Inspired By Isymam: A Talaqqi Story

Six years after I'd retired, I received two academic certificates.

One conferred by Masjid Sultan Salahudin Abdul Aziz Shah in Shah Alam for completing its one-year Talaqqi/Tajwid Course. The other one for attending a four-month Tajwid class at Rehal Islamic Studies Centre.

No, no, these are not fake PhD's. Hahaha.

The Shah Alam certificate was a sheer beauty. It's inscribed 100% in Jawi calligraphy, including my name. When was the last time I'd my name written in Jawi? Standard Six, 1965. That long ago. So I'll keep this certificate for the rest of my natural life, for both its intrinsic and extrinsic value.

Everybody knows the blue-hue Masjid Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah. But not many have heard of Rehal. It's a small, privately-run Talaqqi centre in Kota Damansara. The owner and teacher-in-chief is one Dr Surur Shihabudin, a two-time PhD who also lectures at UIA. Dr Surur has written a widely read text entitled  "Ilmu Tajwid" (pink hard cover, 342 pages). The book is about, hold your breath, Tajwid. What do you expect?

Religious gurus are never known for marketing craft and guile. Their books all look drab and dreary. And the titles leave very little to imagination. They should take a leaf out of literary frauds with funky titles like Blue Ocean or Freakonomics that have sold millions. "Talk Tajwid And Get A Second Wife In Two Weeks" would have been a runaway bestseller. Anyway I'd been using Dr Surur's "Ilmu Tajwid" for some time now and I've to admit that I was motivated to attend the course on the weight of this book and its author. Nothing beats the horse's mouth.

Frankly I'm proud to receive these certificates, even at the tender age of 62. I've lost count of all the certificates I'd received for all kinds of courses I attended when I was with Petronas. Lateral Thinking, High-Impact Speaking, Finance For Finance Haters, Business Leadership, 7 Habits, 5 Asses, you name it. But none really compares with these two humble certificates.
   

I'm writing this not to show off my religious fixation and credentials. I'm in fact exposing my failure and frailty. Children as young as six now learn the Quran and know all the finer points of Tajwid.  At my age, I'm supposed to teach.

So what's the point? In short, I want to share my late-life learning joys and trials. And if I can get  one more person to just think about learning Tajwid, I'd consider this blog entry a major triumph.

Tajwid is, admittedly, a very dry subject matter. Think theoretical Physics. Or Cost Accounting. It's highly technical and more potent than sleeping pills. Some of the charts and pictographs used are suspiciously similar to the periodic table.  You can't compare Tajwid with, say, Sirah, where you get to learn and turned on by our Prophet's love life with wife Aisyah, or marvel at the bravery of Khalid Al Walid and awe at the exploits of my favourite all-conquering warrior-archer-wanderer Saad Abi Waqqas.

One of my friends knows an awful lot about Syiah and Wahabbi, which, I think, are both juicier than Tajwid. He can expound on Nikah Mutaah, or temporary marriage, in the way that E Channel explains the premise behind the much-celebrated gender migration from Bruce to Caitlyn.

When I completed early Quran reading classes in standard six, I thought I'd mastered Quran reading. Mom could just pick any page and I'd read it aloud. I grew up with this mistaken belief that Tajwid was just an option, something for those who want to win the international Quran reading competition. So it was left on the back burner for fifty years. When I began to learn Tajwid,  I  rudely discovered that, for fifty years, I hadn't been reading the Quran the right way. I'd been reading the Quran not in Arabic, but in Kelantanese.

How did I "discover" Tajwid? It wasn't exactly Fleming and penicillin, but it was similarly fortuitous. Or serendipitous, if you don't mind. The story is screenplay stuff and wrote itself.

It was in 2002 when about 20 of us, close classmates who went to Tiger Lane in 1966, descended for a reunion and Iftar. We had a brief tazkirah, where, by default, the most qualified of us led the session. He reminded us of the intrigues and intricacies of Quran reading, and, to prove his point, he picked out Isymam, a Tajwid rule applied at Ayat 11 Surah Yusuf. We've to purse (muncung) our lips when we recite ta'- man-n-na.  Man, this is something, I thought. I'd been missing lots of fun !

From then on, I began to sniff around for basic Tajwid books. "For my son" I told the bookseller. He'd heard this routine before, so he just nodded. Reading the books was uphill. Tolstoy's two-volume War and Peace was easier and faster.

I finally retired in 2009, but it wasn't until two years later that I began to make some inroads by attending formal and informal Tajwid classes, including our monthly Tiger Lane usrah sessions led by, yes, the Isymam Imam. Every lesson was a sobering self-discovery.

I found out that learning at my age is extremely challenging for three reasons. One, I'd lost most of my thinking skills (not a lot to begin with). So it took me longer than forever to get the hang of the strange concepts and to memorize new names. Two, I was among the oldest, if not the oldest, in class. My Shah Alam and Rehal classmates were mostly half my age, mentally sharper and, worst, they all had more hair. Three, most Tajwid teachers had very little talent in the complex art of teaching. The Rehal program, in particular, was stressful not only because the classroom felt like a Cambodian sweatshop but also because the teacher (Dr Surur) used a teaching technique made popular by the Japanese army during their brief occupation of the old Malaya. He didn't believe in soft sell. He'd drill and grill, regardless of your age. If you're the sensitive sort, you'd drop out and become a "syahid" before the third week.

But after the initial scares and jitters, I began to enjoy the Tajwid classes. Even Dr Surur's hard-hitting military style didn't scare me. With age advantage, I could ask any question I like, like why huruf "Dhod" is Rokhowah and not Syiddah? I always believe everything has its soft and sweet side. In a class of 20 students, you'll listen to 20 different ways of reading. High notes, low notes, poor pitch, terrible tone. I can tell you it's more fun than Akademi Fantasia audition.

We learned from our teachers and from each other, driven by one common and singular ambition: to read the Quran the way our beloved Prophet read it 1400 years ago. What's not to like?

The test of Tajwid is not in the terms and theories, but in putting it to practice. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, remember? Not the prettiest of parallels, but you get my point. Mastering the Makhraj, Mad and the stuff is only the starting point. It's how I apply it when I get down to actually doing it. It was mentally and physically draining, tougher than treadmill. But once I get in the groove, it's hard to stop. You could even get high. Try the graceful Surah Maryam, and you'd soon find yourself doped and drowned in the rhyming verses. Reading the Quran would never be the same.

So I've mastered Tajwid. No, no, no. Not even close. Never. There's still a lot left to learn. Dr Surur kept reminding us "Bergurulah walaupun kita seorang guru".  It's not possible to unlearn and relearn 50 years of work in six short years. The trick is to train. Serena Williams has won 23 Grand Slams and she still trains with a coach, six hours a day. Now you're excited.

I'll never be a champion. But I'll keep on learning: twisting and turning my tongue, tweaking my speed and breath, and even trying out a new tune. The divine virtues and rewards of reading the Quran are never in question. But I can promise you one immediate payoff when you read the Quran the right way: your wife loves you a lot more.  

Sojourn In Shenzhen

The landing was faultless. But the moment I stepped into the airport and looked around, my stomach dropped. Everyone here except us was a Chinese. I'd nothing against the Chinese as a people or a concept, it's just that I'd never seen so many Chinese in my entire life. My wife sensed my abeyance and pressed my shoulder. "Come on, this is China. Not Italy". I knew, but, I mean, all these Chinese and so many. "China, Chinese la" She reasoned out. This line of logic left me with almost nothing to argue.

Last month I was in Shenzhen and nearby Guangzhou. Nearby was actually 150 km away. These two cities are now China's boom towns, growing at breakneck rates, and home to 23 million people, all Chinese (What do you expect? 23 million Italians?).

It's hard to find another place more sanguine than Shenzhen. And so devoid of character and charisma. If you love museums, castles and art houses, don't go down to Shenzhen. Go to Leuven. Or Leiden. Nobody here has time for contemplation. Culture and theatre are a waste of space. This is the soulless motherland of finance, factories and fakes feeding off world's rapacious greed and relentless consumption. Only 50 years ago the mantra was fish, farm and fight for the country. Now? Let's make more money.

I was part of a touring party of 17 fine-looking people, all my family members, including wife and daughter Aida. The youngest was nephew Umar, 10 years old. We'd been travelling around together quite a bit to whet the wanderlust. Well, not to Las Vegas or Las Palmas, but mostly the more affordable local and regional hotspots. This time we broke our long-held tradition of self-styled backpacking and bespoke itinerary by taking a guided tour. Backpacking with a guide? Now that's embarrassing. Why? Because this is China, that's why.

In case you've forgotten, China is officially a communist state, you know, Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong, Falun Gong, Gang of Four, Shaolin Temple, and all the scary stuff. We heard that government officials in China are summarily shot even for petty crimes like corruption. So quite naturally, we were worried. Who knew, we could get jail term in China for laughing or reading. We'd to agree with Ronald Reagan's pearl of wisdom: Why take chances?

Our Chinese tour guide, named Felix, could speak English and a smattering of Malay. He was a native Shenzhenian or Shenzhenese or simply Chinese and very proud of his city. According to him,  the average age of the Shenzhen population was only 31 years. I knew I was the oldest person in my group. Now I was also the oldest person in the whole city of Shenzhen. I quickly told wife that she was technically the second oldest person in Shenzhen. She dismissed it offhand, accusing me of conspiracy, hangover, late-life lapses and so on. All too familiar.

After five days and four nights in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, we came away mixed. Well, no place in the world has all pluses. Not even Paris. And certainly not Ottawa. (One of my brothers-in-law still thinks Ottawa is in Japan). You'd always end up with a bone or two to pick. So there's this nagging and uneasy feeling that we might not have seen and done enough. Or, in Obama's language, we weren't getting the biggest bang for the buck. Guangzhou especially deserves more time. The jury is still out, so to speak and I hate this phrase. We've to really sit back and think hard before passing a verdict.

In the meantime, I've put together some takeaways from our tour, if you're interested. If you're not, then just scroll ahead for some Android-quality photos. This list is strictly my opinion.  The 10-year old nephew may have other ideas. PM him if you want to know. 

1. A Guided Tour Is A Time-Waster.

A guided tour of any part of China requires that you visit a number of state-sponsored "craft or cultural centres". The Shenzhen jade factory that we were taken to had the uncanny feel and atmosphere of Hotel California. Yes, that part "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave..." and the searing guitar licks.  Lucky thing a sister-in-law bought something. That probably was enough to save us and let us live to fight another day. Hahaha.

What's worse than one jade factory? Two jade factories. We'd to visit another jade factory, in Guangzhou. Same bloody scripts and tricks. But this time around we were all prepared to fight back, communist or not. It all ended peacefully though, with nobody buying anything. 

Then there was this Chinese herbal medicine centre or clinic in Guangzhou, where they had a professor from Beijing touch our hands and size up our state of health. Apparently everybody seemed to be down with at least one chronic condition. A sister-in-law seemed to be critically short of oxygen. Hahaha, thanks prof, finally we knew why she was what she was. But no worry, because the kind professor, as expected, would prescribe the necessary (and expensive) concoction. I know a scam when I see one.

We'd easily wasted precious eight hours on these state tours, which we could have easily spent exploring Guangzhou's Muslim quarter, fruit markets, the subway, and the old city with its narrow alleys and quaint shops. Both Shenzhen and Guangzhou were safer than Subang Jaya and taxi drivers eat and live by their meters. We would survive on our own.

Felix the tour guide was a part-time bait-and-switch artist. He was so good at his trade that he managed to lure us into buying bags of nuts, Longchamp purses, and watches from him.

Hwang He, the Chinese River of Sorrow, shall be my witness as I promised myself to never ever again take guided tours and go near tour guides.

2. Muslim Meals Are Marvellous

Chinese Halal food or Halal Chinese food? Doesn't matter. Heaps of horror stories about this. Bland, tasteless, sticky and so on. Don't listen. The food was glorious and out of this world. It was vegetable based, with superb soy and only touches of meat and fish. Very healthful. My weight and pulse rate fell after two days.

3. Fakes Are Fine

Shenzhen and Guangzhou are full of fake stuff, with miles of malls plying the bogus high styles. I'm all for this counterfeiting and bootlegging. I think for far too long the much celebrated European haute couture are getting away with exploiting unsuspecting Asians through clever marketing and subtle branding. Those designer labels are never worth their extortionate prices. They are the real fakes, not the fakes. A fat girl flagging a 100,000 dollar Hermes bag is still a fat girl.

Louhu Mall near Shenzheng railway station was a five-storey affair choked with fakes and knock-offs. The action here was thick and fast. The goods were excellent value, at less than 5% of the "real" thing. The Chinese "designers" have really come a long way. The stitching and sewing was splendid and it'd tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. If your friends can still tell it's not Chanel, you're the problem. Not the bag.

Bargaining here was more intense than watching Lee Chong Wei. Price of anything starts at 850 Yuan (RM 500). You must poke back with only 50 Yuan and then watch the sales girl feigning (or actually going into) fits or short comatose. You must hold your ground and walk away. She'd bolt after you and this fast furious sequence should last for ten minutes before you and the girl finally settle for 100 Yuan, a discount of 80%. The process takes plenty of energy. But well worth it. You get a fake bag and lose 400 calories of real fat. What's not to love.

4. The Magnificent Mosque Of Saad Abi Waqqas

The name alone conjures up the mystique. You simply have to see this old mosque in Guangzhou, a shoo-in in traveller's bucket list. The blatant collision of Arabic and Chinese architecture, set among lush gardens, will just blow you away. The dark red panels and pillars were bold, defiant but delightful.

Saad was Nabi Muhammad's close companion and relative, warrior, archer, traveller and diplomat extraordinaire, all in one. He purportedly travelled all the way to China with his kabilah in the 7th century to propagate the Islamic faith, 700 years before Marco Polo and his gay brothers.

Climbing up the steps, I hesitated. I was overcome by the poignant thought of the old mosque of Kg Laut, where I grew up. It's  not as old, but the warmth and welcome were strikingly similar. I could still picture the mosque standing triumphantly where it was 50 years ago, just like this very mosque in Guangzhou.

5. Beijing Street, Dongmen Market, Baima Wholesale Market, Mangrove Park (or Whatever).

A standard tour will happily drop you off at these (in)famous places. These are duds and dreadful and should be officially certified as state tourist traps. My lawn is bigger than the Mangrove Park, and more birds. Skip if you can. That jade racket was more fun. Go to Sungai Wang instead, when you come back.

6. Finally, Oh My English!

The Chinese love the English language. They've a long way to go. But, believe me, pretty soon they'll speak English better than our public university graduates. Notices and signs everywhere carry the English translations. The intention is noble enough, but you'll almost always end up bemused and amused. You've probably read and heard loads of cruel jokes about this. I can confirm they are all real, not a joke. Here's a selection. Enjoy !      

Whatever It Is, Just Don't Do It.

             

Hotel Room: Warm Prompt? Heat Spout? Mirror Burst?

So Profound. How About The Grandfather?

Hotel Door: If You Don't Brush, The Door Won't Open

Toilet At Shenzhen Airport: Take Your Time To Rise. Thanks. 

Kg Pandan Backpackers In Action (Plus A Tour Guide)

 Saad Abi Waqqas Was Here

The Oldest Couple In Shenzhen

The Not-Very-Curious Case of Starving Students And The Very Curious Case of A Billion Donation

Sorry for the lavish and longish title, but, really, our university students are starving.

A recent survey of 25,632 students in six public universities revealed that more than half are actually living on RM 5 a day, while three-quarters have been in situations where they're too broke to eat.

The very next morning, the Ministry of Higher Education dismissed these survey results as nonsense. 

A "Freemeals" program at UKM recently saw all 100 free food packs gone in 600 seconds. A similar program at UPM produced similar results, only faster. Another "Freemeals" variety called "Suspended Meals"  is ongoing at UPM.

In the wake of widespread outcry, the voluntary groups who organised these free-food programs were harassed by the universities. They were hauled up and quizzed and questioned. Apparently the authorities weren't too happy with the name "Suspender Meals".

"No students will go hungry on my watch", declared the Minister of Higher Education on 10 January. Brave words. "On my watch"! Wow. This guy sounds like President Donald Trump. Our ministers are all masters of the atmospherics. You could almost feel the hot air and the hollow ring. He forayed further by suggesting that students should seek part-time jobs. Like what? Housemaids? Uber grabber?

Another minister, this time a blue blood, rejected offhand the whole notion as sensationalism and theatrics. According to him, nobody's starving in this great country, not even the homeless. Hard to believe that a minister for youths can be so out of touch with the youths. Maybe he's still busy consoling last year's SEA Games female gymnasts.

If these ministers don't already know, students go to universities and colleges to do one and only one simple job: study. That's why they're called students, and not pump attendants, or surgeons. If they have to study AND work at the same time, we have a problem. Just imagine a surgeon who has to cook while doing a coronary bypass.  Or a chef doing a bypass while cooking. Either way, the food wouldn't turn out good. I can't find a better analogy, but I think you get my point.

The public are again divided on this.

Why I said again? Because people are already divided. We're already divided over the RM 2.6 billion donation. We're literally, figuratively, badly beaten, shaken, broken. It's like a big fat hole, with those who believe on one side and those who don't on the other side.

Going by the social media dynamics and statistics, the ratio of believers to disbelievers is roughly 1 to 99.  Loudly lopsided, I know. But don't be discouraged by that 1%.  If you understand mathematics, 1% of 30 million population is actually 300,000, including some newborns and Nepalese. This is one hell lot of people, equivalent to the entire population of Kuala Terengganu. Imagine, the whole boring people of Kuala Terengganu believe that an Arab has donated RM2.6 billion, while the rest of the country don't. In my 60 over years, we're never this divided.

On this case of starving students, we're again split into believers and disbelievers. The line is less clear though. Those who believe that students are starving are mostly those who don't believe that there's an Arab somewhere throwing away RM 2.6 billion, while those who doubt students are starving are mostly those who believe in mad Arabs.

Believers are naturally sympathetic and very angry. They felt that the government had wasted loads of money on floating submarines, illegal speed traps and Mongolia mines, starving the students of funds. They also believed that RM 2.6 billion, mad Arab or dead Arab, could've been mobilised to feed the students for the next 100 years.

While the doubters or disbelievers came down hard on the students themselves, levelling the blame squarely on the students for their financial profligacy, you know, things like iPhones, prepaids, Starbucks, girl friends and so on.

If you asked me, I think there's a strong and valid case of hungry students. Even if you didn't ask me, I still think there's a strong case.  A couple of old classmates with children in public universities are grappling with the classic opportunity cost dilemma: anak vs mamak. More money for anak means less for mamak. With cruel cutbacks on Mara and Ptptn handouts, the parents have to fill the void. We'd never know whether the students would starve without their parents' financial lifeline. No parents would run a trial to find out.

I went to UKM for my degree way back in 1975. A local bank fell for my charisma and handed me a handsome scholarship of RM 2400 a year. I won't shame and name this unfortunate bank. The government scholarship was about  RM 2000.  I thought could live like a king. 

After one semester, I discovered that I was actually a king on a shoestring. At the time, a full-blown breakfast cost under RM 2.00. No smart or stupid phones to make you go mad. Water was free from water cooler. We used payphones and public transport. We ate pretty much what the prehistoric men ate. But still there were days when we'd to dig deep and dip below United Nation's recommended daily dietary intake. I stayed off campus, ten or maybe fifteen of us in one house. Yes, we pioneered this communal concept, not the Banglas. It's a basic and spartan lifestyle. Lifestyle, yeah. At the end of every day, I only had enough left to fight another day.

So I'm the least surprised that some students are hungry now. Education is mentally and financially draining, even in the heavily subsidised public universities. Private colleges are even more intimidating. Premium brands like Sunway, Taylor's, Nottingham, Monash etc charge upwards of RM 90,000 for a 4-year degree. QS recently ranked our private tertiary education the fifth most expensive in the world (cost relative to income). Father PTPTN will never give you enough to cover your fees, let alone your feed. If you go to these colleges, you'd die of starvation.

Thing is, university life is not supposed to be a walk in the park, at least not for most of us. Occasionally missing meals is no big deal.  It's par for the course during my time and more so now with GST in full flight and Ringgit in freefall. Plain roti canai is RM1.60 a pop now and you've to compete with the cash-rich Bangladeshis and Indonesians.

So I'm not sure why the ministers or the universities or just about anybody would've to be up in arms and deny this. Just accept this as part of education. It preps the students up for later life. I know you can pinpoint a lot of ugly things to Umno, but starving students isn't Umno's doing. The grand old party has done a lot of good, building 20 public universities in the country, with another five new ones if they win in 2018. It's unfair to expect them to feed the students as well.

Hungry students are pretty much everywhere, in India, in Mongolia, in Malaysia, and  even in richer countries like the US.

Which reminds me of the inspiring story of Indra K Nooyi, the current CEO of PepsiCo. She's championing the "performance for a purpose" management mantra, which espouses responsible business. Pepsi now has less calories than Coke. She left Tamil Nadu for Yale to do her MBA in 1978, and, in her own words, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I was totally, completely broke. I'd no money to buy clothes". She worked on campus on minimum wage and probably survived because she's a vegetarian.

She's quite rich now, of course, and has been generously giving back to her university. Yale is just happy to reciprocate her generosity with a Classroom and a Deanship named after her (Nooyi Classroom, Nooyi Dean). "My gift to Yale pales in comparison to the gift that Yale gave me". Such humility. I'm sure there are fewer hungry students in Yale now because of her gift. She gave again early this month, her biggest so far. No numbers were disclosed, but it's thought to be between 20 to 30 million. US Dollars!

It would be nice if our own ex-starving students who make good take a leaf out of Indra Nooyi's playbook and give back to their universities. They may start with RM2 and work all the way up to RM 20 million.

I must admit that, with depleting retained earnings and a girl deep in college and another very soon, I can't afford much. Maybe Ahmad Maslan, a fellow UKM alumnus, can. I don't think he was starving when he did his MBA at UKM. No hungry students would graduate with 3.85 CGPA. I'm sure he's fairly rich, I mean, he's a deputy minister with three or four jobs, and Umno, don't forget. If he wanted to, he could start his own legacy in UKM with Ahmad Maslan Suspender Meals!

Believe me, there's hardly a cause greater and godlier than giving. Donate to your alma mater. Don't donate to your prime minister.