I haven't been writing for more than a month. But one comment spurred the urge to write tonight. Its easy to spot other's flop and write thousands word for that. Yes its true and I did that. So does many others who doesn't have strong islamic educational background but yet write islamic-articles like me.
These flops in today's malaysian muslims has been the target of constant bormbardment from these writerr. Some claims that islamic practices in Malaysia is not relevant. Then it spurs waves of retaliation from the so-called conservative muslim, claiming that these writers don't have authority or lacking in islamic knowledge to put such claims in their writings. And some of these waves are emotional rather than objective. When it starts to get emotional, sensitivities comes in.
Let's make things clear first. Good journalists and columnists and bloggers write reports rather than write their own biased articles. They have holistic views from many angles and produce a fair report. Eventually they are happy to let the reader judge the issue themselves. At least that's what a blogger who doesn't have sufficient understanding in Islam like me should do. And I did realise that I made a mistake. I report what i saw but then i gave my biased, one sided arguement on what i saw.
Yes I do think that i have made grave mistakes. I never thought of this before. Medieval Islamic scholars, get themselves cleaned up, wear good clothes, put on perfume, take ablution perform istikharah, and pray before they start to write their great books on Hadith, Fiqah and so forth. Therefore their ideas are great ideas, least corrupted by their own prejudices, nafs(desire) and all those undesireable human flops.
If I, a normal improperly educated person wants to write my own view on religious matter, i might get biased and (God-forbid) touches community's sensitivities. Hence what a 20 year old chap like me should do is reporting instead of forming corrupted ideas. I should report ideas from many parties regarding a particular issue. Let's take the hijab issue for example. i do think that if I am to write a good unbiased article about this issue, I should take ideas and situations from the obidient women, the ikut-saja women (who wear hijab because their mom wear it) and those who didn't wear it. I should also take ideas from women overseas. Those muslims in France for example.
However one might say that it'll be so rigid if i refuse to form my own views. Well, for the sake of reporting, i don't care much whether I am rigid or not. At least this is how i view a media should be: reporting.
Taking Dina Zaman for example. She produces a book entitled I Am Muslim. She posted her hijab-less picture on her book. Its ironic right? My firts damn shallow judgement was that Dina Zaman is just another liberal muslim trying to obscure the real islamic message.
Forgive me Dina, I was wrong to judge. Initiallly i refuse to buy the book because i judge her like that. Then I realize that I should not judge people. Allah has place the judgement based on the level of takwa, which is logically unknown to human being. Hence bought the book and found that her articles are full of reports, not biased sellfish views and ideas. She has represented the diseases our malay-muslim culture. She has revealed bit by bit, the corruptness of our people.
However, simply reporting doesn't satisfy readers. The reports presented us the problems in our society. Readers nowadays need answers. Thanks to the journalists, i think now our ustazs have jobs to do; clarify the reason why these problems occur (Some of these problems may be caused by them) and how to solve it. I urge our contemporary ustaz to embark on this new task because they have claimed (through the title ustaz) that they must have the fundamental undestanding of how this deen works. Young, uneducated chap like me should gain more knowledge in the deen and keep reporting instead.
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