Sarjana Islam Terulung: Biografi Ringkas

Kira-kira 20 tahun lalu peristiwa itu amat menyayat hati. Pada 27 Mei 1986, dalam waktu dinihari bulan Ramadan al-Mubarak, Prof Dr. Ismail Raji’ al-Faruqi dan isteri, Dr. Lois Lamya al-Faruqi dibunuh dengan kejam setelah ditikam bertalu-talu oleh seorang lelaki misteri. Anak perempuannya Anmar al-Zein terselamat, itu pun terpaksa dirawat dengan lebih 200 jahitan juga akibat tikaman si penjenayah yang tidak berhati perut itu. Kejadian dalam banglo kediamannya di Wyncote, Pennsylvania, Amerika Syarikat itu amat tragis kepada seluruh umat Islam termasuk pengikut beliau, sebahagian besar adalah anak murid beliau yang diasuh di Universiti Temple, Philadephia. Semuanya bungkam, terkejut, kecewa dan bersedih. Ismail Raji’ al-Faruqi adalah professor Pengajian Islam, khususnya dalam disiplin perbandingan agama, satu cabang kepakaran khusus yang amat diperlukan dalam mempertahankan maruah dan wibawa Islam dan ummah. Kepakaran itu amat diperlukan dalam suasana hari ini ketika umat Islam menghadapi pelbagai cabaran globalisasi selain dilabelkan sebagai agama yang menganjurkan keganasan.

Sebahagian besar hayatnya, sarjana dan ulama kelahiran Jaffa, Palestin ini mengabdikan diri dalam usaha memartabatkan ilmu-ilmu Islam atau lebih terkenal sebagai Islamisasi Ilmu (Islamization of Knowledge). Dakwah beliau ialah menerusi gerakan jihad intelektual, satu gerakan keilmuan yang mengajak umat Islam agar giat mempelajari dan mengembangkan ilmu pengetahuan. Khazanah warisan keilmuan Islam dimanfaatkan dan disepadukan dengan ilmu-ilmu moden bagi menzahirkan satu sintesis ilmu yang begitu berharga. Ia adalah gabungan antara ilmu-ilmu wahyu dan ilmu-ilmu akli. Fokus itulah yang menatijahkan beliau bersama-sama rakan sarjana seperti Sheikh Dr. Taha Jabir al-Alwani dan Dr. Abdul Hamid Abu Sulayman menubuhkan Institut Antarabangsa Pemikiran Islam (IIIT), berpusat di Washington DC.

Usaha kesarjanaan dan kecendekiawannya amat progresif sehingga beliau menulis kira-kira 25 buah judul buku dan beratus-ratus makalah berkaitan pemikiran Islam, tamadun dan perbandingan agama. Beberapa daripada judul karya beliau terus menjadi rujukan sehingga sekarang termasuklah Islamization of Knowledge (1982), Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life ((1982), The Cultural Atlas of Islam (1986) dan Islam and The Problem of Israel (1980). Sebahagian daripada karya monumental seperti Islamization of Knowledge dan The Cultural Atlas of Islam sudah diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Melayu oleh penerbit Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

Faruqi pernah menuntut di Universiti Al-Azhar, Kaherah, Universiti Amerika di Beirut, Lebanon, Universiti Harvard, Amerika Syarikat manakala ijazah kedoktorannya diraih dari Universiti Indiana, Amerika Syarikat dalam tahun 1952. Beliau berpengalaman luas berkhidmat di beberapa universiti di Timur Tengah dan beberapa universiti di Amerika Utara termasuk Universiti McGill, Montreal, Kanada. Beliau juga pernah bertugas sebagai profesor Pengajian Islam di Institut Penyelidikan Islam Karachi, Pakistan. Namun tugas kesarjanaan tidak menghalang beliau untuk menubuhkan Kumpulan Pengajian Islam, Akademi Pengajian Agama di Amerika dan menjadi pengerusi untuk tempoh 10 tahun selain menyumbang perkhidmatan sebagai Naib Presiden Kolokium Keamanan Antara Agama.

Pandangan keilmuan Islam yang diketengahkan beliau menggabungkan kebenaran wahyu Illahi di samping kekuatan dalil rasional dan hujah saintifik. Menjelang penghujung karier dan hayatnya, Faruqi memberi penekanan yang lebih radikal terhadap gagasan Islamisasi Ilmu. Pandangan beliau adalah jelas, iaitu krisis dunia moden hari ini adalah krisis ilmu pengetahuan. Manakala kaedah bagi merawat krisis ini tidak lain dan tidak bukan adalah melalui satu sintesis baru ilmu pengetahuan menggunakan kerangka epistemologi Islam. Baginya, Islamisasi Ilmu adalah satu seruan agar orang Islam menjadi peserta intelektual yang aktif dan memberikan sumbangan untuk memajukan ummah. Bagaimanapun, wadah IIIT yang diasaskannya dilihat hanya memberi tumpuan terhadap disiplin ilmu-ilmu sains sosial, sebaliknya mengabaikan ilmu-ilmu sains tabie.

Penglibatan dan sumbangan Faruqi bersama rakan cendekiawan seangkatannya sebahagiannya telah dapat dilihat pada hari ini. Sumbangan dan iltizam dalam aktiviti kesarjanaan beliau secara serius adalah pemangkin yang mempercepatkan proses Islamisasi khususnya dalam dunia intelektual. Di Malaysia, Faruqi mempunyai puluhan anak didik yang pernah menuntut di Amerika Syarikat. Antaranya termasuklah Profesor Dr. Salleh Yaapar dan isteri, Dr. Fatimah Ali, Profesor Emeritus Dato’ Dr. Osman Bakar, Dr. Mohamad Nur Manuty, dan Dr. Faisal Osman. Tetapi ramai lagi yang berguru melalui pendedahan dengan membaca karya-karya beliau sekali gus terpengaruh dengan ideologi dan pemikiran beliau.

Tatakala menceritakan pengalaman bersama Faruqi, Dr. Mohamad Nur berkata, sebelum meninggal dunia tokoh ilmuan itu memang berhajat untuk meninggalkan Amerika Syarikat dan institusi yang dipimpinnya untuk berhijrah sama ada ke Malaysia atau Pakistan. Baginya, misi dan tugas beliau di institusi yang didokongnya sudah tercapai. Manakala catatan dalam buku Ismail al-Faruqi: Warisan Zaman Yang Abadi (terjemahan Ahmad Shah Mohd Nor) menceritakan pada malam pembunuhan itu Dr. Salleh Yaapar dan Dr. Fatimah menghabiskan masa bersama beliau sehingga jam 11.30 malam. Mereka sama sekali tidak menyangka itu adalah pertemuan terakhir bersama Faruqi, antara lainnya mereka membincangkan gagasan kesenian Islam.

Menurut Faruqi jika meneliti hasil kesenian Islam seperti permaidani, seni tulisan khat atau seni bina yang ketara ialah suatu daya bentuk berterusan, sambung menyambung tiada akhirnya. Bagi Faruqi, bentuk novel itu sendiri tidak berunsur Islam kerana ia mempunyai plot, iaitu ada permulaan dan pengakhiran walhal kesenian Islam melambangkan teknik dan jiwa al-Quran yang tidak mempunyai permulaan atau akhirnya. Dalam suasana gawat yang dihadapi umat Islam hari ini, Faruqi berpandangan bahawa dunia Islam sedang menghadapi ketandusan intelektual dan tekanan politik manakala dunia Barat pula mementingkan kebendaan, bersikap permisif dan yang lebih dahsyat dunia Barat amat anti-Islam. Pandangan beliau itu nyata masih tepat dan relevan. Justeru umat Islam sendiri mestilah mengambil peranan proaktif, kembali menerajui kepimpinan intelektual dan mengukuhkan perpaduan ummah.

Tahun 2006 yang lalu genaplah 20 tahun pemergian Faruqi. Beliau pergi sebagai seorang syuhada. Sumbangan beliau dalam dunia keilmuan dan kesarjanaan memang tidak ternilai. Wajarlah kita pada hari ini meneruskan iltizam dan warisan intelektual yang ditinggalkannya. Cuma ada persoalan yang masih tidak terungkai sampai hari ini ialah mengapakah beliau dibunuh dengan begitu kejam bersama isterinya? Adakah beliau sengaja dibunuh atau apakah memang terdapat satu konspirasi terancang untuk menamatkan riwayatnya ketika dunia Islam ketika ini sedang memulakan satu babak baru dalam kebangkitan Islam? Wallahu’alam……

Principles of Muslim Family Life

The Question of Pre-marital Sex

First of all, before a family is made or before a family is born, is it possible to engage in the kind of family relationship, in the very same kind of relationship that the family blesses and legitimizes, before marriage? In plain English, what about pre- marital sex? Certainly our daughters do not practice pre-marital sex. They keep their chastity and their purity and for us sex is legitimate only within the bounds of marriage, only in the family, and this very restriction upon our sexual lives saves us from the evils of sexual promiscuity, the sexual libertine that is taking place today in all Western societies. The consequences of this sexual promiscuity are clear for everyone to see. The spread of venereal diseases, the disappointment of the newly-weds in the first week after marriage because everything has been déjà vu as, we say in French. Having been accustomed to having more than one sexual partner, this becomes a habit which is continued even after marriage and, therefore, there is no fidelity in the Western home. The children are illegitimate in the eyes of the father because he is not their father and all this brings about emotional ruin.

The leaders of the women’s liberation movement in the West, practically all of them are now retracting what they had been advocating by way of sexual liberty in the 50's, the 60's and the early 70's because they say to themselves now and to their own people: That is not what we have been dreaming of by way of liberty for women. It looks as if we have given birth to a monster that is eating up our stand in society and ruining it. You have also all heard about the teenage pregnancies and the unmarried mothers. You have heard about infanticide, about how people throw their babies into garbage bins and leave them at the doors of others. There is an extremely active business of buying and selling babies which is without parallel in the history of the West and also that despite all this, the so-called ideal of women's liberation, namely that women may have a career, a career which may give them dignity and self-respect, has failed. Despite all the work that has been done in this field, women are still looked upon as sex toys or sex objects. They are still under-paid and their legal personalities are incomplete. In other words, there are still many legal rights which women do not enjoy on par with men and so, this whole movement which liberated women in order to improve her situation has brought ruin upon itself, upon women, as well as upon the family. However, the Islamic family, by upholding the Islamic ideal of sexual purity, of sexual legitimacy only in and within marriage and married life, has saved itself from all these evils. In New York, where at the entrance to the public library stand two big lions made out of stone, the common saying is that these two lions roar whenever a virgin passes by them. Well, now the saying is that the two lions roar whenever a sane woman, whenever a woman who has preserved her mental health, passes by them. All these evils, Alhamdulillah, we are saved from by virtue of our upholding the Islamic ideals of sexual chastity and purity.

The Patriarchal Family

Secondly, the family in Islam is a patriarchal family and the patriarch, that is to say, the head of the family, carries a tremendous burden of responsibility. Along with this responsibility he carries the burden of leadership. He acts as a fulcrum around which the life of the family revolves and all the talk about the superiority of men over women is nonsense unless it refers to this leadership role and the responsibility role. It is absolutely essential. Even in the case of the universe, of the cosmos, Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, has said to us in His Holy Book: "But if there were more than two Lords in the universe, one of these Lords would have contested the power of the other and fought to ride over him." In other words, it is impossible to have a management, to have an organisation, to have a going concern such as the family without somebody assuming the role of leadership and responsibility. And this is really all that Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, has meant us to achieve and to understand when he established for us the leadership, the family as a patriarchal institution because our Shari'ah, without apology does regard the family as a patriarchal institution. The ship without a captain cannot run for long, nor does the ship without a rudder. Allah has blessed us by imposing this leadership, by vesting the patriarch of the family with it and demanding its fulfilment, in fact, making the question of fulfilment a question of law. A father who is not fulfilling his role as a responsible leader is a father that can be sued under the law, under the Shari'ah, and he can be sued by any member of the Islamic Ummah because the Ummah and the Shari'ah regard this role as constitutive, it is a public role.

The Social Features

A third advantage which the Islamic family has over the Western family is the fact that the family is made out of a cement which is social and therefore begins long before the marriage, but the special relationship that we refer to as the love relationship is supposed to begin and to grow only after marriage and not before. Before marriage, there is social affinity between the two families of the couple. After marriage, one enters upon this relationship with a determination to make it grow and, therefore the chances of a love relationship between husband and wife growing and becoming more secure and stronger are better under the Islamic system than they are under the Western system. Under the Western system, as you know, it is supposed to grow as a result of courtship, but because of illicit fornication which may take place between the couple before they become husband and wife, marriage is looked upon as a confirmation of that which has already been developing for a year or two or three or ten or whatever. In our society, marriage is regarded as the beginning not the consummation; it is not something that is practically finished on the wedding day. It is something that begins on the wedding day, and has all the future in which to flower and become greater. The determination with which this is entered into by the Muslim spouses allows ample room for adjustment because the commitment has already been made and therefore a Muslim who enters into marriage is determined to make that marriage work, determined to make the love relationship between the two spouses grow, and is therefore more ready for the adjustment that family life demands. It is the other way round in Western society. If this relationship has grown to its apex before marriage and marriage is looked upon as a consummation of that movement, then the consequence is that the desire to adjust, the preparation to make the necessary sacrifices and adjustments, would be all the more because the interest in it would be on the wane rather than on the increase.

Arranged Marriages

A fourth advantage is the advantage that we talk about in arranged marriages. Arranged marriages are really the coming together of two families. Of course, the individuals are involved, and as we said earlier it is possible for such a marriage to succeed because from the standpoint of the marriage the love relationship begins after and not before the wedding. But then, the relationship between the two families is something that has been cultivated for some time, and so we speak of the Muslim marriage not as a marriage of two individuals but as a marriage of two families. And the two families with all their resources, their human resources, their economic resources, their wisdom resources are at the service of the newly-married couple and there is no doubt that nobody in the world needs more advice, more economic assistance and more support than the newly-married couple and this is provided for them from both sides of the marriage if it is truly a Muslim marriage, that is to say a marriage of the two families. Compare and contrast this with the situation of the Western young men and women who meet under all kinds of circumstances on their own and having met and fallen in love, decide to enter into marriage. They are literally alone and this is why the greatest overwhelming majority of these marriages are contracted outside even the knowledge of their parents and their relatives.

Marriage: A Civil Contract

A fifth point is that our marriage is by contract; it is a civil contract between two equal parties, between two equal families, not just between two individuals. It is a civil contract that requires the consent of the two parties. The two parties may include outside of the Shari'ah requirements, anything that may lead to their happiness and mutually agreeable to both of them. Once the marriage has taken place and the contract has been signed and agreed upon, witnessed not only by the individual spouses, but also by their guardians and their elders, then it becomes a legal and binding document. Now, this creates a constitution for the marriage. Now consider its fate, and the home as a state. It has internal affairs and it has external affairs, it has public security affairs and it has police affairs and jail affairs, sometimes. It has educational affairs and it has propaganda affairs, and public information. All the ministries of government, all the functions of the ministries of government are there to be per- formed in the family, in the home unit. Can you imagine all these activities being carried out with- out a constitution in the state? But such is the Western marriage. The Western marriage has no constitution. It is a state without a constitution.

They say it is a sacrament and a sacrament is an equal act; it is a mysterious cement which has created, a cadre or framework that has been vested upon that couple outside of their family and it is not spelled out, that is to say, nobody knows its terms and this is why when there is dispute, when there is trouble, when the marriage is on the rocks, they have to refer to custom, to common law, to what- ever the arbitrary wisdom of the judge may happen to hit upon by way of solution. Therefore, we can say that the Western marriage is a chaotic marriage, it is the founding of an institution without a constitution, whereas our Islamic marriage, being built upon the constitution, its terms being spelled out in the constitution which is the contract of marriage, is an orderly, a societal institution, that is to say it is an institution very much in society. And Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, has commanded us in the Holy Book that if we agree on anything, to write it down, and writing down the contract of marriage is a blessed act which saves the marriage as well as a great deal of unhappiness and suffering.

Marriage - Settles Life and Relations

Likewise, this contract of marriage, and this is my sixth point, settles life and relations should the marriage for any reason come to an end, whether this is by death or separation by divorce. The consequences are all or should all be spelled out in the contract of marriage and in this way the life of the spouses after marriage are also regulated. I remember a case which I read about in the American press not too long ago, a case in California. California is the state which is most liberal in man- woman relations and now they recognise that a man and a woman coming together and living together without marriage, without the sacrament, still entitles the woman to some kind of settlement, some kind of compensation. I remember one very famous American woman sued the man who was her paramour, with whom she had been living for many years without marriage, without bond, neither civil nor religious nor anything. She pleaded her case to the judge that "after all, I have given this man the flower of my youth, I have given this man all the service and all the company and so on and so forth, now he is telling me to get out of here, and no settlement, nothing, and he is a man of means. Am I not entitled to something, despite the fact that I have no marriage and we have been living in sin?" So the judge pronounced his verdict that because there had been no contract, no marriage agreement, and at least the sacrament is a kind of agreement that is recognised by society, you the woman are not entitled to anything. So this famous woman went out and met the press and she began cursing the judicial system of America for this atrocious piece of injustice and she was saying: "all fellow women of America, do not ever enter into marriage, do not allow your men even to kiss you unless you agree with them on the consequences of termination of that relationship, and put it down in writing for only then will the judicial system operate."

And when I read that, I said that here, finally, these American women, after running away from the Islamic value of pinning down and spelling out the relationship and the consequences of the relationship in a contract which has been available to everyone for fourteen centuries, finally they are coming to realize its value. How much education and how much safeguarding of the future for our Western neighbors, our non-Muslim neighbors it would provide if we were to invite them to our homes and show them our contracts of marriage and tell them that life within marriage, or should the marriage be terminated outside the marriage, are all here, written down and spelled out, agreed upon not only by the two individuals concerned, but also by the two families. What a tremendous source of relief this could give them if they were capable of practising it and, of course, this would be an introduction to them to enter the fold of Islam because only Islam gives them that assurance and that guarantee.

Women's Personality

The seventh point that I want to make concerns woman's personality. I have already mentioned women's liberation and you are aware, I am sure, how much has been done since the days of universal suffrage; the right to vote, to elect officers of the government, or a right to all property or what you have, but the West still has a great deal to learn from Islam on this question of legal status, regardless of the relationship that marriage has brought about. In the West, only very recently and only a few women are beginning to carry their maiden name and then only those that have achieved a reputation and a career before marriage. It has become something of a business value, like the name of the business world, therefore they want to keep the name, but very few among them believe that they are total and complete personalities and of course, the law does not allow them to be. There is no faith in the union, in America that would allow a married woman, or a married man for that matter, to sell a property without consideration for the other spouse. And so it looks that, as far as buying and selling property is concerned, women are half persons, not fully legal persons, and in the continent in Europe, there are still many states which do not recognize at all such rights of married women or of unmarried women for that matter.

The Extended Family

Then our family, and this is my eighth point, our Muslim family is an extended family, it is not a nuclear family though the nuclear family is quite fashionable . We said that the nuclear family, forgive me for using this term and playing on the term nuclear and fission, the nuclear family consisting only of husband, wife and children does not have the resources, the human resources, the wisdom resources, the friendly resources that the extended family brings to the scene. This tendency, unfortunately is gripping the whole Muslim world and I would not be surprised to see it gripping the Muslim population of England, Europe and America as well, that every person who gets married wants to go and live in a flat of his own, avoiding his relatives, immediate or distant. This is a terrible development, this is the Westernisation and the corruption that we are subjected to, that we are undergoing in our lives in the West, and we should resist it. We should resist it for several reasons. The Shari'ah has prescribed for us who our dependent is and who is not our dependant, who is our heir and who is not our heir and therefore, to the extent that the Shari'ah has done this, then those people who inherit from us and who are our dependants must live together. We must eat together from the same kitchen and live as far as possible in the same home. We, our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our grandparents, our cousins, uncles, nephews, nieces and so forth, because these constitute the extended family of Islam. Now the extended family of Islam is the noblest, the greatest, and the most valuable social institution that the world has ever seen. By going nuclear, that is to say by going individualistic, Western society has lost all these values and they are suffering terribly.

Let me point out to you a few of those consequences. Because we live with our parents and our elders, we love them, they have brought us up, they have played with us when we were young, they have told us stories, they were patient with us and they have educated us, guided us, and advised us, so we love them because we are in constant communion with them. However, in the Western case, there is alienation and a strangeness because as soon as the youth period is past, the children strike out on their own and the result is that when the parents become old, there is no respect for them; they end their days pining for their children in old folks' homes or the nursing homes for old people. There could not be a more cruel death for anyone than that of being taken to the old folks' home to die slowly, away from his own progeny, from his own dependants and there could not be a worse fate for any man or woman than to be deprived of the relationship and affection of their own children. But you see, respect for elders has to be cultivated and it will not be cultivated by separation, hence this is the great benefit of the Muslim extended family. Secondly, the extended family permits no generation gap among Muslims. In the same family there are babies, teenagers, adults and elders, maybe elders of the first level and elders even of the second level and, since they live together, they are in constant communion with one another; this is precisely the socialization, the acculturation that the sociologists are talking about and are pleading for, and yet the nuclear family makes it impossible. This is why acculturation and socialization have to be obtained in the drug store, through the television screen or through one's peers in the schools, but then this is not acculturation, this is not socialization. This is demagogisation, if the term can be used. Acculturation and socialization means the passing on from one generation to another of norms, of social norms, of social values. It does not mean a group of people coming together Ad hoc in order to have fun. That is not socialization, that is not acculturation, and where in the Western society can this process take place anyway?

This is why Western society today is so radically different from Western society of yesterday, and this is why the old values of Western society do not obtain today and why there is no continuity. On the Islamic side, because of the extended family, there is no such generation gap. Thirdly, a great consequence of the extended family is the fact that considering that human beings are social animals, as the philosophers used to say, they need company, they need solace. I need somebody with whom to love sometime and I need somebody with whom to play sometime. I need somebody with whom to complain sometime and I need somebody with whom to cry sometime. Now where else but in the extended family can I find that somebody? Now if I do not have the extended family, if I do not give vent to these pent-up emotions, these emotions will build up in me and make me insane, make me crazy, they will make me take to drugs, to alcohol, to running after other women outside the home.

A nuclear family endangers that sanity and opens the door to all kinds of maladjustments. Another consequence of the extended family is that we learn to be loyal to a group, we learn to be altruistic, we learn to give our emotions, our love, loyalty and fidelity to a group that is, of course, the microcosm of the Ummah, in other words, to defeat our individualism. All of us are individualists, this is something inside us, it is an instinct. We are all advocates, everybody wants to promote himself and fill his own tummy and so on and so forth. This is natural, Allah has put that inside us, but Allah has also planted us in an extended family in order to curb those instincts, to discipline them. In fact, to make something good come out of them instead of the egotistic pursuit which brings ruin. Without the extended family there can be no Ummah because there can be no Ummatic feeling bred in the members and the result would be dissolution, and this is exactly what we are seeing in the Western family and in Western society. Western society today is built upon individuals and upon egotism, everybody wants his own thing, his own pleasure, to pursue his own interests, and nobody is willing to adjust and sacrifice and co-operate with another and this is why the society is falling apart. And to bring a Western person into an extended family and to let him experience what we experience in the extended family situation is undoubtedly, if he or she has any measure of sensitivity, to convert them to Islam, to make them one to that kind of relaxation, that kind of thirst that is enjoyed by the Muslim who is living in an extended family.

The Benefits of an Extended Family

Another point, the ninth point, can be regarded as a consequence of the extended family. We have heard about women going out to work and having a career, but for a woman to go out to work and have a career in the West, in the nuclear family, must always be and can only be done at the cost of the home and the children. Either there are no children, deliberately, in order to pursue the career or, if there are children, they are abandoned to the television set or to the baby-sitter or to the street corner if they cannot afford the baby-sitter. Sometimes they even bum themselves or burn the house down by playing with fire without a supervisor. Or the woman comes home from work, exhausted to the point of being uninterested in the spouse or another person, and then tempers fly, because everybody is exhausted and so family life is ruined. I want to tell you that only in the Muslim family can the woman have a career outside the home. Why? Because she can absent herself, if she has a talent; if she has the talent to invent things or produce things that would benefit the whole Ummah, a woman can do that without losing either home or children. Why? Because there are so many other women in the home, because there are so many other people in the home carrying on the business of the family and so preventing damage to the career or the home. Of course, the first career of a Muslim woman is her family. There can be no doubt about that, and that comes before driving shuttles to the moon or whatever or inventing robots. It is her duty, it is her function, it is her prime function, and the function for which Allah has created her is, indeed, to be the pillar, the main pillar of the family and the mother. But this may not exhaust all her years or all her energies. And therefore, if it is possible for her to serve the Ummah additionally, besides being a mother, this could be done only in the case of the extended family and the Muslim family. And it is also the condition for the preservation of her femininity because the tensions under which women work outside of the home are dissipated when she comes home and the same femininity, the same feminine touch never leaves the home. This is always available.

And, in conclusion, I should remind you of all the other values that our Muslim family enjoys by virtue of adhering to the prescriptions of the Shari'ah. The fact that we do not drink alcohol or take drugs is a tremendous source of strength for the family. The fact that gambling is Haram and that the resources of the family ought to have one kitty in which to put their incomes and from that kitty should come all the expenses of everyone according to a system of priorities established by the responsible leader or father. All these are tremendous props which the Western people do not enjoy at all.

Note: An essay I wrote during my ‘malas-malas’ time while enjoying my holiday. For further reading, please consult The Principles of Islamic Family by Ismail Raji’ al-Faruqi and Islamic Sociology by Maulana Wafa Taufeeq.

Fakta Berkenaan Palestin

1. Negara-Negara Arab yang berjiran dengan Israel serta merta melanggar negara itu dan mengulanginya beberapa kali dengan mengalami kekalahan teruk;

2. Akhirnya semakin banyak negara Arab sama ada mengiktiraf Israel dan menandatangani perjanjian damai dengannya atau tidak lagi memberi keutamaan kepada isu Palestin;

3. Melalui perang psikologi, Israel dan penyokong Yahudinya dari seluruh dunia menyusup masuk dan menguasai politik, ekonomi serta media massa Amerika Syarikat (AS);

4. Israel dan gerakan Yahudi antarabangsa berjaya menjadikan Amerika boneka, pelindung dan pembiayanya;

5. Menurut John J. Mearsheimer dan Stephen M. Waltdalam tulisan mereka berjudul “The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy” (Lobi Israel dan Dasar Luar Amerika Syarikat), Israel menerima bantuan langsung bernilai AS$3 bilion (RM10.62 bilion) setiap tahun atau 20 peratus daripada bantuan luar AS;

6. Setiap orang penduduk Israel menerima subsidi daripada AS bernilai AS$500 (RM1,770) setahun walaupun Israel adalah negara perindustrian yang sama pendapatan per kapitanya dengan Korea Selatan dan Sepanyol;

7. Menurut Perkhidmatan Penyelidikan Kongres Amerika, bantuan kepada Israel bagi tahun 2007 berjumlah tidak kurang daripada AS$2.5 bilion (RM8.85 bilion). Ini tidak termasuk AS$138 juta (488.5 juta) bagi projek pertahanan bersama peluru berpandu dan jaminan hutang sebanyak AS$$1.4 bilion (RM4.95 bilion);

8. Purata AS memberikan AS$6.8 juta (RM24 juta) kepada Israel setiap hari berbanding AS$300,000 (RM1.06 juta) kepada Palestin pada tahun 2007;

9. Janji Amerika membantu Palestin adalah janji kosong sejak daripada tertubuhnya Medinat Yisra’el pada tahun 1948;

10. President Truman dalam ucapannya pada 28 Oktober, 1948 – lima bulan selepas rampasan bumi Palestin oleh Yahudi -- antara lain, berkata:

“Adalah tanggungjawab saya memastikan dasar kita di Israel menepati dasar kita di seluruh dunia; kedua adalah hasrat saya membantu membina negara Palestin yang kuat, makmur, bebas, merdeka dan demokratik. Ia perlu cukup luas, cukup bebas dan cukup kuat untuk membolehkan rakyatnya berdikari dan selamat.”

[ “It is my responsibility to see that our policy in Israel fits in with our policy throughout the world; second, it is my desire to help build in Palestine a strong, prosperous, free and independent democratic state. It must be large enough, free enough, and strong enough to make its people self-supporting and secure.”]

11. Dan bolehkah Barack Obama diharap untuk mengatasi pembohongan AS selama ini? Pertimbangkan kenyataan beliau ketika kempen pilihan raya Presiden baru lalu yang berbunyi:

“Kita jangan sekali-kali mencuba mengatakan apa yang terbaik untuk orang Israel dan keselamatan mereka dan tidak seorang pun Perdana Menteri Israel yang patut diseret ke meja perundingan...”

[We should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests" and that no Israeli prime minister should ever feel "dragged" to the negotiating table...];

12. Yahudi mempunyai perwakilan yang kuat dalam politik nasional AS. Pada bulan Jun tahun lalu (2008), 7.8 peratus Ahli Kongres adalah Yahudi walaupun penganut agama Yahudi di AS dianggarkan hanya 1.4 peratus daripada penduduknya;

13. Kalau AS menjadi boneka, pelindung dan pembiaya Israel, banyak negara Islam, khasnya negara-negara Arab, menjadi boneka dan pak turut AS;

14. Dari mula lagi banyak negara Arab tidak mahu Hamas berjaya di Palestin. Hamas adalah singkatan kepada Harakat al-Muqāwamat al-Islāmiyyah atau Pergerakan Penentangan Islam yang terdiri daripada pengikut Sunnah. Ia ditubuhkan pada tahun 1987 oleh Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi dan Mohammad Taha yang berupa penggiat Ikhwanul Muslimin cawangan Palestin pada permulaan gerakan Intifadah pertama;

15. Oleh sebab Hamas diasaskan atas landasan Ikhwanul Muslimin maka ia dicurigai dan ditolak oleh banyak negara Arab. Ikhwanul Muslimin diharamkan atau dikawal kegiatannya di banyak negara Arab;

16. Ikhwanul Muslimin atau Persaudaraan Muslim adalah organisasi Muslim yang diasaskan oleh Hassan al Banna di Mesir pada tahun 1928 berikutan keruntuhan Empayar Ottoman;

17. Pada mulanya Ikhwanul Muslimin menyokong kerajaan sekular Presiden Gamal Abdel Nasser tetapi apabila seorang anggotanya dituduh membunuh Perdana Menteri Mesir, Mahmud Fahmi Nokrashi, pada 28 Dis. 1948, pertubuhan itu diharamkan dan Al Banna sendiri dibubuh oleh agen-agen perisik kerajaan pada bulan Februari tahun berikutnya;

18. Majoriti negara-negara Arab tidak demokratik. Mereka bimbang jika kerajaan Hamas berjaya di Palestin mereka akan menghadapi tekanan daripada rakyat jelata mereka sendiri agar memperkenalkan demokrasi;

19. Negara-negara Arab sendiri terus bercakaran dan serentak itu menjadi tali barut kepada hegemoni AS di Asia Barat seperti yang terserlah dengan sokongan mereka terhadap serangan dan penaklukan AS ke atas Iraq;

20. Akhir sekali, politik Palestin sendiri kucar-kacir akibat ketidaksepaduan sokongan negara-negara Arab dan persengketaan di kalangan pelbagai kelompok agama di Asia Barat, khasnya pergeseran antara pengikut Sunnah dan Syiah.

From the The Scribe A.Kadir Jasin

Rindu Ku Terubat Kini.......

Waktu itu tiada apa yang hendak ku lakukan. Semuanya telah ku siapkan dari awal lagi. Termangu-mangu tiada apa yang hendak ku kerjakan. Sudahnya aku duduk diam menghadap komputer riba ku. Melayari dan menyusuri dunia maya. Tanpa arah tujuan. Kosong minda ku…….

“Hey…. What you doing there?”
“Doing nothing. Buat bodoh ajer depan pc nie. Ader apa?”
“Nothing. New year eve, where will you be?”
“Tak ke mana pun. Duk umah ajer. Maybe nak ke Seremban, jumpa Harith.”
“Kul berapa?”
“Entah. Tak sure. Kenapa?”
“Wanna meet up? Lepak-lepak……”
“Your place?”
“Solaris nak?”
“Bisa ajer. What time? 8 pm?”
“Alrity… See you at 8 then…..”
“Orait. Daaa……”

Terus aku berkemas-kemas. Menyiapkan diri ku. Untuk bertemu dengan si dia. Yang agak ku rindui. Sambil ku siapkan cenderahati ku buat si dia.

Segera ku bergegas ke lokasi perjumpaan. Tidak sabar untuk ketemu sama si dia. Rindu yang teramat sangat….

“Hey sorry lambat. Caught in a traffic jam.”
“It’s okay. New year eve. Semua orang nak kuar.”
“Alrite. Nak makan apa nie?”
“You?”
“Hmmm….. Ikutlah. I’m okay ajer. You order for me.”
“Okay….”

Pantas dia membuat pesanan. Dan tidak berapa lama selepas itu, hidangan telah tersedia di atas meja dan kami menikmati hidangan yang amat lazat itu. Sambil berbicara seperti biasa….

“Ehh… I have something for you. New year gift.”
“Hmmm…. Naperlah susah-susah.”
“Alah dah lama benda tue I beli. Lagi pun it’s cheap. Sorry tak mampulah nak beli hadiah mahal-mahal.”
“It’s okay. Having you in my life is the greatest gift I ever had.”
“Hmmmm….. Thank you. Gotta go. Nanti lambat pulak sampai Seremban.”
“Okay. Happy New Year sayang…..”

Bicaranya sambil mencium pipi ku……

Dan aku berlalu meninggalkan dia. Menuju ke destinasi ku. Untuk bertemu dengan si chomel ku, Luqman Harith…..

====================


You are my paradise, you are my craving

You are what I pray for, you are what brings my soul peace

You are what cools my eyes to see, you are the footstep of my heart

I don’t know about anything else but I do know

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

In an offering of love my head bows down to you, what should I do

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

What kind of distance is this, what kind of helplessness

That I have to touch you with only my eyes

Sometimes your scent, sometimes your words

Without asking for it I have received the whole world

You are what lightens my heart, you are all the valuable things of lifetimes

I don’t know about anything else but I do know

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

In an offering of love my head bows down to you, what should I do

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

It comes, it makes me yearn

Your shadow bothersomely kisses

How you smile, how you become shy

Is as if my God is spinning

You give me worth, you are my penance

I don’t know about anything else but I do know

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

In an offering of love my head bows down to you, what should I do

I see God in you, but I do not know what to do

====================

Muhammad: The Universal Man of All Times

Throughout history, human beings have celebrated the qualities of men and women whose lives were believed exemplary and inspiring, giving rise to the cult of prophets, sages, military leaders, and charismatic political figures. Of all this galaxy of individuals who have dominated human thought and imagination, the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ, and Gautama Buddha continue to enjoy unbelievable influence in societies around the world. The Prophet Muhammad's reputation and influence are most evident in the daily rituals of Muslims, who link his name in prayer to that of the grand patriarch Abraham. Few people are as memorable as Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha. What is distinctive about Muhammad is that he is referenced not as a saviour but as a final messenger who metaphorically brought the last divine direct connection, through which men and women could maintain direct and unmediated contact with the celestial world. Yet, this very claim of the man from Arabia has made him simultaneously the most hated and most loved human being ever to step on the surface of this earth: The venom directed at him and his movement has coagulated in the bloodstream of history. Our age is as affected by this poison as were the generations that came after him. The great irony is that his message was called Islam and the root of this word is very much related to another Arabic word, salaam (peace).

THE CHILD OF ARABIA

Examining the historical record about the Prophet Muhammad reveals several biographical fragments that help us understand his background. Born into a Meccan family whose ancestors go back to the early days of the city, Muhammad grew up knowing that he was a member of the Quraysh tribe and that their roots link them to Abraham. Though poor and orphaned at an early age, he enjoyed the warmth and support of his uncle and grandfather. Young Muhammad belongs to that group of children who grow up without adequate knowledge of their deceased parents. His father passed away before his birth, and his mother did not live to see him as a teenager. Despite these personal tragedies, his earliest biographers tell us, he had good exposure to Arab and Bedouin culture. He spent some years in the custody of Halimah, a Bedouin nurse. She gave him access to the Bedouin lifestyle, which differed in many ways from the folkways of Mecca's urban areas. The same sources tell of travels to Syria in the company of his uncle and other Meccan merchants. Many stories have reached us about the experiences he had on this journey. Some of the accounts are filled with hagiographic details, and some shed some light on the psychology and sociology of these times. However one may feel about such narratives, the fact remains that Muhammad grew up learning and mastering the ways and styles of his contemporaries in Mecca and Arabia. In this light one can understand how he at age twenty-five married his boss Khadijah, the Meccan merchant woman who had employed him as part of her long-distance trade network.

Muhammad was a child of Arabia in many ways. Mecca was home to the Kaaba, the black stone that had served for centuries as the spiritual centre for Arabs of the peninsula and beyond. It drew tribal Arabs from every corner of the region for the specific purpose of pilgrimage. As a child he saw his family and others engaged in these pagan ways; later, as a prophet, he would demolish these irreligious practices and begin the worship of the one true God, the God his ancestor Abraham had worshiped in earlier times. This transformation of the ancient traditions would make him the source of continuity and discontinuity of that inheritance. His teachings and the religion that grew after his death would embody the great synthesis between the ways of the ancient Arabs and those of the tawhidic dispensation (focusing on the unity of God) enunciated by the Qur'an.

Muhammad's command of language and the manner in which he expressed himself led some of his contemporaries to charge that he was a poet, a title he strongly rejected. Since Arabs have always placed extraordinary premium on their language and the manner in which it is used, the eloquence of the Qur'anic verses became a source of dispute between his enemies, who saw him as a good Arab poet in the tradition of the ancients, and his followers, who saw him as a favored human being who was merely the microphone of the heavenly voice. Again, whatever one's attitudes toward the Prophet Muhammad, the fact remains that the Qur'an has continued to move men and women around the world. It is a document that captures the metaphysical and historical realities of his times, not only in Arabic but in the Quraysh dialect in which it was originally revealed. Like the Hebrew prophets who preceded him in the region, Muhammad was a man of the area in terms of both speech and culture. Whatever universalism he conveyed to humanity was inevitably captured in the language of his group. The relativization and historization of the universally intended message have continued to create tension between the chauvinistic Arab and the non-Arab who sees the kernel of truth in the universalism of the message.

The peripheral role of his city and people in the wider world of contemporary history is another distinctive factor. Living in the desert, far from the centres of political and cultural gravity of his age, Muhammad, like many of his Arabian tribesmen, was operating at the edges of Sassanian and Byzantine imperial power. Remarkably, he saw the negative consequences of Arabian disunity and, through his role as prophet, was able to unite these variegated elements into a commonwealth of faith and a community of moral and political solidarity. The child whose peoples were dismissed as uncultured and marginal to the centres of human civilization managed to express genius in social organization, military warfare, and diplomatic sagacity, ushering in a new age for Arabs and other followers of his brand of monotheism. In his lifetime Muhammad the Arabian became the symbol of human ingenuity and the fountain of spiritual inspiration for his companions. One should hasten to add that this very record of success soon became a source of hostility among the other peoples of the Book.

THE PROPHET TO HUMANKIND

Biographers have stated repeatedly that Muhammad was a reluctant prophet. This is to say that the young man was not eagerly awaiting his mission. According to the sources, when he first encountered the angel Gabriel (Gibril in Arabic), he protested to the heavenly creature that he could not read. Iqra, the opening verse of Chapter 96 of the Qur'an, which Muslim tradition claims to have been the first revealed, not only led to his admission of illiteracy but also made Muhammad question his suitability for the task. Tradition has it that he rushed home to share his experiences at Mount Hira with his loving and supportive wife, Khadijah. It was she who consoled and reassured him about his prophetic mission. Waraqah, a cousin of his wife and a practicing Christian in Mecca, also reassured him that what he had experienced in the cave of Hira was in the tradition of the earlier prophets. Once he had accepted his new role and place in society, he pursued his task unflaggingly. He preached his message of monotheism to his fellow Meccans and people of surrounding areas. In his hometown he faced formidable opponents, who saw his ideas as detrimental to their cultural and religious heritage and to the centrality of their city to the Arabian experience. For this and other related reasons, they plotted to do away with him.

Muhammad the Prophet soon became a feature in certain parts of Mecca. Through various means he began to recruit followers among the poor and lowly members of society. In time some members of the elite began to join his ranks. Abu Bakr and Osman would later succeed him as key figures. Ali, his cousin and later his son-in- law, would become the first youth to embrace Islam. Bilal, the Ethiopian slave who later rose to the position of muezzin (caller of worshipers to prayer), would for years remain the major symbol of Islamic concern for the poor and downtrodden.

What was the message of this budding community in Mecca? And how was their philosophy of life different from that of their contemporaries? First, it should be said that the coming of Islam to Arabia was a spiritual, moral, and political revolution simultaneously. Spiritually, the Arabians were being exposed to a new form of belief and worship. Contrary to their traditional belief in Uzza, Manat, and Lat, these Meccans were now asked to embrace a single God who created life and death, day and night, the visible and the invisible. This God, according to Muhammad and the Qur'an, has no rivals and cannot be seen in human flesh. This teaching of the young Islamic community challenged the belief system of the Meccans and their coreligionists in Arabian paganism; it also raised doubt about what was vaguely known to some Arabians as the Christian belief in incarnation. However, like the contemporary Jews and Christians, Muhammad's followers embraced a community of beliefs in common with these other branches of the Abrahamic tradition of monotheism. For example, they believe in angels, in revelation, in the creation story of Adam and Eve, in Satan and his threat to human moral development, and in the resurrection and judgment of humanity at the end of time.

It was for this and other related reasons that early Islam was perceived by some as a form of Judaism or of heretical Christianity. Muslims then and now never accepted this characterization of their faith. In their view, Islam is the culmination of a long line of prophets and messengers from Allah (God). According to Muslim tradition attributed to the Prophet himself, Allah had sent 140,000 messengers to humankind since the time of Adam. Each was instructed to educate his people to encourage the doing of good and the avoidance of evil. Because of this reasoning, Muslims believe that the Qur'an was God's last word to humanity. Hence the Qur'anic designation of the Prophet Muhammad as "the seal of the prophets." To put all these theological differences in a nutshell, one can say that Muhammad clearly saw himself as a continuation of the Abrahamic legacy. He assumed the self-confident role of the iconoclast, whose job was to demolish the idols of the tribe and then rehabilitate the ruins of monotheistic beliefs known to Arabians from their ancestor, Abraham.

THE GREAT EXEMPLAR TO HUMANITY

Muslim children learn early that the Prophet Muhammad is the ultimate role model. Being such a universal model, he therefore becomes the example that is copied from sunrise to sundown throughout the Muslim world. This tradition of imitation is not confined to the domain of rituals. Muslims not only pray like their role model, they also fast in his tradition and offer sacrifices during their pilgrimage to Mecca in like manner. This attempt to follow in the Prophet's footsteps has led to many little traditions within Islam. These approaches to the prophetic examples have become institutionalized in the branches and sects of Islam. The Sunni-Shiite divide, which has continued to plague Muslims throughout their fifteen centuries of history, is wreaking havoc in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and a few other places where sectarianism has replaced the spirit of cooperation of the early Muslims. But even these antagonists, who have consistently tried to outdo each other in their fidelity to the prophetic example, agree on a wide range of issues regarding his life, activities, and examples of ways people could live in this world and prepare themselves for the hereafter. Evidence for this claim lies in the points of convergence and divergence between the five legal schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Whatever his school, a Muslim faces the qiblah (points facing Mecca) when offering prayers to Allah, goes through the bodily motions associated with the prophetic example of salat (prayer), does the hajj (pilgrimage) by circumambulating the Kaaba, and attends to other details central to this ritual.

Muhammad is an example to Muslims in many other ways. According to tradition, he is the example par excellence in family life. Although he married more than once, for more than twenty years, he knew only one woman, Khadijah. However, his thirteen years of life in exile and refuge in Medina made him a polygamist. Muslims and non-Muslims have spent a great deal of time arguing about this marital status. Believers who have accepted the prophetic legacy of polygamous relationships see it as a special case demanded by historical and political circumstances. They peg their arguments on the political utility of these matches and on the fact that the Prophet was an old man when he consummated such marriages. Non-apologetic Muslims simply embrace this example as an opportunity that is available. While affirming such things, they also acknowledge the Qur'anic stipulation that the man who decides to have more than one wife needs to ask himself whether he can be fair and just in his dealings with these women.

The prophetic model of family life has continued to exercise much influence. Although monogamy is the dominant form of marriage in most Muslim societies, rich and poor Muslims have taken full advantage of this Qur'anically sanctioned opportunity. Sociologists may lament the fact that many a Muslim male has engaged in polygamous relationships by citing the prophetic example, but the fact remains that people sometimes deliberately ignore the conditional clause that accompanies the granting of such opportunities.

The Prophet Muhammad's exemplary role is also evident in politics, diplomacy, warfare, and several other areas of life. In politics, he showed the Arabians of his time the benefits of unity and the strength of coalition building. This exercise in political sagacity was most evident in the years of exile, when Muhammad and his companions were at the mercy of Medinans and other Arab tribes who were willing to form alliances with him and his movement. Some of his Orientalist critics read the historical record differently and blame him for pursuing worldly ambitions. Muslim believers have always refuted these charges as unfounded and bigoted. Regardless of how one may feel about this characterization, the modern world provides a living testimony to the continuity of the prophetic example. The rise of Islamic movements in our day and the claims they make for themselves have made it categorically clear that what happened in Medina many centuries ago still reverberates in the firmaments of Muslim political debate. Although most Muslims around the globe may not embrace an Islamic fundamentalist view of reality, they would not deny these groups' claims that the governments of their countries are often corrupt and inept and that there should be change for the better.

An example of the Prophet's message being widely misunderstood and distorted often centres on the question of jihad. Often translated as "holy war" and pressed to serve in any ideological contest between non-Muslims and Muslims, this term has assumed negative connotations in many Western and some non-Western languages. In its original meaning, it was used to encapsulate the spirit of struggling on the path of Allah. The idea of jihad was originally meant to underscore the precarious nature of the young Muslim community in Medina. Caught between the Meccan enemies and unreliable partners whom the Qur'an called hypocrites, and being willing and ready to sacrifice their lives in case of all-out war with the opponents of Islam, the Prophet's followers were told to struggle at two levels. The first and greater jihad was the conquering of the ego in the service of Allah. The second struggle was the defence and maintenance of the Islamic boundary line that separates those who believe in God and those who do not. It was in this context, according to Muslim tradition, that Muhammad told his companions after the victory of Badr that they were leaving one battlefield for another. When the companions asked what he meant, he clarified by saying that warfare against one's worldly enemy was the secondary jihad. The primary jihad is the war against one's soul.

MUHAMMAD IN THE EYES OF CHRISTIANS AND JEWS

The Prophet Muhammad was known to Christian and Jewish contemporaries. According to Muslim tradition he married a Christian woman from Egypt called Mary who later bore him a child called Ibrahim. He also married a Jewish woman, Safiyya, who came out of the Jewish community in Medina and its environment. In the early history of Islam there are accounts of Jews who joined the Islamic movement. These were, however, the exceptions that confirm the rule of religious rejection and defiance of the Prophet and his movement in Medina. The young Muslim community's relations with the Jews of Medina were seesaws of pride and prejudice, love and hate. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that it was doomed from the very beginning. Committed to their tradition and unwilling to change their faith, the Jews of Medina saw no reason to join the Muslims. They maintained their sense of pride and religious independence among the pagans of Arabia. This state of affairs was not shaken by the coming of an Islamic form of monotheism in their neighbourhood. The Muslims, on the other hand, had a different sense of relevance and suitability for the occasion. Coming out of Arabian days of ignorance (jahiliyah) and confident that Allah had chosen one of them to be the recipient of the final revelation, these followers of the Prophet saw themselves as custodians and inheritors of divine honour and blessings. This mixture of enthusiasm and antipathy defined the history of the two communities in Medina. The differential outcomes would later become the yardstick by which many Muslims and Jews measure their relationships.

From a religious point of view, some Jewish contemporaries of the Prophet, like their coreligionists in our world today, saw Islam as simply as a distorted copy of aspects of the Jewish heritage. This characterization was never accepted by Muslims of the Prophet's generation. In our times, some Jewish scholars have examined the Islamic tradition and found points of convergence and divergence between the two faiths. Their research often reinforces the claims of some classical Muslim writers, who argued that following Islam's triumph in Arabia a great deal of material crept from Judaism into Islam. In their view, these Israelite elements within the Islamic experience deserved attention and scrutiny. The charges of the anti-Israelite literature in Islamic literate culture were not false. They confirm the fact that many early Muslim writers drew from these sources to supplement or complement their narratives about Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, and other figures in the Bible.

The Christian reaction to the Muslim rise was bitter and enduring across the centuries. As an expanding civilization and empire, the young Islamic movement gained ground at the expense of those who were previously powerful. Because of this transformation, the history of the area now called the Middle East was changed almost permanently. The ethnic and religious groups that had inhabited the region since time immemorial would gradually convert to Islam, while many of their coreligionists tried to remain faithful to the tradition of their ancestors. The ethnic and religious quilt that characterizes the Middle East today is a result of this long history of coexistence and conflict between the Muslims and their Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian neighbours. Throughout this long stretch of time there were moments of peace and harmony and also moments of violence and disharmony. The conflict between Islam and Christianity was most violent and tragic in the eras before the creation of the state of Israel. The Crusades, undertaken in the name of retaking the Holy Lands, have become the worst example of religious bigotry and warfare, according to many scholars. W. Montgomery Watt has written, in Muhammad, Prophet and Statesman that European views of the Prophet were worst "in medieval times when his name, corrupted to 'Mahound,' was regarded as a name of the devil." This is not as strange as it appears at first sight. We have to remember that in the first rush of expansion after Muhammad's death the Arabs wrested from Christian control the lands in which Christianity had been born, Syria and Egypt.

But if the Crusades are unparalleled examples of religious bigotry, then the events of the last two centuries have provided another source of negative memories for the faith communities. Between the eleventh century and the present day, Muslim- Christian relations have gone through several stages. The period between the eleventh century and the end of the Crusades was marked by unremitting attacks on the Prophet. Not only was his name spelled mischievously with Roman alphabets, but his character was widely assassinated to score points against the "Muslim infidels." With the end of the Crusades the Muslim world and Christendom continued to interact but with less violence. Europe, then the bastion of Christianity, soon entered a new phase in its history. Western historians called it the Age of Discovery. Three developments during this time would have consequences for Christian-Muslim relations. The first was the annexation and colonization of the Americas by the rising European powers and the decision by church leaders to proselytize Christianity among the native peoples of these lands. The second was the successful European penetration of parts of the world that were previously known to or controlled by Muslims. The circumnavigation of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama led to the European colonization of India and regions east of the subcontinent. It also caused the partition of Africa and the loss of Muslim power in those regions.

The third development that has consequence for Christian-Muslim relations was imposition of colonial and imperial rule in Muslim lands. Much has been written about this period of colonization. From the perspective of this essay one can say that colonialism was the greatest challenge to the legacy of Muhammad, not only in non-Arab lands but in the Arab lands themselves. How is this so? Well, the colonizers, especially France, sought to replicate their cultures in the colonial territories. This policy of assimilation did not succeed as originally intended. One can argue, however, that the influence exercised during this time was strong enough to lead a sizable portion of the colonized population to embrace at least modernity, if not Christianity. This sense of identity with modernity has resulted in secularization without industrialization in many Muslim lands. Such unintended consequences of the colonial empires have created conditions that many political leaders in the postcolonial states have been unable to handle effectively. Under these trying conditions, some politically conscious Muslims have resorted to what they call Islamic revivalism. Banking heavily on Islamic thought as the moral compass to them and their movement, these young men and women have created havoc in many Muslim states. The activities of the Islamic movements in the Arab world, Pakistan, and some African states have come to haunt us all. The ferocious wars in the Balkans and many Muslim areas within Russia testify to the powerful grip religion still exercises in the minds of these former victims of communist tyranny. Though most of the fighters on both sides of the religious and ideological divide may actually believe that their war against group A or B is religious, in fact, religion is simply a tool manipulated to draw into the conflict coreligionists who would not otherwise have cared much.

Muhammad's legacy is also affected by the intended and unintended consequences of colonialism. Today, many Muslims live in the Western world. These "children of the Cold War" provide another example of the manner in which religion has served political motives and strategic interests of competing powers. South Asian Muslims in England, Turkish-speaking persons living in Germany, and Maghrebians in France are good examples of how secular and colonial objectives of European powers have wittingly or unwittingly created the conditions for a massive transfer of people from one part of the Muslim world to the West. Accepted or not, these men and women are now increasingly becoming a part of the cultural and political reality of life in the West. Their presence in European and North American cities tells us that globalization is following the logic of the corporate markets; the particularism of religious traditions apparently must now give way to the universalism of the market. This state of affairs poses a challenge to both the Muslims who follow the example of the Prophet-cum-trader and to the Western Christians who believe that God entered history in the person of Jesus Christ. Both are being buffeted here and there by the forces of secular humanism; both are still insisting that their message be relevant to the problems of living in all periods of human history.

MUHAMMAD IN THE EYES OF SECULAR IDEOLOGIES

Examining the writings of our contemporaries, we find that Muhammad is viewed differently by the various ideological schools of thought in the Muslim world and beyond. This is particularly true in our time of isms. Before the fall of communism, the Prophet Muhammad and his Islamic movement were appropriated differently by the rival schools of thought. Among the anticolonial intellectuals of the Muslim world, Muhammad and Islam were pressed into service by both the secular nationalists and the more religiously inclined members of the political class. Arab nationalists, including even some prominent Christian thinkers, saw him as the father of Arab nationalism. According to the late Oxford University Professor Hamid Inayat, writing in Modern Islamic Political Thought,

"In defining its relationship with Islam, Arab nationalism thus often ends where it started: with the glorification of Arabism as a commanding value in Islam. On this point, most theoreticians of Arab nationalism seem to be in agreement whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims, religionists or secularists. Some of them are, of course, at pains to underscore their recognition of Islam as a religion for the whole of humanity and not just for one particular branch of it. Nevertheless, their works impart an unmistakable impression that the Prophet Muhammad almost acted as the first hero of Arab nationalism by uniting all Arab-speaking inhabitants of the Peninsula under his banner."

Judging from the rich corpus of opinions on and attitudes toward secular nationalism, Arab nationalists of our age and before have viewed the Prophet Muhammad as the principal architect who helped prepare the way for the creation of Arab consciousness. Michel Aflaq, onetime dean of the Syrian branch of the Arab nationalist caravan known as Baathism, shared this perspective. Gamal Abdel Nasser, a major personality in the annals of Arab nationalism, also included Islam among his three concentric circles of Egyptian identity. In his Philosophy of the Revolution, he urged his countrymen to reach out to their Islamic brethren in their fight against colonialism and imperialism. A rival to Nasser, Syed Qutb of Islamic Brotherhood fame, also appropriated the legacy of the Arabian prophet, calling for establishment of an Islamic state. Because of his activism for this ideal, he went to the gallows. But before he lost his life to the Nasserites, Qutb vigorously argued that Islam does provide intellectual foundations for a socialist order in human society. These and many other Arab thinkers and leaders saw in the Prophet's legacy a significant building block for the renaissance of Arab and Muslim society in the contemporary era. The rise of Muammar Qaddafi in the late 1960s and his affirmation of some form of Islamism in Libya reached a high point with the publication of his Green Book. Living contemporaneously with the Marxist movement of the post-war era, Qaddafi decided to use some form of Islamic symbolism to counter the Red Book of Mao Zedong of China. He self-satisfied opposed the Red Book with the Green Book, green being the favourite colour of the Prophet of Islam.

If the Arab nationalists and their Islamist rivals both appropriated something from Muhammad, how did other secular thinkers feel about him? The distinguished French Marxist Orientalist Maxine Rodinson has told us in his book, Mohammed, that “The Comte de Boulainvilliers, early in the eighteenth century, hailed him as a free-thinker, the creator of a religion of reason. Voltaire used him as a weapon against Christianity by making him a cynical impostor who yet managed to lead his people to the conquest of glory with the help of fairy stories. The eighteenth century as a whole saw him as the preacher of natural, rational religion, far removed from the madness of the Cross. The academies praised him. Goethe devoted a magnificent poem to him, in which, as the very epitome of the man of genius, he is compared to a mighty river."

In this concluding chapter of his book, the Frenchman goes on to say that Thomas Carlyle put Muhammad among the heroes of humankind in whom the spark of divinity is to be seen. Rodinson tells us the nineteenth-century Arabist Hubert Grimme "saw Muhammad as a socialist who was able to impose fiscal and social reform with the help of a [strictly minimal] 'mythology', invented deliberately to terrify the rich and enlist their support."

What the French scholar's research revealed about the selective appropriation of the Prophet Muhammad's legacy should lead us to conclude that the secular thinkers and politicians have their own ideological and political interests. Muhammad and Islam became mere pawns in their shrewd calculations. What happened to his legacy in the wrong hands is the best example of unintended consequences of human history. A careful reading of the literature of the modern-day Islamists around the Muslim world offers us a vast sample of selective appropriation of the prophetic legacy. Since the train of history roars along the tracks of human conflicts and uncertainties, the great men of Muhammad's mettle and ingenuity would serve as intended or unintended sources of inspiration for those of dubious intentions and objectives. This is particularly true in our modern and postmodern age when human beings, almost every man and woman, now feel that their sense of rationality empowers them to interpret the sacred text, a task previously left in the hands of the ulema (the learned class).

MUHAMMAD AND THE SHARIA

In writing about the Prophet Muhammad one cannot avoid the issue of the Sharia. As the late Fazlur Rahman, a leading interpreter of Islam in this century, said in his book Islam, "The most important and comprehensive concept for describing Islam as a function is the concept of the Shari'a or 'Shar.' The University of Chicago professor tells us that the word originally meant " 'the path or the road leading to the water,' i.e., a way to the very source of life." He goes on to say that in its religious usage, from the earliest period, the word Sharia meant "the highway of good life, i.e., religious values, expressed functionally and in concrete terms, to direct man's life." (p. 100) He contrasts this term with the word Sunna to show that, whereas Sharia has a correlate in the Qur'anic term din (religion), Sunna means that which underscores the exemplary role of the Prophet in his capacity as religious leader (imam) of men and women in the worship of Allah. This is why Professor Rahman believes that "for the Muslim Community which had so submitted, the primary task was to explain the Sharia, the 'Way' or the 'Command of God.' This task has since occupied the succeeding generations of Muslims.

The history of this idea and its human attempts at embodiment has been the source of joy and pain to many Muslims over the centuries. But despite how one may feel about the history of Muslim attempts at the institutionalization of the Sharia, the fact remains that almost all Muslims believe that social and religious life cannot be led properly without human fidelity to the Divine Law. Hence the development of a science of Islamic jurisprudence called Figh. It took several generations of human intellectual and scholarly activity to bring this edifice into being. Its primary building blocks were the Qur'an and the Sunna (the words and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad). But since changing times required creative responses to the circumstantial needs of the growing Muslim community, the learned jurists of the Islamic world began to press into service what was known as ilm (learning) and fiqh (comprehension). The term fiqh, which was originally distinguishable from ilm, later became the word used by jurists to define the body of knowledge about the Sharia and its application in human society. What was once "a process rather than a body of consolidated knowledge," according to Rahman, went through a radical transformation around the middle of the eighth century, this is to say, fiqh passed from being a personal activity to meaning a structured discipline and its resultant body of knowledge.

It is indeed against this background that one can talk about the present developments in the Muslim world. Since the Iranian revolution, the political leaders and intellectuals of the Muslim world have come again to examine the relevance and utility of the Sharia in the creation of modern Muslim structures of governance. The Iranian revolution established a new state system that calls for the restoration of the Sharia in Iranian society and the return to Islam among the Iranian masses who had gone through the processes of secularization and modernization under the shah. Similar attempts at Islamization have taken place in Pakistan under President Zia ul-Haq and Jafaar Numeiri and General Bashir of Sudan, and the present Taliban government in Afghanistan. Because of the introduction of the Sharia in these countries, many political, moral, and social issues have come up for discussion between Muslims and non-Muslims around the world. Issues such as religious freedom, the rights of women, and Huddud punishments for criminals and violators of the Divine Law have continued to attract the attention of politically conscious Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors. These issues are burning ones because they go to the heart of modern living and liberal sensitivities.

Before the Iranian revolution most Muslim countries had secular nationalist governments whose leaders were not eager to introduce the Sharia into the domain of public law. Consciously or unconsciously following the example of Kemal Ataturk of Turkey in their drive for modernization and economic and political development, these countries and their leaders shied away from any mixing of religion and state. If religion entered the picture, it was always in the role of a legitimizing tool in the hands of manipulating agents. This was most obvious in Egypt under Nasser, who tried to stack Al-Azhar University with scholars and jurists amenable to his policies. This pattern of political manipulation of Islam was evident throughout the Muslim world; and until the rise of Imam Khomeini, the Sharia was mummified in the former British colonies in the Muslim world or effectively marginalized and banished as a relic of medieval Islam in the Francophone world. The flickering light of the Sharia was visible to only those who ventured to the Arabian Peninsula, where the successors to the Wahabi Movement of Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab kept the flag of the Sharia flying. Things have changed a great deal in the Muslim world. With the emergence of many Islamist groups around the world, more Muslims are pressing for the reintroduction of the Sharia. The challenge facing Muslim leaders and intellectuals in the twenty-first century is how to revisit the Islamic heritage and to reconstruct a political/religious order that remains faithful to the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad without necessarily violating the rights of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities. This is a major feat, and Muslims who believe in the authenticity of the prophetic message would have to work harder along the path that predecessors such as Imam al-Ghazali and Imam Ibn Taymiyya have traveled.

MUHAMMAD'S IMPACT ON OUR AGE

In evaluating Muhammad's impact on the contemporary period, one must focus on the political, cultural, and economic life of Muslims and their neighbours. Future historians who look back at the twentieth century will note several developments whose roots come back to our time. The world wars will be remembered as great blunders in human decision-making. They will also be judged on the basis of human cruelty and ferocity. Muhammad's name will occupy the minds of those generations of human beings when they think about the anti-colonial struggles of the Muslim peoples and the uses and abuses of Islam and the Prophet's name in the campaign against the European colonizers. Most significantly, the eruption of the Iranian Revolution and Imam Khomeini's rise to power would also be remembered as a turning point in the Muslim quest for self-determination and cultural autonomy. The Iranian people felt betrayed by a generation of rulers and elites who were more interested in lining their pockets than in maintaining the cultural and political patrimony of the Iranian people. Though the Iranian Revolution raised much hope in many circles, its un-foldment has led to disillusionment among some Iranians and guarded optimism among many die-hard supporters of the late imam. Despite one's position on the ideological contest within Iran, the fact remains that future Muslim and non-Muslim historians will remember this event, which took place 204 years after the American Revolution and 10 years before the collapse of communism.

But if future historians pay attention to the Iranian Revolution and the reassertion of Muhammad's legacy in its Shiite form, they will also be forced to look back at the oil embargo of 1973 and its intended and unintended consequences. We are still too close to the events and mistake the trees for the forest. With the benefit of hindsight, those who come after us will see that Muhammad's message benefited immeasurably from the embargo. It helped change the face of the Arabian Peninsula. It gave the people of the region a glimpse of what modernization could do for those who are determined to change while simultaneously holding on to the rope of faith.

Muhammad and his ideas have outgrown the mental and emotional boundaries created by the accident of his birth. His is a message of universalism, and the vast numbers of Muslims around the world who pattern their lives after his testify to the magnetism and continuing relevance of his message Yet, because of the ever- growing power of secularization and modernization, Islam and all other religions face new challenges and problems. The Prophet Muhammad, it appears, will continue to affect many a human soul. Only time and history will tell whether his message will settle in outer space, just as it has spread successfully around this sublunary world.

Keganasan Menjadi-Jadi.......

Dengan melihat dari jauh, membaca akhbar, menonton televisyen atau melayari internet, seseorang pastinya tidak dapat merasakan apa yang ditanggung oleh rakyat Palestin di Gaza. Apatah lagi jika seseorang ingin membuat ulasan atau cadangan bagaimana hendak menyelesaikan masalah yang dihadapi oleh mereka. Lebih-lebih lagi laporan-laporan yang diterima hampir kesemuanya berat sebelah. Agenda berita Reuters, AP dan AFP serta rangkaian televisyen CNN dan BBC tentunya berorientasikan kepada kepentingan Israel. Baik dari Amerika Syarikat mahupun Eropah, simpati mereka jelas adalah kesemuanya kepada Israel.

Walaupun mereka melakukan kerja secara profesional, objektif dan berasaskan kepada amalan kewartawanan yang tinggi, tetapi asasnya ialah mendokong Israel. Bagi mereka Israel mempunyai hak untuk hidup. Palestin yang membuat kacau. Apabila Israel menyerang dan membunuh ratusan orang awam Palestin, Washington tanpa teragak-agak menyalahkan Hamas kerana menggagalkan gencatan senjata. Tetapi mereka tidak menceritakan mengapa Hamas melanggar gencatan senjata itu. Betapa penduduk Gaza dikurung oleh Israel hingga hidup mereka terseksa di tanah airnya sendiri. Rakyat Palestin di Gaza dihalang hidup untuk mencari sara hidup. Untuk itu pihak Barat semua menyalahkan Hamas. Sedangkan Hamas telah disokong penuh oleh penduduk Gaza. Mereka ada hak untuk memimpin bangsa dan negara mereka. Hamas dipilih secara demokratik. Mengapakah dalam hal ini Israel dan dunia Barat tidak menyokong demokrasi?

Di pihak dunia Arab dan Islam, tentunya sokongan adalah kepada Palestin, tidak kira sama ada tindakan atau polisi mereka betul atau tidak. Rangkaian televisyen Al-Jazeera umpamanya akan menyiarkan laporan berasaskan kepada simpati ini. Maka nada dan rasa umat Islam adalah marah kepada Israel. Sungguh zalim negara Zionis itu sudahlah menjajah Palestin, membunuh pula orang awam. Dengan ikutkan perasaan, mahu rasanya beramai-ramai menyertai askar sukarela dan melancarkan perang ke atas Israel. Bukan saja Gaza dibebaskan tetapi juga Palestin benar-benar dimerdekakan sebagai negara yang berdaulat dan berdikari. Bahkan Israel patut dihapuskan sebagai negara jika terus mengancam keselamatan Palestin.

Sememangnya senario itu adalah khayalan kerana dunia Islam tidak kuat. Lihatlah roket, jet pejuang dan kereta kebal Israel yang meluru masuk ke Gaza. Begitu besar peralatan senjata mereka. Bagaimana Israel menjadi begitu kuat? Tentunya bantuan daripada Amerika dan Eropah. Kekuatan Amerika dan Eropah menyebabkan Israel kuat. Iaitu selain daripada kekuatan rakyat Israel dan bangsa Yahudi di luar negara itu. Lebih-lebih lagi apabila dibandingkan dengan kedaifan rakyat Palestin, bangsa Arab dan umat Islam. Boleh didengar pelbagai pendapat tentang bagaimana rakyat Palestin di Gaza wajar diselamatkan. Kedua-dua pandangan sama ada daripada Pihak Berkuasa Palestin pimpinan Pertubuhan Pembebasan Palestin (PLO) mahupun Hamas boleh diambil kira. Tetapi akhirnya apa yang sahih adalah mereka yang menanggung kesengsaraan itu sendiri. Rakyat Palestin di Gaza itulah yang wajar didengar. Suara mereka itulah yang disampaikan oleh Hamas.

Kenyataan rasmi Hamas yang dikeluarkan dari Beirut, Lebanon ini bagaimanapun dilaporkan oleh Reuters pada 29 Disember lalu. Ia disampaikan oleh wakil rasmi Hamas di situ, Osama Hamdan. Beliau menafikan kenyataan yang dikeluarkan oleh Kementerian Luar Senegal. Apa yang dikeluarkan oleh Kementerian Luar Senegal di Dakar, ibu negara Senegal berpunca daripada Presiden Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, pengerusi Pertubuhan Persidangan Islam (OIC). Menurutnya, beliau menerima panggilan telefon daripada pemimpin Hamas, Kaled Meshaal yang berpejabat di Damsyik, Syria dengan dikatakan persediaannya untuk menandatangani perjanjian gencatan senjata melibatkan pihak Israel menghentikan serangan dan kepungan wilayah itu.

Jika benar kenyataan Meshaal itu, sudah tentu ia akan disambut baik oleh banyak pihak di dunia, sama ada di Barat mahupun kalangan Islam kerana gencatan senjata sekurang-kurangnya mengelakkan lebih banyak orang awam Palestin dibunuhnya. Walaupun jika ia benar-benar terjadi dan menjadikan satu kemenangan kepada pihak Israel tetapi lebih penting ialah keselamatan rakyat Palestin di Gaza daripada dibunuh dan wilayah itu dimusnahkan, apatah lagi diduduki kembali. Tetapi itu pandangan dari luar. Mereka yang terlibat di dalam mempunyai pandangan berbeza, termasuk Hamas. Oleh kerana mereka sendiri bertanggungjawab terhadap rakyatnya, dan ditambah pula lebih memahami politik serta strategi berperang dengan Israel, maka Hamas berpendirian bahawa perang wajar dilanjutkan, dengan apa saja senjata yang mereka miliki. Begitulah maksud kenyataan yang dikeluarkan oleh Osama ekoran daripada penafiannya terhadap makluman Presiden OIC itu. Tetapi adakah Presiden Senegal itu berbohong? Atau lebih tepat lagi pernyataan yang dikeluarkan oleh Meshaal itu hanyalah untuk kegunaan peringkat diplomatik dan bukannya sebagai makluman rasmi untuk umum. Justeru ada perkara yang tidak betul mengenai laporan itu, baik di peringkat Reuters, Presiden Senegal itu dan Hamas sendiri. Ataupun sememangnya hanya soal kesilapan teknikal yang tidak perlu diambil kira.

Bagaimanapun, di pihak Israel, adalah jelas mereka tidak berminat untuk melakukan gencatan senjata. Pada 30 Disember, AFP melaporkan kenyataan Presiden Israel, Shimon Peres bahawa ‘‘apa yang kami mahu bukannya gencatan senjata tetapi untuk menghentikan keganasan.’’ Kalau diterjemahkan ke dalam bahasa Palestin, ia bermaksud bahawa ‘‘kami tidak mahu Hamas, kami mahu menghapuskan Hamas.’’ Ini dapat difahami dengan kenyataan Menteri Infrastruktur Israel, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer pada hari yang sama bahawa gencatan senjata akan membenarkan Hamas ‘‘mengembalikan kekuatan, bangun dari kejutan dan bersedia menghadapi serangan lebih besar daripada Israel.’’ Maka adalah jelas bahawa Israel tidak mahu gencatan senjata walaupun jika Hamas mahukannya. Justeru bagi Hamas, soal gencatan senjata sudah tidak ada dalam kamus mereka. Perang sudah berlaku dan wajar diteruskan hingga ke titisan darah akhir.

Ia merupakan suatu yang kurang difahami oleh dunia luar termasuk di kalangan umat Islam sendiri. Mengapakah rakyat Palestin di Gaza sanggup berkorban sebegitu rupa walaupun berdepan dengan kekuatan senjata yang besar dari pihak Israel? Di sebalik itu pula, mengapa wajar mana-mana pihak menyalahkan Hamas dan rakyat Palestin di Gaza yang menyokongnya sedangkan yang membunuh dan menderitakan orang ialah Israel. Di Amerika, institusi intelektual termasuk media dan akademi akan menggambarkan bahawa Hamas yang patut dipersalahkan kerana mereka mengancam keselamatan Israel dan rejim Tel Aviv berhak menghancurkan parti yang mendapat sokongan rakyat Palestin di Gaza itu. Hakikat bahawa Israel menghalang Gaza untuk hidup dan merdeka tidak disebut. Bahawa Israel melanggar kehendak rakyat Palestin dengan tidak mengiktiraf Hamas juga tidak ditimbulkan. Ingatlah peristiwa-peristiwa ini: Januari 2008, Israel mengepung Gaza. Bulan berikutnya, Israel menyerang dan membunuh 120 rakyat Palestin. Jun, gencatan senjata enam bulan bermula. November, Israel menyerang Gaza dan dibalas dengan serangan roket Hamas. Pada 19 Disember, Hamas menghentikan gencatan senjata. Maka pada 27 Disember, Israel mula menyerang Gaza.

Apakah kesimpulannya? Bubarkan negara Israel dan gantikan dengan sebuah negara Palestin yang menyeluruh serta meliputi kedua-dua bangsa, Arab dan Yahudi dan ketiga-tiga agama, Islam, Yahudi dan Kristian.

Ucapan Tahniah

Tahniah buat anak saudara pupu, maksudnya anak sepupu tue, Ahmad Faridzul bin Shahadan yang telah melangsungkan perkahwinannya pada 1 Januari 2009. Moga bahagia bersama isteri tercinta dan berkekalan hingga ke anak cucu. Agak stress juga masa hadir ke majilis tersebut. Pakcik, makcik, sepupu, anak sedara semuanya sibuk bertanya giliran aku bila lagi. Hehehehehehe.... Seperti biasa jawapan ku hanyalah senyuman manis ku. Lagi-lagi anak sedara pupu ku yang lain, Zhafran@An, bising-bising bertanya bilalah Cik Zahar nak kawin. Chet. Aku tahulah ang dah bertunang. Nanti esok aku kawin aku jemputlah ang. Hohohohohohoho (",)