Muhammad Abdul Rauf

I am thinking of adopting this name.

Last Thursday, I got elected involuntarily as the President of MSAJ (Malaysian Student's Association in Japan) in Kansai area branch. Which means that from now on, I shall be the one who is in charge of all the collective Malaysian student events here.

Which I don't want to do, for I hate events.

No choice. Take one for the team.

Anger on Christmas Pt 2

Those people who avoid wishing their Christian friends Merry Christmas, be warned.

The whole logic of not wishing them Merry Christmas as it would be equivocal to recognizing the Trinity of God, and recognizing that Jesus is the begotten Son of God, is not a good logic. It is a logic which doesn't care what others think, a logic which spreads suspicion among people, and a logic that can possibly breed enmity based on religious differences.

If Christians have the same logic, they won't respect our Ramadan. They won't let us celebrate Maulid Nabi, they won't let us have our Azans in loudspeakers, they would say that Muslims are followers of Antichrist!

There's this whole notion among Christians (of course I am talking about the freaking fundamentalists) that we Muslims are heretical, deviant, and violent followers of an excommunicated church, manipulated by a false Messiah called Muhammad. Us not wishing Merry Christmas to Christians might fuel this thought among the Christians, increasing their enmity toward us, and consequentially this will increase our enmity towards them.

There is no communication where there is enmity.

Anger on Christmas Pt 1

There's this stupid thing recently about not wishing Christians "Merry Christmas" because, as it was argued, wishing them Merry Christmas would be equivocal with us recognizing the Trinity of God, as Christmas is a celebration of the Nativity of the Son of God.

Heh.

Poor people with backward religious beliefs, and lack of understanding of the history of religion in a humanistic sense, and also lack of thinking about the implications of not wishing Christians (or anyone who celebrates it, for that matter-not all those who celebrates Christmas are Christians, mind you), I don't know whether I shall pity them, or I shall be angry at them. Maybe I should be both.

We must know that 25 December is not the exact date of the Nativity of Yeheshua (this is Jesus' Hebrew name-I prefer this)-the formerly institutional pagan Romes would never know the exact date, as they were, under the National Imperial Roman Pagan Church, discriminating against Christians in a way that to today's standards, would be termed on par with the Nazi's Holocaust. So when the Roman Empire became Christian somewhere in the 4th century-300 or more full years after Yeheshua's supposed death on the Cross-it is logical, as illiteracy were rampant, that almost no one among them would know the exact date anymore.

So they took the 25 December as the date, as this was the date of Saturnalia, a Roman pagan festival celebrating the deity Saturn. So much for the purpose of celebrating the Christian creed.

Well, history put aside, nowadays people don't really celebrate Christmas to celebrate Jesus anymore. Some Christians do, I won't deny it, and in the religious Malaysia, the Christians are about as religious as Muslims, and they would be appalled by the suggestion that Christmas was a pagan Roman festival-"Ridiculous!" At any rate, wishing "Merry Christmas" is not the same thing as recognizing Trinity. There's a whole line of thinking among the Christians called Unitarism-those people don't believe in Trinity- and yet they still celebrate Christmas. Not to mention the contemporary atheists and agnostics who celebrate it for the fun of it.

Naive thinking among the religious sometimes pisses me off.

Don't be afraid, W4LR6S.

Mei tou Melayu ako ih. Ako mesti senged ih.

Islam is both our strength and our weakness.

Older

-According to the Muslim calendar, around 11 months from now, I am going to be 23.

-According to the Western calendar, I am 21 and a half years old.

-Despite being 21 years old, I still behave like a 13-year old brat sometimes, and this sometimes bothers me a lot.

-Being 21 years old, I somehow felt very old, despite the fact that most would say that 21 is an age of youth, and this might be to my religiously inclined thoughts on life: you will die one day, maybe you will die tomorrow, Death doesn't care whether you're old or you're young, if it's your time, it's your time, you can't fasten it nor can you delay it.

-This gives me anxiety. I was told throughout my youth as a student, having a Muslim background in a strongly Muslim-influenced society, that as a man, one has to fight for Islam; All one's prayers, doings, life and death are for Allah only, hence every struggle of life must be done with Allah being the foremost in mind. This pressures me a lot; "What am I supposed to do?"

-Many people say that if you really are struggling for God, God will clear the path for you. Yet what I see before me is a ridiculously hazy path, with no signs to guide me. Maybe God does clear your path. It's just that I am pursuing the wrong path. But then, I see the so-called God-cleared path taken by most people who claim to believe; somehow, their path seems wrong to me, I don't think that it is really the path for me, I can't take that, going there would be against my conscience.

-Well, some people say human conscience can be manipulated by the Devil. To that I would respond: "Then who controls the Devil, the fallen Satan?"

-Sepatutnya ako bei rah lebuk, nulong nawan ngaked barang, nulong nawan ngemas lebuk, nulong apak mak siap-siap bak pengilan a kawin janek ako. Salak kedau ako ajau ih. Mei patut, mei patut.

-Alah selaka mak timing ih. Time ako nda bei tang lebuk, nda bei duit bak belei tiket mulik, time in kawak kakak ako bak benikah. Yu yu. Nang lah mei kenah paut agik, paut angai dah matik. Tapi nyin lah, tusah laus bak nerima yang mei paut agik nuan tou jakin wang keluarga ako. Ako debei tang inan, mei kenah pilak nou-nou, semadi mak ih.

-Wai wai.

Philosophy 1

I found it more spiritually and emotionally fulfilling to try and understand others and to try to make them happy, than trying to figure out and reach the metaphysical, perpetual Truth.

But nevertheless, the path of making others happy is harder than the path of pursuing Truth, as it brings you sadness and pain to see that it is largely impossible to make everyone around you happy.

That may be one of the reason why people has to have a God, in which they can put a trust in, trusting that God may somehow lead everyone to salvation, and everlasting happiness.

But this statement also highlights the fact that the God that most of us believe is something that is realized by human desires, and the God as we hope He would be, are largely a figment of our emotions and ideals, being in themselves a product of our egos that want to survive, be immortal and perpetual.

But the statement above in itself is no proof that God is merely as such, that is, a product of our consciousness, and does not point whatsoever to any proof that can showcase the truth, or the falsity of the concept of Existence of God. as there is no viable connection that can be concretely demonstrated between the God that we all know and the Actual God that is beyond our comprehension, beyond our realms of reality and senses.

Any kind of argument or proof that is shown to us that might be labelled as that connection can be refuted by pointing out that those arguments, or proofs, are part of our reality, and being part of a reality that is subject and inferior to God, can't possibly be in an association with the Actual God, except as something that is created, and us, assuming that we are all part of the Actual God's creation, couldn't possibly verify with ultimate absolute confidence, that these arguments or proofs really serve as the Proof of God's existence, and assuming the confidence amounts to saying that we are equal to God, and thus, contradicts our conventional understanding of God as being One that is Unequal to any creation.

不可知論

神様が単一的に実在しているという前提から考えてきた。どうしてその前提から考えてきたのかは、子供の頃からずっと神様が実在していると回りの人々から教われ、それが当たり前の話だと信じ込められたのである。子供の理性と言うのがまだ熟成になっていない理性だから、知らないうちにその子供の理性には神様の絶対単一的実在と言う概念が成り立ち、その子供の潜在意識にまで入り込んで、大人になっていたらもうその概念を完全に精神から取り捨てるができなくなるのだ。

とはいっても、この事実があるから、「神様の実在」のは実は、人間が迷信のように、ただ回りの人々に従って真実だと信じさせられた概念にすぎないということは、決して神が存在しないと言うことを示していないのである。