Now what?

Gosh, it's so hard to start writing again after years. I might be a little rusty in this but hey hello everyone. Assalamualaikum

There are a lot of things I have missed since the last time I wrote on this blog. I should give credits to Faith because she was the only reason Alaqsaarmy hasn't been completely abandoned. I am so sorry. I will do better next time, Insyallah.

By now, I am sure everybody knows about what's really happening in Gaza since a month ago. The ongoing battle between Palestine and Israel was at it's peak when the Israel Defense Force decided to react to the claim of 3 Israeli teenagers kidnapping by committing a terrible act of revenge on civilians in Gaza. Not surprisingly, the claim turns out not to be true after all. (click here for official news report)

Every day for the past month, our Facebook newsfeed has been bombarded with a lot of news, reports, videos, documentaries - all pertaining to the ongoing war. With such overloaded knowledge, now what do we do with it?

Of course we could always choose to stand in silence and do nothing about it, or we could join the fight because we know at the end it will worth every minute of our effort.

So here I presented 6 steps we can attempt to help them out:

1 Research, reevaluate, reconsider.

Before we begin to develop any opinion in any conflict whatsoever, we should question the source of information. In this case, since we don't live in Gaza or Israel and there's no way for us to become an eyewitness, we can't never rely on any journalism before asking this question: who would benefit from any misrepresented fact? If one side throws any accusation, make sure it is made with substantial evidence before we believe it.

Read the history. Listen to both sides of the story. Pay attention to different sources of news. Get in touch with people who live there. Do research. Seek for official facts and statistics. And be aware of the systematic brainswashing.

When I said listen to both sides of the story, I really mean both Palestinians and Israelis. You may call me crazy for suggesting to listen to what the oppressor's have to say, but you will be surprised of how much the knowledge could benefit you in the future. It's true that they might come out with thousands of different justifications for their acts of evil. But we should take a note of all of that, and prepare ourselves with a thousand more reasons why their justifications do not make sense. This way, we'll be fully prepared to combat any deceiving idea that's coming our ways.

2 Raise awareness as much as you can.

We do realize that the world is waking up. Thousands of peaceful protests and rallies are being held all around the world as we speak. But there are still a number of people who have no idea about what's really going on in Gaza. It's either because they don't care, or because they still believe everything the mainstream medias are telling them.

This is where your role is significant. In today's world, the social media is more powerful than the mainstream ones. So use facebook, twitter, instagram or any other means to spread the truth. Trigger the conversation. As small as it may seem, you never know how many people will be moved to know more about it when they see your posts.

3 Boycotting.

This sounds very cliche but yet it is the most powerful tool for us to cripple the country's economy. Search for other alternative products, or better, come out with ones. Don't be a seasonal boycotter. Don't make it our short term goal. Always keep in mind to why we're boycotting. It's not merely a sign of protest. We want the conflict to end. Israel has been occupying the land for over 60 years, and three years of boycotting won't stop them from doing it for many more in the future.

4 Use your talent.

Use up your talent and creativity to help. If you love to write, write good articles, poems and stories. If you love music, produce inspirational songs to spread the words. So on and so forth. Channel your creativity for a good cause.

5 Be consistent and persistent.

Never get used to the massacres on the news. Do not get bored. How inhuman would it be from us to ever get bored to this. And never feel enough about what you have done for them. It is never going to be enough as long as the land is still occupied. It is never enough until Palestine is freed again. It is never enough until the dictatorship in Syria and Egypt have fallen. We have so much more to do. And until then, we don't deserve to stay in silence and enjoy our privileged life.

If at times you found yourself crying your heart out because you just can't take it anymore, have a look at photos and videos of people all around the world, uniting despite the difference in race and religion, chanting their hatred towards the Israeli occupation, and smile. Because there is still hope in humanity. I personally found this helpful :)

6 Everything happens for a reason. Find the reason.

I was a troubled kid. I asked too many questions. And it's not the first time I question God why he made things to be the way it is now. Why so many wars? Why are the good people losing?

But I believe the answer to this lies within the question itself. God has not made their lives on this earth worthless. They did not lose. Rather, they are in a much better place right now. It is us whose fate is yet to be determined. It is us whose battle has not yet begun.

He promised us a victory and it is near. It is us who has yet to choose to join them and win, or to ignore them and lose.

Till then,
Cokelatchip

Of Guilt and Love

Salam everyone,

So after endless 'tag-you're-it' (read: tag-you post) skype session with Cokelatcip, I've decided to give in and write something down here.

(coz I'm cool and tolerate well with immature kids =p )

Anyway, as some of you might have realized, Cokelatcip and I have sort of abandoned this blog for a while. To be honest, I can come up with a bunch of explanation to why I did so. But let me just be honest.

I stopped writing because I was exhausted.

Yeah. Coz, I dunno, somehow it felt like a never ending crisis.

There will be some cease-fire, some new agreement to allow access to the rafah-border, some actual light that things are going to be if not okay, at least improving...

then suddenly, another bomb will just drop down from the sky. the way it has always been since 1948.

And as if Palestine is not enough news,

there was the massacre at Rohingya as well. The whole ethnicity that practices Islam was demolished within a short period of time.

And then Syria.

Lord, Syria was slaughtered by their own people.

By their own government.

It's so illogical how a bunch of things in this world can go so wrong when the muslims are so massive in number that I just can't help to not want to know anything anymore.

I got tired. I got really tired of these issues, strangling me, asking me for my contribution that I decided that I had enough.

I decided to take a break and like-sort of waive the whole thing away until I'm ready to get back on.

Ya Allah, what sort of thinking was that?

Looking back at how stupid I was, I realize that I was giving excuses to escape. I blamed the bias in the media, the unreliable sources that limits my capability of mashing stuff together into a blog article. I blamed the world. The muslims. The people who could actually make a difference, like, i dunno, the presidents of the muslim countries and the UAE (United Arab Emirates)...

thinking back...

I went away too.

So, what difference does it make.

Whether I'm the person holding a big post somewhere that can secure Palestine safekeeping in seconds; whether I'm that person or not, I'm a muslim too.

I would be held accountable for every second I decide to ignore the issue of the muslims worldwide.

The people at Rohingya espescially; I didn't pay that much attention at all to what happened there.

I heard stories about it but I didn't bother to look it up and give the injustice that have happened if not prayers, at least some minimal attention.

I dunno what kind of heartless monster I've became.

And now I'm thinking,

what am I gonna tell Allah later.

When I stand before him on judgment day. (well, that is if He wants to see me, what if He doesn't?naudzubillahminzalik)

How am I gonna justify that I did pray for my brothers and sisters around the world and I really thought that, that was good enough. That my generic prayers, one that I can quickly recite after the fardhu prayers, crosses out the need for me to do anything further.

That, I dunno, I may have felt- that I have my life too.

Astaghfirullah.

I remember one of Nouman Ali Khan's lecture that I've randomly listen to before.

He mentions that there's one part of a verse in the quran that says,

 cÎ)ur (#öq©9uqtGs? öAωö7tFó¡o„ $·Böqs% öNä.uŽöxî ¢OèO Ÿw (#þqçRqä3tƒ /ä3n=»sVøBr& ÇÌÑÈ   

(47:38)

"if you people turn away, he will replace you with someone other than you, and they will not be like you"

If we turn away, Allah does not lose anything.

Allah can simply replace us with others that can, and will actually do the job.

And this is scary.

As Nouman Ali Khan puts it, 

we think Allah need us to build this ummah, to have Islam in this earth.

But no.

Allah can remove each and every one of us if He wish, and Islam will still be there.

In another word,

If you wanna leave,

Or rather,

If I wanna leave, by all means. do.

Islam will not be affected.

I will be.

Lets not turn away, people. Lets not get exhausted too quickly.

After all, for the time being, all that we had to do was to spread the news. To be aware. To constantly pray for them.To boycott. To donate. 

If that is too much to ask for, then how do you justify this.

or this

I bet they'll be horrified to know that we felt somewhat burdened to boycott Starbucks or Nestle.

We will, insyaAllah get to the stage where our voice is heard and we didn't have to scream.

We will get there.

If so He wills.

It will be okay to die not witnessing the victory of Islam, the freedom of Palestine, the stops of Muslim massacre in any land in this world.

It's okay if we die first.

So long that we didn't become a part of the problem.

A speaker from Aqsa Syarif once came to my college and said,

The story of Palestine will end eventually. 

It has to end somehow. There's Judgement Day.

And Allah promises victory for the muslims before then.

This story, well..

Everyone of us is in it.

You choose what character you want to play.

And you choose where you stand.

I've made a mistake before. I ran. I escaped.

But He let me live. 

He let me live.

"if you people turn away, he will replace you with someone other than you, and they will not be like you"

Allah, don't replace me.

Don't replace us.

We love Islam. 

Lead us back to it.

Make us part of the victory.

Amin.

by: Faith Hana. 

observing and experiencing...total silence in action

Salam Alaikum everyone,

Yeah, it have been 10 months actually since I last blogged.

The thing is, I get very bad at writing these days. I tried posting a couple of times but my views are totally knowledge-limited. And whenever I discuss any worldly issue with my family and friends, the world situation is all tangled and messed up that I don't exactly know who's saying the real deal. I can't even eleborate on a newspaper article before one of my relatives started pointing out that it's crap and here's the real story.

I know it sounded like I'm running away from responsibility of finding the truth. It almost sounded too, like I'm giving up.
Yeah, you can say that.
I'm actually quite tired at so many levels of hypocrisy in this world. How some wars that are happening are not actually wars at all. How human aids are not human aids. How just about any issue in this world is being over and overly politicized.
There's nothing that I can write and I'd be happy with the substance. Coz, there's too much lies going on.

So, I decided to lay low. And it wasn't half as bad. Sometimes, you dwell too much in the big picture of the world, trying to change the mindset of the people, trying to guide the muslims, your friends, people around you, you forgot that you are supposed to be guiding yourself too.
And for months that I lay low, I saw a lot of things that I've missed.

Those surahs I've failed to memorize and understand the context; those prayers steps and meaning of each recitation, those sirah of the prophets, the way the human mind works, the issue of human complications, how some of my friends are struggling with their past and present, how education is not everything in some's life but continual survival, how attitude outways whatever principles you believe in.

I found myself back, by laying low and shutting up. I learned that it's not wrong to be me.

I know it sounded ironic, like am I telling the world now to shut up when Syria's in mass-killing and starvation, Iraq in total danger, Palestine is still in blood bath, Egypt politics is crumbling, Malaysia's hedonistic with entertainment, Indonesia's islamic identity is screwed, Turkey's still with belly dancing, Iran is still divided of sunni and syiah ~ am i telling everyone to shut up?!

No.
And Yes.

Shut up sometimes and take a step back. See, how the your life is twisting and then, reflect that on the world.
There's no way the world can be a better one, if we all just keep shouting.
Sometimes, the people who are most in silence, they understands better. They see the bigger picture with a much simpler solution.

Silence is virtue.

Faith Hana
Thanks for reading!
btw, I'm starting on a new blog just for fun. I've been listening to online lectures and I have to say, I found 'em very connecting. So, I'll have the files uploaded and see to it that readers will be able to download them.
Otherwise, I'll just redirect the links to the specific podscats.
here's the link but yeah, it's still under construction so yeah~

http://ilistenlisten.blogspot.com/ enjoy!

Celebs on the run- for or against?

Hey there, Salam Alaikum.

So I was making French Toast this morning for my dad when all of the sudden, he came barging into the kitchen and got all hype telling me about his new idea for the upcoming documentary series. I calmed him down, served the toasts and let him pour in the news. It must have been my non-frantic looks, because somehow, after 5 minutes or so, he changed the subject. We started talking about the house instead.
Lol.
I'm a bad daughter, I know.
Well, it was morning. You don't talk about work at 9 am.
When its holiday.
Or ever.

Hehs. Poor Dad will have to wait for my mum to come back from the Uni for him to be able to blurt out everything of his chest. I'll just pass this one.

So, we talked about random stuff, finishing the toast together... something about the difference between TWITTER and FACEBOOK (yes, many adults don't know how different those two are, really), when suddenly, my dad took a sip of his morning tea and asked me lightly.
"What do you think of the fact that they are using comedians as an ambassador for Islamic Causes?"

I was washing the dishes, so I didn't see his face when he said this. But the tone was undoubtedly serious.
Oh-uh, I thought. I gave a small laugh, trying to tone-down the thick atmosphere of probable rage and plopped myself back on the chair beside him. Dad was looking straight ahead-pass the wall, pass everything. Man, he can be so dang serious at times.

"You mean like Afdhlin Shauki?"

He looked at me and nodded. "Yes. The fact that they're sending a clown like him to Palestine."

Clown? okay, it was way harsher in Malay. Badut.
My Dad is calling Afdhlin Shauki 'Badut'? I want to laugh, seriously.
But then he wore all that stupid clothes and was named BOBOI with Harun Salim Bachik and..
(well, badut and boboi kan x jauh. lol)

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Maybe it's a good thing, you know. Like, that's how they pull the crowd."

"But he's a comedian. And this Palestine matter is serious," Dad added. "I don't know why but I'm sad, really. I'm disappointed at how people are perceiving this issue. How things are not the way it was.."

"You know," I started, wanting to end the conversation. "Maybe this is another way to pull the crowd. Like the Ustaz Izhar Idrus and Zizan Raja Lawak thing. No one can deny that was a success, right? These celebrities, they have the untouched market, the gazillion followers on facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, so, their poularity does help in telling the people the real deal that is going on around the world."

"Yes,"Dad nodded. "And once it is all over, they just go back to the real them and take away with them the gazillion followers. They go back touching non-muhrims, make jokes that hurts the ummah indirectly, they go back insulting pendakwahs with the Manisnya Kurma Ini, Selami Lautan Dalam...everything. They go back worshipping celebrities and other people like them.. So, they're just a mere crowd puller. Crowd for what? Temporary repentance."

Ha-di-ha. I hate debate. I hate debating with Dad, espescially.

"You know I watch Maharaja Lawak. And Maharaja Lawak Mega," I said, vaguely.

"I know," he said. "But then that's it. These things don't mix."

I was so not in mood for early morning debate.
I rather read the nursery rhymes. Really.

"These people, these celebs, they know how to talk to the crowd," I said, being all confident. "What the crowd wants etc, they live with the crowd. They befriend the crowd. They have the attention of people that most of the utazs and ustazahs don't. So, maybe it's not a big change, but they can at least spread the awareness to the people that wouldn't very much care for Gaza at all. People who tune in to these comedians just for the sake of some humor will be forced indirectly to know their updates on these islamic causes. So there..."

There was silence as we both finished our last piece of toast.

"I believe Allah controls the heart of people," my Dad slowly says. "Not them."

Ouch.

"If this is the situation of the ummah now," he says. "It's worrying. I know I can sound so orthodox talking like this but, there are things that have essence. You don't make Qurans into small colourful children booklets  with fairies and cartoons around just to attract your children to read them. You don't make concerts with people dancing half naked and call the ticket fee funds to build a new mosque. You don't make shawls that are overly attractive with half the prints are studded with diamonds and bling-blings like some Gypsy hip just so girls will be more looking forward to cover their hair and what, lower the gaze of the men(?). You don't manipulate the islamic identity just so you wanna get the crowd. Just so you can say, "At least these people are doing 50% of the good deed."

I sipped my cold tea and smiled at Dad. Weak smile.

"If you are true to your heart," my Dad continues. "If you are sincere about your cause, you can send just anyone, and you'll get the crowd. Because from the way I see it, the cause has turned channel. It's no longer all the worries for Gaza people, it's this forever-to-be-praised celebrity that got off his comfort zone and went as an idol of the Muslims for the Muslims. The mindset had shifted."

"The great leaders of the past touched people's heart," said Dad. "Not their desires. If you give men everything, you'll lose them. Give them what they should have. Tell them what they should hear. Allah will do the rest."

"Let's just," I said slowly, clearing away the table. "Pray for the best."

"Yeah. For the best," Dad says and smiled at me...

"So! what are we having for lunch?"

I groaned and let Dad get back to his script-finalizing at the living room while I boil the water for his second cup of tea. And it got me thinking back to his words which are just plain truth.

We've been so desperate wanting to change the world, we forget how to do it properly.
My Dad might be wrong about Afdhlin Shauki. He might change after he get back, make thousands of good islamic movies, or he'll set up a really good foundation for muslims, pull even bigger teenage crowd that from rempit-ers and super comedians to people that fight for Islam.
I mean, we don't know right. Many celebrities change. There's Sham Kamikaze and Catriona Ross and okay, many of them...slowly changing, becoming even better muslims and knows how to tackle issues most of the ustazs and ustazahs don't.

But yeah. He has a point when he says things have essence.
Are we gonna delve deeper into the world where it's okay to drink at Starbucks as long as you still give donations to Palestine? Or its okay to lie down with your boyfriend on sweet smelling grassy field as long as you don't touch each other or talk about anything stupid? Or its okay to tweet 'I'm gay' and dance to 'Oppa Gangnam Style' as long as you don't mean what you say or understood the dirty meaning behind the porn dance...

This world is a complicated place.
And no matter how many times I look at it, it's us who are in deep trouble, in deep danger, in massive manipulations.
The Palestinians make thousands hafiz and hafizahs in a month. Their friends are people who dies as syahid and syahidahs. They live worshipping Allah. They die for Allah. For real.
They are guaranteed.

Where do we stand, exactly?
Are we making Islam better, or worse...think about it.
All of these will end. And there's only two ending for every individual.

Well, you know that. You're big enough.
Subhanallah, Alhamdulillah, Lailahaillallah, Allahuakbar.

by: FaithHana.

Dear Afdhlin Shauki, if you still get to live after the Gaza cause,  please set a good example afterwards for all of us here in Malaysia.
Because it's either my dad is wrong or we are really in a serious mess.

Testing 1, 2, 3

mbahahaha..yeah, i know.

as if~

this is so temporary, no worries. whats with my bunch of long-lost friend in there

of course i'd reactivate it.

God, life for the past 6 months have been way different from ...the 6 months before that. (Lol. So much for English HL, huh. Can't even get my vocabs right)

I tell you; KMB is so much different from what I thought it would be.

Nope; the classes are not in big halls with adjustable seats and mapel flooring bla bla..

and the hostel is not air conditioned with personal bathrooms for every room or so.

oh no

KMB is basically a school.

Yep, a school renovated, upgraded, re-labled into a ..WORLD SCHOOL ie COLLEGE

Which is...Not so bad.

Trust me, I've had it worse.

It must have been the countless group discussion and the hectic schedule that somehow made life there very very enjoyable. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. KMB, Sem 1, was a blast.

I've learnt a lot of things about human there.

Especially myself. My weakness. My strength. God, things were so obvious.

During my high school years, we have this sharing-whatever-we-know session every night after Al-Mulk which will usually take place around 11.30 to 12.00 pm (it usually drags because everybody would be busy doing other stuff like last minute laundry, ironing, supper at the dining hall, etc).

So, what we do is basically recite the al-mulk, then the last few verses of al-Hasyr, then, according to rotation of turns (sod my vocab, will ya ^^), one person will be conducting the sharing session. We'll listen to Hadith quotes or a normal friend-to-friends piece of advice, current issues and relating it islamically, peronal opinions, history of the prophets etc..

Boy, those were good times.

Anyway,

it was somewhat cliche to hear a friend going "you know, whatever you say today, you'll be tested on that in the future. Like that thing you're not agreeing with, well, who knows you'd be the one doing that so...well, beware."

and so, you can pretty much guess what our reaction would be like.

We were...slightly demotivated, confused and couldn't help agreeing to fact.

Some of us silently nodded in agreement,

some raised their own opinions, saying that "we better well share it now than never"

some'd go "well, no one's perfect. We're humans. We'll forget whatever we use to share"

Most of the people in the room, I remembered, would then, hesitate with their words. Or they'd cover up their end of the speech by saying.."I'm just saying this because my friend told me to pass it on." (ngee~)

I remembered one of us, then, giving us the story of Abu Bakr As-Siddiq

He was Prophet Muhammad's bestfriend.

And because of his love towards Islam and da'wah

he didnt wait long to spread, to share, to tell people of what he know.

As soon he was told by the Prophet to start his da'wah

he didn't wait to become a perfection

he immediately went out and dealt with his duty.

As I encounter one thing after another at KMB,

I soon realized

that the cliche phrase was right. No matter how...demotivating it sounded. It's fact 101.

We'd be tested.

I mean, of course, we'd be tested.

But what do we do to the tests is the question.

Sure, you can share millions of advices.

And sure, you'd forget as time passes.

But then; the question is,

if it's the rules of Allah, how can we ever forget?

If our princips are based on what He sketched..

then it won't have to be manipulated; it won't have to be purified in one way or another just so as to derive ourself from the guilt.

Everybody will be tested.

And no one can fail from questioning their moves and actions

Things have consequences.

And if you don't know where you're going, you can easily be misguided.

My senior told me that if you wanna know if what you're doing is right or wrong

Take a few seconds, reminding yourself that Allah is watching

If you feel uneasy

Leave whatever it is that you're doing.

But if you feel okay,

Then take control.

Human is...weird

You can make millions of school rules, thousands of job application terms and hospital and bank regulations.

They'd complain, make a fuss, but at the end of the day,

they'd obey.

Because they want what they want.

Or they are afraid of the consequences, the fines, jail, court, everything.

Allah made simple rules.

Why can't we obey?

And are we not afraid of what He promised?

He gave you sunshine today.

He could have very well take away you life while you were asleep.

But He loves you.

Everyone will be tested. Make a choice.

by: Tested and forever will be, FaithHana.

*sem 2 oh sem 2....

Rancho Chanhad says...umm...dang, I'll have to watch the movie again. LOL.