Irony Syawal

Today is the second day of raya and I am back home at the moment. I am watching a program in TV 9 called From Taiping to Akademi Al-Quran a story about a Taipingite who became the champion of Akademi Al-Quran. It is always a wonderful feeling to be here even though there are not many people at home now but guests keep coming as every past years. Always looking forward to see them. It is a nice feeling and environment here with raya song and program played on TV, kids coming for raya from out of nowhere and meeting old school friends that I have lost contact with for years.

I have to sincerely say that this Ramadhan was not as sweet as my past Ramadhan. I only woke up for Tahajud once and Alhamdulillah I did not miss one single Tarawih while in Perth except for one day when I was on the flight to Malaysia. I guess I have been slacking in making this Ramadhan a beneficial one. Having to work and some other commitments are not an excuse for me to treat Ramadhan as any other months. I was very inspired by this MAS accountant that I met in Trinity prayer room when he said that we do not do justice to Ramadhan if we treat Ramadhan just like any other usual months. Therefore, he took 2 weeks off to celebrate Ramadhan. On the other hand, I took 2 weeks off to celebrate raya! I know that one of the groups of people that has been cursed by Rasulullah s.a.w. is those who do not take full advantage of the month of Ramadhan. Allah forgive me.



I begin to feel that we are not on the right track in our way of celebrating Syawal and our way of saying farewell to Ramadhan. It is an irony how we are in high spirits in celebrating Syawal and at the same time we forget that we are leaving Ramadhan behind us not knowing if we are meeting Ramadhan in the next year never mind if we have benefited from this year’s Ramadhan. As far as I am concerned, Islam stresses heavily on reaping full benefit of Ramadhan and 1st of Syawal is the day that we celebrate having successfully completed Ramadhan. Syawal is the celebration of religion not that of culture. However, today we tend to celebrate Syawal like a big party putting Islamic values to a side. It should be a way of expressing our gratitude to Allah for giving us the blessed month of Ramadhan.
It is an irony how we are joyful that Ramadhan has gone and for some of us Ramadhan is not something that we look forward to even though we know the big rewards that contain in it. Every big reward comes with difficulties that we have to face and in this case we have fast and to govern ourselves from everything that has been forbidden to us in order to reap the benefit of the blessed month.

It is an irony how we can cry of not meeting families in Syawal but we can’t cry realising that Ramadhan is going. It is an intrinsic nature of human being I think that we are forgetful and we enjoy being happy. We look forward for the worldly happiness and we forget about eternal happiness. I think what we should really be doing is that we have to reap the full benefit of Ramadhan and then we enjoy the Syawal festivities, of course within the Islamic boundaries.

I remind myself so that next year my heart will be soften to perform more in Ramadhan and to moisten my lips more with the praising of my God. Not to mention also that Ramadhan is a month to practice to be carried forward to the months after.

14 Oct 2007, Taiping