Monthly Archives: May 2020

You who believe, fasting is prescribed for you, as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may be mindful of God.

Surah Al-Baqarah [2:183]

The holy month of Ramadhan has just ended. For some, this marks a return to ‘normal’ life, or at least, a life as normal as can be in this pandemic. For me, however, the passing of Ramadhan this year really feels like losing something valuable. What follows is my humble attempt at recording some of my thoughts on Ramadhan 1441H.

Back to basics

In years past, one of the paradoxical aspects of Ramadhan in Malaysia is that it is often associated with excessiveness rather than frugality. The epitome of this is undoubtedly the all-you-can-eat Ramadhan buffets where you can get nasi kandar, nasi tomato, nasi ayam, nasi goreng, mee goreng, mihun goreng, kueyteow goreng, ayam goreng, ayam merah, ayam tandoori, satay ayam…wait, where was I again? Oh yes, excessiveness! Indeed, the Ramadhan buffet for me is the antithesis of what this holy month should be. If you’ve never been to one, I don’t think you can quite appreciate how much food there often is. Sometimes it feels like war in there, especially when there’s only one piece of lamb chop left and many hungry souls eyeing it!

Let me put my hand up and say that I’m equally guilty of partaking in these all-you-can-eat buffets previously. Thankfully, this year all that wasn’t even a concern as most eating establishments were shut anyway. Instead, we had to eat at home (ooh!) with our families (aah!), which automatically limits the amount of food you can bring to the table.

I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to go back to the basics: spending time with my family, eating a simple meal for buka puasa, reading the Quran on Zoom with my batchmates, performing the terawih prayers together etc. Turns out when you strip away all the relentless marketing for more food, more clothes, more things in general, you end up with the truly valuable moments in life. Who knew!

Staying productive

When I flew back to Malaysia in mid-March, I had a plan to stay productive, by keeping up with the latest medical/neuroscience journals and writing up the introductory chapter to my DPhil. I got in touch with my neurology unit to see if they needed my help, but alhamdulillah by the time I obtained approval to return to clinical duties, the situation in Malaysia had improved slightly to the extent that I could just remain on standby and carry on with my DPhil work.

The only problem was trying to maintain productivity while working from home. This term was supposed to be dedicated to analysing the neuropsychological and neuroimaging data I’ve collected thus far, as well as learning about advanced MRI topics like resting-state functional connectivity and diffusion imaging. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to keep up with all the online lectures but this is one area where I’m determined to put in a lot more effort in the next few weeks inshaAllah.

On the flip side, I am now spending so much time with my 3-year-old son that I have officially been upgraded to Best Buddy status.

Social media use

One last thing that I wanted to write about is the role of social media in a pandemic. In a previous post I mentioned how my use of social media was limited to a few platforms, but in recent weeks, this has coalesced even further to basically just Facebook.

Privacy implications aside (something that deserves a blog post of its own), here’s what I like about social media:

Social media allowed me to stay in touch with family and friends while I was overseas. In particular, as the COVID-19 situation in the United Kingdom was steadily worsening and more and more places started to shut down, I could still follow along with developments in Malaysia. I also found social media useful for charity work particularly through IMARET (in which I have a tiny supporting role).

But social media use also comes with its own pitfalls. Two in particular deserve special mention:

1. Self-righteous posts and public shaming: All of us have seen this. The hastily-taken snap of people queuing up to go into a supermarket, or cars stuck in traffic, accompanied by harsh words about how people should be staying at home. Yes, people should stay at home as much as they can, but I wonder why we are so quick to judge others negatively for doing exactly the same thing we are doing. The people posting traffic jam pictures, implying that they are going to work but these other people are doing…what? Shopping? Sightseeing? This is one area where I think we can benefit from being less judgmental towards other people.
2. Fear-mongering: In Malaysia, there’s been a lot of hate directed towards Rohingya refugees, blaming them for all kinds of problems from unemployment to COVID-19. I wonder what we would say if our own families were being massacred, our own homes destroyed etc. A friend of mine wrote how we are being tested here, not as the Muhajirin but as the Ansar i.e. not as the people facing trials and tribulations, but as the people responsible for helping these refugees. May Allah open our hearts and fill it with empathy for others.

Conclusion

Overall, this Ramadhan has acted as a reset button for me, allowing me to pause and take stock of the many blessings I have in life. Although I miss being in Oxford, doing neuroscience-y things and pretending like I know a lot more about human memory than I really do, I am also aware of how privileged I am to be able to batten down the hatches and try my best to weather this storm. And because no lengthy blog post is complete without a Tolkien quote, here’s one from the Lord of the Rings:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Thank you for making it this far.

Selamat hari raya Aidilfitri, maaf zahir dan batin.

At the beginning of the year, if you had told me that soon I will be joining nightly ‘tadarus’ (reading of the Quran) sessions on Zoom with my friends, I would have looked at you and asked “What’s this Zoom thing you’re talking about?”

But such is life, that within a few short weeks, Zoom has become a huge part of many things we do today.

Because of the Movement Control Order (MCO) that has been implemented in Malaysia since mid-March, the month of Ramadhan this year has been very quiet so far. No ‘bazaar Ramadhan’, no ‘terawih’ prayers at the mosque, non of the usual activities that accompany the month of Ramadhan. To try to break the monotony, I invited some MCKK batchmates of mine for ‘tadarus’ sessions every night via Zoom. The aim here is to get us to read the Quran, even a little, especially during this blessed month of Ramadhan.

Alhamdulillah, I am really happy to see this simple being embraced by others. Attendance has been unexpectedly decent too, with about 15-20 people tuning in every night. We wanted to keep it casual, so everyone can choose to either read half a page of the Quran, or simply listen to other people. That way, we hoped more people would be attracted to join the session, even if just to have a quick chat at the end.

So far so good.

What I didn’t anticipate was the rush of memories flooding back in, transporting me back to those years I spent the month of Ramadhan in the quaint town of Kuala Kangsar.

I entered MCKK as a Form 1 student on 13 January 1997 which was near the beginning of Ramadhan that year. Five years later, my batchmates and I left ‘Koleq’ also during Ramadhan, after sitting for our ‘Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia’ examination. So as my friends were reading the Quran on Zoom, I couldn’t help but visualise the nights standing in ‘terawih’ prayers at the Prep School ‘surau’, together with these new friends of mine who would go on to become the brothers I never had. Likewise, my mind automatically wandered to ‘iftar’ in the Carey Hall, supplemented with food and drink bought from the ‘bazaar Ramadhan’ in the area popularly known as ‘Lembah’.

Looking back at those years, I can honestly say that they made me who I am, for better or worse. Indeed, for me personally, Kuala Kangsar is the closest thing I have to a ‘kampung’, not in the physical sense of where my relatives are, but in the sense of it being a place where I return time and time again in search of peace and tranquility. Even now, despite having spent time in other peaceful places like Oxford and Cambridge, the introvert in me inevitably longs to make another short trip to Kuala Kangsar. Definitely something to do before I fly back to the United Kingdom later this year inshaAllah…

I am writing these words just after concluding tonight’s ‘tadarus’ session, during which I couldn’t help but be captivated by these few verses in Surah Al-Anfal:

True believers are those whose hearts tremble with awe when God is mentioned, whose faith increases when His revelations are recited to them, who put their trust in their Lord, who keep up the prayer and give to others out of what We provide for them. Those are the ones who truly believe. They have high standing with their Lord, forgiveness, and generous provision.

Surah Al-Anfal [8:2-4]

Have a blessed Ramadhan everyone.