Friday, January 04, 2008

Misconception of Da'wah

It is commonly mistaken that da'wah is JUST a tool for people to propagate extreme ideas of Islam, or a political means for someone to rise up in the ranks of the political world, or threatening someone to leave some inhumane act, or any other reasons that could possibly put you off when you hear that word.

Islam is a message. It is a message given by God to all of His prophets (that includes those before Prophet Muhammad) to be conveyed to humankind. The message is about getting to know God and His way of leading our lives.

This message have to be conveyed, trasmitted, explained, distributed, be known to everyone. That's when Da'wah takes place. We have the Da'ie (Deliver; You & Me!), the message (Islam) and the Mad'u (Receiver). Thus we need some tools to propagate the message efficiently to our Mad'u, hence the need of ACTION in delivering the message.

With Da'wah, comes consciousness.
With Da'wah, comes awareness.
With Da'wah, comes purified hearts and wanting to be obedient with God.
With Da'wah, comes eagerness to follow God's decree and avoiding His wrath.
With Da'wah, comes groups of people who love to expand the message to other nations.
With Da'wah, these groups proliferate immensely worldwide.

If there are someone who are unease with the work of other people in Da'wah, I urge them to join their discussion on THE MESSAGE rather than lamenting on the work that they are doing. Check, comment, argue and debate. I'm sure those in the field of Da'wah are open for discussions.

ISLAM IS THE FUTURE, mate!

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

AUKU 1971

*This is an edited version of the post.
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I recently downloaded a copy of the University And College University Act 1971 (Akta Universiti Dan Kolej Universiti in Malay Language) and read only Section 15.

Without reading any other section hence unable to see the overview of the document, I would like to comment on Section 15 alone. I DO NOT believe in the idea of AUKU. There seemed to be some problems as to:

  • What are the criteria of a permissible society?
  • What are the criteria of a NON-permissible society?
  • What if there are a mixture of both permissible and non-permissible society? What is the guideline of approving or rejecting societies' formation?
  • If there is a committee under the supervision of universities VC's, who are its members?
  • Who appoints them? What are the criteria for the committee members selection?
  • What are the criteria of the appointee?
This is to ensure integrity and credibility of people handling the job are restored. We need some ammendments and detailed guidelines coupled together with the commentaries of the document. Improvement.

The solution for the problems is to replace it with a student-controlled national union of students establishment. Students rights are protected as well as religious and moral values so as long as it is within the boundary of the Constitution.

I believe that it's absolutely unfair for some to be allowed to join certain politically-inclined societies while others not. It is an unacceptable discrimination towards them who in fact do not , by principle, go against religious, moral and social values. Student activism in Malaysia should be allowed. The minds of Malaysian university students should be liberated.

We're so free here to do anything we want in our Students Unions. I guess my friends in Malaysia are missing a lot.

Dato' Mustapa Mohamad, the Higher Education Minister paid a visit to my house last Sunday but, unfortunately, I was not there! The British NUS structure is an excellent model, so Mr Minister, why don't you get your team here and study this model for a few (not more than 4 please) years and propose to implement it? May God grant wisdom to you.