I just watched one documentary by BBC about America’s Most Hated Family. This story revolves around a family who indoctrinate one of the sect minister in Christianity who hold a belief which I found interesting. They seems like holding firmly to the essence of the teaching of Christianity although their approach is seemingly intrusive and harsh in the eye of the American public. They held the belief that the people in US doomed because participating in the war in Iraq and God condemned those US army who died in the war in Iraq because they did not believe with the War in Iraq. So they condemning the soldiers who died by picketing at the funeral of the soldiers who died in Iraq.

I am neither condoning nor accepting their doctrine but what interest me the most is the firm belief they hold on the transgression act of people such as homosexual relationship which is currently being publicize as if those who cannot accept the homosexuals are portrayed as being bigot and narrow minded. They hold strongly with their belief that homosexual is a corrupted act and those involved with this act will be condemned to hell in the Hereafter. To hold so strong and to publicly picketing with their belief with the mindset of they are propagating the belief of the Jesus (as) to remind people that they have transgressed and they need to come back to the pure path of Christianity can be seen as an honorable and brave act. They are fueled by their desire to save the other people from being condemned to Hell in afterlife.

When the journalist ask one of the daughter within the family about being hated by friends because of their belief and action, her answer strikes me the most. She said roughly that anything in this temporal life should be put on the least priority and to work for the God should be the utmost important thing in this life because I AM AFRAID of the God wrath.

Subhanallah, they dedicated their lives according to their belief while we have Muslims who do not even care about our own religion. We spend MOST of our time on things that is useless and have no added value towards Islam. We spend more time watching stupid movie videos, hundreds of episodes of cliché drama and television shows more than we spend time on learning about our own religion.

That is what exactly Syeikh Hamza Yusuf said, we have thousands of great kitab and scriptures that have been unread an unopened for centuries because of our own sad attitude towards knowledge! We claimed that we are the true religion but we do not appreciate Islam and even worst, we distorted the presentation pure image of Islam to the non-Muslim. The non-muslims steer away from Islam because of our own attitude and action that does not represent the true meaning of being a Muslim.

I hope this will be a great reminder mainly for myself and for all my fellow friends. Dr Bilal Philips once said that Islam and Iman are like respect, it is something you have to earn and do not come by inheritance. Yes, we can have Islam inscribed as a religion in our Malaysia Identity Card (IC) however being a muslim is about choice and sacrifice and we become a true muslim when when we completely submit ourselves to the will of God above our own desire (nafs).

Wallahua’lam.