Crime and Us

Kejadian ragut di Malaysia is apparently becoming more rampant. According to the recent forum on Halaqah, the latest statistics from PDRM stated that between Jan 2009 to April 2009, there had been a total of 3437 reported cases. That brings to an average of 859 cases per month and a total of 28 cases per day! My God!! And apparently as well, these criminals are now so heartless, they'll do anything just to get a few ringgits worth of money.

Besides kes2 ragut, I've also heard of more crimes being committed on the road, esp by mat rempits. Recently, I read from a friend's status, that her colleague was stabbed in the neck. Alhamdulillah, I believe he is recovering right now.

I am now feeling quite anxious about coming back to Malaysia again. Is it still a safe place for us to live there? What has become of our country, of our people? What has become of the moral and akhlak of the citizens?

"Sesungguhnya Allah tidak mengubah apa yang ada pada sesuatu kaum sehingga mereka mengubah apa yang ada pada diri mereka sendiri" ( Surah Al-Ra'd: 11 )

Are we being too complacent in putting the whole responsibility for change on the country's leadership, that we forget it all has to start with ourselves? We see thousands of Malaysians now membuat demonstrasi here and there mengutuk kerajaan and what not, but of those thousands, how many are asking to the right source for change to happen? Berapa ramai yang balik dari demonstrasi terus solat dengan khusyuk dan berdoa "Wahai Tuhan kami, berikanlah kepada kami kebaikan di dunia dan kebaikan di akhirat dan peliharalah kami akan azab api Neraka." ?

Of those thousands that kept mengutuk kerajaan about rasuah and guna duit haram, how many of them check themselves everyday - adakah duit, makanan, pakaian, rumah dan segala harta datang dari sumber yang halal? Adakah kita ada ambil kesempatan membuat claim lebih dengan company? Adakah kita amanah dengan kerja kita dan kita yakin gaji kita adalah halal? Adakah kita telah membayar semua hutang pembiayaan pelajaran kita? Adakah pembiayaan rumah dan kereta kita mengikut pembiayaan Islam dan bukan dengan sistem riba? The implication of riba itself is serious but in Malaysia it is taken too lightly by most people. (Check out Uztaz Zaharuddin's blog for more detail on this.)

"Dan dirikanlah solat, sesungguhnya solat itu mencegah dari perbuatan-perbuatan keji dan mungkar" (Surah al-Ankabut: 45)

Based on this ayat, if everyone around us solat, we should be living in a crime-free world right? A world where everyone does good, and no one does any bad things. But we keep hearing of people yang solat lima waktu, tapi ambil rasuah. Solat, tapi mencuri. In this case, it goes back to the implementation of the solat itself and the life surrounding that person. Does the person solat dengan kusyuk dengan penuh pengharapan untuk menjadi hamba yang diredhai Allah? Adakah dia meminta dengan bersungguh-sungguh apabila dia mengucapkan "Tunjukkanlah kami jalan yang lurus" 17 kali sehari? Does he put aim in his heart to be a good muslim? Does he clear his life from eating and taking things that are haram? And does he ask, doa for Allah's help to make him a good Muslim?

“Dan apabila hamba-hamba-Ku bertanya kepadamu (Muhammad) mengenai Aku maka (beritahu kepada mereka): Sesungguhnya Aku (Allah) sentiasa hampir (kepada mereka); Aku perkenankan permohonan orang yang berdoa apabila dia berdoa kepada-Ku. Maka hendaklah mereka menyahut seruan-Ku (dengan mematuhi perintah-Ku), dan hendaklah mereka beriman kepada-Ku supaya mereka mendapat petunjuk.” (surah al-Baqarah: 186).

This is a reminder to myself untuk memperbaiki my solat, aim untuk khusyuk and istiqamah, clear my life of anything that is haram, find ilmu, learn Quran and aim untuk beramal dengannya. Insya Allah.

The weather went from a sunny 30degrees C to 10degrees C in a space of one week. That is UK weather for you :p

Of course in winter, I've experienced snow to light rain to sunshine in a space of an hour!

The weather here is soo unpredictable, Subhanallah.

UK Vote - a continuation.

My meeting with my supervisor has been postponed to Monday due to some misunderstanding of time. Sigghh...

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Anyway, just to clear some confusion (for I was myself confused :p), it wasn't a UK election but a European election instead. This is to elect the Members of European Parliament (MEP), which is one of EU's two legislative bodies. There are a total of 785 MEPs where 78 of them will be elected from Britain.

I don't think a lot of people bothered so much about the European elections here (well, in Lancaster at least). I don't see a lot of banners around. The only party that had made some effort is the Conservatives. I received their leaflet "Vote for Change" in my postbox, with their main cause to maintain/increase Britain's independence from EU's tight regulations and standardisation. They are even campaigning against changing the weight metrics from pound to kilogram! :p

What I found really interesting however is the fact that I get to vote as well even though I'm not a resident. I just wonder what would happen if the same policy is being applied in Malaysia. Probably every candidate will start throwing money at foreign students and immigrants like nobody's business. At least right now we know the money is being given to the legal citizens. One way of looking at the bright side of it, right? :p

UK Vote

It is voting day today. And surprise, surprise, I vote! My first time ever. And it's not even for my own country hehe.

I have some thoughts that I wanted to pen down on this. But will have to take a raincheck for now. Have some studies deadlines that I need to meet first :p.

I received a very sad news today. A friend, my Lancaster family member here had lost her mother just a few hours ago. It came as a shock to her as her mother had been well all this while. In fact, the mother was planning to come over to Lancaster in the next few months to witness the birth of her second child. My friend was overcome with grief. And those around her cried with her. During the emergency tahlil and solat jenazah that we had just now, not one person there could hold back the tears.

Her tears were mixed of sadness for the loss and the regret, rasa terkilan for not being able to see the mother for the last time. It is a feeling that all of us being in perantauan can empathise. Deep down, each one of us have this fear of losing a loved one while we are away from them. The fear that the last meeting we had a few months back would be the last that we will ever had. The regret that we may not have spend enough time together will be like nails that keep piercing our hearts.

For us though, it was only the possibility that haunts us. For her, it had become a reality.

Sabarlah wahai kawanku.

"Sesungguhnya kita adalah kepunyaan Allah dan kepadaNya jualah kita akan kembali."

Al-fatihah.

The best teacher

While we celebrate and wish our teachers Happy Teacher's day today, let's not also forget the best teacher that any person could have in his/her life - the parents.

Parents taught us how to be a human being - taught us to eat, to walk, to talk, to clean ourselves, to have manners and to have other crucial survival skills that we need to master to live in this world.

My parents are both working parents. I grew up being minded by the maid during the day. Yet I remember during the night, my mother would spend her time with me, reading me books and teaching me the alphabets. She instilled in me the love for books and for reading. I didn't go to any nursery. The first school that I went to is the compulsory pre-school when I was 6 years old. And I went into that school already knowing how to read.

By that time, my mother had also taught me to memmorize the important verses for solat like al-Fatihah and tahiyatul awal even though I was still too small to perform the solat. I remember watching her pray every night and sometimes I would follow her movement by her side. I remember back then, my father would call me to sit on his lap after his prayer to hear and say the doa with him. I remember going to the mosque every Ramadhan for the terawih prayers; sitting by the wall waiting for my mother when I was small and later praying with them when I was able to.

My parents were very strict about the food I eat. It is very rare for me to be able to eat junk food, even maggi. Every morning, she would make me eat half-boiled egg and drink milo. Later on, I managed to persuade her to switch my drink to light nescafe (yeah, i was a coffee drinker since small :p), but she would only allowed it if it was with powdered milk. No condensed milk for me. As a routine as well, my father will give some vitamins for me to eat in the morning. At night, the whole family including the maid would have dinner together. There was no TV in the dining room and no one was allowed to eat by him/herself in front of the TV. During dinner, my father would normally talked about what was on the news on that day.

My mother is very particular about manners - close your mouth when yawning, do not burp loudly in front of companies, do not interrupt when adults are speaking, do not walk in front of people when they are sitting down, say Alhamdulilah when sneezing or burping, and the list can go on from here.

My parents would always take time off during school holidays to take the whole family for a road trip. I was a very bad traveller then, as I was always having motion sickness when travelling in a car for long distance. Yet that never detered them to take me on any other road trips. It was mostly domestic travelling, but when they had some extra money, they would bring us for a trip overseas, to see how other people in other parts of the world lived. During these trips, my parents would teach us about the history of the place, of the people and the geographical significant of it. But the most important lessons that I learnt from them was that no matter where we went, no matter how difficult the situation maybe, they would always strive to perform solat within the allocated time. I remember performing solat underneath the stairwell in Heathrow, (back when there wasn't a prayer room yet), at the highway R&R in Europe, by the cold river in Scotland, and so on.

Where we travel normally depended on their financial situations and opportunities for that year. However, they had made a pact that when each of us (me and my siblings) finished our SPM, they would take us to Mekah for our Umrah. Alhamdulillah, they managed to fulfill that pact. Each one of us were brought to perform our Umrah after our SPM. And it was the best and most enlightening trip in my life.

To me, my parents are my best teacher, the one who taught me (in words, in action, in their approval/disapproval, and in their own actions and deeds) to be human, to have manners, to value education, to travel, and above all to put Islam as my compass in life. So on this Teacher's Day, I would like to dedicate my whole-hearted gratitude to them, while not forgetting other individuals and teachers that had helped to enrich my education throughout my life.

"My Lord! Bestow on them Your Mercy as they did bring me up when I was young.''

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I had read once somewhere a story: One man, whose wife was expecting his first child, went to a pious and learned man to seek advice on the best way to bring up the child. The learned man replied, "If only now you ask that question, then you are already lost."

It brought up some important questions:

1. What do we want to teach our children?
   
2. What do we want them to have in order for them to be somebody worthwhile, somebody we can be proud of?
   
3. Do we have those knowledge within us right now for us to teach them?
   
4. What values do we want them to have?
   
5. Are those values the one that we carry with us right now?

Some may already be teachers for their own children already, while some, like me are still given the time to seek and evaluate our answers, ourselves to the above. I hope and I pray that I will be at least as good a parent/teacher that my parents had been to me. Ameen.

Spring for my heart

Spring is such a beautiful season. It is a season when all the trees, the plants and even the grass have flowers that bloom so beautifully. It is a pleasure to walk through grasses and trees and see the wonders that God have bestowed upon a land and its creatures that had gone through extreme cold weather. Just like a silver lining after the dark clouds, like rainbows after heavy rain.

I hope and pray that God will bestow upon me my own silver lining and rainbow for the dark clouds in my heart and in my life right now.