Tag: Islam

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On Mercy and Compassion

During Ramadan, I think a lot about how, of all His Ninety-Nine Names that He has claimed for Himself, it is The Merciful and The Compassionate that takes centre stage.

Ar Rahman. Ar Rahim.

Almost every chapter in the Quran would be prefaced with Bismillahirrahmanirrahim – In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and the Most Compassionate.

Given how so many of our religious functionaries can spew fire and brimstone over His Justice and His Punishment, it is curious that it is Mercy and Compassion that is central to the Muslim conception of God. The satanic desire to elevate oneself, to inflate one’s ego – I was made out of fire, unlike that other puny creature made merely out of clay – can often lead to a sense of misplaced grandeur, and has certainly led many to believe, probably erroneiously, that they speak with His authority.

If the Christian God is said to privilege Love, then the Muslim God puts the relationship between the Creator and the human in its proper place: the makhluq are humble creatures who depend on Him for everything: for our wealth, for our success, for every breath of air that we take. We need His Mercy and His Compassion for our survival, for our very existence.

I believe that by putting Mercy and Compassion at the very centre of Muslim ritual and practice, God is modeling the way for us to exist in our own everyday life and in our dealings with our fellow humans. Prioritise mercy and compassion with your loved ones, with the ones you meet in your everyday.

If Mercy and Compassion are at the heart of the nature of the Divine, then by being merciful and compassionate ourselves, we too can strive to touch the Divine in everything that we do, and everything that we are.

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Tentang Lebai Alphard

(dengan pohonan ampun maaf buat penulis lagu asal)

Sepohon kayu daun berlendir
Lebat bunganya serta buahnya
Walaupun mulut berbuih "takbir!"
Kalau dah tak ikhlas apa gunanya?

Lihatlah, situ, si Lebai Alphard
Kopiah putih, hidupnya mewah
Rumah banglo tersergam megah
Akhlaknya bau bak ubat gegat!

Tunggang agama sehari-hari
Elaun berkoyan poket sendiri
Supaya nanti peroleh undi
Kuasa duniawi dijunjung tinggi.
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On Wokeness and Privilege

There is a lot of talk now, not just about wokeness, but also about a so-called anti-woke movement – a counter-revolution.

For my part, I try as hard as I can to listen – really *listen* – not just to what people are saying, but also to what I am feeling as these things are being said.

For one, I think it is important to understand the motives underlying – and the emotions flowing through – these conversations. In many instances, of course, the recent rise of “wokeness” is a legitimate uprising against injustice and oppression. Indeed, it is part of a long-running moral arc of struggle – for the right of the slave to be free, for the right of the woman to vote, for the right of the poor to live dignified lives.

At the same time, I also recognise that as a straight Muslim Malay male, I am part of the dominant narrative in the land where I live. Many of the institutions and incentives are kindly predisposed (if not outrightly rigged!) – if not in my outright favour, then at the very least in the favour of those who look like me, who sound like me, who have names like mine.

It is too easy, I think, to simply dismiss “wokeness” – and the often-frustrating polemics that have arisen in the wake of its ascendance. Much of it can be grating, ingenuous, or even plain outrageous. But I think “wokeness” is, or should be, something that speaks to the core of what it means to live a moral life: to be just in our dealings with others, to treat others with dignity and respect, to do unto others as we would like others to do unto us.

One of the most gratifying aspects of my faith, for me, is that Islam was born in the deepest reaches of the desert, and that the message resonated most, in its earliest days, with the enslaved, the poor, the marginalised, the downtrodden, the oppressed. Muhammad did not pander to the rich, and indeed he refused riches when it was offered to him by the great and the good of Makkah, if only he would shut up on all that God business.

And Muhammad taught us that everyone had access to Him through His Scripture: there was no need for a Church or a Rabbinate to intercede or to mediate on behalf of the believers. Salvation was offered to anyone and everyone, and we will all be judged on the content of our character and the good works that we do on this Earth.

So whenever I get annoyed at reading something that someone had written or said, I try to remind myself that “wokeness” is, at the heart of it, a plea for justice. Yes, there will be those who try to profit from “wokeness” – either from what they stand to gain from through what is demanded, or merely from the satisfaction of being up on the moral high horse of performativeness. But we still have a duty to enact and perform justice by ourselves, in the acts that we do in our own small circle of existence.

That is all that anyone can truly ask for.

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On the Friday Khutbah

For years, I had made it a point to drive some distance away from my workplace in order to attend Friday prayers at ISTAC – an outpost of the International Islamic University Malaysia, where the khutbahs are delivered in English, and (for most of the time) the sermons are prepared and delivered in person by a member of the academic staff of ISTAC, rather than the usual regurgitation of the bland and inane texts provided by our esteemed religious bureaucracies.

I finally gave up the ghost some months back, after realising that even in that intellectual oasis, the government-sanctioned text has begun to rear its rather boring head. To be fair, there were still many occasions when the sermons were prepared and delivered by ISTAC academic staff – as a treat, sometimes ISTAC would even open its khutbah platform to external speakers. On one memorable occasion, an Australian Uyghur preacher was invited to speak, and he gave such an impassioned sermon on the plight of his fellow Uyghur brothers and sisters, that many of us were moved to tears. (Needless to say, there are no tears involved when it comes to the usual gomen sermons – most of the jama’ah would be busy trying to stay awake, instead.) But recently, more often than not, the officially-approved text would be delivered, and in the usual tones: either the typical uninvolved drone of the bored state-employed imam, or the declamatory faux-politician style of the wannabe celebrity preacher.

So recently, as I started reading Khaled Abou El Fadl’s excellent compilation of his Friday khutbahs, I was reminded of how the subordination of Muslim scholars to the needs and wants of the State has truly led to the current sorry state of the intellectual stagnation and sheepification of the Muslim ummah. With the excuse of trying to prevent the politicisation of our masjids, our religious apparatchiks have rather succeeded also in preventing any sort of enlightenment for the ummah on these weekly occasions when we would gather as one people, down our tools and close our shops, to attend the masjid and glorify His Name.

I can only take solace from the hope that, with the Friday sermon forever entrenched as a core pillar of the Muslim experience, the time might come, one day, when these moments of gathering would rise from their current sordid state to become what they were in the time of the Prophet Muhammad: a constant madrasah for the education and edification of the Muslim ummah.