Today... I went to madrasah... We started the first lesson of this year (FYI: my year 3 sem 1 term 1) with a discussion within 4 groups. 1) female youths, 2) male youths, 3) female adults, 4) male adults. We were to discuss what we think people our age out there generally envision for themselves within the next 10 years... And we talked about 4 aspects. 1) career, 2) community, 3) religion, 4) community. It was an interesting discussion. Unfortunately, we did not have access to internet and such to back up what we say with survey findings etc.

Ustaz gave an insight (it was like a tazkirah) about how is the world like now. he reminded us, that with the passing of another year, we are one more year nearer to returning to Allah swt. Yet, the world nowadays are guiding us away from Allah instead of towards Allah. The older generations are putting their hand on the youths of today to be the leaders (be it political, spiritual etc) of tomorrow yet our youths nowadays are more concerned about glamour, about money. Sadly, the mindset now is such that, what is ma'aruf is viewed as mungkar, not only by the youths btw, while what is mungkar is viewed as ma'aruf (memang dasarlah sekarang ni aku confuse sangat2 dan sedang mencari apa yang haq).

Ustaz directed a question towards us, students of the DPI program, year 3 and above... "Apakah peranan aku dalam agama?" We are ambassodor of Islam everywhere we go. We are da'ie ila Allah, whether we like it or not. It is our role, our responsibility, our amanah as students of this program...

Actually, I do want to know more about what it is like out there. I realise that I have been closing one eye all these while. I'd been living in my own bubble, oblivious of what's happening out there. I say I want to outreach to the community, yet I do not know what is really the situation in the community. I realise that I had been assuming all these while, never really going out there to find out for myself, never really observing, opening my eyes wide to everything around me...

But how do I find out???

For BILL camp, we did a survey on the general public in Tampines. That was interesting. I like what Sufyan's group did. Sufyan, gangster like as he is, can be an asset to us actually. Hmmmm....

Anyway, the module title was actually 'Pengajian Tazkiah Nufus', which actually means 'membersihkan jiwa daripada sifat mazmumah, yang tak elok, kepada sifat mahmudah, yang mulia', which is actually wajib in our lives. Ustaz talked about our purpose in life, yakni: Tidak Aku menjadikan jin dan manusia melainkan untuk mengabdikan diri kepada Aku (Surah 51: ayat 56). It is 100%, no less, obedience to Allah.

Ustaz elaborated further about ibadah umum and ibadah khusus, and bring us to reflect how many of us, even us who learns about the religion, do not prioritise our ibadah khusus, like solat, zakat, puasa, selawat etc, when in fact it is much much more important than our ibadah umum, which is anything good that we do, that is halal, that gives benefit to others such as whatever we do for our job, our volunteer work etc...

Ustaz went on to talk about 2 syarat amalan kita diterima... 1) ihklas, which is beribadah semata-mata mencari keredhaan Allah s.w.t. 2) mengikut landasan syara'.

Woah... That's just the first lesson... 4 more lessons to go!