I have not done any updating for a while. I have been principally occupied with a personal project that I had hoped to complete before the beginning of the fasting month, and decided to drop everything else in the meantime. Nevertheless I have decided to make this entry today, on this auspicious beginning of the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, to address those for whom I am still, or had once been responsible for, in this life and the next.
First, a little on what had been occupying me recently that is outside the usual business of day to day living. I had recently come across a book written in the early part of the last century, in the Malay language typical of religious writings of the period entitled ‘Penawar Bagi Hati’ (perhaps, translatable into English as ‘Balm for the Heart’). Well, maybe ‘had recently come across’ is not exactly accurate, since it had been and is still being used by one of the visiting ustaz’s (teachers) at the local mosque as the basis for his monthly lectures. It was just that I had never looked at it before. The contents would fall into the realm of Tasawuf (Sufism), which on close examination interested me deeply and thus I felt that I just had to share it with others, especially those closest to me.
The trouble is that it is written in the Arabic script and as observed earlier, in the peculiar difficult to understand language used in religious writings of the period. To top it all, as is also typical of its genre of writings, the visual presentation is also something that an average reader today would find rather daunting. There is hardly any punctuation and hardly any paragraphing, such that you can sometimes have difficulty even trying to determine where one sentence ends and where another starts. Imagine a continuous stream of hand written Arabic scripts that visually seems like one continuous sentence, indeed like one very very very long word, from the first to the last letter on a page. Yet therein is contained an immense volume of what would be or should be of interest to a true Muslim. I therefore decided to translate the book, first into contemporary Malay written in Romanized scripts, and then after proper editing by those with more expertise than I on the subject of Sufism and the Arabic language, into English.
The task had proven quite a bit more difficult than initially envisaged and instead of having completed the entire exercise by today, I am only halfway through the unedited first draft. Nevertheless, I will start posting excerpts from the yet to be edited draft tonight. It is my hope that at least those closest to me will take a few minutes each day to read the excerpts that I will post daily.
As every father and every husband, I am entrusted with the religious education of my wife and children, something that I have to accept whether or not I like it, as is my wife equally responsible where it concerns our children. We each will answer before God for our failings thereon, I as husband and father, she as mother. In the realm of religious upbringing my wife is only responsible to me, but not for me. Unfortunately, I may have failed all of you in this sacred duty, for how can I properly lead when I had not been well equipped to do so. Without realizing it, the example I set had not been what is required and the values I portrayed had not been entirely Islamic. This effort, in some small way is my attempt at atonement. Please find it in all your hearts to forgive me.
As we go along, the direction in which I now want to go will become apparent. I do not pretend that I am anywhere near, but it is where I wish to be. Come along with me. I will need your support and we will prosper together in the way Allah intended. I am not an expert, but we can learn by reading and listening to the true experts. And we will try to put into practice what we have learnt.
It had taken me almost fifty years of adulthood to finally realize my errors, and I thank Allah SWT for allowing me the amount of time needed to finally see the light. I pray daily that all of you will also be given the time needed. For a long time I had lived believing that being a Muslim means believing in the six Articles of Faith, adhering to the five Pillars of Islam, and not doing any of the expressly forbidden, period. We then trust in the infinite kindness of Allah SWT to forgive us our sins while we merrily go on spending most of the means Allah SWT had put at our disposal on self indulgence, while continuing to commit ‘small’ sins and even ‘big’ sins all along the way. In truth there is no such thing as a small sin. There are only big sins and bigger sins, for every sin consciously committed is an act of willful disobedience against the divine will of Allah SWT, and if one were to die without having truly repented, one would have died in willful disobedience. True repentance means absolute abstinence from ever knowingly committing sins. In his infinite kindness, Allah SWT will forgive us our sins when unknowingly committed. But will sins knowingly and continuously committed because we are willfully disobedient ever be forgiven? I wonder.
We are all familiar with the idea of ‘muhasabah diri’ and we tell each other that we should ‘muhasabah diri sendiri’. I now list a few of what should be the yardstick:
Every time we perform the solat, we recite the Iftitah which includes the oath that we dedicate our entire lives to God, yet in reality how much of our means are dedicated to Him? I answer for myself and you each answer for you to yourselves.
God proclaims in the Holy Quran that he did not create mankind (or the race of jinn) except to serve Him. Did we in practice serve Him more than we served ourselves?
Allah SWT proclaims in the Quran that he will create mankind to serve as the Khalifah on earth. The Khalifah in Islamic nomenclature is not the lord and master of the human developed feudal system. The Khalifah is someone who serves. Notice that the Saudi king is called the Khadam (as opposed to King) of the two Forbidden Cities and Islamic history records Khalifahs and Governors living in worldly poverty. Have we lived to prosper the earth as Khalifahs or ourselves as kings?
While I was in Mecca for the Hajj last year, I was told about a real rich Muslim who right of the bat had given away 30% of what ever he earned. Apparently his pious mother had asked him to give away 30% of whatever he earned. So the good son that he was gave away RM 700 of his first pay check of around RM 2000 and has continued the practice ever since. Today he is billionaire, but there is no conspicuous consumption. He takes for consumption only what is reasonable by the standards of ordinary middle class people. No Rolls- Royce, not even an S-class. No RM5000 shirts, no luxury yachts. Where does the rest of the money go to? Well, they go to charity and to the creation of more employment opportunities. God bless him.
Let us celebrate this Ramadan as a month of piety and repentance. That is what it is meant to be.
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