Has the Malays slack in their faith in Islam?

The goings on these couple of months and the Court trial going on fornication and rape by the Malay Muslims seems very worrying. Even death has occurred at the scene of a fornication. And the rape of underage children by some Muslim adults had also occurred, the children being entrusted to be cared for at his house. And also someone made a video tape of his sexual act on a couple of girlfriends, the tapes are meant for sale to the public. And I cannot imagine a Malay Muslim girl living together with an unmarried(?) non-Muslim man, and that has occurred. These are splashed in the local press. All these involve lack of moral values of Malay men and women. It may be just a few example but it can also be the tip of the iceberg. Had Muslim laws been implemented, the punishment of all these crimes can be quite severe. I mean some of these are clear confession in Court so they can easily be charged under the Muslim laws if Malaysia is really a Muslim country. But Malaysia is not a Muslim country, maybe a big percentage of its citizens confess to be Muslim but how many are really Muslim according to the Koraan and the Sunnah? That is a big unanswered question.

And of course we have not taken into consideration the supposed to be Muslim people gambling, drinking alcoholic drink (never mind those involved with the manufacture, the packaging, the distributing and the server of these alcoholic drinks; all are haram in the Muslim religious sense - and of course the person who give those licences and those who sign those licences) and those eating non-halal food, there is even some doubts that many food served in Malaysia are non-halal but no research is properly done. I am pretty certain that if research is properly done we can find many of the food served as 'halal' has doubt on their halal status (this is just my guess, but I stand corrected).

And the number of Muslim men and women not praying the 5 times a day as required, the paying of Zakat and all that. There are probably the majority of these Muslims. But of course you see them fasting during the month of Ramadhan, and making many trips to Mecca either for the Haj or the Umrah. The very basic however have been left far undone. And I suppose the most simple thing as big ablution (hadas after sex) may not be done by those having sex (I cannot prove this). Imagine if you die while having sex not with you legally Muslim way marriage spouse. What a sin, and I cannot imagine the amount of sin that you carry with you to the next world. Only Allah knows and only Allah can do something about them. Its too late to repent by then anyway, so you are at he mercy of Allah. And many knows that as well. It should not happen that way if you read and understand the Koraan and Sunnah properly. Sometimes I fell very sad when I see Muslims who do not even bother to pray the 5 times required prayer per day, I see most mosques are empty on such occasions, and I these Muslims in hotels, shopping complexes and I can imagine how many of them are home as well just watching TV or even a few probably walking about in town looking for prey for the purpose of fornication. Its a world full of sin, in a Muslim sense. I cannot talk of other religions as I do not know enough about them to write anything about.

And now I am hearing a new term. Islam Hadhari (I am told that it should be pronounced as Hadha-ri, I am not conversant in Arabic so I cannot say how it should really be pronounced). I am told that this new concept of Islam is on how to rule a country. But I have seen see any book on the subject, perhaps I have not found them yet. I have seen a book called "Fiqh Daulah" by Yusof Al-Qardawi which describes on how a Muslim country should be ruled. Again I am not a politician so I am not able to say which is which. But I know that the book "Fiqh Daulah" is very clear on the concept and it even describes the methods of such rules by taking verses from the Koraan and quoting the Sunnah.

And I also worry about the situation that not many Ulama are available to preach in mosques and suraus. Only chosen Ulama are allowed to preach. And there are not many chosen Ulama are available. They say why not watch TV for there are many Ulama preaching on TV. I for one do not watch TV and what more watching these Ulama on TV is not like hearing them direct where I can meet them so that I can interact and ask questions and get direct answers from them on the spot. And at one time some higher ups in the Govt. commented that why is it that the Malays like to take Islamic Study at the U. Because of that people were discouraged from taking Islamic Study which has resulted in a dearse of people who can competently teach the Muslim religion and who also can lead the Muslim prayers. This is especially serious in the rural areas and even in the town areas where there may not be an appointed Imam, say in small suraus.

And many Ulama had died or killed. Thus their numbers has been reduced drastically. This happens all over the world. Once upon a time when the British ruled India they burned a lot of the Koraan because someone in the British Parliament said that the Koraan is the source of the strength in Islam. But what the British did no realise then was that there are thousands of Muslim who knows the Koraan and who can recite the Koraan by heart. So the Koraan got rewritten, checked and confirmed the correctness of its verses and once again Islam flourished. Another strength they tried to overcome was the Friday prayer and the prayer in masses for all the 5 daily prayers. They have not been successful to date and will never be successful.

And now Islam is branded as a fanatical religion. In Islam there is no such thing as fanaticism or moderate or liberal. Islam is Islam and the Koraan and the Sunnah are the guides. If you do not follow these then you are not a Muslim. Muslim must have immovable belief in Allah (very deep in their heart) knows the religious theories, practical and philosophy, and these must be taken together and you cannot just take one and discard the others. If you discard any of them then you are not following Islam as a religion; you may call yourself a Muslim it will Allah call you a Muslim? You will not know about it until you reach the next world and by then it will be too late.

What is the future for the Islam? Plenty. In Malaysia alone, people are getting more conscious of the Muslim religion, of course this relates to the Muslims (of others I do not know). Some may try hard to stop the growth of Islam, but its like King Knute who tried to stop the tide. Going to Mecca for example is a common activity for Muslims in Malaysia, for the Haj as well as for the Umrah. In fact all if not most of the agents doing this 'going to Mecca' business find themselves even not being able to get seats on aeroplanes for their customers, some even resort to extra trips such as to Cairo or Jordan or even Dubai routes just to get their customers to Mecca. And many young Muslims are learning Arabic to give them better understanding of the Koraan, as the true Koraan is always written in Arabic. Learning Arabic also enhance them to understand the Hadith so that they may practice the religion more closely to what Islam was all about 14 centuries ago. And there are the Tahfiz Schools being built everywhere, Tahfiz Schools are Schools where Muslim youths learn the Koraan more extensively and they produce graduates who can recite all the verses in the Koraan. These Schools will produce the future Muslim teachers and missionary to spread the teachings as given by Allah to Prophet Muhammad PBUH..

I have now expressed my opinion, and some time back I wrote an article on faith which I want to re-visit and use as a continuation of this article.
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My little Oxford dictionary defines faith as "trust; religious belief; creed; loyalty, trustworthiness".

On the religious side, and I do not know how other religions define faith, I noted the following for Islam.
Narrated Abu Huraira: One day while the Prophet was sitting in the company of some people, (The angel) Gabriel came and asked, "What is faith?" Allah's Apostle replied, 'Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, (the) meeting with Him, His Apostles, and to believe in Resurrection." Then he further asked, "What is Islam?" Allah's Apostle replied, "To worship Allah Alone and none else, to offer prayers perfectly, to pay the compulsory charity (Zakat), and to observe fasts during the month of Ramadan." Then he further asked, "What is Ihsan (perfection)?" Allah's Apostle replied, "To worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you cannot achieve this state of devotion then you must consider that He is looking at you." Then he further asked, "When will the Hour be established?" Allah's Apostle replied, "The answerer has no better knowledge than the questioner. But I will inform you about its portents. -1. When a slave (lady) gives birth to her master. -2. When the shepherds of black camels start boasting and competing with others in the construction of higher buildings. And the Hour is one of five things which nobody knows except Allah. The Prophet then recited: "Verily, with Allah (Alone) is the knowledge of the Hour--." (31. 34) Then that man (Gabriel) left and the Prophet asked his companions to call him back, but they could not see him. Then the Prophet said, "That was Gabriel who came to teach the people their religion." SAHIH BUKHARI Hadith 1.47 Narrated Anas: Allah's Apostle said, "From among the portents of the Hour are (the following): -1. Religious knowledge will be taken away (by the death of Religious learned men). -2. (Religious) ignorance will prevail. -3. Drinking of Alcoholic drinks (will be very common). -4. There will be prevalence of open illegal sexual intercourse. SAHIH BUKHARI HADITH 1.80

So Islam has defined faith quite clearly from the hadith above. And faith has no scientific explanation, as far as I know, just a belief in the unknown, in the unseen and the hereafter. A sort of fait acompli, if that is the right term to be used. Maybe not but to my little mind, its close enough.

In everyday terms faith is trust, but at a higher level. Trust in yourself, trust that you will wake up every morning, trust that the sun will rise tomorrow and the moon will be full on the 15th day of the lunar month. Trust that your child will come back from/after school when he/she finishes the school day, trust that your husband/wife is faithful to you (here faith is used because what a wife/husband does behind your back you would not know). A faith in things that you have no real knowledge of (and maybe no control of).

And faith goes higher than just trust in the terms used, but it goes at a different level at a tangent, like loyalty. You have faith in your country so you are very loyal to it. The opposite is true, if you have no faith in the country then you become disloyal. Maybe not to the country itself, but to the systems in the country if you find that the systems in the country do not meet your belief system. Or even if you find that the people ruling the country using a system that you have no faith in, you make yourself disloyal, to the system and to the people creating and managing the system. You are not an expert in the system so you rely on how you see the system being created and managed, those are the unseen and not within your mean to understand fully. Do many of us understand how a Parliamentary procedures work, how the legal system works, how the Administration system works, but we have faith in them because we have seen (or we think that we have seen) how they each works. We may not experience it but we know that its there. We trust the people operating the systems even though we do not understand the systems fully. We have faith in the people operating the system. But once the systems proves that they do not (or seen to be not working) then we loose faith, not only on the people operating the systems but on the systems themselves.

Religion is something else, it is of higher level than to have see how the systems works, its a belief and the belief system is a higher ranking system (to my mind) than the faith as we know it on the normal daily system that we are using. In Islam its a definite belief system, belief in Allah is the first one, and so on and on. Now you do not see Allah, so how do you have faith?. Then this is where the higher level belief system comes on. I shall not deliberate on this belief system in this write up.

For faith to be continuous, there must be consistency and may be trustworthiness. Would you have faith if you have no trust? Let us come nearer home. Would you trust your wife/husband if you have no faith in her/him? So trust on your part and trustworthiness on her/his part is very important in a faith system. Can you imagine if you do not trust your wife/husand, and you have no faith in her/him. Can you stick by her/his side all day long. If your wife/husband works for someone, I think it will be before long that the wife/husband get sacked. So faith is related to trust, but I am not sure which comes first, like the egg and the chicken situation. Someone says to me that chicken come first because the chicken has to be mated before they produce the egg. Can I trust that argument? If I trust that argument should I have faith in that argument. Difficult isn't it, some one may argue that the egg must come first as the egg may be not from chicken but from other animals and there is a mutant process in the egg which results in the birth of a chicken. Such argument can go on and on until the cows come home, nobody wins as each will try to defend his/her stand.

Defending one's stand? Now again come the religious faith. In Islam, it is considered correct to defend one's stand as long as these stands are based on certain known rules, not just what is in your mind, or from what you have heard other people say. Or even from your own experience as experience may vary from person to person. I might say that the moon looks blue to me because I heard a song called "Blue Moon", but you may say its bright because you heard a song called "Tearing Bulan" (translated as Bright Moon). In Islam we are always advised to go to the knowledgeable and if these knowledgeable (knowledgeable in Islamic religion that is - ulamak) cannot resolve the problem, then the last reference will be the Hadiths and the Koraan. Of course there are many interpretations of the Hadiths and the Koraan, so many people say. That is why all Muslims are expected to study and understand the Hadiths and the Koraan. Have I gone too deep into the Muslim religion now?

Now back to faith. Each religions in this world has its own faith system. No religion is the same, and some people claim that all religion are the same. If they are all the same, then there should only be one religion. But the system is that many religions exist because each has its own belief system depending on their birth 'accident' and the way they are brought up. I will go deep into this as other people may have other opinions, and I have mine. But the faith system goes beyond religion to some people. Or are what I call beyond is still a religion? For example, is Feng Shui (wind & water) a religion?

Many people (not necessarily the Chinese) believe in this Yin & Yang thing and as they say if one believes in it half the battle is won as so many things can be achieved if the person believes in it. Naturally most of it is based on Taoism. Now can anyone tell me what is Taoism. Is it a religion, or is it just a belief system or is it something else?. But many people has faith in Feng Shui, or else books on Feng Shui will not sell like hot cakes. And the funny thing is that even Muslim practices Fen Shui. I know of some of my former bosses consult Feng Shui experts even before they buy a house or the direction to face their desk in the office. Is that why they are 'bosses'? Now I call this 'syirik', that is believing in powers other than the power of Allah, that is you have no faith in Allah to guide you in your lives in this world. I may be wrong n my argument, to some people, but looking back how Islam defines faith, one of which is defined as belief in Allah, then I am confident that my argument is right if you are a true faithful Muslim.

So faith is a very complex subject to deal in. I am dealing with is here, because I believe that I need some place where I can let off steam. Years ago when thing did not go right for me, I lost faith in the life I lead in this world, and I believed then that no one can put my life right until I do it myself. But I knew that I could not do it alone, there is must be a guiding force or else I would not know which direction to take. There are so many cross roads in our lives and so many junctions with so many traps at the end of the road from that junction. In fact you cannot even see the tip of your nose so how can you possibly see what is ahead of your life. You cannot even tell what will happen tomorrow. So I come into this system, whatever one may call it and I hold on to that system faithfully well into today, but tomorrow? As I said, I do not even know what will happen tomorrow. But with faith (or whatever one wishes to call it) I know that events will go right, even if wrong to my shallow thinking it is right to the power far above my shallow thinking.

To shout back, e-mail: mylias@tm.net.my