I sit here in my room, my mind numb as it suffers from having to read a plethora of stupid political issues day in, day out. The ignominy fence-sitters like I have to experience, reading about immature power-crazy politicians, and the comments made by their equally imbecile supporters on online social networks crying foul over every single thing the government of the day does. Every single excruciating whimsical cry pierces through my sanity that I wish I could just bitch slap each and every one of them on a daily basis for tormenting my soul.
Then there’s Ramadhan…
Then somehow virtually everyone becomes religious, starts talking about religious stuff; previous profile pics of clubbing scenes were immediately replaced by pics of the blond hair being fully-covered. I guess we love that – being seasonally-religious.
I guess it’s human to want to hope for something, up to the point of sucking up to other people’s ass and so on, as long as we can get some form of reward. And given a choice between two beneficial deeds, we would perform the one that benefits us most. Virtually every Muslim I know planned on what nights to attend the Tarawih prayers simply because there is a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) that lines up every single night’s reward for performing the prayer, even when it has been proven that the mentioned Hadith is false (Maudhu’).
A couple of weeks ago, Facebook status from users glorified the night of the middle of Syaaban (Lailatun Nisf min Shaaban). Everyone started fasting and suddenly everyone turned religious on that one day only, prayed as if that was THE night to pray and so on. Then they would quote Hadiths stating how special that day and night is, and that the revelation of the Quran was on that night; but when asked what is Nuz al-Quran if it’s not the night the Quran was revealed, the most they could answer was, “Oh, you are not a learned. Therefore, you should not ask these things.”
I may not be a learned but I know that God gave me a set of brain so I could weigh pros and cons, good and bad, logic and stupidity. Why the hell would God want you to pray five times a day when praying on a certain day equals to 10,000 prayers? All I need to do is pray on eight of this Syaaban day, year after year for eight years and I would have prayed the equivalent to my current lifetime! It’s a shortcut! And it is only human to love shortcuts! So, is that logical that there ought to be one special day to do a lifetime’s prayers? You have your brain, so use it. I am not going to answer that for you.
The Quran is there for you. But you should not just read it at face value. I do not see the point in memorizing the whole Book of God in its original language when I know jack what every verse is about, what the history behind the revelation of that verse was. For that reason too, I do not know why is Arabic made compulsory in schools for Malay/Muslims when I would rather have my children learn Mandarin and Tamil so they can grow up to learn about their Chinese and Indian brothers. What is this talk about being a Hafiz? About creating schools to churn out Huffaz? (Hafiz means ‘Guardian’ and Huffaz is its plural form). I doubt that every single Hafiz could memorize each word by how it was spelt in Arabic. But wouldn’t I be a Hafiz too, if I PDF the Quran onto a DVD and make thousands of copies? Children need to grow up as children; you can’t have them go to school in the morning, then have them attend religious studies in the afternoon, only to have them to be able to study and do their homework after all that! Even we adults feel exhausted after a day at the office. We are only better off because we do not have homeworks and exams like they do. After all, they already have religious studies class in school.
The problem with us is that all of us think we are better than God. When I was 16, I used to go out of my dormitory at night, especially on Thursday nights, hunting for house lizards, just because there was this tale that a lizard’s sound almost gave Muhammad away to the Quraisy who were after him. So, there I was with my friends all geared up for war against one of God’s supposed most-hated animal. The problem with that was, I once told myself,
“Wait! If God hates this creature so much, why is He being such a wimp, asking mortals like me to wipe out the world’s lizard population when He can wipe out the whole existence of what He created faster than I can blink?”
See, I have a brain to think with, to rationalize. Unlike some stupid cow-shit-for-brain Soldiers of God who went around petrol-bombing churches, decapitate non-Muslims, blow up innocent people be they Jews, Buddhists, Christians or fellow Muslims alike – ALL in the name of God, because to them God is such a penis-less being that cannot take care of His own divinity. These are people who say they are the learned ones but learnt nothing of the Quran.
So, that’s it. My first posting for this month of Ramadhan that until now has yet to have a title. Therefore, whatever title I decide to give it may or may not reflect the content of this posting at all.
To all Muslims, fast as you are told to, not because you seek divine rewards, but because you love to fast and not because you were told to, or because if you don’t then the person in the cubicle next to you is going to tell everyone at the office including the tea lady that you don’t fast.
You have a brain, use it.
SeaDemon Says 
Irony every living organisme born with exoskeleton covered by muscle and meat coated with skin suffer from inferior complexity which breed incompetance. That the human weakness bestow by our maker (aka god). However strangely earthlings (aka homo sapien) have the strongest level of survival mindset.
Back to Islamic teaching (I appologize if I offended anyone, sorry I’m buddhist), I’m really puzzle whether is it really in Quran that “dosa” and “pahala” do carry value? Years ago a few of my colleagues did appologize for any wrongdoings. I don’t mind this and I accepted it with an open heart. Unfortunately my heart sinked to the lowest level when the next word they said “semua reset balik kosong ye…”. This give me the image of all year long except month of Ramadhan can do any bad things and then on holy month do good things and thus the pahala can offset all the dosa previously. Like the maths -1+1=0.
I appologize again for my naive thoughts. It just what I sum up with the current situation happen in our beloved country-men
There is no value attached to anything. It doesn’t say anywhere. But that is how human beings love to see it. They want things that are tangible. For example, if you tell them “You are bad, you will go to hell.” But you still see people committing crimes and sins. Because hell is intangible. When you tell them that “if you get caught for drug trafficking, you will be hanged to death” then they might not do it because that is something they see in the law books. But for some, they might think “IF I get caught…if not, it’s okay.”
There is no 1+1=0. Not even in Islam. Otherwise there is no point of having hell to punish people for their wrongdoings here on earth.
Human has been bestow with 5 basic senses (See, Hear, Smell, Taste & Feel). It is natural for us to rely on the tangible things to represent the level of survival & security. Once both survival & security is satisfied, then we crave for satisfaction which tangible things won’t able to explain much.
Sometimes I do wonder how big or small are heaven and hell. Would it able to accommodate ever increasing of human population? But ever since I watched the Discovery Channel of continuous expanding of universe, just I make it heaven & hell do expand simultaneously.
there is another ‘sense’ that you left out – common sense, which is not so common these days. i thinkONLY god has the right to measure ‘dosa’ or ‘pahala’ and not any other mortal souls. god has not even weight us out yet. supposedly he waits til everything ends (eg: judgement day) before he weights out our dosa and pahala – event when he already knows the ending of all this thing we call life.
nothing make sense anymore. the more i use my brain, the less sane i will be. the less sane i am, the more stress i get and when that happen, i become less nice to others. so, would it be less of an evil if i leave my brain at home and go on to my daily life being nicer to others and pretend that all these around me make sense to every one including me?
thats a cool thing of being human – we get to make decision even when we know its the least best options or its a wrong one. bla bla bla.. nice entry. thanks for posting.