Friends ,
Surah Al Hujarat presumably was revealed around 1st or 2nd year post Hijrah ,a short surah dealing mainly with etiquette and good mannerism to be expected in the presence of the messenger of Allah :
"And know that the messenger of Allah is amongst you .If he were to obey you in much of the government ,ye would surely be in trouble ,but Allah hath endeared the faith to you and hath beautified it in your hearts and made disbelief and lewdness and rebellion hateful unto your .Such are they who are the rightly guided .[7] It is a bounty and a grace from Allah ,and Allah is Knower ,Wise .[8]"
That was some 1450 years ago .Now what do we Muslims have ?The Quran ,Hadiths and "descendents" of the Prophet ,the ulama' ,and what kind of nonsensical behavior are we showing towards them ?People who control the press and media ,people in government ,shallow minded unschooled pea brained politicians , 'progressive feminists [ eg Marinaapakahnamadiadah; Sisters in and out of Islam ; try reading Farish Noor's Other Malaysia]. All are having a field day " screwing up " the ulama' left ,right and centre .Of course some of the ulama' themselves lend themselves to such behavior .An Ulama likewise has no business '' rounding up all the jinns in Bangi into buses and sending them over the Penang Bridge ".Time is short ,they should be spending all their limited energy and time to think , write ,cajole and motivate this 'sickly ummah of our time' to greater height .No time for 'jinns and jembalangs'.There are already enough jinns from amongst humans .Some of these midget politicians think that ulama' grow on trees ,not so ,especially on Malaysian rubber trees !The sacking and rape of ISTAC's Prof Naguib's some 3 years ago was a blatant example of the meaning of lewdness and stupidity alluded to by Allah in ayat 7 in Surah Al Hujarat .Allahualam .
Dr Nik Howk
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
Not So Pearls & Gem :Nik Isahak
" Life[and for that matter death]is a mind game ."
Appears crazy .But in life we have a finite way of choosing ,within a broad leeway of limitation ,how we would like to 'colour' it .Black ,white ,gray even red or purple !
That to most people is acceptable .In death ,even a mind game !This chap is crazy !
At the moment of death or precisely at the brink of death ,when measured in finite time ,may be short , but is it really ?From the Muslim perspective ,all of will meet Mr Izra'il at that moment in time .We are encouraged to 'doa' thruout our life to have a 'peaceful' moment of death :husnul khatimah .Not suul khatimah .What precisely would determine whether we go upward meaning 'husnul' or have a downward spiral as in 'suul'?Allahualam !This has to do with how we lead our lives as preamble to that 'brink' in time at the precise moment before we exit this earthly life go thru the exit door thru to Alam Baka' for another millenium or so !What would determine our state of mind at that point in time to choose the proverbial 'cup of milk' rather than 'wine' when offered by that foxy Mr Iblis at a time when neither wealth or any number of childrens [ or wives ] we have can help us .That is the mind game .
We have to prepare our minds with ILM for that . Back to Ilmu ,Ilmu , Ilmu and Ilmu .But ilm alone is not enough .John esposito has got a lot of ilm about Islam ,so are all the orientalists !With hidayah from Allah ,with ilm we proceed to iman and amal .
That was why Allah started His revelation to Muhammad[ pbhuh] with "IQRA...! .
Appears crazy .But in life we have a finite way of choosing ,within a broad leeway of limitation ,how we would like to 'colour' it .Black ,white ,gray even red or purple !
That to most people is acceptable .In death ,even a mind game !This chap is crazy !
At the moment of death or precisely at the brink of death ,when measured in finite time ,may be short , but is it really ?From the Muslim perspective ,all of will meet Mr Izra'il at that moment in time .We are encouraged to 'doa' thruout our life to have a 'peaceful' moment of death :husnul khatimah .Not suul khatimah .What precisely would determine whether we go upward meaning 'husnul' or have a downward spiral as in 'suul'?Allahualam !This has to do with how we lead our lives as preamble to that 'brink' in time at the precise moment before we exit this earthly life go thru the exit door thru to Alam Baka' for another millenium or so !What would determine our state of mind at that point in time to choose the proverbial 'cup of milk' rather than 'wine' when offered by that foxy Mr Iblis at a time when neither wealth or any number of childrens [ or wives ] we have can help us .That is the mind game .
We have to prepare our minds with ILM for that . Back to Ilmu ,Ilmu , Ilmu and Ilmu .But ilm alone is not enough .John esposito has got a lot of ilm about Islam ,so are all the orientalists !With hidayah from Allah ,with ilm we proceed to iman and amal .
That was why Allah started His revelation to Muhammad[ pbhuh] with "IQRA...! .
Allahualam !
Pearls & Gem:George Bernard Shaw
" We do not stop playing because we grow old,we grow old because we stop playing ."
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Some More Random Thots on Death
A colleague just this week was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the pancreas .Medium survival 6 months .With state of the art chemo and radiotherapy,if you are very lucky 1 year .
In the doctors rest room a small group of us were discussing the merit and demerit of 'saying goodbye' to this earthly life the 'fast way'[massive heart attack,mva,plane crash etc etc ]against the 'slow way'[incurable cancers,leukemias,debilitating strokes,chronic heart or lung failures etc etc],since in the same week we have al most gone bonkers discussing Dr M. We could not make any sense of Dr M's recent resignation from his AMNU this same week.....age and the thought of death itself must have hit that old man ! .
On the point of death itself,from my perspective, any superficial discussion generally devoid of divine revealed injunction, would be a sheer waste of time and function.Very naive,rather secular discussion devoid of depth just like the 'war games' they used to enact in the Pentagon before the rape and devastation of Iraq.Without the 'spiritual'content any discussion on death,or rather moment of death,tend to be shallow,for no one can predict at that precise moment of death,the one involve can be in a different 'plane'altogether and that precise short moment could well be a protracted affair for the individual concerned.Only God knows.That precise moment when you face Izra'il ,Mr Death himself,on his turf.You and him would be in the world of your own ,oblivious of the surrounding.
Needless to say as cardiologists in a hospital setting,we 'presided'over most hospital deaths be it during office hours or in the wee hours of the morning.A thankless job,imagine yourself being called at 3 am just to see and maybe 'bring to life'an 80 year old man dying of terminal cancer in Bed 211,who suddenly went blue and noticed by the night nurse to be not moving .Cardiac arrest.The usual euphemism :Code Blue .Either you are there Ist or the anaesthetist on call or the resident MO.I have 'presided' over more than several thousands such calls in my 30 years or so of hospital practice.When you drive home to capture any decent sleep remaining and see your spouse snoring away like crazy you cannot help but feel honoured and priveledged to have been there when even the closest family members of the newly departed were just probably be making their way to the hospital.
It was 3am,you were there and you damn sure Izra'il was also there.You are not paid for the service rendered whatever the time[as all Code Blue are dire emergencies]but what the heck, you are in the priveldge territory and presence of Mr Death himself,Izra'il !. That is an honour and esteem.
I usually say a few prayers for the departed and also for my own salvation .Despite the several thousand times ,during my lonely drive home I cannot help but felt eerie about that kind of encounter :"The next one could well be me feeling". It is time like these that make myself think of my very own mortality 10, 20 times a day , everyday ! And that is a priveledge and a blessed life, if I have got the right hadith correctly that I used to read somewhere!.... was it from Abdul Qadir Jilani's 'Sublime Revelation' ? Maybe from Imam Ghazali's most beautiful long discourse on 'Remembrance of Death and The Afterlife', translated magnificently by T J Winter ? Must be from one of these two or maybe Hamka......
The one million dollar question? How many able to say the 'syahadah' at that moment in time .From my experience,very very very few!I can recall only 2 individuals in my whole quantum of experience.One lady of late 60's,a dear patient of mine 15 years back,mother of my friend,Zul, a self made millionaire thru forwarding business,died as a complication of angioplasty when at that time stent was not invented yet and the resident cardiac surgeons could not help because despite popular believe, they are 'slow animals'.It take a couple of hours to prepare a healthy cardiac patient for surgery.It take only a few minutes for a moribund old heart patient to die.Of course in a court of law ,the judge and lawyers will always appear very clever."I put it to you Dr Nik that you have not exercised due care blah blah blah ".No shade of gray in their superficial world,just simple yes and no! F...k these bastards!If life at that precise moment can be very simple.3 am ,4am ,5 am in the wee hours of the morning ,you struggling with dear life and Izra'il looking over your shoulders ,all the time .All the time!
Well back to this fine lady . She was saying the syahadahs all the way . Very rare breed .Another chap was an old man from Kampong Melayu Subang . Can still remember his name .Javanese chap. Toppan Rusdie . Always very polite.Always come to my outpatient clinic followed by his dutiful son .One day came in with bad intractable angina .Required urgent coronary angiogram but no son and father conferred ,No Angiogram ! No invasive procedure ,we have no fund !Had a massive myocardial infart shortly after that .[Later I discovered this old man had 'many many' acres of land near Subang Airport ].He was destined to meet Izra'il then .Shahadah till the last .
I said only 2 but actually nearly 3 .
I was doing CCU round one bright Sunday morning when I saw an SYT probably in her early 20's,Irish ? Australian ? sitting anxiously outside .One corner of the open bedded CCU then was shrouded and I knew some active resuscitation was going on behind the screen .Someone groaning " Allah ,Allah ,Allah ...".My senior cardiologist colleague was there 'presiding' over the Code Blue .Patient survived .Tun Datu Mustaffa died a week later in Sabah.From then on I make a point not to prejudge a man's destiny with his Maker from his 'apparent' lifestyle and 'colourings'.Only Allah Knows .
In the doctors rest room a small group of us were discussing the merit and demerit of 'saying goodbye' to this earthly life the 'fast way'[massive heart attack,mva,plane crash etc etc ]against the 'slow way'[incurable cancers,leukemias,debilitating strokes,chronic heart or lung failures etc etc],since in the same week we have al most gone bonkers discussing Dr M. We could not make any sense of Dr M's recent resignation from his AMNU this same week.....age and the thought of death itself must have hit that old man ! .
On the point of death itself,from my perspective, any superficial discussion generally devoid of divine revealed injunction, would be a sheer waste of time and function.Very naive,rather secular discussion devoid of depth just like the 'war games' they used to enact in the Pentagon before the rape and devastation of Iraq.Without the 'spiritual'content any discussion on death,or rather moment of death,tend to be shallow,for no one can predict at that precise moment of death,the one involve can be in a different 'plane'altogether and that precise short moment could well be a protracted affair for the individual concerned.Only God knows.That precise moment when you face Izra'il ,Mr Death himself,on his turf.You and him would be in the world of your own ,oblivious of the surrounding.
Needless to say as cardiologists in a hospital setting,we 'presided'over most hospital deaths be it during office hours or in the wee hours of the morning.A thankless job,imagine yourself being called at 3 am just to see and maybe 'bring to life'an 80 year old man dying of terminal cancer in Bed 211,who suddenly went blue and noticed by the night nurse to be not moving .Cardiac arrest.The usual euphemism :Code Blue .Either you are there Ist or the anaesthetist on call or the resident MO.I have 'presided' over more than several thousands such calls in my 30 years or so of hospital practice.When you drive home to capture any decent sleep remaining and see your spouse snoring away like crazy you cannot help but feel honoured and priveledged to have been there when even the closest family members of the newly departed were just probably be making their way to the hospital.
It was 3am,you were there and you damn sure Izra'il was also there.You are not paid for the service rendered whatever the time[as all Code Blue are dire emergencies]but what the heck, you are in the priveldge territory and presence of Mr Death himself,Izra'il !. That is an honour and esteem.
I usually say a few prayers for the departed and also for my own salvation .Despite the several thousand times ,during my lonely drive home I cannot help but felt eerie about that kind of encounter :"The next one could well be me feeling". It is time like these that make myself think of my very own mortality 10, 20 times a day , everyday ! And that is a priveledge and a blessed life, if I have got the right hadith correctly that I used to read somewhere!.... was it from Abdul Qadir Jilani's 'Sublime Revelation' ? Maybe from Imam Ghazali's most beautiful long discourse on 'Remembrance of Death and The Afterlife', translated magnificently by T J Winter ? Must be from one of these two or maybe Hamka......
The one million dollar question? How many able to say the 'syahadah' at that moment in time .From my experience,very very very few!I can recall only 2 individuals in my whole quantum of experience.One lady of late 60's,a dear patient of mine 15 years back,mother of my friend,Zul, a self made millionaire thru forwarding business,died as a complication of angioplasty when at that time stent was not invented yet and the resident cardiac surgeons could not help because despite popular believe, they are 'slow animals'.It take a couple of hours to prepare a healthy cardiac patient for surgery.It take only a few minutes for a moribund old heart patient to die.Of course in a court of law ,the judge and lawyers will always appear very clever."I put it to you Dr Nik that you have not exercised due care blah blah blah ".No shade of gray in their superficial world,just simple yes and no! F...k these bastards!If life at that precise moment can be very simple.3 am ,4am ,5 am in the wee hours of the morning ,you struggling with dear life and Izra'il looking over your shoulders ,all the time .All the time!
Well back to this fine lady . She was saying the syahadahs all the way . Very rare breed .Another chap was an old man from Kampong Melayu Subang . Can still remember his name .Javanese chap. Toppan Rusdie . Always very polite.Always come to my outpatient clinic followed by his dutiful son .One day came in with bad intractable angina .Required urgent coronary angiogram but no son and father conferred ,No Angiogram ! No invasive procedure ,we have no fund !Had a massive myocardial infart shortly after that .[Later I discovered this old man had 'many many' acres of land near Subang Airport ].He was destined to meet Izra'il then .Shahadah till the last .
I said only 2 but actually nearly 3 .
I was doing CCU round one bright Sunday morning when I saw an SYT probably in her early 20's,Irish ? Australian ? sitting anxiously outside .One corner of the open bedded CCU then was shrouded and I knew some active resuscitation was going on behind the screen .Someone groaning " Allah ,Allah ,Allah ...".My senior cardiologist colleague was there 'presiding' over the Code Blue .Patient survived .Tun Datu Mustaffa died a week later in Sabah.From then on I make a point not to prejudge a man's destiny with his Maker from his 'apparent' lifestyle and 'colourings'.Only Allah Knows .
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sheikh Ab-dal Kadir al Jilani's take on death
"Make a frequent practice of remembering death and what lies beyond it,that narrow bridge [siratul mustakim ] and what lies beyond.Remember the hereafter with its bliss and torment."
............excerpt from Utterances of Sheikh Ab-dal Kadir al Jilani ,sufi saint.Writings of this great sufi saint available in the English language ,translated by the late Muchtar Holland :
Utterances
The Signs of the Unseen
Sublime Revelations
............excerpt from Utterances of Sheikh Ab-dal Kadir al Jilani ,sufi saint.Writings of this great sufi saint available in the English language ,translated by the late Muchtar Holland :
Utterances
The Signs of the Unseen
Sublime Revelations
Sunday, May 18, 2008
FW: [jublintan65] Not So Pearl & Gem:Random Thots on Deat
Friends ,
Yesterday , while busy going through my morning clinic list ,I received a call from a clinic staff of Dr Shuiab ,a classmate ,Family Physician practising in Kampong Bharu : He died early morning ,in University Hospital ,presumably from heart failure following a massive heart attack .
My work involve me to think about 'man's fragility and mortality' all the time from from morning till evening even in the seemingly 'fit and healthy individuals passing my door just for a simple annual examination' ,call in a paranoia or whatever ,but after 30 over years in 'the business' , just like any hard nosed top gun entrepreneur ,you have to develop a 'bottom line' approach to your patients ,your clients :ie what is the chance of this individual being seen around end of this year , next 5 years ,will he make it to his 60th birthday etc etc on the basis of limited statistical clinical data I have just from the 'cardiological and endovascular viewpoint I have .Taking away the other variables of a fatal motor vehicle accidents ,latent cancer ,suicides etc etc of course .
A hardnose clinical assessment all the time ,never discussed or divulge unless to the very few ,who really ask .In my experience ,in the ones who really need to know amongst my patients ,very few really want to know and ask .
Still a classmate's demise even at 56 hit me like a speeding car crashing on a brick wall .Time's up .Think of you own mortality .Average lifespan of Malaysian males ,74 ,75 ? .Mashaallah 'we' are heading there already !What if I am diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer tomorrow ?Like another colleague the other day walking in the clinic with just vague weight loss and abdominal discomfort and found on CT scan to have terminal 'pancreatic ca' . Or TS Nazamuddin ,a former occasional patient years back who went to LA for his wife's medical check up but instead brought back in a cold coffin 2 months later ,of 'metastatic lung ca' .And another friend ,Nik Aziz formerly of Petronas ,fighting for his life ,in Selayang Hospital also of lung cancer . And that 35 year dog trainer in Cardiac ward with a heart as big as a' football' with idiopathic dilated congestive cardiomyopathy with only a left ventricular function of 15 % .He asked me gingerly yesterday whether he can get back to his favourite badminton game next month .I was not sure whether he can survive walking to the 'loo' on his own safely even while in the hospital ,preoccupied in my own thought about possible litigation if the unwanted cardiac arrest actually do happen in such compromising circumstances .Knowing that this chap on good statistical basis will improve to go back to his dogs and more than 99 .9 % sure he does not want me to tell him what is in store for him in the next 6 months , 1 year of 5 years .
That is the burden and realm of the cardiologists !
And yet still Dr Shuiab's sudden death hit me like a brick .But is death really sudden ?Is death really sudden ? Sudden to us but as soon as you are born ,your 'date' has already well been cast in iron ! You cannot change that even a second !The scenarios of your death can somewhat be a variable :Death by drowning , plane crash , MVA's , sudden death of a brain haemorrhage , fatal heart attack ,chronic brain or heart failure , kidney failures ,cancers and so on and so forth .Some may appear sudden some insidious , but all to the family members and individual involved seemingly 'untimely ' .
In some it may appear as a 'relief' ie in people with chronic debilitating diseases , in situation of prolong dementia , death is a relief to both patients and care givers especially the long suffering spouses .I know this because my elder brother died last year after 10 years of dementia .After the initial period of grief when we look back that was a relief for everyone around him .
What about those young chaps in Palestine who have decided that there will be more meaning in the deaths than to carry on living meaningless lives under a perceived ' repressive Israeli regime supported by and equally belligerent West ' .All avenues in the last 60 years leading to nowhere except more denials and more repression .Death to them is just like walking 'from a room feeling like a hot furnace thru a door into an air-coditioned heaven ' .
Some random thots on Death ,I must get on with the clinic ,Shan my Clinic assistant frowned at me to indicate some of patients are already making 'animal'noise outside there for the long delay ! More structured thots on death later, if you guys can bear this 'depressive mood ' of mine ! Still Dr Shuiab's death hits me like a brick wall !
Dr Nik Howk
Yesterday , while busy going through my morning clinic list ,I received a call from a clinic staff of Dr Shuiab ,a classmate ,Family Physician practising in Kampong Bharu : He died early morning ,in University Hospital ,presumably from heart failure following a massive heart attack .
My work involve me to think about 'man's fragility and mortality' all the time from from morning till evening even in the seemingly 'fit and healthy individuals passing my door just for a simple annual examination' ,call in a paranoia or whatever ,but after 30 over years in 'the business' , just like any hard nosed top gun entrepreneur ,you have to develop a 'bottom line' approach to your patients ,your clients :ie what is the chance of this individual being seen around end of this year , next 5 years ,will he make it to his 60th birthday etc etc on the basis of limited statistical clinical data I have just from the 'cardiological and endovascular viewpoint I have .Taking away the other variables of a fatal motor vehicle accidents ,latent cancer ,suicides etc etc of course .
A hardnose clinical assessment all the time ,never discussed or divulge unless to the very few ,who really ask .In my experience ,in the ones who really need to know amongst my patients ,very few really want to know and ask .
Still a classmate's demise even at 56 hit me like a speeding car crashing on a brick wall .Time's up .Think of you own mortality .Average lifespan of Malaysian males ,74 ,75 ? .Mashaallah 'we' are heading there already !What if I am diagnosed with a terminal lung cancer tomorrow ?Like another colleague the other day walking in the clinic with just vague weight loss and abdominal discomfort and found on CT scan to have terminal 'pancreatic ca' . Or TS Nazamuddin ,a former occasional patient years back who went to LA for his wife's medical check up but instead brought back in a cold coffin 2 months later ,of 'metastatic lung ca' .And another friend ,Nik Aziz formerly of Petronas ,fighting for his life ,in Selayang Hospital also of lung cancer . And that 35 year dog trainer in Cardiac ward with a heart as big as a' football' with idiopathic dilated congestive cardiomyopathy with only a left ventricular function of 15 % .He asked me gingerly yesterday whether he can get back to his favourite badminton game next month .I was not sure whether he can survive walking to the 'loo' on his own safely even while in the hospital ,preoccupied in my own thought about possible litigation if the unwanted cardiac arrest actually do happen in such compromising circumstances .Knowing that this chap on good statistical basis will improve to go back to his dogs and more than 99 .9 % sure he does not want me to tell him what is in store for him in the next 6 months , 1 year of 5 years .
That is the burden and realm of the cardiologists !
And yet still Dr Shuiab's sudden death hit me like a brick .But is death really sudden ?Is death really sudden ? Sudden to us but as soon as you are born ,your 'date' has already well been cast in iron ! You cannot change that even a second !The scenarios of your death can somewhat be a variable :Death by drowning , plane crash , MVA's , sudden death of a brain haemorrhage , fatal heart attack ,chronic brain or heart failure , kidney failures ,cancers and so on and so forth .Some may appear sudden some insidious , but all to the family members and individual involved seemingly 'untimely ' .
In some it may appear as a 'relief' ie in people with chronic debilitating diseases , in situation of prolong dementia , death is a relief to both patients and care givers especially the long suffering spouses .I know this because my elder brother died last year after 10 years of dementia .After the initial period of grief when we look back that was a relief for everyone around him .
What about those young chaps in Palestine who have decided that there will be more meaning in the deaths than to carry on living meaningless lives under a perceived ' repressive Israeli regime supported by and equally belligerent West ' .All avenues in the last 60 years leading to nowhere except more denials and more repression .Death to them is just like walking 'from a room feeling like a hot furnace thru a door into an air-coditioned heaven ' .
Some random thots on Death ,I must get on with the clinic ,Shan my Clinic assistant frowned at me to indicate some of patients are already making 'animal'noise outside there for the long delay ! More structured thots on death later, if you guys can bear this 'depressive mood ' of mine ! Still Dr Shuiab's death hits me like a brick wall !
Dr Nik Howk
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