When you talk about usrah, there will of course be many perceptions depending on who you are, what group you join, who your naqib is, and a few more other factors.
But all in all, excellence in some aspects of it will determine the the success the group itself.
So I pose this question, what do you think are the success factors of usrah? Why?
Comment and let me know.
I am a sucker for stories about family.
For instance:
Ahahaha! I just listened to that song. I got interested. Then I went looking for the summary of the story.
I got hooked.
I dunno. A friend once told me that first-borns usually place a lot more emphasis on family. He was commenting on his eldest brother; he was third. I guess this statement rings true in a way to me.
Amongst the Malay novels that I have read, the ones that give me the most impact are the ones that place great emphasis on marriage and family. For example, Ayat-Ayat Cinta and Ombak Rindu.
It also saddens me that people of my age and below nowadays get blocked from starting a family early in their lives. I guess this is mostly due to the cultural upbringing here in modern Malaysia.
The examples are widespread. You can this everywhere. Youth wanting to get married will have to face high “hantaran” costs, high wedding ceremony costs, relatives that demand this and that, the cultural norm of delaying marriage until after studies and all sorts of friction between the first intent of marriage and the actual nikah.
I have seen this in my friends. Some of them very close to me. Some tells of what they face when they bring up the subject of marriage to the girl’s parents, whereupon the response would be, “RM10,000!” Others have opined their reluctance to marry early, putting it off due to not having amassed enough to propose to the girl.
Once an uncle told me what he said to the girl’s parents when he went to “merisik” at the girls house for his son, “If you want, we can do this (nikah) next week, I’ll support the walimah, and they do it simple (i.e. do only the obligatory stuff). But if [my son] wants to give special presents to his wife (i.e. ‘hantaran’), then he has to collect the money himself.”
At this, the other family declined to hasten the nikah, opting instead to go through with tradition.
Not all my friends get this much friction though. Quite a few of my friends have it the opposite, with the girls parents suggesting hastening the nikah instead and helping out with a whole bunch of stuff.
One friend of mine had his wife’s hand in marriage offered to him by his wife-to-be’s (at the time) sister. Then the process after went very smoothly. They managed everything from start to finish in about three months, doing everything minimally but effectively. This would count as very fast in terms of Malaysian wedding preparations!
Another friend went to “merisik” thinking that he probably had another year or more before he was allowed marriage, but the father of the girl said to him, “How about later this year?”
I think he went somewhere in the middle of the year. Calculate how fast that went.
My parents also had their wedding simply. Theirs were so simple that some people enquired to my grandfather, “Why didn’t you put a higher price (for ’hantaran’)?”
To which he replied, “I am marrying off my daughter; I am not selling her.”
Cool. I’d love to say that in the face of today’s pro-high-class-wedding parents.
“I am guilty of a crime.
“I have no excuse but to say that I am guilty of it. This I cannot deny. What ever it is, even though to others I may lie, but to myself… I cannot deny.
“Yet… I feel so ashamed of myself that I am afraid to meet Him. To ask forgiveness from Him. Too ashamed to utter the words for begging forgiveness.
“Why? Because I have begged forgiveness before… Yet I trangressed yet again.
“I begged again. But again I fell victim to my desires and flaws.
“And again, and again, and again I begged. In all… I broke my promises. In all I broke and disregarded my repentance.
“So now… I am ashamed. So thoroughly ashamed of myself, that I cannot face Him any longer.
“I begin to turn my face away.
“To distract myself of ever facing Him. Although deep, deep, down in my heart, I know… That He is ever-knowing of the state of my soul.
“I cry in this mind of mine, seeing no hope… But to seek forgiveness that is so often and so quickly forgotten…
“What hope is there in offering what one cannot give truly?
“What hope is there for one such as me?
“And thus I fall further into the abyss of sin…
“Without any foreseeable way out. The cycle of sin.”
—
What similarities can you see the above monologue to your own life?
Do you often feel that in your life, you often go back upon your repentance to God?
You repent. Yet not long after, you repeat the same mistake…
You repent again. Yet in not-so-far a future, you find yourself unable to resist the same mistake. Again…
You repent yet again. You start to fear that your repentance may not last long. You begin to become paranoid of yourself. Then you do it again.
Then you give up. You say to yourself, “In myself, I see no hope of ever becoming good. How can I? Even promises to myself and God, I am not able to keep. No human would accept a promise from a person who breaks his a hundred times. So surely God would be angry with me.”
Then you fall into despair and you begin a chain of destructive behaviour.
You know what you do benefits you not. You know this very well. You need not anyone else telling you this. For you are the one who did this to yourself. But what else can you do?? For you have tried and tried to change and be better, but all your attempts have failed and failed! What else can you do?!
—
You see… I know this train of thought. It has happened to me quite often. Yet, alhamdu LILLAH, by His grace, I have not been flung into an irreversible chain of behaviour.
Always remembering that ALLAH is The Most Forgiving (al-’Afuw) helps me. It breaks thr thought when it comes to:
No human would accept a promise from a person who breaks his a hundred times. So surely God would be angry with me.
It helps even more to know the ayaats of the Qur’an that gives ALLAH’s assurance that he accepts the repentance of his servants.
“O our Sustainer! Make us surrender ourselves unto Thee, and make out of our offspring a community that shall surrender itself unto Thee, and show us our ways of worship, and accept our repentance: for, verily, Thou alone art the Acceptor of Repentance, the Dispenser of Grace!
(translation of al-Qur’an by Asad, Surah al-Baqarah:128)
So… Never give up hope that ALLAH would forgive you. If you make a mistake, repent. You do it again; then repent again. Never submit to the cycle. Repent, repent, and repent until you finally leave the sin behind.
I know… It’s hard. But then that is what this life is isn’t it? A test. A test that isn’t hard is not worth taking.
“Hargailah pemberian sesiapa sahaja walaupun sekelumit…” ujar Pak Long, menggalakkan anak-anak buah KBM kami untuk tampil ke hadapan berkongsi kisah.
“Saya memohon maaf sekiranya saya berkasar…” ucap seorang pelajar Kasih SMK Bintulu ini dengan penuh rasa insaf dan berharap dimaaf.
“Di sini saya ingin meminta maaf, kalau saya ada terkasar bahasa.” Pengerusi PPI SMK Bintulu.
Itulah antara beberapa patah kata yang diucapkan peserta baru beberapa ketika yang lalu.
Kami kini sedang mengendali slot In-Team KBM untuk adik-daik yang begitu kami kasihi dan sayangi. Begitu sekali kami memujuk dan merayu mereka untuk berkongsi. Betapa mengawal dan memujuk manusia ini merupakan satu kemahiran tersendiri.
I for one… Would love to see us immersed in such technology. The depth of interaction would be such that learning would be simplified so much.
This past month I have been calling Celcom repeatedly due to problems on my broadband. It seems like they’ve been having problems with the network making such simple things as login into my gmail account, almost impossible. This gmail thing started somewhere around the 10th of this month, I think.
I was wondering if there were any problems relating to any of equipment (phone, computer, bluetooth dongle, bluetooth software, windows - maybe). So I search on the net just in case anyone blogged, or posted something related to this matter. Surprisingly, I got no useful answers to barely any that resembles the problem.
I called the to find out about this specific problem twice at least (yes, I did call them more times for other problems). Once, they told me that there was a ‘network disturbance’ lasting until the 20th (I called approximately on the 15th).
It still lasted beyond that. So I called again today, after getting frustrated waiting out the problem for two days. And they said that there are issues with big email services and uploading and it will persist until 12 midnight on 27th of March.
Darn. There goes my communication line until another 29.5 hours! IF, I repeat, IF it gets solved.
Hmm… Maybe I should redirect all my mail to another temporary account hosted on this domain of mine. I wonder…
