What are you saying?

I have been giving a lot of thought recently to my practise of Islam. I have absolute faith in the religion and its teachings, it is the way we practise it in Malaysia that has bothered me of late.

The problem lies in almost all elements of our practise of the rituals of Islam - Prayer, doa, reading of the Quran, etc. One example: The thing has has been bothering me is that we are tought the entire 'text' of prayer, in this I mean what we read like the Iftitah, Al-Fatihah and other bacaan during sujud, rukuk, tahyat, etc. How many of us actually understand the full text of what we are saying, reading, uttering? Another example: We are tought to memorise many surah's and read them during prayer and other times of need, but do we actually understand what we are sayin?

My frustration actually lies with myself. If I am an isolated case, then I pray to god that I can correct my waeknesses. I sometimes find myself being annoyed at myself at saying 'amin' during recitals of doa when I don't know what it is I am saying 'amin' to..

I believe there is a misinterpretation in this: We were told that we should try to read the Holy Quran, we should try to understand it, even if we don't understand it, and if we can't do this, we should just listen to readings of the Quran.

My feel is that 'even if we don't understand it' means that even if we cannot understand the moral, the hidden meanings or even the statement that is being made - not that we can't even differentiate one word from the other, let alone their meanings.

To describe: In English, Synergetic alliances prolong executional excellence as a sentence may not make much sense if I don't know the context of it being said. At least I know there are 5 words and can understand what each word means, thus having a certain degree of assuomtion to what this means.

Now if I wrote in the Japanese Katakana characters: シナジェチクアラヤンサスプロロンッグエクセキュショナルエキセレンス。For those that can read it, can u make sense of it. For those who say pick up Katakana, do you think it'll make a difference?

Even listening, I don't the teachings meant to listen and not understand would mean to listen and not understand a single word!

Forgive me and educate me if I am wrong, but how many people actually read and listen to the readings of the Quran and understand (at least in my description of the word) what is said? I sadly feel like it is no more than appreciating the harmonious melody of the readings. Is that not the same as listening to a nice Japanese song that we can't make out the words but like the song anyway? Again, forgive my comparison.

I have taken onto myself that this is not the way I want to practise the rituals of Islam. Slowly, I am trying to find out what is it I say when I pray, when I read the doa's, etc. As an immediate measure I am taking these steps, I have changed by reading of the Yaasin to reading the 'Tafsir' or translation, when I read the doa after prayers, I read it in Malay or English.

I hope to one day master Arabic to get to perform these rituals and understand the teachings of Islam in a whole different light. For now, I just want to know what is it that I am saying, do you know what you are saying?

Na,na,na,na Terengganu Kite!

Looks like my blog is turning more into a 'Hari ini dalam sejarah'... the actual reason for this is that I don't have internet connection at home, not even a dial-up connection... Am looking to rectify that once I free some resources that I can allocate to subscribe to streamyx..hopefully in June.

Anyways, the past weekend, actually the weekend before that, we were in Terengganu to have the 'Aqiqah' for Ilhan. This is a symbolic ritual that is performed through the sacrifice of animals - cows, goats, sheep and other livestock. So, we as we performed the slaughtering of the two fine male goats (though the actual slaugthering was done by Ayah Teh), I actually picked up a few new words to add to my vocabulary of Bahasa Terengganu and some terms you would use throughout the entire slaughtering process. See if you know them as well:

Pam: Literally means 'Pump'. I never knew that this was how you skin a goat. You tie one leg to a tree (as in picture), slit the skin on one of the front feet, and place the valve under the skin, and start pumping. This is to get the goat bloated enough so that the 'skinning' can be made a lot easier. Now I know.

Layu Api: This actually takes skill. It is done by rolling up some old newspapers and making into a torch like thingie. You then sorta like wave it over the skinned goat. This is done to remove any hairs left over from the skinning process.

Katang: To chop off. This is done once the internal parts (stomach, liver, etc.) has been removed. It would mean to cut the goat into smaller parts to be passed over to the other group that would then cut them into even smaller pieces.

Gi Turut: Is to invite. Didn't understand this until I heard it 3-4 times, then finally got it. My young brother in law of 5 actually had some fun of his own when he 'gi turut'ed the neighbours to come again to our house in the evening, saying that it was my mother-in-law invited them to come again for the 'cukur jambul' session. And they came! A case of the little boy crying wolf.

Anyway, in the little over two years that I have been married, I must say that I am picking up the language steadily. I would like to say I am fluent, but I think I'll give a little longer before we can say that..

Where have I been?

I last wrote sometime ago..so where have I been, whats been going on? I look at other blogs that I regularly read, and enjoy the new stuff or the comments that they put up. Lemme see if I can back track the high's and low's on over the past 7 days...

Yesterday - well actually this morning, Liverpool beat Juventus 2-1 to set up what should be an interesting meeting next week in Turin - definitely a HIGH!

Monday - work as usual, sue was on call (always a low, and it being a monday meant we missed our regular sitcom nite on starworld - quality time), continued to read Angels and Demons, went to Mohsin with Kambing (Abdullah, my kohai)..so all in all I would say it was an OK day..

Saturday and Sunday - Sue was on leave this weekend, really enjoyed having her around as she usually works over the weekend, Ma and Abah from Terengganu came over Friday, we went to Long's house, we participated in the ALEPS bowling thingie (which left unimpressed, but will write about that in a later blog, hopefully), went to TImah's house for Mohinga (traditional Myanmar Laksa)..On Saturday nite, enjoyed Liverpool beating Bolton, and at the same time Sue enjoyed Siti Nurhaliza getting the award for most popular artiste, so I would say it would be a HIGH weekend.

Friday - Work as usual, don't actually recall what I did that day..Ma and Abah came over for regular check up at Sunway Medical, we went to the Sate Kajang at Uptown, and I went for futsal at Sunway - so whenver there's football invlovled, definitely a HIGH!

Thursday - Work, sue was on call, but a definite HIGH as we (Rapid DU Koloq-koloq) beat Duplix 8-2 in our futsal tournament..

Wednesday - We got Sue's Honda City 1.5 IDSI, so if you see me in a gold (they call it satellite Silver) WLU 3201, that's her new car, pretty nice drive actually.. So again another HIGH

So the past seven day's have been good actually, football results have been good, got a new car, in-laws came down (hmm, sure this is a good thing?), Sue had the weekend off...Let's hope every week is a good week!