9th of Ramadhan, 1432/9th of August, 2011

A phenomenon has occurred in the blessed lands of the Malays. The Hijri calendar and the Gregorian calendar are counting the same number of days. It has been 9 days of fasting and my 7 year old son is feeling the pressure. He keeps on insisting that he's strong enough to fast, but, he would take a glass of water in the afternoon, after school, before continuing with his 'fast' with us. Always eager to break the fast with the rest of his family. But he did get a whole day of fasting in his first Ramadan experience by spending most of the evening in the hibernation mode. I don't want to be accused as trying to be like a Spartan father, so for your information, Muslims do not force their children to fast. Not unless puberty reached them first, of course.

Got a new task on my shoulder now. Seems like the person supposed to be in charge of his/her work finally decided that this is his/her time to play sulky and showed to all just how important he/she is to the organisation. And so, I have to bear the burden of making sure that the work is done, within a bizarre time frame to finish everything in time. But maybe it's just me. 

But what I'm experiencing is nothing compared to the Muslims in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Xinjiang, the Caucasus regions and Syria. They are being overwhelmed with not just with certain task at hand, they even have to die for it and watch others fight for their lives, in real time. Sometimes I wonder how wasteful it is for some mosques to spend a thousand ringgit each day for the breaking of the fast during sunset for a few hundred well-fed men while not far in a distant, many are dying out of starvation. Sometimes, thinking of them makes your appetite disappear.

As always, Muslims are terribly divided. Some leaders have to make bizarre promises of taking their people to the fantasy land of once Greece was. So proudly had been standing and bathing under the blessing of unimaginable wealth and health. Maybe it is not such a good idea in the first place being so rich and pampered. The rich would get richer, the not so rich, would remain the same while struggling to keep ends meet, while glancing with envy, how the rich evade taxes and their social obligation so exclusively and charmingly.

It's funny, how the issues are getting similar and similar between countries. In Israel, the people are taking it to the street to demonstrate against the rising cost of living, particularly in the housing issue, in spite of being so well-educated. Come to think of it, just about 4 to 5 years back, one can build a decent good house he called home with just around RM 150k. Nowadays, it will cost him around 250k to 300k. The size and the built quality would be very much the same, if not far much lesser. But the contractors and the suppliers would of course, have no worries whatsoever. They have tons of money to spend lavishly since the taxing system usually is not that efficient when dealing with the rich and the super rich. It is quite snobbish and strict when it is around the average Joes who had to spend around RM 200 to RM 400 for their monthly tax deduction. The easy target would of course be the sitting ducks that only make around RM 3k to RM 5k a month. Mind you, the poverty line in most big cities in Malaysia is around RM 3,000.00 a month. And that's a lot of money for someone that is caught in the middle of being so well educated only to end up below the poverty line. Whatever happened to the prestige of higher education?

While some claimed that we can't blame the rich for being super rich, certain scholarships or grants or contracts or privileges would of course be handed over to them as a part of ’strict’ social obligation that certain people had to see being done in a perfectly balanced society. The more you struggle and strive and sacrifice, the more you should be earning and getting for yourselves.

It should always be this way and should not ever be another way around.  If we would always be giving to those who earned more money or having ten times more than the average Joes just because he's a CEO, well, what does that make the CEOs of the more advanced countries that are now in a brink of economical and social collapse? Were they lesser intelligent than certain special CEOs that have 'saved' us so many times from economic disasters and blunders based on their over-paid 'sharp' observation and evaluation? Were the losses that they made insignificant and refundable?

If I recall correctly, we had lost not just tens of millions, but hundreds of millions of precious dwindling resources due to incompetency of certain elite order. And the average Joes would be asked to understand the situation and deal with it. That is life. The elite make the mistakes. The average people suffer them.

May this Ramadan show us just who we really are to ourselves. How honest are we really in dealing with people that had trusted in us with their safety, well-being and foremost, their future. What more with their lives. Have we no shame?

11:50 PM in the blessed lands of the Malays where the 'pious' big turban and long bearded men are vying with one another for the throne of kings, by wading through diligently all the filth of lies and the double talks they are willing to 'endure' in achieving their 'ultimate' goal of God's grace. Selling themselves for the glory of this world while claiming to be purer and more decent than the likes of you and me. Maybe they have somehow secured themselves from God's punishment for daring to ask others to do what they glaringly could not have done. Or maybe it is just that they are trying to be Saints like in other religions?

Alhamdulillah, there are no Saints in Islam. This would of course make them not more than just simple unashamed liars.