The Class

The past few days have been volatile, to say the least. To make matters more tricky, I'm ill and have recurring fever bouts.

But there's one thing that really got my spirits up high. Many months ago, I was thinking (under what could've been a moonless night) that all the bayaans, hadiths and lectures that are given on the topic of Islam in Tamil-language madarasahs were inadequate. They were inadequate in the sense that they failed to enable the student to visualise the facts, obscuring the logic behind the facts. This thus hindered the ability to increase the faith that arises out of simple reasoning and the examination of facts. Lack of strong faith produces students (and people in general) who ritualise Islam - i.e., they fail to see the meaning and significance behind each and every prescribed act of worship.

In my own small capacity, I gained the support of a few of the older students and my wife to start a class that combined visual aids, and a motion picture, in primarily explaining the story of Islam. We hoped that through this, the students could obtain an overall contextual background of why they were Muslims in the first place, and the meaning of Islam through the experiences of the first Muslims in history.

"The Message", a movie I believe is good as a historical document but poor as a blockbuster chart-topper, was just the movie to help the students visualise the various stages of nascent Islam. Combining other forms of visual media, the class proceeded smoothly yesterday, and everyone involved had a good feeling about its impact on the students. And of course, prizes for an answer (be it right or wrong) always helps.

Insha Allah, I hope the sessions can continue to share with the students the Islam they should practice in their lives.

Remember

After a meeting at One Raffles Quay one nice afternoon

My Dear NunBun (of May 2006),

On the completion of 365 days of your first job, and on the 50^th blog-entry anniversary of the Telepathic Brinjalees, let me recount the events of the past year and the lessons I have for you, in the event you go back in time to re-live the last one year as a younger version of me.

- Work. It’s your first job. There was a major project going on. Both the place and you need time to adjust to each other, so you’re not as stupid or slow as you think you are. Eventually, you will get used to the pace and volume of work.

- Recognition. Everything in this world is temporary. No one’s going to remember the sudden influx of awards and media coverage of self for so-called academic achievements after a year, so be humble and continue to work hard and do your best in whatever you do.

- Marriage. Be thankful for having a partner who has been created just for you to moderate your moronic temperaments, mood swings and lust for Coca-Cola.

- Home. This one is nasty. Although you would’ve bought your flat for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the small things can nick you from behind, and some heartache might ensue. Forgive and get on with life. In any case, your living abode (flat) is as temporary as your life on Earth.

- Friendship. You must be grateful for getting the opportunity to make friends for whom you have always supplicated for. Treasure them and engage them as much as you can.

- Knowledge. Do not thing you know it all – there’s always something you don’t. Seek knowledge and seek to spread the knowledge to everyone who might be interested.

- Time. You should already know by now that it flies. Make your experience here a worthwhile one, and aim to make a contribution to the people around you. Your time may come anytime and you must remind yourself of this continually.

- Worship. It’s not just about prostrating. Make every single thing you do an act of worship. Don’t be uptight and keep a straight face. Learn to smile easily and think positive. This is in itself worship if the intention is there.

That’s all I can think of now. More pearls of wisdom when I’m 60, if I do reach it.

NunBun,
May 2007

Spidey and Nafs

Spider-man 3 was a good sequel to the previous sequel. The action and special effects were mind-blowing and painstakingly rendered. There was lots of humour - but also quite a lot of mushy moments. But it stood out because there were moments of "bad moods" uncharacteristic of the Good Guy Peter Parker/Spiderman.

Without giving away too much, let's just say that Spidey encounters a situation where he realises that he has potential for listening to his baser instincts and become quite a different guy. This guy is egotistic, violent, brutal and enjoys being brutal.

Knowingly or unknowingly, the writers had explored an aspect of the nafs in humans. The topic of nafs is in itself a huge subject. But I'm not qualified to talk about it. But I will share the little knowledge I have. The nafs is basically negative energy that resides in all of us - in Freudian terms, it is the id. The nafs is the primeval or "beast" in man, which prefers the baser activities of human life - eating, sleeping, sex etc. The nafs prompts the individual to eat a lot, sleep a lot and do things that give pleasure to the individual. It is raw energy that needs to be tamed.

Upon returning from the Battle of Badr, the Prophet s.a.w. said, "We have returned from the lesser jihad [holy war] to the greater jihad." They asked, "O Prophet of God, which is the greater jihad?" He replied, "The struggle against the nafs."

So the nafs is constantly trying to get the best deal by egging on the individual to have more of everything. To make things worse, the avowed enemy of man, Iblis, sends his Iblis juniors to instigate all our nafs-es to go the extra mile and screw us up. The start point can be a very small thought (eg. "I feel a bit lazy"). That's enough to make a mountain out of a molehill. The main deliverable of the small iblis' exercise is to eventually make us forget the truth of the relationship we have with our Creator: the nafs is instigated up to a point where it wraps around our hearts, clings onto us and blocks all rational thought. We begin to compromise with what our Creator and Prophet have commanded us to do (for our own good!). Then we inch towards disobedience. Slowly, we forget our role as vicegerents on Earth, eventually making us subservient to our desires, when it should be the other way round.

Warning - Spoiler Ahead
In a similar fashion, Spidey gets enveloped by the alien matter which wraps itself around him and instigates his rather small thought of revenge and pride, into something big and unrecognisable to himself later on. He realises what he has become, but he chooses to rid himself of it. He then literally tears it off with a lot of struggle.

The battleground is within all of us. We can choose whether to fight this instigation and reinstate control on our lives and submit to the Truth, or we can choose to ride on the wave of the nafs and encourage it to do more damage to our health and mind.

This struggle is the essence of what the greater jihad really is - the battle against yourself. When one is able to conquer oneself, he has indeed conquered his reality. Everything else becomes easy.

And for such as had entertained the fear of standing before their Lord's (tribunal) and had restrained (their) souls from lower desires (i.e. nafs) -
Their Abode will be the Garden

79: 40-41 - (Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali)