Saturday, February 27, 2010

Cringes

My friend told me that it is getting difficult to talk to me nowadays. I suppose I am. We were talking about a paper report which puts the blame on the weather (rain) that causes disturbance on something (I forgot what it was).

On another note, there was a recent event here in Qtar - camel race. There was heavy rain on the very day. The article came out in the country's leading english paper as "Rain disrupts National Show : Rain played spoilsport and dampened the spirit of the National day celebration." And the article went on and on telling that the photojournalists were not happy, how the promoters were forced to suspend the much publicised show and the camels were also in low spirit.

You would think, for a country where the rain comes once a year and the amount only make up for perhaps two days rain in Msia, people would leap for joy when it rains. Oh I remembered they had to make prayers to ask for rain many time before. HERE But here the paper goes about how unhappy people were about the rain.

And also with FB status. It cringes me so much when I read people curse the rain because it spoils their plan. It is understandable to see status like "Gosh! It's hot! I'm standing in front of the AC for the whole day". Or "It's so cold, I think I have lost my ears"

But "Daymn! It rains! There goes our picnic plan" just makes me cringe and scared.

Rain is when one of the times when du'a is most maqbul and we use the blessed time to curse? To be angry? Who are we angry at? Is it not to the creator of the rain? Angry at the creator of the rain when it is the time that He wants to give you what you ask for? Angry at THE creator? You dare to be angry at ALLAH? *nangis*

But my friends asked me, so how to say when rain, like in my post about Jeddah happen, and the destruction seemed like it was caused by the rain. Qadr Allah, I would say. If He doesn't will anything to happen, it won't happen. Wallahu'alam. That's all I can think off. If you know more, please share it with us.

And when it rains, make du'a. Beg for His mercy. Beg for Allah's blessings. Also ask Allah to give us beneficial rain and not harmful. In the end Allah knows best what He gives to His slaves.

But i think, besides that, perhaps I am getting difficult to talk to. Dah jadi party pooper and boring gamaknya. Ahaks!

Sometimes I feel that I am at the crossbridge. Should I say it or not? Should I? Yes? no? A part of me feels, alaa, masing-masing dah besar taulah. On the other hand, enjoin good, forbid evil. You will be asked if you didn't tell. Susahnya.

In f@cebook, you can see many things, which may represent part of people's habit. So you can see what people like to do, play games, build farm, build restaraunt, jadi mafia, tengok gambar, status happy, status marah, tulis notes etc.

Unfortunately also, comes with all these are some application yang fun and normal to many people but is really a red alert siren : the horoscope. JENG JENG JENG!!

It cringes me to see people play with horoscope. It cringes me seeing them subscribing to the application. It cringes me seeing people subscribing to "what is my luck today", fortune cookie and the likes.

Stay away from horoscope. Even for fun. The fun comes when coincidentally the prediction is correct. Then what? Believe? And later what? Looking forward to it? Avoiding what it says to avoid? Doing what it says you should do?

Horoscope and believing in zodiac may all "fun" way of telling the future. But nothing is fun when we know that rasulullah sa.w.. said

The Salaah (daily prayer) of whoever approaches a fortuneteller and asks him about anything will not be accepted for forty days and nights.'
[Saheeh Muslim vol.4,p. 1211, no 5440]


And this is just approaching, or reading, baca aje tak percaya pun, fun fun ajelah ni. Even only reading, and not believing will make your salah not accepted for forty days. Bear in mind though, this is not a green light for you not to pray because if you do not pray, that will mean another thing. Your ibadah will not be accepted unless you repent with sincere repentance. And what if you die in the state of not making repentance yet?

And more to it than that, astrology is like fortunetelling because it deals with, guess what, telling the future. And fortunetelling or telling the future are shirk. And it is shirk because it is claiming the knowledge of the unseen and the future of which the knowledge only belongs to Allah.

With Him are the keys to the unseen and no one knows except Him. Al An'aam 6:59

Say: None in the heavens or earth knows the unseen except Allah An naml 27:65


I understand this is not how we feel or our niyyah to think that we have Allah's power to tell the future. Or the fact of just reading it, we are admitting that someone else has the power. But when it comes to the matter like this, there is no fooling around and poking around. RAsulullah s.a.w. said

"What I fear the most for my nation after my time is: the injustice of their leaders, the belief in the stars and the denial of divine destiny" Colected by Inm Asaakir and authenticated by As Suyotee


Let it be known that shirk is major sin. Cooperating in shirk is also major sin. It is a sin so grave that it will not be forgiven by Allah unless you repent when you are still alive. This also include believing that the sign of stars determine the personalities.

Even if everyone is doing it, it doesn't mean that it is right. Do we really dare to say, this is just for fun, when we are walking into the fire of shirk? And if we don't believe in the horoscope, don't go near it, for Shaytan will make you believe it, bi iznillah. He is the master of trick and have thousand of years of experience in the field. And shaytan's ultimate objective is to make us Kufr and join him in hellfire. And the moment you believe in the horoscope you read, you will fall into Kufr.

Whoever approaches an oracle or fortuneteller and believes in what he says, has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad s.a.w. reported by Abu hurayrah collected by Ahmad and Abu Dawood.


Put your trust in Allah, And fear Him and fear of death in the state of shirk. i ask Allah that He preserves us and guide us to the correct path.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Lelaki Perempuan

I am finding myself more and more in love with arabic language.Tak pandai mana pun lagi. Tapi with knowledge smaller that a micro drop of water pun dah fall in love, cannot imagine kalau dah banyak.

So I thought of sharing a few things with you as what I have shared with some sisters here.

As most of you would have known already arabic language distinguished the difference between masculine (Mudzakar) and female (Muanath) names. Not only in the nouns but also in the verb.

For example you say a sentence, "Read Quran", you can't tell whether the one who reads it is female or male unless you put the word she or he. But in arabic, even the sentence "read Quran" can tell you whether the reader is female or male.

تقرأُُ القرآن
Female reading Quran

يقرأ القرآن
Male reading Quran

The difference is the letter "Ta" and "Ya" before the word read.

And also in general rule to tell whether a noun is feminine, it generally has the "Ta marbutah" - ة at the end.

So you see the word
جنّة Jannah
آية Ayah (Ayat)
بقرة Baqaroh (cow)

All these indicate feminine.

But there are exceptions. Because the word hamzah Also ends with Ta' marbutah. Muawiyyah and Umaiyah. All of them have ta' marbutah at the end, but are male names. So they are not feminine by default.

Also there are some words which do not end with ta' marbutah but are also feminine. I think at the moment, I don't want to dwell in it yet.

Quite some time ago, perhaps when i started learning arabic, I came to this ayah (verse) that struck me the most about this quran language. On how Allah has put wisdom in the people practicing this language and Allah has built this language so rich that when the Quran was sent down, it became a medium that was easy to understand and yet even better than the one they had.

Please refer to the verse in Surah An Naml 27:18

This verse is about the ant, who after realising the Prophet Sulaiman's a.s. troops were coming, called out to the other fellow ants to hide in their dwellings.

general


If you are like me, who would just read the quran because we can read it and read the tafseer, then we can only perceive from this verse that an ant called out some ants to run for seclusion.

But if we know the arabic word قالت نملة in the verse, we would immediately recognise that the word قالت would indicate that the one is speaking is female and the word نملة with a "ta' marbutah" at the end means a female ant. Essentially in this verse, it is saying that a female ant called out to the other ants. Not just any ant, but a female ant.

Among the different castes and working system of ants, the worker ants are sterile female ants. They are the majority of the colony. Among their jobs are to take care of mother ant and her babies - clean and feed them. they also build new corridors and galleries for the nests. They also guard their nest and would continually clean it. They are also responsible to search for food and store honeydew. Taken from The Miracle in the ant : Harun Yahya. And Allah knows best. You can download it HERE.

Simple read on summary of genders of ant castes HERE.
And Mr. Wiki HERE.

Subhanallah. This verse was sent down 1400 years ago to the unlettered prophet s.a.w.. I presume nobody would care to study about ants at those time to differentiate the gender of the different caste of ants. Wallahualam. And here Allah is telling you, merely by adding a letter ta' marbutah to the noun "Naml - ant", a scientific prove of life that Allah has ordained from the beginning can be seen.

I am at awe of this ayah and the fact that the quran language could easily point out that it was a female ant who called out - also a prove that ants do communicate. Subhanallah.

This also indicate to me that the true meaning of the quran verses is somewhat lost in the english or even malay translation. And it made me even more determine to know more. Oh do I have much time?

I used this verse as what I called "Pembakar semangat" for those who want to learn the language of Quran. But you probably have to hear me pot pet to feel the burn. hahahhaha.



But then this is only my own theory of limited knowledge of the arabic. Perhaps the singular form of the word ant would have the ta marbutah anyway while the plural form is mudzakar. Do correct me if I am wrong. Since Allah is the greatest of all planners, this is not mere coincident, I believe. Who can plan anything to this detail? To the nahu of the language?

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Memori Indah

Hahahahhaa. Apa punya tajuk daaa

Subhanallah! Alhamdulillah! My past few weeks have been tremendously full. I was initially occupied with my arabic exam, and in between busy preparing (taklah busy mana) for an Outdoor ibadah camp (purpose of the entry) and then immediately preparing for my tajweed exam (It's today. I don't think I did flying colours)

I went to this Outdoor Ibadah camp organised by the centre that I am working in. hahaha can I use this term? Working in? You know the place where the Malaysians gather to teach the deen to our youngsters here in Qtar. Anyway the call it K@f@ Qtar. So some of the seniors of the teachers who have experience in doing ibadah camp organised this. The best thing of all was we had it at the sand dune itself. Yabedabeduuuu!

Masya Allah! Tabarakallah! They really did a good job!

I am happy that I was asked to help and I was so glad I did. I am tremendously satisfied with the experience I gather being the facilitator for this outdoor camping.

Yeah sure I have been camping before. But the ones I went to are entirely lagha. In factnya rasanya masa muda-muda dulu, that's where we meet the guys..but I didn't meet any though. And sure I have been to some ibadah camp. But..yyaaaaaawwwnn..mostly are filled with talks which are filled up to late night and after that kena bangun qiyam. How lah to appreciate? Or maybe it's just the devil in me.

qatarBut this one was filled with action packed activities very suitable to my adventurous nature. The participants are mostly teenagers and the to be teens soon. Alhamdulillah, I have always liked working with teenagers or interacting with them. As long as they are not rude, I like to be their friends or aunties as they call me nowadays. :P. Picture on the left are the girls in my group, Umm Salamah. We won by the way. Tee he he

If before, I like mixing with them because I love tapping these young mind so hopefully I can still be in touch when my kids' time come. Now to add to it, I am hoping that can impart something with them so they don't spend their precious time growing old like I did. Wasted years of nothingness.

qatarI enjoyed my time and I think sometimes I forget that I was not the one playing the games. LOL. When they need to search for clue, out of my nature nak buat kerja, I searched high and low for the clues too. But the part I love most was guiding the young ones to understand the clues given. They are required to think. A LOT! And they are required to search through the Quran for answers. Understandably some find it harder than others. I don't know the answers of the questions actually. So I went through it with them. Ask them to READ s l o w l y or LOUDLY. Guide them to think.

So I was so sebok looking at nearly all teams making sure they are ok and not stuck here and there. Sungguh over. Picture on the left is one of the boys' group,Amr Al 'As. Haziq's group. I am just happy to see haziq was the one with the pen. They won the boys' team. Tee he he

I am happy with this activity because I see it as a way to narrow the gap between the adult and the teenagers which I find very important for this age. they need role models whom they can emulate. Someone they can admire for the right values and also someone they can respect. respect must be earned. And with teenagers now (eh even my time), the challenges are greater because you have to compete with everything else. It's nice to give them a chance to speak their opinion the right way. I am not an expert and it is a bit too late for me to be one. I am not sure whether they would find it beneficial. Above all the fun and games. Perhaps it's a start.

The expat children here, come to think of it, are usually neglected. They mix with expats from other countries and do their own thing. the adults rue everything and they have to tag along. Makan-makan rumah oranglah. They go to movies and sleep overs (DANGEROUS). They do not have a guided activity. Little interaction between adults and the young ones. They are just here because they are our kids.

This is indeed a good start. Barakallahufik to the ones who organised.

qatar qatar


I don't know how effective this programmes usually are, but I pray it does leave an impact to them. If not soon but later. That one day, at least, they would remember..hey i've learned that before.

The weather was cold when we were there but sprinkles of rain now and then. But overall it was really nice.

qatar


May Allah guides us all to do the right thing. May Allah make these young ones leaders of the Muttaqun.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Zaman dahulu kala

Sya is doing work about the Romans at school. It involves learning how they live their life, their food, the kind of work they do.

Anyway they end it today by dressing up like the Romans. So you can choose to be a soldier and wear the glimmering helmet with shield and armour or chose to be a slave. Or maybe some would chose the toga and wear the beatle's hair. Or a gladiator. Those shoes apparently are in fashion.

Sya wore a dress like the Lady of The Court.*Macam Bagus*

Do you know in the old times all of them were wearing very modest dress? Abaya like. Perhaps feminism and all these women lib thingy causes fabric to shrink on women.

I am not sure in what era was it that they actually wear chest popping dress like you see in epic movies like in the Other Boleyn Girl for example. Really when it is cold, not wearing proper jacket to cover my chest will make me cough profusely. Let alone chest popping dress with cape which does not cover much. But I suppose that's me.

Anyway, i bought some velvet fabric, a simple black silver lace and designed a simple abaya and send it to the tailor (because I cannot sew). And taraaaa Sya got herself a "Roman" lady of the court dress.

And not only in the old times they wore modest loose dress, no way in those times they wear pants, they also wore head covering. Which makes this theme a very easy one to do.

For extra accessories I got her some silver (fake) and black bracelets. And long silver (fake) necklace with dangling bits which I used as her waist belt .

Sya loves the dress. I love it too.

And it was made long enough, so Insya Allah boleh buat baju raya. Ahaks!

sya sya