On the 25th night..

I hope it was the Lailatul Qadr. Still, if it was, I will still maintain my momentum. Who knows if I will be here to celebrate Ramadhan next year. So, better safe than sorry. Better late than never.

That night, after having tazkirah from an ustaz, about how should original Muslims act as reverts - degree of embracing Islam, I went up around 1.20 am to check my brothers. Whether they had slept and wanted to make sure about their sahur. Then I went to the Mahallah Ali to buy my own sahur. I parked my car in front of the mosque around 2.30 am. The night was really peace, chill, and calm. When I parked, I didn't set myself to become careful and had watchful eyes to secure me as I did when I went home late. Got dogs everywhere. Always need to have my bike in first and second gear so I can 'pacak' whenever the night companies came.

Just before I locked my car, a foreigner came and asked me to help him. He came from Saudi and he couldn't find any taxi(of course, it's 2 am brother..), so he asked my help to fetch his wife and send them to their apartment near Terminal Putra. Straight away I invited him into my car(actually it's my dad's..). He seemed a bit uncomfortable, maybe because he afraid that he had caused me trouble. I became more friendly with him. So he could become more comfortable. Then we went to female's mahallah to fetch his wife. He introduced his name, Fauzi and I introduced my name Asif which directly means 'sorry'. As usual, any arabic speaking person would react like this, "Oh Asif.. Ana Aasif jiddan.." =.= We talked about how UIA was Islamized very well and known for it's bi'ah and how the bi'ah slowly went away.

"See.. I told you. How can guys freely walk out and in from female's mahallah..You should have guards, even to see your own wife, strictness should be implemented.." he said. Seriously I didn't know how to react at the moment, my mouth opened wide as if I was inviting a horde of fly into my mouth to sacrifice themselves willingly to be my sahur. I was surprised. Really. I didn't thought it would be like that. Sadness. His wife was doing her Master and must really know UIA as she graduated also from UIA for her degree.

After fetching his wife, the serious conversation started. He started the discussion.
"So, after your A level, what course will you be pursuing?" he asked. "Emm.. Insya ALLAH, in the direction of Physics. I haven't decided yet, whether Pure Physics, Astrophysics, or Nuclear Physics. If there are possibilities for humans to benefit the dark energy and dark matter, Astrophysics would be nice. But now, demand for Nuclear Physics is higher. I mean for our ummah.. So, Insya Allah my tendency is more to the nukey's thing." I said.
"Don't you afraid? - I mean I have been in Australia, Saudi, India and Iran, these kind of people were hunted.." he asked curiously.
"Of course, I was thinking about that too.. But, there should be someone to do this. Of course, I sometimes thought about being like a secret agent or Spiderman where you can never have families, or else someone will hurt them. It's a promise to myself, that I wish to devote my life to Islam and die for it. I am no one to contribute, I even may be a liability to my religion, but I will do my best for it. Even, I will marry if there's a chance. Haha.. in Palestine, the fighters have big families. So, I want to be like that too.. Big families, big benefits.." I answered.
"Ok.. you are naughty son.. do you have someone in your mind?" suddenly.. accompanied with evil laugh..
Then, he shared his experience with Muslim physicists. He talked about India, Iran, Iraq and many more and somehow it motivated me very much.

Before we arrived, he gave me a very good set of advices. I asked where will he celebrate his Eid.
"You mean Hari Raya? In Malaysia of course. I love Malaysia.." he answered.
"Why Malaysia? You know how Islamic activists were followed by SBs everywhere. Even just now we have few SBs in the circle. I can show you one. They followed everyone and wrong step you'll find yourself in prison.." I asked.
"Oh Asif.. you are young and passionate. I like that. I can see it in your eyes. You should be thankful. In another country like Saudi and Australia, I can never find a safe place to really practice Islam. Right now, U.S is urging Saudi's government to modify their national syllabus. Remove Islamic contents. And Saudi's is considering it. How can you consider such requests? You have your national syllabus full with Islamic values. And you have a balanced government. You have groups that are trying to add more and more Islamic policies to the country. If you are practicing Islam like this in another country, you'll be caught. All you need right now are to improve and maintain. Don't be like us. We have failed leaders. Your leaders, some may be corrupted, but some are trying their best. You have tonnes of Islamic NGOs. Even in UIA here got many. This i'tikaf, it's a collaboration, local and international NGOs. It's hard to find this elsewhere. The bi'ah do exist"...until we arrived.

I stayed awake the whole night - hoping it was the night of Lailatul Qadr. Insya ALLAH..

What I learn from him...

1. We should be thankful we live in this country.

2. Too bad, most of Muslims in Malaysia cannot make the best of Perlembagaan which gives us the privilege.

3. Malay used to be synonym with Islam, but now, what Malay did to defend their racial exclusiveness cannot be regarded as Islamic.

4. If we think our country is too bad enough, and make us feel hopeless, do remember there are someone else who loves our country because of the bi'ah here. If we feel hopeless for ourselves, let us help them to embrace this country.

5. To at least maintain the peaceful condition of our country, we need to put our effort as hard as we can, so we can keep at pace between the Islamization of this country and the secularization. We must try hard. We have IFC to reduce the special rights, we have Muslim NGOs to do nonsensical things like SIS, we have non-Muslims NGOs cooperating to pin us down, we have media on their side, we have everything against us. What is left to us is only the Constitution. We don't have enough man power.

6. Let us free ourselves from what people called "Kitaran Bodoh". In the end we die having nothing to contribute to Islam.

Let us be thankful and celebrate this Ramadhan blessed by Allah...  :)