Kau dah baligh ke belum?

I would like to share a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few days ago about solat Terawih. To me, it didn't seem important, initially. But, after a few hours, I got to thinking about it and masha Allah! I think I need to share it with you guys.

Friend: "Arit (Harith), boleh tak aku solat Terawih empat rakaat je?"
Me: "Hmm, kalau kau tanya aku, aku cakap tak boleh. Sebab, tak macam sunnah nabi, atau sahabat."
Friend: "Takkan tak boleh kot? Kalau macam tu, baik aku tak payah solat langsung."
Me: "Bukan macam tu maksud aku. Kalau kau solat empat rakaat, Allah balas untuk empat rakaat jela. Cuma, tak berapa cantik, bila kita beribadah tak ikut nabi kita."
Friend: "Oh ok."
Me: "Tapi kan bro, soalan kau boleh ke tak solat Terawih empat rakaat ni, macam soalan budak belum baligh. Budak yang baru nak belajar sembahyang, kaki pun tak cukup kuat nak berdiri lama, hidung pun masih berhingus, silap-silap sunat pun belum lagi."
Friend: "Perli nampak."
Me: "Bukan perli, nasihat. Anyways, kau dah baligh ke belum?"

wAllahu 'alam

Standard Ummat pada Solat Subuh

Saya ingin berkongsi beberapa persoalan yang pada pandangan saya agak thrilling. Persoalan-persoalan ini timbul apabila saya hampir habis membaca buku "Rahsia Solat Subuh" karangan Dr.Sirjani.

Saya ingin bertanya kepada diri saya dan para pembaca yang dihormati: bagaimana kita menilai atau meletak standard untuk satu ummat itu? Adakah pada kejauhan pencapaian saintifik dan teknologi? Atau pada kekayaan negara dan rakyat yang melimpah ruah? Atau pada seni artistik dan hiburan yang mengasyikkan jiwa?

Dr. Sirjani berpendapat, dan saya amat bersetuju dengan pendapat beliau, bahawa standard ketinggian satu-satu ummat itu dinilaikan pada keupayaan mereka menjaga solat Subuh secara berjemaah. Kalau dilihat pada generasi-generasi yang telah menggegar dunia pada suatu masa dahulu, solat Subuh secara berjemaah di masjid adalah suatu rutin. Bahkan solat malam menjadi suatu kemestian.

Dan kita lihat sekarang di mana kedudukan generasi muda Islam. Dan kita nilai sejauh mana generasi ini menghayati kepentingan solat Subuh. Para pembaca yang dihormati, Nabi S.A.W. pernah mengancam untuk membakar rumah-rumah mereka yang tidak pergi berjemaah di masjid di waktu subuh. Hadith ini ada disebut di dalam Sahih Bukhari dan Muslim.

wAllahu 'alam

Apa ada dengan Cinta?

Baru-baru ini saya diberi peluang oleh Allah S.W.T. untuk berkongsi sedikit kebaikan dan pengetahuan yang saya ada berkenaan masalah cinta sesama manusia di sebuah forum di kolej. Forum tersebut bertajuk "Ada Apa dengan Cinta?". Saya ada seorang kawan yang sedang mengalami krisis kecil tentang perasaan cinta lawan jantina. Dan saya bersyukur yang dia datang ke forum itu. Tapi selepas beberapa hari semenjak forum tersebut, nampaknya kekeliruan dia tidak surut, malah bertambah rumit.

Entri kali ini mungkin sangat spesifik untuk tuan punya diri yang saya maksudkan di atas. Tetapi, harapnya apa-apa kebaikan dapat kita manfaatkan, dan segala keburukan dapat kita jauhkan.

Saya berpendapat cinta adalah mustahil untuk timbul sebelum terjalinnya apa-apa ikatan yang sah. Perkataan cinta itu datang bersamanya peranan, tanggungjawab, dan pengorbanan. Cinta itu perlu didahului dengan berkat Ilahi dan restu keluarga. Cinta bukan dipandu oleh kehendak hati yang selalunya diselubungi nafsu. Kalau rakan-rakan pembaca pernah menonton filem "Ayat-ayat Cinta", perhatikan bagaiman Maria membezakan antara cinta dan keinginan untuk memiliki.


Jangan senang-senang menjaja perkataan cinta. Cinta itu sesuatu yang teramat mahal. Perasaan yang suci yang Tuhan anugerahi untuk memenuhi fitrah insani. Pandukan perasaan cinta dengan wahyu dan sunnah ar-Rasul. Semoga Allah S.W.T. memberi petunjuk kepada kita.

wAllahu 'alam

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and His Psycho-sexual Development Stages

I am just about to begin my revision for tomorrow's exams. One of the topics that I need to cover is "Human Psychological Development" and one of the popular theories to describe this event is Freud's Psycho-sexual Development Stages. Let's see what once a super popular psychologist has to say about how we develop psychologically. What I find controversial about Freud's theory on personality development is that he asserted that an unsuccessful completion of a stage would mean that person becomes fixated at that zone (erogenous) and would become either over or under-indulged once he or she becomes an adult.

Here I present how Freud divided the stages of human psychological development.
____________________________________________________________________

Oral Stage (Birth to 18 months): At this stage, the child will focus on oral pleasures (primarily sucking). Too much or too little gratification can result in an Oral Fixation or Oral Personality which is evidence by a preoccupation with oral activities--a stronger tendency to smoke, drink alcohol, over eat, or bite his or her nails. Personality-wise, these individuals may turn out to be unduly dependent upon others, gullible, and perpetual followers, or they may also fight these urges and develop pessimism and aggression toward others.

Anal Stage (18 months to three years): The child’s focus of pleasure in this stage is on eliminating and retaining feces. Through society’s pressure, mainly via parents, the child has to learn to control anal stimulation. In terms of personality, after-effect of an anal fixation during this stage can result in an obsession with cleanliness, perfection, and control (anal retentive). On the opposite end of the spectrum, they may become messy and disorganized (anal expulsive).

Phallic Stage (age three to six). The pleasure zone has now switched to the genitals. Freud believed that during this stage boys develop unconscious sexual desires for their mother. As a consequence, he becomes rivals with his father and sees him as competition for the mother’s affection. However, boys also develop a fear that their father will punish them for these feelings, such as by castrating them. This group of feelings is known as Oedipus Complex.

Later it was added that girls also go through a similar situation, developing unconscious sexual attraction to their father. Although Freud strongly disagreed with this, it has been termed the Electra Complex by more recent psychoanalysts.

According to Freud, out of fear of castration and due to the strong competition of his father, boys eventually decide to identify with him rather than fight him. By identifying with his father, the boy develops masculine characteristics and identifies himself as a male, and represses his sexual feelings toward his mother. A fixation at this stage could result in sexual deviancies (both overindulging and avoidance) and weak or confused sexual identity according to psychoanalysts.

Latency Stage (age six to puberty). It is during this stage that sexual urges remain repressed and children interact and play mostly with same sex peers.

Genital Stage (puberty onward). The final stage of psychosexual development begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers, with the primary focus of pleasure is the genitals.

Can we identify a few illogical, or I would prefer absurd, relationships that Freud had made between certain life events and the sexual pleasure? To all mothers in the world, isn't it creepy to find that your little precious innocent babies find sexual pleasure when you breastfeed them? Isn't it extremely worrying to find your toddlers find sexual joy when excrete feces?

"I think I didn't get enough of my mother's tits. That's why I smoke a cigar."

wAllahu 'alam

Mujahadah: Suatu Kata yang Indah, Tapi Payah

Mujahadah adalah suatu kata yang indah dan bertenaga dalam ceramah-ceramah agama dan motivasi diri. Namun, pada hakikatnya, pratikalitinya jauh lebih payah daripada menyebut empat suku kata yang membina perkataan yang yang amat mahal harganya di sisi Allah azza wajal. Mujahadah yang membawa makna "to make strenous effort against one's nafs" adalah satu proses yang memerlukan keikhlasan, kemahuan yang tidak berbelah bagi, dan ketahanan yang konsisten. Tatkala nafsu mampu dikekang dan dikawal, jiwa begitu mudah kembali kepada fitrah dan rapat kepada Tuhan. Namun begitu, daripada 1000 orang yang bijak membahaskan persoalan mujahadah ini, mungkin hanya 10 yang mampu membuahkannya melalui perbuatan.

Akhir kata, di saat kita mengharungi separa Ramadhan yang terakhir ini, saya ingin mengingatkan diri saya dan rakan-rakan pembaca untuk menghayati konsep mujahadah. Terutama rakan-rakan yang sedang berada di medan dakwah kampus yang begitu banyak menyebabkan kita mengeluarkan kata-kata yang kebanyakkannya tidak tertunai oleh si pengata. Saya akhiri tulisan saya kali ini dengan dua firman Allah S.W.T..

"...dan demikianlah keadaan hari-hari (di dunia ini, dengan kemenangan dan kekalahan yang silih berganti) supaya nyata bagi Allah siapa yang tetap beriman dan supaya Allah dapat mengambil di antara mereka sebagai Syuhada'..." (Ali-Imran: 140)

"Wahai orang-orang Mukmin, mengapakah kamu berkata tentang perkara yang kamu tidak lakukan? Sungguh besar kebencian Allah kepada kamu kerana tidak melakukan apa yang telah kamu katakan." (As-Saff: 2-3)

wAllahu 'alam

Ramadhan Mubarak & Pantun Cari Ganti

Been a while since the previous entry. I would like to take this rare opportunity to wish the Muslim readers "Ramadhan Mubarak" (blessed Ramadhan). Let's all pray that Allah will make us one step closer in knowing Him by the end of this holy month. I also would like to remind myself and my dear readers that Ramadhan is the season of ibadah for the Muslims. Not to say that we don't have to do ibadah in the other months, but to bolster ourselves to amplify and improve the quality of our ibadah.

I recently read this interesting pantun by Ustaz Dr. Mohd Asri Zainal Abidin and I would like to share it here before I go offline.

"Pantun Cari Ganti"

Kota sarat disimpan tempayan
Zahir berlian di sunyi hari
Harta rakyat dijadi taruhan
Akhir kebencian menjadi api

Gula dan santan diuli roti
Kelapa diparut dimakan sama
Bila kebencian menjadi api
Apa dihasut ditelan semua

Anak singa di Pulau Teberau
Anak tebuan seekor lari
Jika negara sudah kacau
Eloklah tuan mengundur diri

Pergilah mandi di Titi Tinggi
Jalan tersepak tali pencuci
Carilah ganti berbudi tinggi
Bukan perompak ganti pencuri

wAllahu 'alam

You're Ineffiecient, You Dumb-A**

Hell, I am annoyed by some people who have an absurdly narrow view on what attitude means. These people focus attitude on mistakes others made. They simply characterize a person based on mistakes, even worse a slight mistake, that person makes. And I recently had been a victim of this unfit idea of what attitude covers.

I missed a few days of the orientation program because I needed to repeat my JPJ test. And for that, I got labelled by the group of people I mentioned above as "lacking in attitude" and "inefficient". There were a few others who did not attend the program too for a sets of different reasons. On the first day of class, we were gathered to meet with the deans. Of course we were asked to provide our reasons for absence during the meeting. I for sure felt like it was a big crime to miss the program. And this is how the dialogue between one of the deans and me went:

Him: "Harith Fakhrudin."

Me: "I didn't come for the registration. I had a two-hour driving lesson on that day and a JPJ test on the next."

Him: "So, when did you get back here?"

Me: "On Saturday, around Maghrib. I attended the Qiam and kuliah Subuh on Sunday morning."

Him: "Did you inform anybody about your situation?"

Me: "I informed kak Ida, and a few of the facilitators knew about my situation."

Him: "What I see here is a problem with attitude. If you really want to be with us, you would have headed straight back here after you JPJ test."

Me: "Prof, my parents are both working."

Here come the stupidest question of the year.

Him: "Why didn't you drive here yourself?"

Me: "My parents don't trust me with the car yet."

Him: "Can we trust you to be a doctor?"

Me: (I didn't really answer because I seriously felt that this fellow had lost his mind. For anybody in the whole Malaysia, your license is due to you after at least 3 working days after you pass the exam. And he expected me to jeopardize my in-process license or even worse getting involved in traffic accident just to join the orientation program.)

I was asked to write a letter explaining my case to him, and surprisingly the letter matters not. Because a week after the meeting, he held an apology session in which these "criminals" are compelled to apologize before their colleagues. This is another symptom of absurdity that seems to grow in this college. What is our fault to our fellow colleagues? We can only be faulty against our colleagues if only the orientation program had been a disastrous program and they had to bear "kebosanan yang membunuh" (I like this phrase) and we were happy out there slipping away from the sufferings.

I still hope there is a wisdom to this and I pray to Allahu 'Alim to reveal it to me.

wAllahu 'alam