Poem of Death

Two days ago, I read on the newspaper about parents wanted actions to be taken against a religious teacher who showed a video of how jenazah is tortured and questioned in a kubur to a bunch of primary school kids. This video was showed during an extra-curricular activity at a school. According to these parents, their children were having problem sleeping at night and constantly scared. Some even claimed that their children mentioned that the teacher told them that if they don't pray, they're going to end up like the jenazah. 

So last night, a friend forwarded me the link of the video on Youtube. I didn't have the guts to watch it last night because I don't wanna end up having nightmares. So I watched it this morning at Kimmel where there were a lot of people around me ;P It turned out that it is not that scary, but still, the idea of seeing a jenazah in kain kafan is not something that I enjoy looking at. Apparently, according to my friend, this video was done by the Al-Arqam group as one of their video and books publications and it was banned before (or so I heard). But with the technology nowadays, it must have leaked somewhere as people started to upload it on Youtube. 

I try my very best everyday to be a better Muslim. As a Muslim, I do the necessary Ibadah as best as I could but still, I have a lot more to learn about the religion. But when I read the news about this story, I must say that I do agree with the parents. Showing this video to a bunch of small kids won't help them to understand about death/religion any better. It is quite a scary scene to be shown to them. No wonder these kids are having nightmares. This teacher should be punished! Where is her integrity as a teacher? Even if you want to teach about death to your students, showing this kinda video is not the way! They're too young to comprehend this sortof thing! 

When I was much younger, I had a mixed feelings about being a Muslim myself. I was glad to be born as a Muslim because my religious teachers always told us that we are guaranteed a place in heaven because we are already a Muslim, unlike the kafir who will go straight to hell. At that time, I sympathized my friends who are non-Muslim. Poor thing that they are going to end up in hell even if they do good deed all the time. Although I was glad, I did complained about the many stuff that I had to do at such a young age without understanding the reasons why I had to do such things, such as solat 5 kali sehari, recite the Quran (thought I have no idea what I'm reciting about), puasa, baca doa makan, hafal al-Fatihah, hafal sifir (totally out of topic ;P), and many more things. The only explanation I got was kalau tak buat, nanti kena bakar dalam neraka. As I grow up, some of the things are making more sense and I became much more disciplined at doing these Ibadah. 

Nonetheless, the more I think about the way I was taught about my religion, the more it occur to me that I'm believing in things that I couldn't even know how to explain to other people. For example, if people especially non-Muslim, asked me these questions, I wouldn't know what to say, such as, why does Muslim pray in Arabic language but don't know what it means, why does some Muslim women wears the hijab and some don't, how come most Muslim drinks alcohol although it is clearly stated that it's haram, why do religious teacher still listens to Siti Nurhaliza's song but they're the one who said that women's voice is aurat? If the voice is aurat, are women not allowed to talk at all? Why can't Muslim eat pork? Why must Muslim samak when they touch dogs? Why can't we have dogs as pets? They're among of the cutest animal that God has created! I can come up with so many questions right now but not necessarily be getting all the correct answers. I'm sure if I ask too many things, people are just gonna tell me to shut up. 

I guess in a way I do blame myself for not being curious enough when I was younger. And even now, with so many things unanswered, I still do not make enough effort to find myself the answers. Sometimes, I just don't know who to believe (I know that we are supposed to believe the Quran but nowadays there are a lot of people who change the content of the Quran or Hadith to benefit themselves, or to corrupt the Muslim people). I guess it's normal for every human wanting to find answers that we want to hear, instead of the real truth. Therefore, we find a way to find what suits us best, even though it means by altering some of the truth. That way, we can feel better about ourselves.