approach with respect to faith.
click here,
'The Beginning of Guidance' is a compendium of short treatise written by Al Ghazali for seekers of knowledge. A road map of sort.
While the IHYA is his magnum opus, 'The beginning of Guidance', much less voluminous than IHYA, is no less important. Beginning this week I would 'insert' once weekly this 30 or so segment of the book, discussed by Mufti Abdul Rahman Yusuf, of Darul Uloom, UK
Part 1,click here,
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Alone In The Crowd : Looking back...........
Sha,
You asked Papa to list out Papa's top 50 blog articles for your perusal.
My God !
That is a lot of work , having written more than 450 articles over the last 3 years.
The last 3 years Papa have been writing only with you guys in mind, and only for posterity, and you are telling me indirectly you have not yet peruse through. You guys are too much , you and your brothers.
To be frank though, I wrote to keep Papa's sanity. If I dont write I would end up shooting someone very important. That is the amount of anger a simple raayat like Papa had to endure looking at the clowning and the clowns going about their daily business in this 'Malaysia Boleh' of ours. That is the political part.
95 % of the rest is pure daaawah...this constitute pleasure. Proselytising in our profession is not politically correct but Papa, on a daily basis do see more people than patients who has problem within their souls than 'pain' from their hearts !
All are my favourites, as most are written from the heart. Like the 1st one on Lina Joy. You guys were sleeping then, Papa could not sleep thinking of the future fate of all the Lina Joys of the world.
At my age I can't help but occasionally feel 'alone in the crowd' knowing some of the people I 'see through' today,I may not see in the next 6 months; knowing I need to seriously realign some 'souls' close to Papa but out of political correctness and politeness I cant; etc and etc and etc.
Here are my favourite 20 or so.
Wrote about my form-mate Hasan Marican some 6 months before he was'unjustly' sacked from his position [ in my book, he was sacked , they don't even dare give him a farewell dinner at Petronas ]. Now Madame 'R' has been noted to visit The Tower with impunity. My God ! tak cukup lagikah 'precious stones', bajus and shoes of this lady ?? !
I enjoyed visiting the Grand Old Man of Kota Bharu. Despite walking around with an implantable defibrillator now, in the affectionate words of Tuanku Sultan sometime ago, "TGNA is an 'old diesel engine' and despite all, very tahan lasak" . I am happy that TGNA and the young sultan are getting along fine. Monarchies in the Non Federated States enjoy more unwritten 'power' than their brother sultans elsewhere. Cordial 'Istana- MB' relationship is of prime importance in states like Kelantan, Kedah, Perlis and Teganung.
Papa had a brief but very telling altercation with the present NSTT and Prima Apakahnamadiadah CEOs during the BERSIH period. Our rogue politicians had their ways mainly because our journalists have no balls ! I dont apologise for repeating this !
To Papa, a free press is more important than a free judiciary. A free press is 'more preventative medicine', 'judiciary' is ' repairative' after the damage has been done.
Your dad had 'played god' in his favourite sport 'endurance' several years back. The current state of the sport is dismal, full with people who are always ready to please but nothing positive to offer. Despite millions of tax payers money spent in the last local WEC, we are going no where vertically. Short on substance , very huge on forms ! As usual.Typical Malaysia Boleh. Thank God, Papa has retired from this sport. NonethelessIt is very painful to see and watch from the sideline all the nonsense going on in a sport that papa and the good old Dato Awang helped popularised in the early 98's.
Papa am a firm believer in exercise but exercise per se without doing something to our mind is a lot of wasted time, thus, " Mixing The Profane and the Sublime' article. Ther was also a series of articles on longevity and my favuorite amongst them is 'Longevity : A Muslim's perspective"
Sometime last year papa felt elated in being able to 'turn around' a dear friend who had some small quarrel with his God.
Sha,
As you know, Kelantan is 95 % Malay and Muslim. Papa has no quarrel with Dr M but all of us Kelantanese can hold him accountable in a big way, rightly of wrongly, for the level of poverty and iniquities happening in that state. Read 'From Libya to Tok Bali' for a full account.
There seem to be a lot of flak in the parliament lately about the Corporate Lembu. I brought it up some 4 years ago when a friend also in the lembu/kambing business complained his lot did not get the 250 million soft loan. I told him it must be OK and should not complain as they already got MAS earlier on !
And finally Sha, what have Sutan Amir Kaharuddin [ Mandor Diman ],Tok Jeleha Raub, Tok Gajah, Mat Kilau, King Ghaz, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah and Haji Yusuf Rawa share in common with us ?
We are migrants from Pagar Ruyong some 200 years back. We are Rao's.
Our fighting motto is : 'Bior mati di terkam harimo, jangan lari di kejor anjing ! '
You and Papa Sha, we have got to work on all our fours....let us not go for all these nonsense, TIDAK BERKAT .
Our prophet advised us that a clever Muslim lives in 2 worlds, The Here and the Hereafter. It is not meant to make us less than excellent in our conduct and thinking. On the contrary by so doing we should be the perfect khalifah for the world. In all papa wrote 18 articles on ' Death and Dying'.
وَقَالَ ٱرۡڪَبُواْ فِيہَا بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ مَجۡر۪ٮٰهَا وَمُرۡسَٮٰهَآۚ إِنَّ رَبِّى لَغَفُورٌ۬ رَّحِيمٌ۬ (٤١)
Bismillah himajreha wa mursaha inna Rabbi la Ghafur ru Rahim.
{Hud , 11 : 41 }
[ In the name of Allah be its course and its mooring. Lo! my Lord is Forgiving,
Merciful.]..Prophet Nuh alaihisalam on the eve of 'The Big Flood'.
Children,
In life, do not be afraid to 'be alone in the crowd', because at the end of our time we all will be alone in that small hole in the ground.
The quantum that will differentiate us, is at the end of the day, our individual level of piety [ taqwa ] and remembrance of HIM [ dzikr ]
Papa.
Lina Joy Revisited, click here
Alone In The Crowd : Power of Dzikr, click here
Hasan Marican, click here
Case History, click here
TGNA in Conversation [ French ], click here
BERSIH, click here
Playing God, click here
Mixing the Profane and the Sublime, click here
A Letter To An Agnostic Friend, click here
Life Changing Lecture, click here
Advice I Wish My Children Will Read and Heed, click here
longevity, A Muslim Perspective, click here
From Libya to Tok Bali, click here
Redza , click here
Remembrance of Death, click here
Unto HIM is the journeying, click here
Let us All Burn The Quran , click here
Tan Seri, Let Us use The ISA !, click here
Read My Friend, Read This Universe, click here
Prayer of The Cicadas, click here
Leh Budu, Corporate Lembu, Shah Apakahnamadiadah, R'fidah and all that jazz, click here
Big Bang, Surah Al Anbiya and A Century of Science, click here
Bior mati diterkam harimo, jangan lari di kejor anjing, click here
On Life, Dying and Life after Death, click here
Let Us Have One School System PLEASE ! ,click here
You asked Papa to list out Papa's top 50 blog articles for your perusal.
My God !
That is a lot of work , having written more than 450 articles over the last 3 years.
The last 3 years Papa have been writing only with you guys in mind, and only for posterity, and you are telling me indirectly you have not yet peruse through. You guys are too much , you and your brothers.
To be frank though, I wrote to keep Papa's sanity. If I dont write I would end up shooting someone very important. That is the amount of anger a simple raayat like Papa had to endure looking at the clowning and the clowns going about their daily business in this 'Malaysia Boleh' of ours. That is the political part.
95 % of the rest is pure daaawah...this constitute pleasure. Proselytising in our profession is not politically correct but Papa, on a daily basis do see more people than patients who has problem within their souls than 'pain' from their hearts !
All are my favourites, as most are written from the heart. Like the 1st one on Lina Joy. You guys were sleeping then, Papa could not sleep thinking of the future fate of all the Lina Joys of the world.
At my age I can't help but occasionally feel 'alone in the crowd' knowing some of the people I 'see through' today,I may not see in the next 6 months; knowing I need to seriously realign some 'souls' close to Papa but out of political correctness and politeness I cant; etc and etc and etc.
Here are my favourite 20 or so.
Wrote about my form-mate Hasan Marican some 6 months before he was'unjustly' sacked from his position [ in my book, he was sacked , they don't even dare give him a farewell dinner at Petronas ]. Now Madame 'R' has been noted to visit The Tower with impunity. My God ! tak cukup lagikah 'precious stones', bajus and shoes of this lady ?? !
I enjoyed visiting the Grand Old Man of Kota Bharu. Despite walking around with an implantable defibrillator now, in the affectionate words of Tuanku Sultan sometime ago, "TGNA is an 'old diesel engine' and despite all, very tahan lasak" . I am happy that TGNA and the young sultan are getting along fine. Monarchies in the Non Federated States enjoy more unwritten 'power' than their brother sultans elsewhere. Cordial 'Istana- MB' relationship is of prime importance in states like Kelantan, Kedah, Perlis and Teganung.
Papa had a brief but very telling altercation with the present NSTT and Prima Apakahnamadiadah CEOs during the BERSIH period. Our rogue politicians had their ways mainly because our journalists have no balls ! I dont apologise for repeating this !
To Papa, a free press is more important than a free judiciary. A free press is 'more preventative medicine', 'judiciary' is ' repairative' after the damage has been done.
Your dad had 'played god' in his favourite sport 'endurance' several years back. The current state of the sport is dismal, full with people who are always ready to please but nothing positive to offer. Despite millions of tax payers money spent in the last local WEC, we are going no where vertically. Short on substance , very huge on forms ! As usual.Typical Malaysia Boleh. Thank God, Papa has retired from this sport. NonethelessIt is very painful to see and watch from the sideline all the nonsense going on in a sport that papa and the good old Dato Awang helped popularised in the early 98's.
Papa am a firm believer in exercise but exercise per se without doing something to our mind is a lot of wasted time, thus, " Mixing The Profane and the Sublime' article. Ther was also a series of articles on longevity and my favuorite amongst them is 'Longevity : A Muslim's perspective"
Sometime last year papa felt elated in being able to 'turn around' a dear friend who had some small quarrel with his God.
Sha,
As you know, Kelantan is 95 % Malay and Muslim. Papa has no quarrel with Dr M but all of us Kelantanese can hold him accountable in a big way, rightly of wrongly, for the level of poverty and iniquities happening in that state. Read 'From Libya to Tok Bali' for a full account.
There seem to be a lot of flak in the parliament lately about the Corporate Lembu. I brought it up some 4 years ago when a friend also in the lembu/kambing business complained his lot did not get the 250 million soft loan. I told him it must be OK and should not complain as they already got MAS earlier on !
And finally Sha, what have Sutan Amir Kaharuddin [ Mandor Diman ],Tok Jeleha Raub, Tok Gajah, Mat Kilau, King Ghaz, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah and Haji Yusuf Rawa share in common with us ?
We are migrants from Pagar Ruyong some 200 years back. We are Rao's.
Our fighting motto is : 'Bior mati di terkam harimo, jangan lari di kejor anjing ! '
You and Papa Sha, we have got to work on all our fours....let us not go for all these nonsense, TIDAK BERKAT .
Our prophet advised us that a clever Muslim lives in 2 worlds, The Here and the Hereafter. It is not meant to make us less than excellent in our conduct and thinking. On the contrary by so doing we should be the perfect khalifah for the world. In all papa wrote 18 articles on ' Death and Dying'.
وَقَالَ ٱرۡڪَبُواْ فِيہَا بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ مَجۡر۪ٮٰهَا وَمُرۡسَٮٰهَآۚ إِنَّ رَبِّى لَغَفُورٌ۬ رَّحِيمٌ۬ (٤١)
Bismillah himajreha wa mursaha inna Rabbi la Ghafur ru Rahim.
{Hud , 11 : 41 }
[ In the name of Allah be its course and its mooring. Lo! my Lord is Forgiving,
Merciful.]..Prophet Nuh alaihisalam on the eve of 'The Big Flood'.
Children,
In life, do not be afraid to 'be alone in the crowd', because at the end of our time we all will be alone in that small hole in the ground.
The quantum that will differentiate us, is at the end of the day, our individual level of piety [ taqwa ] and remembrance of HIM [ dzikr ]
Papa.
Lina Joy Revisited, click here
Alone In The Crowd : Power of Dzikr, click here
Hasan Marican, click here
Case History, click here
TGNA in Conversation [ French ], click here
BERSIH, click here
Playing God, click here
Mixing the Profane and the Sublime, click here
A Letter To An Agnostic Friend, click here
Life Changing Lecture, click here
Advice I Wish My Children Will Read and Heed, click here
longevity, A Muslim Perspective, click here
From Libya to Tok Bali, click here
Redza , click here
Remembrance of Death, click here
Unto HIM is the journeying, click here
Let us All Burn The Quran , click here
Tan Seri, Let Us use The ISA !, click here
Read My Friend, Read This Universe, click here
Prayer of The Cicadas, click here
Leh Budu, Corporate Lembu, Shah Apakahnamadiadah, R'fidah and all that jazz, click here
Big Bang, Surah Al Anbiya and A Century of Science, click here
Bior mati diterkam harimo, jangan lari di kejor anjing, click here
On Life, Dying and Life after Death, click here
Let Us Have One School System PLEASE ! ,click here
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Alone In The Crowd : The Power of Dzikr
I was a wee bit 'un-eased' last night.
Tossing about in bed unable to sleep. Three hours earlier just back from a glittering Malay wedding reception held in a KL five star hotel, sitting dinner and all; guests resplendent in their best three piece suits; innumerable number of young people going up stage giving their glowing eulogies to the bride and groom; served a fusion 10 course dinner and finally a 'band and dance' to top it all up. A glittering event indeed. A A1Malaysia event par excellence. Najib Tun Razak would have been proud of this.
Could not pinpoint was it the 'fusion dinner' or was it the chay kwaey teow with 'kerang' I had for lunch. Something was not right,perhaps I am getting too old for my age.
3 AM, still could not sleep. My hp rang. A friend [ a much junior medical colleague actually ] in JB rang to tell me that his dear father who was just admitted into the medical ward of GHJB for observation of a recent onset 'central chest pain' [ 'unstable angina' in medical parlance or acute coronary syndrome, will be dealt later in another blog article ] , suddenly collapsed at 1 AM in the general medical ward while under 'observation'and now transferred to a CCU bed, in coma.
Duly intubated and ventilated. Pulse thready and BP on the floor at 60/ ?? Despite being on heroic measures of quadruple inotropes [ intravenous heart muscle stimulants ]. Sounds to me like his father had had a massive heart attack followed by cardiogenic shock following too much muscle loss. Dismal prognosis from the sound of it. The GHJB guys have lost that 'small and short window of opportunity' to change the 'possible outcome'. A primary infarct angioplasty and stenting earlier in the evening before the 'complete closure of the coronories' could have made all the difference. A common fallacy and mistake in being admitted for 'observation' but not really 'observed'.
Maximal modalities of medical treatment all up and situation still dismal. Doing too much now but too late . The 'bus' has already left the terminal. Muscle loss from the infarct has occurred. All the 'iblis Ifs' playing in my mind at 3 AM.
I consoled my 'junior 'friend but told him him that 'as it is now', situation sounded dismal.
" Please do not leave your father. Have someone always reading the Yasin into his ears. He may not be able to hear it now , but his soul may. It sounds like it is a matter of hours before the old heart will pack up ! ".
I was not sure how this kind of advice rub on my friend but at 3 am that was the best I could offer. The window of opportunity was already lost in the evening of 'observation'!
How people respond to your sincere and honest counsel/ advice ??
In my experience,at the worst of time, it differ greatly from people to people depending on their level of piety and ilm, or rather their level of 'secularism' for want of better term. A perfect position and timing for 'the messenger' to get shot !
Could still recall an incidence some 15 years earlier. A Tan Seri in his late 70's, not my regular patient, suddenly admitted with a massive heart attack [ his third one this time ]and shortly in the ward, also had a stroke. All modalities of possible treatment used up and to no avail. The old heart wanted to just go and stop beating.He was dying, full stop.
I summarily called a meeting with close family members and told them the plan : A NO PLAN.
"I have run out of all plans. All that need to be done has been done. Prognosis is dismal. We have reached the end of the road.Your Dad is dying. Let him go gracefully. let us do the 'Yasin' bit.", all to that effect. Family accepted it calmly.
All went OK. The old man died surrounded by close family and all. 'Alhamdullillah' I thought to myself, 'this is the typical ideal Muslim setting related to death'. Prayers and all, no 'ai ya ya ', no howling etc etc.
Four days later, two daughters and son [ one , a law student, another a budding young doctor and a third , a university lecturer ] came barging into my outpatient consultation room and demanded an apology from me for use of 'language' inappropriate. 'Their mother utterly depressed because of that !'
I thought I was doing well, but my Malay may have been 'lousy'. They got my 'apology'.
Just recently I got a full frontal barrage from a dato' and datin for reminding them that 'in death oftentimes there is relief'. Their 90+ mother was very sick and things could go either way. I was anticipating the worse case scenario and preparing them 'emotionally'. That was misconstrued.
That is medical practice for you. It has it ups and down. Even when you think you are doing right, you can be perceived to be 'wrong'. With these sort of people, if you dont apologize readily enough you could get a very hot lawyer's letter on your desk in no time !
I put all these to our current relative lack of REMEMBRANCE and on this aspect let us all listen to Shaykh Al Yacoubi :
[ click here ]
quotable quotes on dzikr :
'The Chain of Quintessences'............
The quintessence of the world is man. The quintessence of man is religion. The quintessence of religion is prayer. The quintessence of prayer is invocation. Here lies the meaning of the Quranic verse: The invocation of God is greater [than anything else]. If man had no more than a few instants to live, he would no longer be able to do anything but invoke God. He would thereby fulfill all the demands of prayer, of religion, of the human state.
'The Two Great Moments'.............
There are two moments in life which are everything, and these are the present moment, when we are free to choose what we would be, and the moment of death when we no longer have any choice and the decision belongs to God. Now, if the present moment is good, death will be good; if we are now with God -- in this present which is ceaselessly being renewed but which remains always this one and only moment of actuality -- God will be with us at the moment of death. The remembrance of God is a death in life; it will be a life in death.
Martin Lings
Other related articles in the blog :
On Life, Dying and Life After Death, click here
Tossing about in bed unable to sleep. Three hours earlier just back from a glittering Malay wedding reception held in a KL five star hotel, sitting dinner and all; guests resplendent in their best three piece suits; innumerable number of young people going up stage giving their glowing eulogies to the bride and groom; served a fusion 10 course dinner and finally a 'band and dance' to top it all up. A glittering event indeed. A A1Malaysia event par excellence. Najib Tun Razak would have been proud of this.
Could not pinpoint was it the 'fusion dinner' or was it the chay kwaey teow with 'kerang' I had for lunch. Something was not right,perhaps I am getting too old for my age.
3 AM, still could not sleep. My hp rang. A friend [ a much junior medical colleague actually ] in JB rang to tell me that his dear father who was just admitted into the medical ward of GHJB for observation of a recent onset 'central chest pain' [ 'unstable angina' in medical parlance or acute coronary syndrome, will be dealt later in another blog article ] , suddenly collapsed at 1 AM in the general medical ward while under 'observation'and now transferred to a CCU bed, in coma.
Duly intubated and ventilated. Pulse thready and BP on the floor at 60/ ?? Despite being on heroic measures of quadruple inotropes [ intravenous heart muscle stimulants ]. Sounds to me like his father had had a massive heart attack followed by cardiogenic shock following too much muscle loss. Dismal prognosis from the sound of it. The GHJB guys have lost that 'small and short window of opportunity' to change the 'possible outcome'. A primary infarct angioplasty and stenting earlier in the evening before the 'complete closure of the coronories' could have made all the difference. A common fallacy and mistake in being admitted for 'observation' but not really 'observed'.
Maximal modalities of medical treatment all up and situation still dismal. Doing too much now but too late . The 'bus' has already left the terminal. Muscle loss from the infarct has occurred. All the 'iblis Ifs' playing in my mind at 3 AM.
I consoled my 'junior 'friend but told him him that 'as it is now', situation sounded dismal.
" Please do not leave your father. Have someone always reading the Yasin into his ears. He may not be able to hear it now , but his soul may. It sounds like it is a matter of hours before the old heart will pack up ! ".
I was not sure how this kind of advice rub on my friend but at 3 am that was the best I could offer. The window of opportunity was already lost in the evening of 'observation'!
How people respond to your sincere and honest counsel/ advice ??
In my experience,at the worst of time, it differ greatly from people to people depending on their level of piety and ilm, or rather their level of 'secularism' for want of better term. A perfect position and timing for 'the messenger' to get shot !
Could still recall an incidence some 15 years earlier. A Tan Seri in his late 70's, not my regular patient, suddenly admitted with a massive heart attack [ his third one this time ]and shortly in the ward, also had a stroke. All modalities of possible treatment used up and to no avail. The old heart wanted to just go and stop beating.He was dying, full stop.
I summarily called a meeting with close family members and told them the plan : A NO PLAN.
"I have run out of all plans. All that need to be done has been done. Prognosis is dismal. We have reached the end of the road.Your Dad is dying. Let him go gracefully. let us do the 'Yasin' bit.", all to that effect. Family accepted it calmly.
All went OK. The old man died surrounded by close family and all. 'Alhamdullillah' I thought to myself, 'this is the typical ideal Muslim setting related to death'. Prayers and all, no 'ai ya ya ', no howling etc etc.
Four days later, two daughters and son [ one , a law student, another a budding young doctor and a third , a university lecturer ] came barging into my outpatient consultation room and demanded an apology from me for use of 'language' inappropriate. 'Their mother utterly depressed because of that !'
I thought I was doing well, but my Malay may have been 'lousy'. They got my 'apology'.
Just recently I got a full frontal barrage from a dato' and datin for reminding them that 'in death oftentimes there is relief'. Their 90+ mother was very sick and things could go either way. I was anticipating the worse case scenario and preparing them 'emotionally'. That was misconstrued.
That is medical practice for you. It has it ups and down. Even when you think you are doing right, you can be perceived to be 'wrong'. With these sort of people, if you dont apologize readily enough you could get a very hot lawyer's letter on your desk in no time !
I put all these to our current relative lack of REMEMBRANCE and on this aspect let us all listen to Shaykh Al Yacoubi :
[ click here ]
quotable quotes on dzikr :
'The Chain of Quintessences'............
The quintessence of the world is man. The quintessence of man is religion. The quintessence of religion is prayer. The quintessence of prayer is invocation. Here lies the meaning of the Quranic verse: The invocation of God is greater [than anything else]. If man had no more than a few instants to live, he would no longer be able to do anything but invoke God. He would thereby fulfill all the demands of prayer, of religion, of the human state.
'The Two Great Moments'.............
There are two moments in life which are everything, and these are the present moment, when we are free to choose what we would be, and the moment of death when we no longer have any choice and the decision belongs to God. Now, if the present moment is good, death will be good; if we are now with God -- in this present which is ceaselessly being renewed but which remains always this one and only moment of actuality -- God will be with us at the moment of death. The remembrance of God is a death in life; it will be a life in death.
Martin Lings
Other related articles in the blog :
On Life, Dying and Life After Death, click here
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Stressed ??..try 're-intrepreting' your reality
Feeling stressed lately ?
Tell me who is not stressed in this world !
As Muslims we do not need Yoga to deal with stress. We are in contact with HIM at least five times a day.
We have Tahajjud.
We have DOA.
We have Zikir.
We have Astagfirullah. WE have Istikarah.
We have 99 beautiful names, Asma al Husna.
And finally, we have REDZA
A whole load of 'system' and armamentarium to help us deal with 'Stress'.
Use them in your daily struggle thru this 'stressful life' if you have to.
Use them.
I want to share my 'secrets' with you guys on my personal 'destressors'.
Whenever I am stressed or feeling down, I 'mix' the 'profane and the sublime'. It has become an art form of sort to me after doing this for years !
I may be swimming 20 laps in the pool and doing my mental sum with the '99 beautiful names'. I may be 80 feet down at the ocean sea bed doing the 'subha nallah'. I may be riding on my horse for hours doing the 'zikir'.
If every thing failed, I go back to my Quran. There somehow I will stumble on some 'ayats' that would make the pain and suffering 'endurable' and clear up the misty , black clouds above me.
Some of you guys may want to try the 'Quran'. Try you must.
We Muslims must have ilm and forget about Yoga , pleassssseeee !...
[ I know Datuk Marina and Zuraidah Apakahnamadiadah of that certain Cancer NGO like Yoga and could not see and comprehend why majority of the scholars are against it.
Wise up Madams ! Why expose our already fledgling 'Aqidah' to uncertainties when we already have a fail-safe system on dealing with STRESS ? ]
Listen to this young man here,insyaallah we may benefit from him :
Reality is in the interpretation, click here
Choose your own Reality, click here
Check in your feeling, click here
The concept of 'Muraqabah' in interpreting Reality, click here
Fear, click here
Tuned to the DUNYA, click here
...and finally,the journey is INWARD, not outward, click here
Similar link on the blog :
Shaykh Hussien Yee on Stress, click here
Mixing The Profane and the Sublime, click here
Tell me who is not stressed in this world !
As Muslims we do not need Yoga to deal with stress. We are in contact with HIM at least five times a day.
We have Tahajjud.
We have DOA.
We have Zikir.
We have Astagfirullah. WE have Istikarah.
We have 99 beautiful names, Asma al Husna.
And finally, we have REDZA
A whole load of 'system' and armamentarium to help us deal with 'Stress'.
Use them in your daily struggle thru this 'stressful life' if you have to.
Use them.
I want to share my 'secrets' with you guys on my personal 'destressors'.
Whenever I am stressed or feeling down, I 'mix' the 'profane and the sublime'. It has become an art form of sort to me after doing this for years !
I may be swimming 20 laps in the pool and doing my mental sum with the '99 beautiful names'. I may be 80 feet down at the ocean sea bed doing the 'subha nallah'. I may be riding on my horse for hours doing the 'zikir'.
If every thing failed, I go back to my Quran. There somehow I will stumble on some 'ayats' that would make the pain and suffering 'endurable' and clear up the misty , black clouds above me.
Some of you guys may want to try the 'Quran'. Try you must.
We Muslims must have ilm and forget about Yoga , pleassssseeee !...
[ I know Datuk Marina and Zuraidah Apakahnamadiadah of that certain Cancer NGO like Yoga and could not see and comprehend why majority of the scholars are against it.
Wise up Madams ! Why expose our already fledgling 'Aqidah' to uncertainties when we already have a fail-safe system on dealing with STRESS ? ]
Listen to this young man here,insyaallah we may benefit from him :
Reality is in the interpretation, click here
Choose your own Reality, click here
Check in your feeling, click here
The concept of 'Muraqabah' in interpreting Reality, click here
Fear, click here
Tuned to the DUNYA, click here
...and finally,the journey is INWARD, not outward, click here
Similar link on the blog :
Shaykh Hussien Yee on Stress, click here
Mixing The Profane and the Sublime, click here
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Living With Ourselves : Prof T J Winter aka Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad
WUKUF,
at Arafah,
Makkah :
On this very eve of the opening of the 'veils within the seven heavens' between the abdals and 'The Master', when there is no 'check and balances between your prayer and doa and HIM, on this very important moment in time that only occur for a few hours in any one year, I find Prof T J Winter's discourse on ' Living with Ourselves' very succinct.
We live in an age where forms over rides substance, where words no longer carry its proper meaning, where being politically correct seem to be more important than being true.
We live in an age where we know the particulate and the subatomic, the vastness of the universe is so and so billion light years from one extreme edge to the opposite extreme edge.
But we also live in an age where the souls are subjugated to the body and mind, at least in people who still believe they do have souls at the centre of it all. We live in an age where the profane and the secular take center stage. As to the sublime, who cares ?
Let us listen to this December 2010 lecture by one of my favourite Muslims in the West. Prof T J Winter :
click here
at Arafah,
Makkah :
On this very eve of the opening of the 'veils within the seven heavens' between the abdals and 'The Master', when there is no 'check and balances between your prayer and doa and HIM, on this very important moment in time that only occur for a few hours in any one year, I find Prof T J Winter's discourse on ' Living with Ourselves' very succinct.
We live in an age where forms over rides substance, where words no longer carry its proper meaning, where being politically correct seem to be more important than being true.
We live in an age where we know the particulate and the subatomic, the vastness of the universe is so and so billion light years from one extreme edge to the opposite extreme edge.
But we also live in an age where the souls are subjugated to the body and mind, at least in people who still believe they do have souls at the centre of it all. We live in an age where the profane and the secular take center stage. As to the sublime, who cares ?
Let us listen to this December 2010 lecture by one of my favourite Muslims in the West. Prof T J Winter :
click here
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Under The Shade of The Quran.......Sayyid Qutb
Many things were said about Sayyid Qutb. Unsavory, unpleasant things both from his enemies and from Muslims.
The West, post 9/11, regards him as 'an intellectual ammunition and high octane stuff' for the radicalization of Islam. The absolutist/ so-called Salafis/Wahabis who think they and only they have the absolute understanding of the Quran and hadiths stop short of saying that he was 'heretical'. Huwallahhualam.
I always hold the view , does not matter whether you are a grand Shaykh of Haram or Medinah or Al Azhar, that no one and I repeat NO ONE has a total monopoly of TRUTH.
It is Allah's mercy that HE allows differences of opinions and ijtihad amongst the learned. HE is the Absolute.
It is not our role to scrutinize word by word what previous scholars of Islam wrote and 'hammer' them. It is not fair because they are not here to defend themselves. I just take what I think is good from my reading of various scholars and do not presume that they are 100 % correct 100 % of the time. The Prophet aside, all the rest are not 'maksum'. With all due respect to them, they are human and they lived and think within their time frame and age, within the 'sciences' and wisdom of their time.
With this approach in mind, I do find Sayyid Qutb's 'Fii Zilalil Quran' very readable and illuminating. His cadence of language is beautiful. His reading and understanding of The Quran, subliminal. His writing can move mountains and change hearts !
I always keep Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad's [ Prof TJ Winter of Cambridge ]advice to heart when I read religious text:
The Qu’ran speaks of the God that’s utterly unlike ourselves, but also says God is closer to us than the jugular vein. He is with you wherever you may turn, wherever you turn, the Qu’ran says, there is the face of God. And whatever we see in terms of beauty in the world, in people’s faces, in humans, mutual compassion and love, there we discern that basic thirst that human beings have for the source of nourishment and richness and fullness that is in God. So it’s a kind of nostalgia. Religion is about awakening a nostalgia that we have for the place where we were before we were born, and the place that we hope we’ll return to after our death.
The ummah of Muhammad is like a supertanker. It's huge and does not change direction easily. There are no doubt voice of dissent and discontent here and there but by the grace of Allah we are still on the ship while the rest of the ahlul kitab have abandoned their ships, and out there somewhere in their life boats and for some even in the sea !
It is to these lost souls and lost sheep that we have a duty to help out.
And we cannot help other people when our hearts also are in need of a proper 'brasso'.
We have 2 choices. Either we go back to the desert of 620 AD and be stuck there with the camels or live in the 21st century with Steve Job's wonderful IPOD's, and all the paraphrenalias of this age, guided by the spirituality and imprinting that was branded by Mohammad [pbuh], the final messenger of God.
Sayyid Qutb is contemporary but even with Sayyid Qutb, whenever I have problem I would return back to the Quran, counter-check with other views. That is the beauty of Islam. Nonetheless it is ridiculous for us to walk around with blinkers like some people do, who when they see Muslims visiting graves, say ' these clowns are grave worshippers !'. This kind of mentality is detrimental to the unity of the Ummah. We have to get real and move on !
I hope you will enjoy 'Fi ZILALIL QURAN'. I find it a great read. If through your reading of him your hearts can change, alhamdullillah. A wee bit today and a wee bit tomorrow, is better than not changing at all. click here
Has bunallah wani' mal Wakeel
Unto Allah we put our trust. HE is al Wakeel [ Disposer of all things ]
Related article on the blog :
Redza by Abdal Hakim Murad, click here
..........................................................
letter from Dato' H to Nik Howk:
Doc Nik,
I am puzzled and repelled by all the unspeakable things that have happened in the past, all in the name of religion. And they continue until today...
How do you explain the horrendous pain that men have wrought upon one another in the name of the religions of the Book. We can go back to the days of the Jewish King David (when Yahweh spoke directly to destroy the other tribes - men, women, children, their cattle, sheep, goats and crops), to the years of the crusades (three waves of Christians gone mad with faith and bloodlust), to the terrible Inquisitions by Christians upon Christians (Catholics torturing and killing fellow Christians and Jews). I can list and describe the forms of tortures used at that time, all in the name of religion and God, from the "Rack" that pulls you apart, to the "Catharine Wheel" where they broke your bones, tie you spread eagled to the wheel, and then spin the wheel, to the delight and entertainment of the onlookers, until you die from the excruciating pain.
(As a matter of interest, Catharine was charged with having doubts about her faith and God. She was tortured and died on the horrible wheel. She was later made a saint, and a Cambridge college was named after her. Our Tunku attended the College. The College crest has the wheel on it. If some humor is allowed in this context, Oscar Wilde, when complaining about reports in the newspapers, wrote "In the old days, they had the Rack, now we have the Press.")
Again, the centuries of persecution of millions of poor old women in almost every town and village in Christian Europe on suspicion of being witches, who had short "trials through torture".
I can list for you the kinds and classification of the tortures that the poor, defenceless, old women had to endure before they were killed. Just because they were old, thin, toothless and ugly. They had no defence in the legal system at that time. Any lawyer or witness who dared to come forward would be roped in,, and similarly charged.
Such laws were in the books of several European countries for centuries, until the middle of the 19th century. As a matter of interest, such persecutions never happened in the centuries when the pagan Romans occupied Europe. Of course there were strict Roman laws that require everyone under Pax Romana to accept the gods of Rome. They were ruthless about it. Jesus was crucified because his teachings threatened the Roman system of beliefs. But the real fun really began after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when Christianity and Islam began to spread.
The torture and killing in the name of God and religion goes on today especially among Muslims, and between Jews and Muslims. In Palestine, the orthodox Jews believe that God wants them to reoccupy the Israel of the land of King David. In Iraq, the Shias electric drill the penises of Sunnis, and vice versa, before slowly beheading them with a long dagger. Women in Somalia continue being stoned to death because they were "tainted" - because a group of men had raped them. A woman in Afghanistan had her nose slashed off and left to die in the desert, just because she left her abusive husband and returned to her parents. All on the name of religion. And that is alright.
In any war or conflict, God is claimed to be on both sides. Even in civilized debates, every side of the Book, all three sides, and every Peeping Tom from JAIS, claims that God is on its side, and its side alone is right. All the others are wrong. Logically it makes no sense, unless all three share the Omnipotent God. But no, God forbid, that simply won't do!
So what does a simpleminded person like me do? Of course I am told the old, empty mantra, "Iman" and "ilm, ilm", "ilm". Scholars in books and videos, however, echo one another about faith and the sophistries of Sufism. The old, hoary, war cry that 'we are right, all the others are wrong' still permeate religious discussions, and that echo chamber puts me off. I do not accept that God behaves like prejudiced human beings, and takes sides in stupid human disputes.
Doc,
You have serene outlook in your faith. You must have overcome the turmoil of anger over the centuries of war, death, pain, and misery, and the holding back of knowledge, and science, by religion, and the demands of beliefs. Personally, I think that if the religions had had their way in suppressing science, we would all still live in the hovels of the Dark Ages, hungry, sick, miserable, with a short life span of thirty years, and believing that diseases are caused by God's anger and retribution for our "sins". We would live and die superstitious and ignorant, knowing nothing about microbes and viruses, and that death is caused by them, and by forms of carcinoma, or high cholesterol, hypertension, high blood sugar, etc.
Science, despite being blocked many times by religion, continues to expand our knowledge and our horizons. There is no Christian Science or Islamic Science. In our schools here, the talk is all about Islamic science. Students are not taught that there is just Science - a pursuit of knowledge based on facts, evidence, and rigorous methodology. There is no Christian Cardiology or Islamic Cardiology. There is just the science of cardiology, based on empirical facts, methodology, and procedures. The cardiology that you, yourself, practise. The healing profession must be based on science. Faith healing is humbug, and preys on the gullible. God knows the depth of the irony that the world is full of gullible people!!!
Dato' H
.....................................
Dato'
Well said Dato'. Your argument , though nothing new in its content, it does reflect erudite scholarship and a certain era long gone.
But you are over generalizing too much and myopic and I am not surprised since you are from Cambridge
You chose to forget that when Tariq Ziad, the Berber, crossed over the Strait of Jabal Tariq in the 7th century AD and freed Europe from barbarism,
the civilizing influence of Islam on Europe extended close to 10 centuries until it ended with the terrible Spanish inquisition. Barbarity and intolerance is not an Islamic virtue.[ click here, for science and Islam ]
I am not a student of history, I am a man of science. Thus I do not share your myopic view on history.
One, especially if schooled in the West, would easily tend to forget and disregard easily the civility of the Ottomans, who ruled some three quarters of the civilized world then,from the Adriatic Sea to China, until its later decadence and degeneration due to putting The Book aside.
Muslim lands were safe haven for European Jews for over 13 centuries. That piece of history, the West and Jews in particular would not like the world to know.
The Jews of today have much to thank the late sultans of the golden Seljuk era and even the Muslims of Cordaba and Seville era for their existence today. If you had left them to the Trinitarians , they would have long disappeared from the face of this earth ! So much for putting 'Jesus' on the cross !
Now the Palestinians and the Arabs are bearing the burden of guilt of the Europeans. But then only the victors write and dictate history, unfortunately.
I do not wish to get into another prolong pointless polemic with you over Islam versus Humanism Dato'. I say Islam here Dato and not religions as a whole because I do not wish to fall into the modernist's trap that 'all religions are the same'. This is the age of political correctness but we Muslims must extra careful. This touch the very basis of our AQIDAH.
No ! Islam is not the same. We are still intact. Our Book is still there despite all the noise here and there within, we are still on the 'ship'. If the others of the ahlil kitab have by now 'abandoned their ships and floating in the sea, we are still very much on board. We Muslim must now stop apologizing, like you do, and instead realize our good fate.
If at this late age in your life you must still insist we are still the same as others , I must wish the best of luck to you Dato.
Nik Howk
postscript :
Yes admittedly we are now quite down and out but if we give ourselves time, we will again be a civilizing influence on this present mad mad world. We just need to know our position in the realm of things. We have to feel proud to be Muslims !
We need to feel deep pain and anguish when scholars like Anwar Awlaki [ click here ]got 'droned' by clowns like Obama et al. We have to think Islam.
We have to separate the foliage and the trees and branches, and see the forest.
If Leopold Weiss aka Muhammad Asad can think for us why can't we do the same ??!!
Lo and behold, we are back to ilm, ilm , ilm and ilm.
..................................
Reply from Dato' H :
Dear Dr. Nik,
It is always a delight to hear from you.
First of all, I did not go to Cambridge; you mistook me for my baby sister, Zuraina. She is the smart one. She went to Cambridge, and then won a doctoral scholarship to Yale. She later became professor of archeology at USM. She is now prof emeritus, and advisor on Heritage to Dato Rais Yatim. She has written several technical books on archeology, is discoverer of the Perak Man (that pushed Malaysian history back by 30,000 years). She is highly regarded by the people at the Smithsonian and at UNESCO. We meet from time to time over dinner, in fact we had dinner just last week. I am proud of her, but I do not have her credentials, I am afraid.
However, if university education has done anything for me at all, it has made me forever curious, and not easily taken in by claims without evidence. As a diplomat, and a civil servant, I had always been driven by the need to have fact and/reason-based policies. (Perhaps this is something today's civil servants may need to think about.)
I agree with your comment that I am not learned in the history and philosophy of Islam. True. Shallow? Hmm, in a way, perhaps. But myopic? I don't think so. I can see the contours of history clearly, of course without the details that academic historians and theologians have. I see them in clear outlines - from the formation of the planet out of a cloud of cosmic dust, its hot birth and the billion years of cooling period to create its surface crust, and releasing the gases to make water, nitrogen and oxygen; another billion years for unicellular life to form in the primordial soup, rich life forms in the sea before they gradually came up to the land, and the early plant and animal life on the planet.
These evolve very, very, gradually, over a billion years, until the dinosaurs (of thousands of species) ruled the earth for nearly half a billion years. After they were wiped fairly recently by a cataclysmic event, just 65 million years ago, the mammals and birds (the birds being the descendants of dinosaurs) had a chance to survive, evolve, and branch out into various species. Very recently, one such species developed into apes and, only six million years ago, this species branched out again, and one branch went on circa 200,000 years ago to develop gradually into modern man. The history of man, over the last 200,000 years, was marked by periods of near extinction, from hunger, diseases, and the ice ages. At one point, our population dwindled down to less than 10,000 individuals. We only knew a settled community and understood its structure, and the psychological demands of that structure, circa five thousand years ago. Very, very recently, in terms of actual history on the planet.
Well, the above is a very brief paraphrasing of evolution and history - a veritable red flag to you. Now you are really, really angry, and ready to gore me to death. But, dear Dr. Nik, hold on. The above line of reasoning is backed by various lines of evidence, from fossil and archeological to genetic. The evidence is overpowering. The fossil evidence is there. And the genetic evidence, showing the gene similarities with other creatures and birds and trees and plants are all there. Modern biology, as all universities now teach, is evolutionary biology. Can all universities be wrong?
How can anybody argue against such evidence? As a doctor (certainly trained in the methodology of science when you were in London) you cannot deny evidence. We must go where the evidence takes us. But, having said that, I also agree that absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. True. This is where Tariq Ramadan (a St. Anthony's College guy) slips his argument in, placing faith in the mechanism of logic, using the very rigour of logic. I anticipate this is where you, too, will come in. Cutting to the chase, this is the very nexus of the intellectual debate on science and religion.
As KD described it, you are more inclined to the "cut and thrust", well that is how I would put it in its most concise way. Doctor jantung, this is the cut and thrust you like. The rest are details and byways. I was once taught that an academic will look at a piece of jewellery, choose a stone in it, and polish that individual stone till it shines. In short, they specialise, and many scholars contribute to add our overall knowledge, until the whole piece of jewellery shines brightly. Few individual scholars are inclined to take the larger view, like Acton, Toynbee, AJP Taylor, Robert Fisk, etc. and offer us a full narrative.
A great danger facing the world is the proselytizing zeal among the three religions of the Book. You will disagree, of course, my dear Doctor. But one can see the irrational zeal and violence of the people involved in it. The recent assassination of a cabinet minister in Pakistan, the death sentence passed on his assassin, and the resulting irrational uproar of the Pakistanis is frightening. You know this case well, I am sure. It will tear Pakistan apart. Humanity and reason vaporize instantly in that atmosphere. Somehow, religion ignites a dangerous, irrational response in people.
Now, dear Nadzrul is doing some research and will fire all starboard cannons at me. I can see the grey puffs of smoke against the blue skies - the explosive shells are on the way!
Regards.
Dato' H
..................................
Dato',
I can see that you are still well stuck to your evolutionary zeal.Oh my God!
Who say I do not believe in 'evolution of the species' ?
Just because your scientists cannot really tie up 'evolution of the species' and complete the 'million mile' dots with the 'introduction' of the primordial man, Nabi Adam on this planet earth, does not necessarily negate evolution.
I am keeping some pieces of metals and wood in my garage.
Who knows in a couple of millions years we can get a Bentley Turbo out of it.........
Of course you and I would not be around to celebrate it and drive it then.
In my realms of things, you might say jokingly that I would be one of those struggling souls trying to figure out how to cross the 'Sirat'.
Nik Howk
......................
From Dato' H :
Doc,
I am puzzled how a few sticks and pieces of metal can ever become a Bentley! An attempt to scoff at Evolution? Are you alluding to the discredited argument by the clergyman William Paley who, while walking on a beach, found a watch in the sand. He thought it was an irrefutable argument that such a delicate, intricate piece of mechanism MUST have had an intelligent designer and maker, and ergo, we all must have had an "Intelligent Designer"! Of course, it was silly, and his argument was quickly proved false.
Dato H
.............................
Dato',
Precisely. You got it on the dot !
This is a digression from our 'Fi Zilalil Quran' but not entirely out of order. Quran is after all about HIM and HIS creation and created beings !
Since this 'old man', a new lover of science, must insist, we will carry on.
I reckon you are an arts man. You are just a new lover of science, all your life being in the arts.
Science to you mean everything.....theories, hypotheses and conjectures become incontrovertible facts! Life for the new lover of science is easy. The dots connecting the 'facts and fancies' in science can be a million miles apart, as your highly talented archeologist sister would tell you, but since science is a toy to people like you , you can swallow them all, the facts, the craps and all.
Evolution for the species do happened. There are incontrovertible evidence for it. I accept that.
Cannot you accept that MAN was planted on earth after millions of years of evolution of species.
Why cant you accept that ?
That God ,that create the Big Bang and the evolution of species, with a 'Kun Fayakun', can plant the primordial man, Adam and his partner on planet earth.
What is so difficult about it. You mean your 'god' [ I mean knowledge ] does not allow God to be there !?
Let us visit the Quran and have a peep:
--sura 21, verse 30:
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them
asunder and We got every living thing out of the water. Will they not then believe?"
--sura 41 verse 11:
on the earth's creation:
"Moreover (God) turned to the Heaven when it was smoke and said to it and to the earth..."
The reference to a separation process (fatq) of an primary single mass whose elements were initially
fused together (ratq). It must be noted that in Arabic 'fatq' is the action of breaking, diffusing, separating,
and that 'ratq' is the action of fusing or binding together elements to make a homogenous whole.
This concept of the separation of a whole into several parts is noted in other passages of the Book
with reference to multiple worlds. The first verse of the first sura in the Qur'an proclaims, after the
opening invocation, the following: "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful", "Praise be to God,
Lord of the Worlds."
Of course you will say, what the heck , Dr Nik ,'doctor jantung', a man of science, is just quoting from Maurice Buccaile, another man of science.
But this is getting a wee bit protracted and tedious and I promised my grown up daughter once not again to get into another prolonged debate with you regarding creation, so let me end with this surah :
Verily in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day - there are indeed signs for men of understanding; Men who remember Allah, standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth (with the thought) "Our Lord! Not for nothing have You created (all) this. Glory to You! Give us salvation from the suffering of the Fire."
ali imran, verse 190-191.
You, your belief, me, mine Dato'
Warmest Regards,
Nik Howk
.............................................
Related Articles in The Blog :
Letter To An Agnostic Friend, click here
Letter To An Agnostic Friend : A Rebuttal by Dato' H, click here
Same Universe, Same Physics but a Dichotomy of Perspective,
Of Stephen Hawking, The Big Bang, The Universe and The Arash, click here
The West, post 9/11, regards him as 'an intellectual ammunition and high octane stuff' for the radicalization of Islam. The absolutist/ so-called Salafis/Wahabis who think they and only they have the absolute understanding of the Quran and hadiths stop short of saying that he was 'heretical'. Huwallahhualam.
I always hold the view , does not matter whether you are a grand Shaykh of Haram or Medinah or Al Azhar, that no one and I repeat NO ONE has a total monopoly of TRUTH.
It is Allah's mercy that HE allows differences of opinions and ijtihad amongst the learned. HE is the Absolute.
It is not our role to scrutinize word by word what previous scholars of Islam wrote and 'hammer' them. It is not fair because they are not here to defend themselves. I just take what I think is good from my reading of various scholars and do not presume that they are 100 % correct 100 % of the time. The Prophet aside, all the rest are not 'maksum'. With all due respect to them, they are human and they lived and think within their time frame and age, within the 'sciences' and wisdom of their time.
With this approach in mind, I do find Sayyid Qutb's 'Fii Zilalil Quran' very readable and illuminating. His cadence of language is beautiful. His reading and understanding of The Quran, subliminal. His writing can move mountains and change hearts !
I always keep Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad's [ Prof TJ Winter of Cambridge ]advice to heart when I read religious text:
The Qu’ran speaks of the God that’s utterly unlike ourselves, but also says God is closer to us than the jugular vein. He is with you wherever you may turn, wherever you turn, the Qu’ran says, there is the face of God. And whatever we see in terms of beauty in the world, in people’s faces, in humans, mutual compassion and love, there we discern that basic thirst that human beings have for the source of nourishment and richness and fullness that is in God. So it’s a kind of nostalgia. Religion is about awakening a nostalgia that we have for the place where we were before we were born, and the place that we hope we’ll return to after our death.
The ummah of Muhammad is like a supertanker. It's huge and does not change direction easily. There are no doubt voice of dissent and discontent here and there but by the grace of Allah we are still on the ship while the rest of the ahlul kitab have abandoned their ships, and out there somewhere in their life boats and for some even in the sea !
It is to these lost souls and lost sheep that we have a duty to help out.
And we cannot help other people when our hearts also are in need of a proper 'brasso'.
We have 2 choices. Either we go back to the desert of 620 AD and be stuck there with the camels or live in the 21st century with Steve Job's wonderful IPOD's, and all the paraphrenalias of this age, guided by the spirituality and imprinting that was branded by Mohammad [pbuh], the final messenger of God.
Sayyid Qutb is contemporary but even with Sayyid Qutb, whenever I have problem I would return back to the Quran, counter-check with other views. That is the beauty of Islam. Nonetheless it is ridiculous for us to walk around with blinkers like some people do, who when they see Muslims visiting graves, say ' these clowns are grave worshippers !'. This kind of mentality is detrimental to the unity of the Ummah. We have to get real and move on !
I hope you will enjoy 'Fi ZILALIL QURAN'. I find it a great read. If through your reading of him your hearts can change, alhamdullillah. A wee bit today and a wee bit tomorrow, is better than not changing at all. click here
Has bunallah wani' mal Wakeel
Unto Allah we put our trust. HE is al Wakeel [ Disposer of all things ]
Related article on the blog :
Redza by Abdal Hakim Murad, click here
..........................................................
letter from Dato' H to Nik Howk:
Doc Nik,
I am puzzled and repelled by all the unspeakable things that have happened in the past, all in the name of religion. And they continue until today...
How do you explain the horrendous pain that men have wrought upon one another in the name of the religions of the Book. We can go back to the days of the Jewish King David (when Yahweh spoke directly to destroy the other tribes - men, women, children, their cattle, sheep, goats and crops), to the years of the crusades (three waves of Christians gone mad with faith and bloodlust), to the terrible Inquisitions by Christians upon Christians (Catholics torturing and killing fellow Christians and Jews). I can list and describe the forms of tortures used at that time, all in the name of religion and God, from the "Rack" that pulls you apart, to the "Catharine Wheel" where they broke your bones, tie you spread eagled to the wheel, and then spin the wheel, to the delight and entertainment of the onlookers, until you die from the excruciating pain.
(As a matter of interest, Catharine was charged with having doubts about her faith and God. She was tortured and died on the horrible wheel. She was later made a saint, and a Cambridge college was named after her. Our Tunku attended the College. The College crest has the wheel on it. If some humor is allowed in this context, Oscar Wilde, when complaining about reports in the newspapers, wrote "In the old days, they had the Rack, now we have the Press.")
Again, the centuries of persecution of millions of poor old women in almost every town and village in Christian Europe on suspicion of being witches, who had short "trials through torture".
I can list for you the kinds and classification of the tortures that the poor, defenceless, old women had to endure before they were killed. Just because they were old, thin, toothless and ugly. They had no defence in the legal system at that time. Any lawyer or witness who dared to come forward would be roped in,, and similarly charged.
Such laws were in the books of several European countries for centuries, until the middle of the 19th century. As a matter of interest, such persecutions never happened in the centuries when the pagan Romans occupied Europe. Of course there were strict Roman laws that require everyone under Pax Romana to accept the gods of Rome. They were ruthless about it. Jesus was crucified because his teachings threatened the Roman system of beliefs. But the real fun really began after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when Christianity and Islam began to spread.
The torture and killing in the name of God and religion goes on today especially among Muslims, and between Jews and Muslims. In Palestine, the orthodox Jews believe that God wants them to reoccupy the Israel of the land of King David. In Iraq, the Shias electric drill the penises of Sunnis, and vice versa, before slowly beheading them with a long dagger. Women in Somalia continue being stoned to death because they were "tainted" - because a group of men had raped them. A woman in Afghanistan had her nose slashed off and left to die in the desert, just because she left her abusive husband and returned to her parents. All on the name of religion. And that is alright.
In any war or conflict, God is claimed to be on both sides. Even in civilized debates, every side of the Book, all three sides, and every Peeping Tom from JAIS, claims that God is on its side, and its side alone is right. All the others are wrong. Logically it makes no sense, unless all three share the Omnipotent God. But no, God forbid, that simply won't do!
So what does a simpleminded person like me do? Of course I am told the old, empty mantra, "Iman" and "ilm, ilm", "ilm". Scholars in books and videos, however, echo one another about faith and the sophistries of Sufism. The old, hoary, war cry that 'we are right, all the others are wrong' still permeate religious discussions, and that echo chamber puts me off. I do not accept that God behaves like prejudiced human beings, and takes sides in stupid human disputes.
Doc,
You have serene outlook in your faith. You must have overcome the turmoil of anger over the centuries of war, death, pain, and misery, and the holding back of knowledge, and science, by religion, and the demands of beliefs. Personally, I think that if the religions had had their way in suppressing science, we would all still live in the hovels of the Dark Ages, hungry, sick, miserable, with a short life span of thirty years, and believing that diseases are caused by God's anger and retribution for our "sins". We would live and die superstitious and ignorant, knowing nothing about microbes and viruses, and that death is caused by them, and by forms of carcinoma, or high cholesterol, hypertension, high blood sugar, etc.
Science, despite being blocked many times by religion, continues to expand our knowledge and our horizons. There is no Christian Science or Islamic Science. In our schools here, the talk is all about Islamic science. Students are not taught that there is just Science - a pursuit of knowledge based on facts, evidence, and rigorous methodology. There is no Christian Cardiology or Islamic Cardiology. There is just the science of cardiology, based on empirical facts, methodology, and procedures. The cardiology that you, yourself, practise. The healing profession must be based on science. Faith healing is humbug, and preys on the gullible. God knows the depth of the irony that the world is full of gullible people!!!
Dato' H
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Dato'
Well said Dato'. Your argument , though nothing new in its content, it does reflect erudite scholarship and a certain era long gone.
But you are over generalizing too much and myopic and I am not surprised since you are from Cambridge
You chose to forget that when Tariq Ziad, the Berber, crossed over the Strait of Jabal Tariq in the 7th century AD and freed Europe from barbarism,
the civilizing influence of Islam on Europe extended close to 10 centuries until it ended with the terrible Spanish inquisition. Barbarity and intolerance is not an Islamic virtue.[ click here, for science and Islam ]
I am not a student of history, I am a man of science. Thus I do not share your myopic view on history.
One, especially if schooled in the West, would easily tend to forget and disregard easily the civility of the Ottomans, who ruled some three quarters of the civilized world then,from the Adriatic Sea to China, until its later decadence and degeneration due to putting The Book aside.
Muslim lands were safe haven for European Jews for over 13 centuries. That piece of history, the West and Jews in particular would not like the world to know.
The Jews of today have much to thank the late sultans of the golden Seljuk era and even the Muslims of Cordaba and Seville era for their existence today. If you had left them to the Trinitarians , they would have long disappeared from the face of this earth ! So much for putting 'Jesus' on the cross !
Now the Palestinians and the Arabs are bearing the burden of guilt of the Europeans. But then only the victors write and dictate history, unfortunately.
I do not wish to get into another prolong pointless polemic with you over Islam versus Humanism Dato'. I say Islam here Dato and not religions as a whole because I do not wish to fall into the modernist's trap that 'all religions are the same'. This is the age of political correctness but we Muslims must extra careful. This touch the very basis of our AQIDAH.
No ! Islam is not the same. We are still intact. Our Book is still there despite all the noise here and there within, we are still on the 'ship'. If the others of the ahlil kitab have by now 'abandoned their ships and floating in the sea, we are still very much on board. We Muslim must now stop apologizing, like you do, and instead realize our good fate.
If at this late age in your life you must still insist we are still the same as others , I must wish the best of luck to you Dato.
Nik Howk
postscript :
Yes admittedly we are now quite down and out but if we give ourselves time, we will again be a civilizing influence on this present mad mad world. We just need to know our position in the realm of things. We have to feel proud to be Muslims !
We need to feel deep pain and anguish when scholars like Anwar Awlaki [ click here ]got 'droned' by clowns like Obama et al. We have to think Islam.
We have to separate the foliage and the trees and branches, and see the forest.
If Leopold Weiss aka Muhammad Asad can think for us why can't we do the same ??!!
Lo and behold, we are back to ilm, ilm , ilm and ilm.
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Reply from Dato' H :
Dear Dr. Nik,
It is always a delight to hear from you.
First of all, I did not go to Cambridge; you mistook me for my baby sister, Zuraina. She is the smart one. She went to Cambridge, and then won a doctoral scholarship to Yale. She later became professor of archeology at USM. She is now prof emeritus, and advisor on Heritage to Dato Rais Yatim. She has written several technical books on archeology, is discoverer of the Perak Man (that pushed Malaysian history back by 30,000 years). She is highly regarded by the people at the Smithsonian and at UNESCO. We meet from time to time over dinner, in fact we had dinner just last week. I am proud of her, but I do not have her credentials, I am afraid.
However, if university education has done anything for me at all, it has made me forever curious, and not easily taken in by claims without evidence. As a diplomat, and a civil servant, I had always been driven by the need to have fact and/reason-based policies. (Perhaps this is something today's civil servants may need to think about.)
I agree with your comment that I am not learned in the history and philosophy of Islam. True. Shallow? Hmm, in a way, perhaps. But myopic? I don't think so. I can see the contours of history clearly, of course without the details that academic historians and theologians have. I see them in clear outlines - from the formation of the planet out of a cloud of cosmic dust, its hot birth and the billion years of cooling period to create its surface crust, and releasing the gases to make water, nitrogen and oxygen; another billion years for unicellular life to form in the primordial soup, rich life forms in the sea before they gradually came up to the land, and the early plant and animal life on the planet.
These evolve very, very, gradually, over a billion years, until the dinosaurs (of thousands of species) ruled the earth for nearly half a billion years. After they were wiped fairly recently by a cataclysmic event, just 65 million years ago, the mammals and birds (the birds being the descendants of dinosaurs) had a chance to survive, evolve, and branch out into various species. Very recently, one such species developed into apes and, only six million years ago, this species branched out again, and one branch went on circa 200,000 years ago to develop gradually into modern man. The history of man, over the last 200,000 years, was marked by periods of near extinction, from hunger, diseases, and the ice ages. At one point, our population dwindled down to less than 10,000 individuals. We only knew a settled community and understood its structure, and the psychological demands of that structure, circa five thousand years ago. Very, very recently, in terms of actual history on the planet.
Well, the above is a very brief paraphrasing of evolution and history - a veritable red flag to you. Now you are really, really angry, and ready to gore me to death. But, dear Dr. Nik, hold on. The above line of reasoning is backed by various lines of evidence, from fossil and archeological to genetic. The evidence is overpowering. The fossil evidence is there. And the genetic evidence, showing the gene similarities with other creatures and birds and trees and plants are all there. Modern biology, as all universities now teach, is evolutionary biology. Can all universities be wrong?
How can anybody argue against such evidence? As a doctor (certainly trained in the methodology of science when you were in London) you cannot deny evidence. We must go where the evidence takes us. But, having said that, I also agree that absence of evidence is no evidence of absence. True. This is where Tariq Ramadan (a St. Anthony's College guy) slips his argument in, placing faith in the mechanism of logic, using the very rigour of logic. I anticipate this is where you, too, will come in. Cutting to the chase, this is the very nexus of the intellectual debate on science and religion.
As KD described it, you are more inclined to the "cut and thrust", well that is how I would put it in its most concise way. Doctor jantung, this is the cut and thrust you like. The rest are details and byways. I was once taught that an academic will look at a piece of jewellery, choose a stone in it, and polish that individual stone till it shines. In short, they specialise, and many scholars contribute to add our overall knowledge, until the whole piece of jewellery shines brightly. Few individual scholars are inclined to take the larger view, like Acton, Toynbee, AJP Taylor, Robert Fisk, etc. and offer us a full narrative.
A great danger facing the world is the proselytizing zeal among the three religions of the Book. You will disagree, of course, my dear Doctor. But one can see the irrational zeal and violence of the people involved in it. The recent assassination of a cabinet minister in Pakistan, the death sentence passed on his assassin, and the resulting irrational uproar of the Pakistanis is frightening. You know this case well, I am sure. It will tear Pakistan apart. Humanity and reason vaporize instantly in that atmosphere. Somehow, religion ignites a dangerous, irrational response in people.
Now, dear Nadzrul is doing some research and will fire all starboard cannons at me. I can see the grey puffs of smoke against the blue skies - the explosive shells are on the way!
Regards.
Dato' H
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Dato',
I can see that you are still well stuck to your evolutionary zeal.Oh my God!
Who say I do not believe in 'evolution of the species' ?
Just because your scientists cannot really tie up 'evolution of the species' and complete the 'million mile' dots with the 'introduction' of the primordial man, Nabi Adam on this planet earth, does not necessarily negate evolution.
I am keeping some pieces of metals and wood in my garage.
Who knows in a couple of millions years we can get a Bentley Turbo out of it.........
Of course you and I would not be around to celebrate it and drive it then.
In my realms of things, you might say jokingly that I would be one of those struggling souls trying to figure out how to cross the 'Sirat'.
Nik Howk
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From Dato' H :
Doc,
I am puzzled how a few sticks and pieces of metal can ever become a Bentley! An attempt to scoff at Evolution? Are you alluding to the discredited argument by the clergyman William Paley who, while walking on a beach, found a watch in the sand. He thought it was an irrefutable argument that such a delicate, intricate piece of mechanism MUST have had an intelligent designer and maker, and ergo, we all must have had an "Intelligent Designer"! Of course, it was silly, and his argument was quickly proved false.
Dato H
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Dato',
Precisely. You got it on the dot !
This is a digression from our 'Fi Zilalil Quran' but not entirely out of order. Quran is after all about HIM and HIS creation and created beings !
Since this 'old man', a new lover of science, must insist, we will carry on.
I reckon you are an arts man. You are just a new lover of science, all your life being in the arts.
Science to you mean everything.....theories, hypotheses and conjectures become incontrovertible facts! Life for the new lover of science is easy. The dots connecting the 'facts and fancies' in science can be a million miles apart, as your highly talented archeologist sister would tell you, but since science is a toy to people like you , you can swallow them all, the facts, the craps and all.
Evolution for the species do happened. There are incontrovertible evidence for it. I accept that.
Cannot you accept that MAN was planted on earth after millions of years of evolution of species.
Why cant you accept that ?
That God ,that create the Big Bang and the evolution of species, with a 'Kun Fayakun', can plant the primordial man, Adam and his partner on planet earth.
What is so difficult about it. You mean your 'god' [ I mean knowledge ] does not allow God to be there !?
Let us visit the Quran and have a peep:
--sura 21, verse 30:
"Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together, then We clove them
asunder and We got every living thing out of the water. Will they not then believe?"
--sura 41 verse 11:
on the earth's creation:
"Moreover (God) turned to the Heaven when it was smoke and said to it and to the earth..."
The reference to a separation process (fatq) of an primary single mass whose elements were initially
fused together (ratq). It must be noted that in Arabic 'fatq' is the action of breaking, diffusing, separating,
and that 'ratq' is the action of fusing or binding together elements to make a homogenous whole.
This concept of the separation of a whole into several parts is noted in other passages of the Book
with reference to multiple worlds. The first verse of the first sura in the Qur'an proclaims, after the
opening invocation, the following: "In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful", "Praise be to God,
Lord of the Worlds."
Of course you will say, what the heck , Dr Nik ,'doctor jantung', a man of science, is just quoting from Maurice Buccaile, another man of science.
But this is getting a wee bit protracted and tedious and I promised my grown up daughter once not again to get into another prolonged debate with you regarding creation, so let me end with this surah :
Verily in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day - there are indeed signs for men of understanding; Men who remember Allah, standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the creation of the heavens and the earth (with the thought) "Our Lord! Not for nothing have You created (all) this. Glory to You! Give us salvation from the suffering of the Fire."
ali imran, verse 190-191.
You, your belief, me, mine Dato'
Warmest Regards,
Nik Howk
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Related Articles in The Blog :
Letter To An Agnostic Friend, click here
Letter To An Agnostic Friend : A Rebuttal by Dato' H, click here
Same Universe, Same Physics but a Dichotomy of Perspective,
Of Stephen Hawking, The Big Bang, The Universe and The Arash, click here
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