Of religion and religious

I have to admit that the idea for this entry is not entirely original. In fact the motivation for typing this is triggered from the reading of my friend’s Blog. This friend of mine being he’s usual provocative and controversy inducing self decided to comment on the various Nasyeed group names derived from Bahasa Melayu and modified to English words which incidentally rendered the a great number of the names meaningless or at the most, daft. He when further so as to quote the names of those groups; All One, Saff One, Nur One, Feel One, Feel Honey, Are Buddy and In Heart, just to name a few and he made some “smart” remarks over the names. I read the article a few days back, had a few ha has and didn’t think much of it thereafter. To be honest, I didn’t think anybody would… but many did actually…

It attracted more than sixty comments in about three days and I was surprise at the types of response it generated. They were a number of comments containing pure hatred, disgust and written so vulgarly. And some of the arguments… ‘My God!’... was so shallow and narrow, more so than Sungai Gombak. And one Mr. Anonymous even went so far as to question and judge another’s faith and others even degraded themselves to name calling. I seriously wasn’t expecting this from a group of people who both promote and patron Islamic entertainment that is Nasyeed. These were supposed to be quote religious unquote people in favour of da’wah, for God’s sake! I expected that if they were any arguments than it would be laid out maturely, intellectually and in wisdom. But no, it was the exact opposite. At one point it was almost like two guys arguing over who had the longer penis. Embarrassing and appalling!

But come to think of it, I’m not and shouldn’t be all too surprised or even perplexed by this. The muslim society is now littered and plagued by muslims who are self proclaimed holier than holy and more judgmental than Judge Dredd. Now this group of people are usually those who have been recently “enlightened” religiously (so they thought anyway) and brought out from the dark by having acquired a few additional Quranic verses and Al-Hadith from their limited studies by attending religious education formally or informally and focusing mainly to the realm of fiqh. Hence the believe that they know more than others, hence the thinking that they are closer to God, hence their motivation to judge others. Had they actually paid better attention in class – or attended classes long enough before deciding to enlist themselves as Judge Dredd, they would also learn that Islam is a religion of life and it governs men’s life as a whole - ‘syumul’ I believe is the term. It is not just confined to the hukm of haram, wajib, etc but more so a religion that promotes morality, compassion and wisdom.

Being the muslims that we are, it is not our role to judge others or be judgmental for that matter, especially when it comes to issues relating to faith and piety. It is not our place to say that a muslim girl having red coloured hair and scantily dressed would certainly be in hell whilst another wearing a veil all the way to her ankle will surely be booked a spot in heaven. I would rightly think that this should be left to Allah’s will. Though I should make it clear that I do not take lightly the importance of covering the aurah and neither should you! Covering the aurah is a must and there’s no two way about it.

I was on the LRT quite recently at which point my sight was drawn to decently dressed muslim lady clad in proper veil and baju kurung seated on one of the few seats available. A stop later at Abdullah Hukum, a blind man stepped in the plain sight of all who were there. I deliberately observed who amongst the eight persons seated would give up their seats to the poor man. And it wasn’t the lady clad in proper veil and baju kurung… Hmm… So what happen to the compassion of that muslim lady? You would think that a lady like that would literally jump up and surrendered her seat without much thought, but that unfortunately was not the case. I am not contradicting myself here by being judgmental. After all, for all I know the lady could have been in pain and therefore rightly seating; but what this is, is just drawing and example of how form is not entailed by substance, which goes back to how a both Nasyeedians and nasyeed fans fail to practice compassions, wisdom and the other virtues in Islam as they’ve preached and heard.

I wouldn’t want to dwell further into religious lectures as I’m clearly not the right person to do it plus I might be accused of preaching without a permit! – And I wouldn’t want that. But the point I’m trying to make here is that we muslims should not be too engross in the “form” portion of Islam but rather we should focus on the “substance” itself. We shouldn’t be too engrossed in our pious outlook more than we are concerned about our overall behaviour… Don’t just look Islam but be Islam!

I could go all day quoting examples and instances of this religious anomaly like how a road hog turn out to be a Pak Haji and how I was mortified as unreligious for studying law, but I won’t. Because if I did, I would be no different from Mr. Anonymous! – to which I have incidentally become.