Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Gemulah Mak Saya; addendum

Mak tinggal di rumah keluarga kami bersama keluarga Kak Yah. Mak mengajar anak-anak Kak Yah, dari Muaz, Nusaibah dan Najwa membaca Quran. Mak agak 'bengkeng' ketika mengajar Quran. Ketika mak masih segar dahulu. Pak Cik Mansor lah yang jadi driver, membawa mak ke tempat orang mengajar sana sini.

Mak seumpama wanita sezaman dengannya suka memakai barang emas di tubuh, walaupun ketika sekadar berada di katilnya pada beberapa tahun akhir hayatnya. Mak juga tidak berpantang makan walaupun dia disuntik insulin hari-hari. Mak yang sangat terbatas gerakannya selepas mengalami sakit kencing manis itu banyak bergantung kepada anak-anak Kak Yah untuk membuka tutup suiz kipas, membuka tutup radio television, membawa air minum serta makanan dan sebagainya. Mak juga berleter kepada anak cucu sekiranya ada yang dia rasa tersangkut.

Ibah (Nusaibah) pulang ke rumah dari UITM Dungun pada 2 hujung minggu terakhir mak untuk berkhidmat kepada mak. Seorang cucu yang baik, masyaallah. Ketika mendapat khabar mak meninggal, Ibah yang sepatutnya mengikuti rombongan ke Johor telah menumpang Dok Mek untuk balik.

Saya teringat waktu saya kecil, mak suka membuat bedak sejuknya sendiri. Dia merendam beras di dalam molor (bekas kaca yang besar) dan diletakkan di kawasan terpencil yang redup untuk masa yang lama. Bau dari beras yang menghancur itu agak busuk, dan selepas beras itu hancur, maka patinya digotel kecil-kecil . Gotelan beras hancur itu diletakkan di atas badang buluh dan dijemur panas. Mak biasanya akan meletakkan kuntuman bunga melor bersama gotelan beras itu. Agaknya untuk memberi sedikit kewangian kepada bedak sejuk itu. Bedak itu tidak dipakai untuk tujuan berjangak (berhias), ianya memberi rasa sejuk selasa kepada pemakai dan mungkin melembutkan kulit. Muka perempuan yang mengenakan bedak sejuk ini akan kelihatan putih, umpama pakai 'mask' kecuali bahagian mata.

Agak saya, antara anak-anaknya , Abang Nung lah anak yang dia senangi, kerana patuh kepada mak, tidak bersoal balik apa yang mak katakan. Dok Mek lah yang dia banyak buat berjenguk -kira , dia anak sulung. Kak Yah dan anak-beranak lah yang dia banyak mengatur dan dia paling 'concern' , memandangkan Kak Yah tinggal bersama mak. Saya yang paling santai, saya bergurau dengan semua orang, mak, mak mertua dan semuanya.


Monday, March 28, 2011

Gemulah Mak Saya

Hari ini genaplah seminggu mak meninggal dunia. Mak telah menghayati hidupnya sebagai seorang Muslim Melayu dalam 'konteks tradisional'. Walaupun ketika mak telah lumpuh bahagian kakinya selepas serangan penyakit kecing manis, mak masih mengekalkan amalan sejak mudanya dengan melazimi surah Yasin, Tabarakallazi, Sejadah setiap hari. Mak terpaku di katilnya untuk hampir 3 tahun lebih, bagaimanapun pemikiran dan ingatannya tidak banyak terjejas sehinggalah ke akhir hayatnya.

Beberapa bulan yang lepas, saya menanya mak semada mak masih ingat Asma al-Husna, mak menjawab yang mak dah lama tak baca, tetapi Alhamdulillah ketika itu mak membaca semula dan nyata ingatannya masih kuat. Di bahagian kepala mak tidur, sentiasa ada Mushaf al-Quran dan ada 2 utas tasbih. Mak masih juga membaca al-Quran terutama antara maghrib dan isya', waklaupun ketika itu terpaku di katilnya.

Walaupun saya menyarankan agar mak menjama'kan sembahyangnya, kerana agak rumit untuk mengambil wudu untuk setiap waktu; apa lagi ketika berwudu mak memastikan yang mak melaksanakannya seumpama ketika mak masih segar sihat. Semua sunnat mahu dikerjakan, bahkan mak juga menyapu air atas tengkuk sebelum membasuh kaki (amalan ini disebut di mazhab Hanafi, tidak dalam mazhab Syafie ).

Beberapa tahun terkemudian ini mak kurang puasa sunnat, agaknya tubuhnya sudah lemah kesan dari penyakit kencing manisnya. Tetapi mak masih bertanya "habis dah puasa 6?", "berapa hari dah puasa ?" ketika hari-hari 10 awal Dzu al-Hijjah.

Mak adalah seorang yang buta-huruf kecuali huruf Quran, dan sememangnya mak hanya belajar membaca al-Quran, mak tidak pernah belajar membaca tulisan rumi atau jawi. Seingat saya mak sentiasa mempelajari al-Quran dari zaman seawal yang saya dapat ingat, dengan Mak Su Haji Batu 4 yang datang ke rumah selepas Asar, dengan Gemulah Haji Ali, dengan Gemulah Ustaz Ismail Mu'allimah Kubang Pasu, dengan Gemulah Mak Jah Haji, dengan Gemulah Kak Mah Cik Gu Johan, terkemudian dengan Gemulah Mak Ngah Haji Kota. Mak belajar mengaji al-Quran sehinggalah dia terpaku di katilnya kerana sakitnya.

Ketika dia terpaku pada katilnya, mak banyak mendengar radio, "orang mengajar dalam radio" dalam istilah mak dan melihat rancangan keagamaan dalam tv. Hanya saya tidak tahu sejauh mana yang mak dapat faham.

Mak juga banyak menghadiri tempat orang mengajar, terutama di balaisah A.Rahman Wakaf Che Yeh kemudian di Masjid at-Tarbiyyah, mak juga menghadiri tempat mengajar Haji Wan Jah, Ustazah Wan Faezah, Dr. Fatma dan lainnya. Mak suka keramaian di dalam majlis orang mengajar, mak juga suka keramaian berbekwoh. Pernah dalam tahun awal 70'an, jiran kami, Cik Gu Mat Amin menumpangkan mak dengan keretanya untuk pergi mendengar Haji Nik Leh di setiap pagi Jummat. Tetapi mak tidak langsung terpengaruh dengan aliran kaum muda, mungkin mak tidak fahampun perbezaan dan kejanggalan yang terdapat dalam pengajian Haji Nik Leh tersebut. Mak sekadar suka majlis pengajian!

Mak pernah bercerita yang dia hanya ke sekolah zaman budaknya untuk 2, 3 hari sahaja. Zaman kecilnya mak berkawan rapat dengan sepupunya Gemulah Fatimah isterinya Mat Isa. Ketika mula-mula serangan Jepun, mak banyak duduk bersembunyi di rumah Haji Saad, ayah saudaranya , iaitu bapanya Fatimah. Dia memberi komen "zaman tu, bodoh lagi , ada ke pergi nusuk (bersembunyi) di rumah orang kaya, (yang mungkin tumpuan orang merompak)". Dalam kad pengenalan ditulis mak dilahirkan pada tahun 1934, jadi agaknya memang tidak jauhlah dari benarnya, apabila dibandingkan dengan cerita mak itu.

Mak kuat bekerja untuk menyara hidup sekeluarga di zaman mudanya, dia menoreh getah di Kampong Jelutung dan di dalam Pagar Cik Mat di kampong kami, mak dan ayah juga membuat (menanam) padi di tanah dekat rumah CikGu Johan dan tanah Dalam Paya,. Mak juga mengoreng kopi untuk dijual, hanya kemudiannya berhenti kerana harga butir kopi melambung naik sedangkan mak tak tergamak hendak naikkan harga serbuk kopi. Mak juga suka sangat jadi 'ibu kutu' kepada rakan-rakannya yang bermain kutu. Kadang-kadang mak tidak ingat di mana disimpan duit kutipan kutu sehingga dia jadi gelisah.

Bapa mak, Haji Idris memang asal orang Kota, ayahnya Haji Abdul Rahman, seorang guru al-Quran berpindah dari Surau Kota ke kawasan sekarang ini berhampiran dengan round-about Kota. Oleh itu adik-beradik Tok Ayah Yeh , Pak Ngah Saad , Tok Da Geretak tinggal di kawasan yang sama. Ibu Mak, Meriam, asalnya dari Gaung, ayahnya Mak Da (gelaran yang kami panggil) ialah Paksu Mamat. Paksu Mamat adalah seorang bomoh patah, bomoh secara keturunan. Yang terakhir dalam keluarga Mak Da yang mewarisi baka bomoh ini ialah Gemulah Maksu Limah Gaung, dia sepatutnya jadi bidan tetapi dia seorang pengemban (mudah merasa jijik), sehingga dia sakit untuk berapa lama; kesudahannya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat datang dalam mimpi dan memberitahu Maksu Limah " dah mu tak leh jadi tok bidan, mu tolonglah orang dengan mengurut". Itulah yang menjadikan Maksu Limah sebagai tukang urut. Saya sempat berurut dengan Maksu Limah beberapa kali. Ganjilnya sebagai ayahnya, Paksu Mamat, Maksu Limah juga dengan sendirinya tertutup lior untuk memakan makanan yang disediakan oleh orang bukan Islam, Maksu Limah tak makan tepung nonde (ondeh-ondeh) yang dibeli kerana bimbang tepung beras itu hasil tangan orang Siam, dia tak makan biskut yang di dalam tin. Katanya ayahnya, Paksu Mamat sampaikan minum kopi yang dicampur manisan (gula melaka) kerana tidak boleh makan gula yang dibeli di kedai.

Keluarga kami agak rapat dengan waris di Gaung terutama dengan Gemulah Maksu Som dan Pakmuda Tolib.

Mak dan ayah sempat menunaikan ibadat haji pada tahun 1980, ketika itu saya juga menunaikan haji pertama saya. Kemudian 3 tahun yang lalu, mak menyerahkan wang sebanyak RM4'000 kepada saya supaya saya dapat menunaikan umrah untuknya, ketika itu beliau sudah tidak begitu sihat. Saya katakan kepadanya yang saya akan tunaikan haji bagi pihaknya, Alhamdulillah saya dengan rahmat Allah diberi kesempatan menunaikan haji pada tahun itu bersama Sdr Yusri , Sdr Shabrimim dan Dr Adli berserta isteri.

Mak sempat melihat Sarah, cucunya, anak kakak sulung saya berkahwin pada cuti raya Cina dalam bulan Februari yang lepas. Dia menunjukkan rasa seakan dia terpinggir di katilnya dari keriuhan persiapan majlis walimah kerana terpaku di katil sehinggalah dia dibawa ke rumah Dok Mek (panggilan kepada kakak sulung), untuk memerhati keriuhan itu dari kerusi rodanya. Ketika rombongan menghantar menantu ke Batu 30, mak mahu menyertai berarak itu. Dia muntah-muntah dalam kereta, dan sampai di rumah besan,mak tidak mahu turun dari kereta kerana kepenatan. Tetapi mak puas hati, nampak sangat yang dia kasih kepada menantu Dok Mek ini.

Selesai majlis menghantar menantu, bibik Indonesia yang menjaga mak mengadu yang dia tidak sihat dan seakan keluar darah bersama kahak. Doktor yang merawatnya menasihati kami agar dihantar bibik ini kepada agensi pekerja untuk mendapat bibik ganti. Sementara itu Sarah, pengantin baru, yang menunggu kursus induksi sebelum bertugas, menjaga mak . Pada 13hb. lepas. Dok Mek telah menelefon saya mengatakan Sarah menghubunginya yang mak bercakap dengan sebutan yang tidak dapat difahami. Ketika itu saya berada di Perpustakaan MAIK bertemu Ustaz Muhammad Mahmud. Saya menghubungi isteri yang berada di rumah, kami ke rumah mak.

Sesampai kami, mak sudah mampu bertutur semula, tetapi mak nampak letih. Saya meminta mak mengangkat tangan kanannya, dia hanya mampu mengangkatnya di bawah paras bahu. Sarah memberitahu yang nasi di makan mak pada pagi itu banyak yang tumpah. Saya diarah oleh Dok Mek supaya hantar mak ke hospital, saya dan isteri beritahu mak, mak menolak dan minta dinanti-nantikan dahulu. Saya memberitahunya kita ke Hospital Perdana, sekadar untuk 'checking', bukan untuk masuk wad. Mak walaupun liat bersetuju. Kak Yah balik dari HUSM dan isteri saya menghubungi ambulan Hospital Perdana. Selepas zuhur mak dihantar ke Hospital, doktor yang merawat mak mengatakan dia mengesyaki masalah jantung, tubuh mak yang sembab dan lelah mak ketika bernafas itu juga disebabkan masaalah jantung. Untuk bertemu dengan doktor bahagian jantung itu, mak dinasihatkan tidur dihospital untuk satu malam. Mak agak keberatan tetapi akhir bersetuju selepas dipujuk.

Esoknya doktor yang merawat mak menunjukkan 'ujian echo' yang injab mak tidak dapat berfungsi dengan baik, terdapat darah yang back-flow. Masyaallah semua itu jelas kelihatan pada 'image scan' yang ditunjukkan , doktor juga menunjukkan kesan-kesan pada jantung yang mengisyaratkan yang mak pernah kena serangan jantung sebelum ini. Sesuatu yang kami semua tidak sedari. Doktor menasihati mak agar tidur semalam lagi di hospital, suatu yang berat untuk dipersetujui oleh mak. Abang Nung balik menziarah mak , dia memberitahu mak yang dia akan balik semula pada 2hb 4, mak menjawab dengan sebutan yang tidak jelas 'lama sangat lagi tu'

Mak ke hospital semula pada 20hb, doktor yang merawatnya mengatakan keadaan mak semakin merosot berbanding seminggu sebelumnya. Dia mengatakan mungkin mak mengalami stroke yang kedua. Badan mak juga agak kering,

Dari hospital, ambulan menghantar mak ke MRSM Tumpat, ke rumah Dok Mek. Mak agak 'selesa' kerana terdapat Nah, orang tempatan yang menjaga mak dari 8 pagi hingga 5 petang. Hari selasa, mak nampak semakin letih, Kak Yah masukkan air ke badan mak, tetapi nampaknya tidak banyak menolong.

Hari rabu itu saya dan isteri pada 10 pagi keluar dari rumah Dok Mek kerana isteri saya menemani Maryam untuk mendapatkan keputusan SPMnya. Saya pula mahu membeli broad-band kerana yang lama hilang. Kami kembali waktu zuhur. Badan mak mulai semakin sejuk di sebelah kirinya, sejuk dan seakan berpeluh. Saya menelefon Dok Mek dan Abang Nung memaklumkan perkara itu, kemudian dada sebelah kanan pula menjadi sejuk. Kak Yah sampai kira-kira jam 2 lebih. Kak Yah menghubungi adik-beradik mak. Dok Mek berada di Kuantan kerana mesyuarat, sementara anaknya, Balqis mengambil keputusan SPM di MRSM Jasin.

Rakan-rakan Dok Mek, terutama Cikgu Nik Zainun dan Cikgu Nik Rahimah berulang alik bersama guru-guru perempuan lain datang menjenguk mak dan membaca Yasin . Mak semakin letih, saya meminta Kak Yah masukkan susu melalui tiub kepada mak, dengan harapan semoga mak akan memperolihi sedikit tenaga. Adik beradik mak, Ayah Sim dan Makngah Yam, Da dan Makcik Esah datang. Mak semakin lemah, keluar air mata yang mengalir dari sisi mata mak yang rapat terpejam.

Saya membacakan kalimah 'la illa ha illallah' berkali-kali di telinga mak, Da membaca Surah ar-Ra'du . Agaknya di pertengahan Surah ar-Ra'du yang saya baca, pada jam 6.14 petang mak berbunyi perlahan seakan tergolong lidah. Agaknya bunyi dari mak itu berulang tiga kali (dalam sekitar seminit), dan makpun berhenti bernafas, Kak Yah dalam sebak mengatakan nadi mak sudah tidak berdenyut.

Saya hubungi Dok Mek dan Abang Nung yang masih dalam perjalanan balik. Dok Mek dalam sebak yang kuat mengarahkan jangan diapa-apa mak sehingga dia sampai balik. Segala yang patut diatur, kami yang ada aturkan. Mak mendahului kami dengan tenang.

Malam itu pelajar-pelajar MRSM perempuan dan lelaki bergilir-gilir membaca Surah Yasin , kaki tangan MRSM pula sentiasa menawarkan sebarang pertolongan yang mereka boleh bantu. Keluarga kami merakam terima-kasih yang tidak terhingga kepada kaki-tangan dan pelajar MRSM Tumpat di atas segala perhatian dan bantuan yang begitu bererti yang telah mereka sumbangkan. Semoga Allah membalas dengan sebaik-baik balasan di dunia dan Akhirat.

Esoknya, mak disembahyang di Surau MRSM jam 11 pagi, kakitangan MRSM serta pelajar menghadiri sembahyang mak, kami juga menjemput Ustaz Muslim dari Pondok Neting serta pelajarnya untuk untuk menyembahyangkan mak. Semada hayat dunianya, mak suka anak-anak, makpun waktu perpisahan dari permukaan dunia ini telah disembahyangkan oleh begitu ramai anak-anak.

Jenazah mak dibawa balik ke Kota, itulah yang selalu mak sebutkan yang dia mahu dikebumikan di Kubur Surau Kota. Rakan-rakan dari pondok dan kenalan lain ramai yang datang menyembahyangkan mak selepas sembahyang zuhur. Sembahyangnya diimamkan oleh Baba Abdul Aziz Pungguk.

Ketika jasad mak diletakkan di dalam lahad, puting-beliong (dragon-flies) begitu banyak mengerumuni kawasan sekitar itu. Saya, Pak Cik Mansor (abang ipar) dan Marwan (anak Dok Mek) turun ke dalam lubang untuk menempatkan mak dalam lahadnya. Saya memulakan bacaan tahlil dan kemudian saya bacakan talqin ringkas untuk mak........

Sehingga hari ini, saya tidak begitu merasa kehilangan mak, tetapi saya merasakan mak sekadar berpindah terlebih dahulu daripada kami, mak sekadar pergi lebih awal menanti ketibaan kami.

Semoga Allah menilik mak dengan tilikan Rahmat, semoga kami terus mendapat kebajikan dari amalan mak, semoga kami tidak terfitnah selepas pemergian mak.

Al-fatihah untuk mak......

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Multiculturalism Failed: 1Malaysia strives

German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off the offensive, British PM David Cameron threw it into the scrum and now President Nicolas Sarkozy has converted it, the match view is unanimous, multiculturalism in the EU is failed, politically bankrupt and dead.

The French President has lined up to bury multiculturalism.

So what have the leaders of the EU’s three most populous states (212 million people) just buried, burned and banished?

The 1970s concept of “multiculturalism” has, these days, essentially become popular shorthand for indigenous concerns about immigration, religious intolerance — basically the Muslim exception — and the undermining of Enlightenment freedoms, liberties, equalities, rights and values as espoused by figures such as Rousseau, Locke and Mills.

Even its earliest advocates admit that as a concept multiculturalism is ill- defined. “Multiculturalism is best understood neither as a political doctrine with a programmatic content nor a philosophical school with a distinct theory of man’s place in the world but as a perspective on or a way of viewing human life. Since the multicultural movement sprang up unplanned in many different political contexts … it lacks a clear focus and identity.” writes Bhikhu Chotalal Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, UK in a paper that is now 11 years old (see below).

The crux of the matter as far as he is sees it is that: “Multicultural societies in their current form are new to our age and throw up theoretical and political problems that have no parallel in history. The political theories, institutions, vocabulary, virtues and skill that we have developed in the course of consolidating and conducting the affairs of a culturally homogeneous state during the past three centuries are of limited help, and sometimes even a positive handicap, in dealing with multicultural societies…This is a formidable theoretical and political task and no multicultural society has so far succeeded in tackling it…”

So and in the words of its advocates, it is a still-evolving, poorly-defined and experimental “perspective” that major European leaders have now dramatically ditched as a disaster.

What then, some might well ask, is all the fuss about?

Among the euro-Left attacks on multiculturalism are seen as intolerant political extremism of the worst kind. Diametrically opposite of course is the view of the euro-Right for whom multiculturalism is a looming threat to the very survival of old Europe.

For the record this is what President Sarkozy said February 10 during a marathon nationwide television exchange on TV1: “My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure … Of course we must all respect differences, but we do not want a society where communities coexist side by side. Our Muslim compatriots must be able to practise their religion, as any citizen can, but we in France do not want people to pray in an ostentatious way in the street. If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France. The French national community cannot accept a change in its lifestyle, equality between men and women and freedom for little girls to go to school.”

Difficult to find a clearer clarion call for the assimilation and integration of immigrant communities and a directive that it is the mother culture that the incomers must absorb — “melt into a single community” he said — not the other way round.

Rather than an outcry in the immediate aftermath of President Sarkozy’s disclosure that he shared the views of the leaders of Germany and Britain on multiculturalism, there was an eerie silence in the news cycle.

Despite the recent significant rise of support for a reinvigorated Front National under its new leader Marine Le Pen — who now proudly asserts her party’s main policies are driving French political debate — the Left did not seem to have readied its defences of a pan-European concept that it hijacked in the late 70s to force through transformational change in conservative western societies with strong folk memories of their different tribal origins.

This may of course have been because until recently multiculturalisme has not been a concept with a stratified place in France, a bastion of the nation state where there are no formal records of a citizen’s ethnicity, culture or religion, and such data is specifically omitted in the decennial census. While the French may not acknowledge multiculturalisme as a state construct, the presidential antennae are acutely attuned and Sarkozy knows exactly why his EU counterparts have held the Requiem Mass for multiculturalism.

He is also uncomfortably aware how strongly the French feel about issues covered by this piece of politically correct shorthand. (A TNS-Sofres poll found mid-January that 32% of voters in the UMP party, led by President Nicolas Sarkozy until his election, would support a UMP-FN government in 2012).

The political Right has now made its point absolutely clear, the 2012 presidential elections are set to be fraught with ethnic/religious tension and it will all be the Left’s fault.

So it was curious that it took more than 24 hours for the Left to pick themselves up off the floor after the presidential punches had landed and cobble together their defence of programmes increasingly under challenge across an economically disintegrating Europe.

French sociologist, Michel Wieviorka defends Multiculturalism

Finally they managed it and the silence was somewhat timidly broken by sociologist, Michel Wieviorka (of EHESS-l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) in this contribution to the left-wing Rue89.com website: “Will the left unquestioningly swallow the convergent attacks from the right and extreme-right against what they call ‘multiculturalism’” he asked?

Mr Wieviorka then proceeded to remind his audience what the media and its readers meant by the use of the word ‘multiculturalism’: “not a set of clearly identified cultural differences, which are strictly speaking the subject of multiculturalism, but a nebulous group of concerns related to immigration, terrorism, crime, delinquency, insecurity and especially Islam, that is to say a religion.”

Continuing his analysis of the Sarkozy Statement, he added: “(it is) legitimate and desirable for a head of state to attack terrorism and violence, and take measures to end domination by groups and their leaders on individuals within minority groups, beginning with women. But to attribute these evils to multiculturalism, is to find too convenient a scapegoat (…) Criticism of multiculturalism by the extreme-right and right always includes a noteworthy aspect: it goes hand in hand with a call for the proper integration of all immigrants. This call is always presented as a need that is basic to nationhood, and the society as a whole; it is never advanced from the perspective of the immigrant (…) In France in particular, with its attachment to the republican ideal, and its national version of universal values, the prevailing philosophy and this includes that on the left, has often resulted in a rejection of everything that might lead to a recognition of minorities, and an encouragement therefore of the horrors of communitarianism. (…) Well-tempered multiculturalism, subject to regular re-assessment, implemented with caution, and without premature generalisations, is not necessarily the abomination that the extreme right and right would have us believe, it might even offer solutions for a left eager to articulate absolute respect for universal values, and differences…” he concluded.

This cerebral and academic defence of the ‘perspective’ seems more designed as food for an enjoyable Left Bank debate by Parisian intellectuals than as effective ammunition against the shrapnel in the political messages the three leaders have clearly been getting from focus groups and grass roots in their respective countries.

The significance of the French presidential position on multiculturalism — it took four months to gestate post-Merkel remember — should not be overlooked.

France with the largest Muslim population in western Europe– five to six million (8-9.6%) of the total according to a BBC European factsheet “favours Muslim integration. But the growth of the community has challenged the French ideal of a strict separation between religion and public life”.

These factors are now of growing political import following the resurgence of the Front National party as FrenchNewsOnline has previously reported here and here

Story: Ken Pottinger
editorial@french-news-online.com

A long and interesting essay “What is Multiculturalism” can be read in this paper by Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Hull, UK

A later essay from 2000 entitled “Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and



  • It would appear the whole of Europe agrees multiculturalism is dead in Europe, so that solves the problem, and the problem now just goes away and everyone carries on doing their own thing – Germany ignores its immigrants, France shoves them on a ferry to England and England gives them a house and benefits, and all agree multiculturalism just doesn’t work!

    S T Vaughan
    Birmingham
    B14 4EA

Entering The Future Egypt

Le Monde diplomatique
English edition
Open page

Is Egypt the future IndoTurkeZil?

So many ways to strut your democratic stuff in a new world

18 March, by Pepe Escobar

Three mummies were recently found in an underground temple in Luxor, Egypt. Translated hieroglyphs identified them as the Clash of Civilizations, the End of History, and Islamophobia. They ruled in Western domains into the second decade of the twenty-first century before dying and being embalmed.

That much is settled. Without them, the Middle East is already a new world that must be understood in a new way. For one thing, Egypt, that previously moribund land of “stability” and bosom buddy of whoever was in power in Washington, has been hurled into the Middle East’s New Great Game. The question is: What will be its fate — and that of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets in a staggering show of aggressive nonviolence in January and February?

It is, of course, impossible to say, especially since shadow play is the norm and the realities of rule are hard to discern. In a country where “politics” has for decades meant the army, it’s notable that the key actor supposedly coordinating the “transition to democracy” remains an appointee of Pharaoh Hosni Mubarak, Field Marshall Mohamed Hussein Tantawi from the Supreme Army Council. At least, popular pressure has forced Tantawi’s military junta to appoint a new transitional Prime Minister, the Tahrir-Square-friendly former transport minister Essam Sharaf.

Keep in mind that the hated emergency laws from the Mubarak era, part of what provoked the Egyptian uprising to begin with, are still in place and that the country’s intellectuals, its political parties, labor unions, and the media all fear a silent counterrevolution. At the same time, they almost uniformly insist that the Tahrir Square revolution will neither be hijacked nor rebranded by opportunists. As the ideological divide between liberalism, secularism, and Islamism disintegrated when the country’s psychological Wall of Fear came down, lawyers, doctors, textile workers — a range of the country’s civil society — remain clear on one thing: they will never settle for a theocracy or a military dictatorship. They want full democracy.

No wonder what that implies makes Western diplomatic circles tremble. An Egyptian army even remotely accountable to an elected civilian government will not, for instance, collaborate in the Israeli siege of Gaza’s Palestinians, or in CIA renditions of terror suspects to the country’s prisons, or blindly in that monstrous farce, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”

Meanwhile, there are more pedestrian matters to deal with: How, for example, will the army-directed transition towards September elections make the economic numbers add up? In 2009, Egypt’s import bill was $56 billion, while the country’s exports only added up to $29 billion. Tourism, foreign aid, and borrowing helped fill the gap. The uprising sent tourism into a tailspin and who knows what kinds of aid and loans anyone will fork over in the months to come.

Meanwhile, the country will have to import no less than 10 million tons of wheat in 2011 at about $3.3 billion (if grain prices don’t continue to rise) to keep people at least half-fed. This is but a small part of Mubarak’s tawdry legacy, which includes 40 million Egyptians, almost half the population, living on less than $2 a day, and it’s not going to disappear overnight, if at all.

Hit by a rolling, largely peaceful revolution all across MENA (the newly popular acronym for the Middle East and Northern Africa), Washington and an aging Fortress Europe, filled with fear, wallow in a mire of perplexity. Even after the dust from those rebellious Northern African winds settles, it’s hardly a given that they will grasp just how all the cultural stereotypes used to explain the Middle East for decades also managed to vanish.

My favorite line of the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 is still Tunisian scholar Sarhan Dhouib’s: “These revolts are an answer to [George W.] Bush’s intent to democratize the Arab world with violence.” If “shock and awe” is now also an artifact of an ancient world, what’s next?

Models for rent or sale

On February 3rd, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation published a poll conducted in seven Arab countries and Iran. No less than 66% of respondents considered Turkey, not Iran, the ideal model for the Middle East. A media scrum from Le Monde to the Financial Times now evidently concurs. After all, Turkey is a functional democracy in a Muslim-majority country where the separation of mosque and state prevails.

That stellar Islamic scholar at Oxford, Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, also recently labeled the “Turkish way” as “a source of inspiration.” In late February, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu agreed, with a surfeit of modesty that barely covered the ambitions of the new Turkey, insisting that his country does not want to be a model for the region, “but we can be a source of inspiration.”

The Egyptian Marxist economist Samir Amin — widely respected across the developing world — suspects that, whatever the hopes of the Turks and others, including so many Egyptians, Washington has quite different ideas about Egypt’s destiny. It wants, he believes, not a Turkish model but a Pakistani one for that country: that is, the mix of an “Islamic power” with a military dictatorship. It won’t fly, Amin is convinced, because “the Egyptian people are now highly politicized.”

The process of true democratization that began back in the distant 1950s in Turkey proved to be a long road. Nonetheless, despite periodic military coups and the continuing political power of the Turkish army, elections were, and remain, free. The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, now at the Turkish helm, was founded in August 2001 by former members of the Refah Party, a much more conservative Islamic group with an ideology similar to that of today’s Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

As the AKP mellowed out, however, the pro-business, pro-European Union wing of the country’s Islamists mixed with various center-right politicians and, in 2002, the AKP finally took power in Ankara. Only then could they begin to slowly undermine the stranglehold of the traditional Istanbul-based secular Turkish elite and the military that had held power since the 1920s.

Yet the AKP did not dream of dismantling the secular system first installed by Turkey’s founding father Mustapha Kemal Ataturk in 1924. The Turkish civil code he instituted was inspired by Switzerland with citizenship based on secular law. While the country is predominantly Muslim, of course, its people simply would not welcome a system, as in Khomeinist Iran, that is guided by religion.

The AKP should be viewed as the equivalent of the Christian Democrats in Europe after the 1950s — dynamic, business-oriented conservatives with religious roots. In Egypt, the moderate wing of the Muslim Brotherhood has many similarities to the AKP and looks to it for inspiration. In the new Egypt, it will finally be a legitimate political party and most experts believe that it could garner 25% to 30% of the vote in the first election of the new era.

All roads lead to Tahrir

Turkish critics — usually from the Western-oriented technical and managerial caste — regularly accuse the democracy-meets-Islam Turkish model of being little more than a successful marketing ploy, or worse, a Middle Eastern version of Russia. After all, the army still wields disproportionate behind-the-scenes power as guarantor of the state’s secular framework. And the country’s Kurdish minority is not really integrated into the system (although in September 2010 Turkish voters approved constitutional changes that give greater rights to Christians and Kurds).

With its glorious Ottoman past, notes Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Turkey was never colonized by a world power, and thus “‘veneration of Europe’ or ‘imitation of the West’ never had the humiliating connotations” described by Frantz Fanon or Edward Said for much of the rest of the Middle East and North Africa.

There are stark differences between Turkey’s road to a military-free democracy in 2002 and the littered path ahead for Egypt’s young demonstrators and nascent political parties. In Turkey the key actors were pro-business Islamists, conservatives, neo-liberals, and right-wing nationalists. In Egypt they are pro-labor Islamists, leftists, liberals, and left-wing nationalists.

The Tahrir Square revolution was essentially unleashed by two youth groups: the April 6 Youth Movement (which was geared towards solidarity with workers on strike), and We Are All Khaled Said (which mobilized against police brutality). Later, they would be joined by Muslim Brotherhood activists and — crucially — organized labor, the masses of workers (and the unemployed) who had suffered from years of the International Monetary Fund’s “structural adjustment” poison. (As late as April 2010, an IMF delegation visited Cairo and praised Mubarak’s “progress.”)

The revolution in Tahrir Square made the necessary connections in a deeply comprehensible way. It managed to go to the heart of the matter, linking miserable wages, mass unemployment, and increasing poverty to the ways in which Mubarak’s cronies (and also the military establishment) enriched themselves. Sooner or later, in any showdown to come, the way the military controls so much of the economy will be an unavoidable topic — the way, for instance, army-owned companies continue to make a killing in the water, olive oil, cement, construction, hotel, and oil industries, or the way the military has come to own significant tracts of land in the Nile Delta and on the Red Sea, “gifts” for guaranteeing regime stability.

It’s not surprising that key sectors in the West are pushing for a “safe” Turkish model for Egypt. Yet, given the country’s immiseration, it’s unlikely that young protesters and their working class supporters will be appeased even by the possibility of a Turkish-style, neoliberal, Islamo-democratic system. What this leftist/liberal/Islamist coalition is fighting for is a labor-friendly, independent, truly sovereign democracy. It doesn’t take a PhD. from the London School of Economics, like the one bought by Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, to see how cataclysmic this newly independent outlook could be for the current status quo.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Don’t misunderstand: Whether the Tahrir Square activists want to reproduce the Turkish system in Egypt or not, Turkey itself is immensely popular there, as it increasingly is in the wider Arab world. That offers Ankara’s politicians the perfect scenario for consolidating the country’s regional leadership role, distinctly on the rise since, in 2003, its leaders established their independence by rebuffing George W. Bush’s desire to use Turkish territory in his invasion of Iraq.

That popularity was only heightened after eight of the nine victims shot by Israeli commandos in the Gaza freedom flotilla fiasco turned out to be Turks. When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vociferously condemned Israel for its “bloody massacre,” he instantly became the “King of Gaza.” When Mubarak finally responded to the Tahrir Square demonstrations by announcing that he would not run again for president in 2011, President Obama didn’t say much, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Egypt not to “rush towards elections.” As for Erdogan, he virtually ordered Mubarak to step down, live on al-Jazeera for the whole Muslim world to see.

While Washington fiddled with embracing the wrong side of history, however reluctantly and chaotically, in the company of those staunch Mubarak defenders Israel and Saudi Arabia, Erdogan — with a canny assessment of regional politics — preferred to back Egyptians attempting to chart their own destiny. And it paid off.

The point is not that America is now “losing” Turkey, nor that, as some critics have charged, Erdogan is dreaming of becoming a neo-Ottoman Caliph (whatever that might mean). What must be understood here is a new Turkish concept: strategic depth. For that we need to turn to a book, Stratejik Derinlik: Turkiye’nin Uluslararasi Konumu (Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position), published in Istanbul in 2001 by Ahmet Davutoglu, then a professor of international relations at the University of Marmara, now Turkey’s Foreign Minister.

In that book, Davutoglu looked into a future that seems ever closer to now and placed Turkey at the center of three concentric circles: 1) the Balkans, the Black Sea basin, and the Caucasus; 2) the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean; 3) the Persian Gulf, Africa, and Central Asia. When it came to future areas of influence, even in 2001 he believed that Turkey could potentially claim no less than eight: the Balkans, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, Turkic Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Today, he is a key player, and in many of those same areas of potential influence, people are indeed looking to Turkey. It’s a remarkable moment for Davutoglu, who remains convinced that Ankara will be a force to reckon with in the Middle East. As he puts it, simply enough, “This is our home.”

Take the idea of Turkey’s “strategic depth” and combine it with the Great Arab Revolt of 2011 and you understand why Erdogan has launched a bid not just to make the Turkish model the Egyptian one or even the Middle Eastern one, but to upstage Egypt as the future mediator between the region and the West. That Erdogan and Davutoglu were heading in this direction has been clear enough from the way, in the past few years, they have tried to insert themselves as mediators between Syria and Israel and have launched a complex political, diplomatic, and economic opening towards Iran.

And speaking of historical ironies, just as Iran’s fundamentalist leaders were watching an Egyptian regime deeply hostile to them go down, protests by the Iranian Green Movement suddenly began to rock Tehran again — during a visit by none other than Turkish President Abdullah Gul. The protests were handled with what amounted to a velvet glove (by Tehran’s standards) because the military dictatorship of the mullahtariat found itself in a potentially losing competition with its Turkish ally to become the number one inspirational source for Arab mass movements.

Java: democracy with your coffee?

If Egyptians want lessons in the establishment of democracy, Turkey is hardly the only place to turn to for inspiration. They could, for example, look to Latin America. For the first time in over 500 years, South America is fully democratic. As in Egypt, so in many Latin American countries in the Cold War era, dictatorships were the order of the day and militaries ruled. In Brazil, for instance, the “slow, gradual, and secure” political opening that left a military dictatorship behind took practically a decade.

That implies a lot of patience. The same applies to another model: Indonesia. There, in 1998, Suharto, an aging U.S.-backed dictator 32 years in power, finally resigned only a few days after returning from a visit to, of all places, Cairo. Indonesia then looked a lot like Egypt in February 2011: a Western-friendly, predominantly Muslim nation, impoverished and fed up with a mega-corrupt military dictator who crushed leftist intellectuals as well as political Islam.

Thirteen years later, Indonesia is the world’s third largest democracy and the freest in Southeast Asia, with a secular government, a booming economy, and the military out of politics.

I still have vivid memories of riding a bike one day in May 1998 across the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, while it was literally on fire, rage exploding in endless columns of smoke. Washington did not intervene then, nor did China, nor the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Indonesians did it for themselves. The transition followed an existing, if previously largely ignored, constitution. (In Egypt, the constitution now must be amended via a referendum.)

True, Indonesians had to live for a while with Suharto’s handpicked vice president, the affable B.J. Habibie (so unlike Mubarak’s handpicked successor the sinister Omar “Sheikh al-Torture” Suleiman). It took a year to organize new elections, amend electoral laws, and get rid of appointed seats in Parliament. It took six years for the first direct presidential election. And yes, corruption is still a huge problem, and wealth and the right connections go a long way (as is true, some would say, in the U.S.). But today, the rule of law prevails.

An “Islamic state” never had a chance. Today, only 25% of Indonesians vote for Islamic parties, while the well-organized Prosperous Justice Party, an ideological descendant of the Muslim Brotherhood, but now officially open to non-Muslims, holds only four out of 37 seats in the cabinet of President Yudhoyono, and expects to win no more than 10% of the vote in the 2014 elections.

While Indonesia remains close to the U.S. and is heavily courted by Washington as a counterweight to China, Brazil under the presidency of immensely popular Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva charted a far more independent path for itself and, by example, much of Latin America. This process took almost a decade and future historians may see it as at least as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Eastern Europe, 1989 could be seen, in part, as a chain of rebellions by people yearning to get access to the global market. The Great Arab Revolt, on the other hand, has been an uprising in significant part against the dictatorship of that same market. Protestors from Tunisia to Bahrain are striking out in favor of social inclusion and new, better social and economic contracts. No wonder this staggering, ongoing upheaval is regarded across Latin America with tremendous empathy and with the feeling that "We did it, and now they’re doing it."

The future is, of course, unknown, but perhaps a decade or two from now, we’ll be able to say that the Egyptians and other Arab peoples struck out not on the Turkish model, nor even the Brazilian or Indonesian ones, but onto a set of new paths. Perhaps the future from Cairo to Tunis, Benghazi to Manama, Algiers to (Allah willing) a post-House of Saud Saudi Arabia will involve inventing a new political culture and the new economic contracts that would go with it, ones that will be indigenous and, hopefully, democratic in new and surprising ways.

Which brings us back to Turkey. It’s perfectly feasible that Islam will be one of the building blocks of something entirely new, something no one today has a clue about, something that will resemble what was, in Europe, the separation between politics and religion. In the spirit of May 1968, perhaps we can even picture an Arab Banksy plastering a stencil across all Arab capitals: Imagination in Power!

Nilai Dan Maruah Bangsa Yang Berbeza: Antara Arab & Jepun

By ABDULATEEF AL-MULHIM | ARAB NEWS

What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?

I HAVE been exposed to Palestinians since I was in first grade in Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia They were my favorite teachers. They were the most dedicated and the most intelligent among all my instructors, from elementary to high school.

When I was attending New York-based SUNY Maritime college (1975-1979), I read a lot of books about Palestinians, Arabs and the Israelis. I have read every article about the many chances the Palestinians had and missed to solve their problem, especially the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.

I have seen and read about the lives of the Palestinians in the US and other places. They are very successful in every field. And at the same time I saw the Arab countries at the bottom of the list in education and development. And I always ask the question: What if the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted the presence of Israel on May 14, 1948 and recognized its right to exist? Would the Arab world have been more stable, more democratic and more advanced?

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then the Palestinians would have been able to free themselves from the hollow promises of some Arab dictators who kept telling them that the refugees would be back in their homes and all Arab lands will be liberated and Israel will be sent to the bottom of the sea. Some Arab leaders used the Palestinians for their own agenda to suppress their own people and to stay in power.

Since 1948, if an Arab politician wanted to be the hero and the leader of the Arab world, then he has a very easy way to do it. He just shouts as loud as he can about the intention to destroy Israel, without mobilizing one soldier (Talk is cheap).

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then there would have been no need for a coup in Egypt against King Farouq in 1952 and there would have been no attack on Egypt in 1956 by The UK, France and Israel. Also there will be no war in June 1967 and the size of Israel will not be increased and we, the Arabs would not have the need for a UN resolution to beg Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders. And no war of attrition between Egypt and Israel that caused more casualties on the Egyptian side than the Israeli side.

After the 1967 war, Israel became a strategic ally of the US because before this war, the US was not as close to Israel as people in the Arab world think. The Israelis fought in that war using mainly French and British weapons. At that time, the US administrations refused to supply Israel with more modern aircraft and weapon systems such as the F-4 Phantom.

The Palestinian misery was also used to topple another stable monarchy, this time in Iraq and replacing it with a bloody dictatorship in one of the richest countries of the world. Iraq is rich in minerals, water reserves, fertile land and archaeological sites. The military led by Abdul Karim Qassim killed King Faisal II and his family. Bloodshed in Iraq continued and this Arab country has seen more violent revolutions and one of them was carried out in the 1960s by a brigade that was sent to help liberate Palestine. Instead it made a turn and went back and took over Baghdad. Even years later, Saddam Hussien said that he will liberate Jerusalem via Kuwait. He used Palestinians misery as an excuse to invade Kuwait.

If Israel were recognized in 1948, then the 1968 coup would not have taken place in another stable and rich monarchy (Kingdom of Libya). King Idris was toppled and Muammar Qaddafi took over.

There were other military coups in the Arab world such as Syria, Yemen and the Sudan. And each one of them used Palestine as their reason for such acts. The Egyptian regime of Jamal Abdul Nasser used to call the Arab Gulf states backward states and he tried to topple the governments of these Gulf states by using his media and his military forces. He even attacked southern borders of Saudi Arabia using his air force bases in Yemen.

Even a non-Arab country (Iran) used Palestine to divert the minds of their people from internal unrest. I remember Ayatollah Khomeini declaring that he would liberate Jerusalem via Baghdad and President Ahmadinejad making bellicose statements about Israel, though not even a single fire cracker was fired from Iran toward Israel.

Now, the Palestinians are on their own. Each Arab country is busy with its own crisis. From Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon and the Gulf states. For now, the Arab countries have put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on hold.

—Abdulateef Al-Mulhim, is Commodore (Retd.), Royal Saudi Navy. He is based in Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia, and can be contacted at: almulhimnavy@hotmail.com


  • 4 Comments

GEORGE

Report abuse
I wished, you posted more often. Your input is without drama and it is very educational. Thank you.

MARTIN

Report abuse
...And, had the Arabs recognized the State of Israel in 1948 there would have been no Palestinian refugee catastrophe (which resulted from the failed Arab armed intervention), and a just peace and shared prosperity would have prevailed since then across the entire region, for all peoples, for the successive generations.

S.H.MOULANA

Report abuse
Commodore Al Mulhim's article is altogether different from usually what we read on the Palestinian issue but it is definitely food for thought. As he puts it, it looks like the Arabs and very especially the Palestinians have missed the bus. His presentation is very interesting and full of sense. I liked it very much. Well done Commodore!

HERB GLATTER

Report abuse
Bravo! an honest historical review. the question is this? what can be done today with Iran racing toward nuclear weapons that will destroy Israel? Wikileaks exposed the Western thinking along with the remarks of some Arab leaders that resolving the Arab/Israel issue will bring peace all over the world. Sunni states are well aware that the Khamenei regime with nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to them not Israel.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

BILINGUAL

Through the shaking, Japan comes together


For centuries, Japan had operated on the unvoiced logic that the only certainty in this world is disaster — specifically, tensai (天災, heavenly disaster). Four centuries ago, Edo (江戸, Old Tokyo) citizens said to each other that they had four major things to fear: jishin (地震, earthquakes), kaminari (雷, lightning), kaji (火事, fire) and oyaji (親父, fathers). These four were the major culprits to wreak havoc but at the same time there was little anyone could do to prevent them. Jishin heads off the list as a matter of course — accordingly, Tokyoites approach earthquakes with a particular mindset.


First off, they are prepared. As soon as Tokyo children can walk, they become equipped with a bōsai zukin (防災頭巾, safety hood) to ward off flames and flying debris, and a small rucksack packed with emergency food, bottled water, a towel and first-aid paraphernalia. And when they mature into adulthood, they know that a good employer always keeps stocks of these hoods for its employees. When the devastating quake struck Japan on Friday, many men and women started their long walk home wearing them.

Speaking of walking, many Tokyo companies assume there will be a time when trains stop, the subways close down and employees will have to walk. There's a word for such people, kitaku konansha (帰宅困難者, those who have difficulty making it back home), and employees are encouraged to participate in simulation drills (sponsored by the company but more often by the Metropolitan Government) where everyone gathers at a preordained meeting spot (the favored choice is around the Imperial Palace) on a weekend, and walk their way back carrying emergency backpacks. The distance varies between 15 and 21 km — this will usually take people out of the city and into the suburbs of Chiba or Saitama prefectures, where they live. Last Friday, the streets were full of kitaku konansha, but it was indicative of the Tokyo disaster psychology that a lot of the ippai nomiya (一杯呑みや, drinking bars) and yakitori stalls in and around major train station terminals were open late into the night, catering to people who didn't or couldn't make it back on foot, but chose to get plastered and immerse themselves in grilling fumes. Great move.

It's said that the Japanese woman shows some fine stuff in the event of a disaster #8212; from time immemorial, women have rolled up their kimono sleeves, somehow managed to procure some rice and done the takidashi (炊き出し, cooking out) for the injured, wounded and hungry. In Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, where 70 percent of the populace are now in hinanjo (避難所, evacuation facilities), the few wives and daughters whose houses were left unscathed immediately got together, raided their own rice bins and made hundreds of onigiri (おにぎり, rice balls) — the traditional takidashi staple — to distribute among the needy. The men, on the other hand, have turned into kyūjo (救助, rescue) heroes, and tales of great courage, snap decision-making and sheer altruism are enthralling people across the nation.

In the Kanto area, the keikaku teiden (計画停電, planned blackouts) are forcing people to leave work early, or in the case of Ibaraki Prefecture, succumb to the jitaku taiki (自宅待機, wait at home until further notice). This is not all bad: Husbands and fathers are home, maybe for the first time in their adult lives, to share the crisis with their families. Wives and mothers are also staying home to be with their kids, and since the shokuzai busoku (食材不足, shortage of food supplies) in the metropolitan area has resulted in kyūshoku katto (給食カット, cutting school lunches), a lot of school children are also going home early and sticking close to their parents. To save on power, there are fewer people glued to their mobagē (モバゲー, mobile phone games), more people engaging in actual conversation, and there's a newly sprung camaraderie in the workplace. The disaster and subsequent tragedy have resulted in some enforced downtime, and families are reporting with some surprise that they are sitting down to eat together for the first time in many years.

The blackouts and yoshin (余震, residual quakes) are expected to last throughout April, and as of Tuesday the 15th, the number of confirmed dead and yukuefumeisha (行方不明者, missing people) was reported to be well over 6,000.

Keisatsu (警察, the police), jieitai (自衛隊, Self Defense Forces) and jichitai (自治体, local governments) are making efforts to sōsaku (捜索, search) for people who are alive.

The most frequently sighted word these days is buji (無事, safe), comprised of the kanji characters mu (無, nothing) and koto (事, incident). Without incident: It's a state we're all praying for.



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Tulisan Lama: Terangganu Dalam catitan Syaikh Ahmad

Beberapa Catatan Syaikh Ahmad Bin Muhammad Zain al-Fatani Tentang Terangganu

Syaikh Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain al-Fatani adalah di antara peribadi kemuncak di dalam sejarah peradaban bangsa kita. Syaikh dilahirkan di Kampong Sena Janjar , Patani pada tahun 1272 H. (1856 M). Syaikh lahir di dalam keluarga ulama yang dihormati di Patani. Ketika umurnya empat tahun, ayahnya, Syaikh Muhammad Zain bin Mustafa telah membawanya ke Makkah. Di sanalah syaikh membesar, belajar dan seterusnya bergiat. Syaikh juga telah melakukan rehlah ilmu ke bumi Palestine dan ke Masir, menuntut ilmu khususnya di Al-Azhar.

Syaikh telah menulis kitab di dalam belbagai ilmu, antara yang terkenal adalah

1-Faridatu al-Faraid: dalam bidang aqidah.

2-Unwanu al-Falah: kitab yang ringkas dan meliputi aqidah, feqah dan tasauf

3-Bahjatu al-Mubtadin: hampir sama kandungannya dengan Unwanu al-Falah

4-Fatawa al-Fataniyyah: himpunan jawaban-jawaban syaikh kepada permasalahan agama yang ditujukan kepadanya.

5-Taiyyibu al-Ehsan fi Tibbi al-Insan: kitab perubatan yang rawatannya berbentuk empirical berdasarkan catitan kitab-kitab Arab dan pengamatan tabib Melayu.

6-Laqtatu al-Ajlan: kitab rawatan yang memanafaatkan bacaan ayat-ayat al-Quran, doa dan gambar-rajah yang tertentu.

7-Badru at-Tamam: Sirah Rasulullah SAW, bersama empat sahabat utama dan Saiyyidatina Fatimah.

8-Hadiqatu al-Azhar: yang merupakan karangan terbesar syaikh, meliputi sejarah imam-imam besar di dalam bidang feqah dan tasauf, sejarah pemerentahan Uthmaniyyah daripada mulanya sehingga ke zamannya, iaitu sultan Abdul Hamid kedua. Begitu juga catitan tentang kefahamannya dalam belbagai perkara dan bidang.

10-Tashilu Naili al-Amani: kitab dalam bahasa Arab yang mensyarahkan kitab Awamil bagi Imam Jurjani , yang merupakan kitab peringkat permulaan dalam pengajaran nahu bahasa Arab.

11-Abniyatu al-Asma wa al-Af‘al: kitab dalam bahasa Arab bagi peringkat permulaan pembelajaran ilmu saraf.

12-Bisharatu al-‘Amilin: kitab tentang kelebihan amalan kebajikan dan janjian seksa amalan kejahatan

Selain daripada yang disenaraikan di atas, masih banyak lagi karya hasilan Syaikh Ahmad yang telah bercetak dan masih dalam bentuk manuskrip. Selain daripada karya tulisan, Syaikh Ahmad telah menyumbangkan jasa kepada peradaban bangsa di dalam bidang:

1- memulai kerja-kerja pentashihan dan percetakan kitab-kitab Melayu di Makkah dan Masir.

2- bergerak di dalam bentuk ‘berpersatuan’ , dengan mengasaskan Jam‘iyyah al-Fataniyyah , bagi mengabungkan pelajar-pelajar dari kawasan Melayu di Makkah pada tahun 1290H [1873 M] . Cetusan ini telah mengerakkan penubuhan kesatuan di kawasan Melayu oleh pelajar-pelajarnya, seperti Jam‘iyyah al-Khairiyyah di Riau, Jam‘iyyah al-Asriyyah di Kelantan.

3- menyemai rasa cinta dan mengambil berat tentang nasib bangsa di dalam rangka peribadatan kepada Allah. Setakat ini, mungkin takrif terawal tentang Melayu ialah takrifan Syaikh Ahmad di dalam kitab nahu Arab karangannya, Tashilu Nailu al-Amani.

4- mengalakkan perkembangan ilmu selain daripada ilmu-ilmu teras pengajian Islam seperti sains dan perubatan serta penguasaan teknologi semasa. Termasuklah penguasaan bahasa-bahasa selain daripada Melayu dan Arab.

5- cakna terhadap bahasa sendiri dan sejarah bangsa,

6- menjalin hubungan yang baik ‘symbiotic’ dengan pihak raja-raja Melayu, serta mengambil berat tentang strategy politik yang bertepatan.

7- meninggalkan wacana yang jelas tentang kewajiban secara kefahaman dan amalan agama perlu dikekalkan berdasarkan huraian ulama agung silam, serta kewajiban secara intelektual, bermaklumat dan mempunyai kepakaran di dalam ilmu-ilmu dan kemahiran yang terkini.

Tidaklah agaknya keterlaluan untuk kita menyimpulkan bahawa Syaikh Ahmad bin Muhammad Zain al-Fatani RH adalah peribadi cendiakawan Melayu terunggul di dalam sejaran peradaban bangsa . mungkin dari zaman sebelum Melaka sehingga kini.

Beberapa Catitan Syaikh Ahmad Yang Menyentuh Sultan Terangganu.

1-Di dalam Hadiqatu al-Azhar, tentang kelebihan ilmu:

“Dan adalah hamba yang haqir, tercita-cita di dalam hati sudah berapa lama , bahawasa Allah Ta‘ala lagi memperdengarkan hamba dan memperlihatkan hamba di dalam hidup hamba bahawa segala raja-raja Melayu yang besar-besar istimewa segala raja-raja di dalam tanah Patani dan Raja Kelantan dan Raja Terangganu[1]dan Kedah yang amat mulia dan maha besar sekeliannya, dan Raja Johor yang masyhur dengan hemmahnya dan Raja Deli yang masyhur dengan murah dan adilnya, menaruh mereka itu akan cemburu pada hati segala mereka itu dan membesarkan segala hemmah mereka itu, dan mehadap segala inayah mereka itu, dan menyungguh-ngungguhkan usaha mereka itu bahawa dijadikan segala negeri mereka itu bendaharaan ilmu, dan perladungan kepandaian,dan membuka segala mata anak jenis mereka itu kepada cemerlang kebajikan dan handalan supaya ada kelihatan kemegahan bangsa Melayu antara alam, dan tertinggi nama mereka itu antara bani Adam dan bertambah-tambah kelebihan ulama mereka itu atas segala ulama dan bertambah nyata agama mereka itu atas segala agama.

Amat menarik apabila diperhatikan bahawa Syaikh Ahmad menyebut negeri-negeri Melayu yang berada di bawah kekuasaan Siam secara berturutan dan di dalam ‘longgokan’ yang satu.

Syaikh memang mempunyai hubungan dengan raja-raja yang dibilangkan olehnya ini, umpamanya beliau telah menemui Sultan Abu Bakar Johor di Istanbul ketika baginda berkunjung dalam rangka lawatan baginda ke England. Terdapat surat-menyurat diantara beliau dengan Raja Patani dan Raja Jambu, beliau telah mengutus surat kepada Sultan Mansur sempena pertabalan baginda dan berhubung surat dengan Sultan Muhammad Kelantan. Tetapi agaknya yang mempunyai hubungan istimewa dengan beliau ialah Sultan Zainal Abdin III, Terangganu.

Beliau telah menulis sebuah syair khusus untuk Sultan Zainal Abdin III, terjemahnnya lebih kurang begini:

Taman impian dicucuri embun pertolongan

Kembali mekar sudutnya dengan basahan

Siramannya itu membasahi suasana dengan pertolongan

jangan dihairan sungguhnya siraman menolong siraman

bertiup padanya angin sepoi yang membelai

tiada banding baginya, sentiasa berhembus tanpa henti

maka kembanglah bungaan penuh keindahannya

membangkit kecantikan yang tiada tara limpahannya

bergerak dedahannya dan bergoyang perlahan

kesukaan serta burung berpesta dengan galak gembiraaan

beraneka dendangan nyanyi pujian lantang nyata

bersyukur pada yang anugerah tangan bantuan pada kita

mentari kemegahan serta purnama di langit tinggi

cahaya cemerlang, harapan jiwa serta penawar hati

lautan kemurahan bagi segalanya dia pembantu

sebelum dipohon sudah dianugerahinya dahulu[2]

perasaan kasih sayang pada rakyat yang dipimpinnya

kebajikan terus dihambur tanpa perhentiannya[3]

baginda hiasan watan kemegahan rakyat jelata

hati rakyat berhimpun pada mencintai baginda sentiasa

hamba maksudkan dengannya Raja Terengganu muda-belia

yang memiliki kehebatan . maruah dan kesungguhan usaha[4]

dengan itu menjadi agunglah dianya raja, bijaksana serta gabungkan

antara siyasah dan pendidikan yang memberi panduan

raja yang agung ketelitiannya pada mendalami pengetahuan

serta makrifat dan belbagai ilmu serta penunjuk jalan

tiada pernah kerajaan Melayu yang dahulu memiliki

umpama peribadi yang seumpama baginda tiada didapati[5]

baik dari segi agama, amanah dan keadilan

maka baginda sumber semuanya jangan diragukan

sesungguhnya baginda tertonjol di kalangan raja yang lain

segi akhlaq, ketinggian dan titihan yang bersambung

baginda antara raja-raja Melayu umpama purnama bulan

apabila mengambang ia, malaplah kerlipan bintang

baginda seorang mulia dari keturunan yang dihormati

berterusan kebahagian semenjak dahulu hingga kini

baginda menjadi raja, anak kepada raja turun-temurun

yang punya riwayat kemulian secara bersambung

berketurunan Sayyidina Ali, seorang sayyid anak saiyyidan

dari titihan yang tiada diperanakkan kecuali ketinggian

ku harap dengan baginda ummah Melayu meningkat

ke kemuncak tamaddun, kejayaan serta ketinggian pangkat[6]

ku harap baginda akan menyebar pengetahuan serta panduan

dengan itu maka akan diperolihi kemulian dan kebahagian

paling ku harap dengan limpah kurnia baginda

agar dititahkan kepada ulama yang mendapat huda

untuk kemaskan kaedah Bahasa Melayu kerana sungguhnya

telah dipunahkan oleh tangan yang menukar lama-kelamanya

serta agar dikarang bagi rakyat sejarah yang meliputi

khabaran Melayu, jika tiada mereka dilupai tanpa diingati

manusia utama menghidupkan peringatan perihal orangtuanya

jadilah sebutan tentang mereka keindahan kekal selamanya

juga diamati pada menyebar kebajikan raja-raja kamu

agar kekal baginya kenangan indah yang diingati selalu

dan kamu dapat megah kepada mannusia dengan kelebihannya

kerana kamu dipimpin oleh raja berilmu serta ada wibawanya

inilah qasidah kami kepada baginda disembahkannya

baginda umpama kaabah, beruntunglah yang mendatanginya

diharapkan ianya dapat diterima dan tercapai maksudnya

walaupun dalam memuji baginda tiada kesampaian tangannya

Dan berkata pada doa ‘Wahai Tuhan yang bersifat ‘Ula

Peliharakan bagi kami Raja ini serta bahagiakan baginda

Disusuli selawat atas Nabi dan keluarganya

Selama taman impian dicucuri pertolongan embunnya

Syaikh Ahmad juga telah menghantar beberapa surat kepada Sultan Zainul Abidin III. antaranya

Alhamdulillah, Allahumma solli ‘ala Saiyyidina Muhammadi wa a lihi wa sahbuhi wa sallim.

Mengangkatkan sembah hormat yang ‘aliyyah

Dengan terlebih sempurna salam dan tahiyyah

Ke bawah takhta ketinggian al-Malik allazi fadluhu ka as-syamsi fi rabi‘ati an-nahari wa badri fi az-zuluma’ie

Wa asluhu ka syajarati tayyibati asluha thabitun wa far‘uha fi as-sama’

wa karamuhu yazri bi kirami ad-da ama ie

wa khuluquhu bi an-nasimi wa lafzuhu ad-durru al-basimi

wa murahimuhu fa ma’u al-hayati wa at-tasnimi

tuhya bi hima ra’yatihi kama tuhya al-‘izama wa hiya ramim

ayyatuma hallau wa haithuma kanu

Maulana al-Malik al-Karim Yang diPertuan Besar Tuanku Zainu al-Abdin Sultan Terangganu, adama llah Ta‘ala daulatahu wa majdahu, wa aiyyada syaukatahu wa zada sa’dahu. Amin.

Wa ba’du al-mazkur.

Maka adalah patik yang daif Ahmad al-Haj Wan Din yang di Makkah pada kampong Syuaib ‘Ali mempersembah-maklumkan kebawah ketinggian Duli Tuanku yang maha mulia bahawasa marqum yang mulia yang hadrat Duli Tuanku kurnia kepada patik itu telah patik sambuti akan dia serta junjung ihtiram dan syukur , dan adalah ia nurun lil basar wa syifa an lima fi as-sudur, demikian lagi rial, sepuluh rial limpah kurnia daripada laut kasihani Duli Tuanku kepada patik itu telah patik sambuti akan dia juga dengan sehingga-hingga besar hati dan penuh kesukaan menjadiakan dia oleh Allah Ta‘ala kebajikan yang maqbul, yang amat gilang-gemilang cahayanya pada hari Qiyamah serta dilanjutkan zaman Duli Tuanku serta zuriat Tuanku di dalam hening kerajaan yang tiada mencampur akan dia oleh kadr menyakiti ajanib dan dilimpahkan dengan nikmat dan rahmat dan kekayaan yang ada padanya barakat yang memberi manafaat bagi agama Islam dan terangkat dengan dia oleh sebutan jenis Melayu dan terkekal dengan dia daulah Tuanku yang maha mulia serta dapat husnu al-khatimah, amin, bi hurmati an-nabiyyi al-amin, kemudian patik mengangkat sembah salam , doa dan ihtiram…..

Di dalam suratnya yang lain kepada Sultan Zainal Abdin III, antara lain melahirkan harapannya yang tinggi kepada keupayaan Sultan:

Khusus minta lanjutkan umur Tuanku dan ‘iayal Tuanku yang maha mulia di dalam berkekalan keredaan Allah dan syafa’ kerajaan serta bertambah-tambah ketinggian dan luas daerah at-tamaddun bagi ummah al-Malayuwiyyah dengan hemmah dan tuah Tuanku yang ‘aliyyah. Yang mendapatkan kuat yang disuruh dengan dia di dalam ayat al-Quraniyyah. Maka mendapat kita dengan demikian itu as-Sa‘adatu al-‘abadiyyah[7]

Syaikh Ahmad al-Ahmadi mengatakan yang Syaikh Ahmad mempunyai cita-cita untuk mewujudkan sebuah kesatuan pemerentahan antara Patani, Kelantan dan Terangganu. Pemerentahan ini pula dinaungi oleh Kerajaan Uthmaniyyah di Istanbul. Dan seakan-akan kelihatan yang Syaikh Ahmad mengisyaratkan yang akan memimpin kesatuan ini ialah Sultan Zainu al-Abdin III.

Begitu juga terdapat pendapat yang agak tersebar yang Syaikh Ahmad berpandangan yang negeri-negeri Melayu yang berada di bawah kekuasaan Siam hendaknya berusaha untuk dijajah oleh pihak Inggeris. Ini berdasarkan pertimbangan yang praktikal iaitu kerajaan-kerajaan Melayu tidak mempunyai kekuatan untuk berdepan secara ketenteraan dengan Siam. Kedudukan geografi Siam yang berhampiran dengan negeri-negeri Melayu dan rupa-paras kita yang agak sama dengan mereka akan menyebabkan Siam akan menganggap yang negeri-negeri Melayu itu sebagai sebahagian daripada negara mereka. Sedangkan negara orang Inggeris berada jauh daripada rantau kita dan rupa-paras mereka yang jauh berbeza akan menyebabkan lambat-laun mereka akan memberi kemerdekaan kepada kita.

Catitan Syaikh Ahmad tentang karya ulama Terangganu

Syaikh Ahmad telah memulai tugasan mengumpul tulisan-tulisan ulama sebelum dan semasa dengan beliau untuk dicetak. Di antara karangan ulama Terangganu yang diusaha cetak. Oleh beliau ialah Kitab Syarah Hikam karya Tok Pulau Manis. Pada cetakan awal yang dilakukan pada di Matba‘ah al-Miriyyah, di Makkah pada tahun1300 h (1882M), Syaikh Ahmad mencatitkan:

Dan tiada hamba dapat ketentuan namanya dengan nas, tetapi telah dikhabarkan oleh

ba’du ath-thiqah bahawa yang menterjemah kitab ini Maulana…yang mempunyai maqamat yang ‘aliyyah dan karamah yang masyhurah, yang dimakrufkan dengan gelarannya Tok Pulau Manis daripada ahli Taraqanu..

Di dalam cetakan berikutnya pada tahun 1302 H, beliau membuat pengamatan yang berbeza:

Telah sempurnalah mentaba’kan ini kitab yang mustatab, iaitu syarah Hikam Ibnu Ata’illah dengan Bahasa Melayu. Dan adalah tarah kitab ini dahulu hamba sebutkan hal keadaan nukil daripada setengah manusia, bahawa kitab ini karangan bagi setengah ulama Terangkanu. Kemudian nyata bagi hamba, kemudian daripada periksakan ibaratnya dan pelekan cakapannya, bahawasanya bukan ia bagi orang Terangkanu, maka adapula orang yang menkhabar bahawasanya ia karangan orang Acheh adanya.[8]

Syaikh Ahmad memang seorang yang sangat memerhati ibarat dan pelat percakapan bagi sesuatu daerah Melayu, sebagaimana dapat dilihat ketika syaikh ini membahaskan terjemahan ‘solah’ kepada sembahyang di dalam kitab Fatawa al-Fataniyyah, umpamanya syaikh telah menyebut pelat orang Pulau Pinang dan Kedah yang menukarkan ‘ra’ di akhir kalimah dengan ain’,atau lam’ di akhir kalimah dengan ‘ya’ , seperti disebut ‘benar’ dengan ‘bena’, ‘betul’dengan ‘betui’.

Syaikh Ahmad juga telah mengusahakan percetakan kitab al-Fawaid , tulisan Syaikh Sayyid Ahmad Bin Husein al-Aidrus, Tuan Sayyid Embun, Syaikh menyebut:

Inilah kitab al-Fawaid

diterjemah daripada kitab as-Solatu wa al-‘Awaid

dan daripada Mujarabat ad-Dairabi yang bernama al-Fathu al-Majid

wa qam‘u kulla jabbari ‘anid

yang terhimpun padanya beberapa faedah dan asrar ayat al-Quran

dan kenyataan rahsia dan kelebihan selawat atas nabi sayyidi waladi Adnan

dan beberapa khasiat fadilat kelebihan doa dan wirid dan bagai-bagai ‘azimat yang menolakkan mudarat manusia wa al-jan

dan terhimpun pula padanya ubat-ubatan dan hikmah yang tak dapat tiada berkehendak kepadanya laki-laki dan perempuan

dan lainnya daripada beberapa lagi yang tersebut di dalam kitab ini akan faedah yang bergantung dengahn dunia dan akhirat daru al-Janan

terjemahan Maulana wa Qudwatuna as-Sayyid Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Husein bin Mustafa al-Aidrus yang dimasyhurkan namanya dengan Tuan Sayyid Embun Terqanu

Syaikh Ahmad berpuas-hati dengan kandungan kitab al-Fawaid ini, sehingga syaikh menyebut:

(Ketahuilah) olehmu hai segala saudara kami yang beroleh kemenangan dunia dan akhirat, bahawsa inilah kitab mujarabat yang asli dan lagi yang sahih dan yang dipindahkan dan diambil daripada Haith Nabi SAW dan perkataan ashab-nya dan ulama dan hukama yang solihin, maka hendaklah kamu berpegang dan percaya dengan dia dan kamu amal dan yakin serta harap daripadanya sekelian yang tersebut di dalam kitab ini kerana yang diterjemahkan pula kepada bangsa Melayu oleh mereka yang sangat alim dan ‘amil lagi yang thiqah dan yang zahir akan keramatnya dan ia setengah daripada anak cucu Rasulullah SAW (dan adapun) mujarabat yang bernama Taju al-Muluk maka iaitu setengah daripadanya perkataan ada baginya asal. Wallu ‘alam.

Selain daripada al-Fawaid, beberapa kitab karangan Sayyid Ahmad Husein ini telah dicetak di Timur Tengah seperti Ta ‘arifu al-Khalani fi Tajwidi al-Qurani yang dicetak di Matba ‘ah al-Miriyyah pada tahun 1333H dan Hidayatu al-Ikhwan fi Azkari as-Solati wa al-Arkan yang dicetak di Matba‘ah at-Taqaddumi al-‘Ilmiyyati di Masir pada tahun 1319H. Tulisan beliau juga yang berjudul Hidayatu al-‘Awami fi Bayani Hukmi Syarbi ad-Dukhan telah mendapat respon daripada ulama sezamannya iaiitu Syaikh Zain al-‘Abidin bin Muhammad al-Fatani, yang dikenali sebagai Tok Minal, iaitu berkisar di atas hukum haram atau tidaknya merokok yang menulis Tabassumu asy-Syaribin..

Isterinya Syaikh Ahmad, Siti Saudah , telah menyalin sebuah karya karangan ulama Terangganu ,Sayyid Muhammad bin Sayyid Zainu al-Abidin al-Aidrus yang bertajuk ‘Kanzu al-Ula’ pada tahun 1324H (1906) . Pencatat ini mempunyai keyakinan yang Syaikh Ahmad mempunyai hubungan dengan ulama-ulama Terangganu semasa itu seperti Tok Ku Paloh dan pembesar Terangganu yang lain, hanyalah belum ditemui bahan-bahan yang membuktikan hubungan tersebut. Walaupun begitu kita dapat temui kitab-kitab yang dihasilkan oleh Tuan Syaikh Hassan Bin Ishaq Besut di cetak di Matba‘ah al-Miriyyah seperti kitab Ayyuha al-Walad Pada Bicara Wasiat dan Nasihat pada tahun 1300H

Catitan Tentang Haiwan Dendang.

Syaikh mempunyai minat yang mendalam terhadap kehidupan semasa tumbuhan atau binatang, lihatlah sebagai contoh permerhatiannya terhadap binatang kecau dan gondang di dalam kitabnya al-Fatawa, Bahjah dan ‘Unwan.

Syaikh telah menyebut tentang binatang dendang yang digunakan sebagai ubat batu karang:

Dan binatang yang dinamakan dia dendang dan tiada dapat akan dia melainkan pada negeri Paka dan Kertil daripada jajahan Terangganu, iaitu binatang kadar besar sorok-sorok, apabila dimakan akan dia menghancurkan karang dan sekelian barang yang kotor-kotor seperti nanah dan lendir yang ada sertanya hingga suci. Dan sekur daripadanya dimakan empat kali dan ia memabukkan jika dimakan seekur sama sekali. Kata setengah apabila mabuk seseorang daripada sebabnya, diberi minum air nyiur niscaya hilang

Pengkabaran Kematian Syaikh Ahmad

Keakraban hubungan Syaikh Ahmad dengan pembesar-pembasar dan ulama di Terangganu dapat agaknya dapat dirasai dengan perkhabaran kematiannya yang diwarkahkan oleh bapa saudaranya, Syaikh Wan Daud dan anaknya Syaikh Wan Ismail kepada Tengku Long Bin Tengku Ngah, pembesar Besut:

Hadrat Tuanku yang mulia serta hamba Tuanku mengurniakan sembah dari hak hamba Tuanku , Wan Ahmad Bin Almarhum al-Haj Wan Muhammad Zain itu sudah kembali ke rahmatullah pada malam 11 zu al-Hijjah [1325H ] di Mina, maka di bawa turun ke Makkah, maka ditanam di Ma’la, dengan sebab mati sebelah tubuh. Awal sakitnya pada 22 Jamadi al-Akhir [1325H], maka dapat [lega] sedikit, kemudian bertambah pula. Pada lepas puasa enam maka hingga [beransur pulih] sedikit pula, boleh naik haji. Maka tatkala lepas zuhur hari raya haji, maka kena pula [serangan penyakit] hingga selepas maghrib hingga habis umurnya. Dan demikian lagi al-Haj Wan Muhammad Zain Bin Almarhum al-Haj Mustafa [ayahanda Sayaikh Ahmad] itu pun kembali ke rahmatullah juga pada 18 haribulan zu al-Hijjah [1325] dengan sebab sakit orang tuha sahaja.

Akhiru al-Kalam

Semoga harapan Syaikh Ahmad al-Fatani yang diletakkan ke atas pemerentah Terangganu dapat diberi perhatian, dipermudahkan Allah kiranya terlaksana impiannya, Syaikh Ahmad mengidamkan agar pemerentah negeri ini dapat berusaha:

1. menjadikan negeri ini sebagai bendaharaan ilmu dan perladungan kepandaian

2. menyediakan suasana dan infra-struktur yang kondusif untuk anak bangsa negeri ini untuk menuntut ilmu dan kemahiran, agar celik mata mereka terhadap kecemerlangan ilmu dan handalan kemahiran

3. mampu melahirkan ulama dan bijak pandai yang ternama di kalangan Bani Adam

4. memerentah dengan adil yakni mengikut syara agama kita yang maha suci dan maha sempurna

5. mengamalkan sifat kasih-sayang kepada rakyat yang diperentah dan bersikap pemurah kepada mereka tanpa sebarang diskriminasi yang tidak syari’e

6. mempunyai kekuatan dan keupayaan untuk membina tamaddun Melayu yang bernafaskan syara agama kita serta memiliki kekuatan semasa.

7. mengambil berat dan memperkasakan bahasa sendiri

8. mendokumentasi sejarah bangsa

9. mampu menjadi tauladan kepada negri-negeri lain di dalam melaksanakan kebajikan, mengamalkan keadilan, menyuburkan ilmu pengetahuan serta kemahiran dan memerentah dengan adil bedsarakan ajaran al-Quran.

Semoga kita semua akan dianugerahi Allah keinginan untuk memahami warisan tokoh agung ini, semoga Allah memperkenankan kita walaupun di peringkat mana kedudukan kita dalam masyarakat untuk mengamalkan saranan dan pengajaran yang dianjurkannya.

Semoga kita mampu menumpang tuah tokoh ini di dunia dan di akhirat.

Wallahu ‘alam.

Wa salla Llahu ‘ala Saiyyidina Muhammadin

wa ‘ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmain

Abdullah Zaidi Hassan

Depan Masjid Salor

23hb Syawal 1426.



[1] Syaikh Ahmad mengimpikan suatu bentu pemerentahan gabungan di antara Patani, Kelantan dan Terangganu yang berada di bawah naungan Khalifah Uthmaniyyah . Akan disentuh secara khusus tentang perkara ini.

[2] Tengku Dalam Kalthom menyebut: menghembur beberapa daripada harta

tiadalah syang oleh Sang Nata

demikianlah hal ku dapat warta

tiap-tiap masuk segala pendeta

[3] T.D.K menyebut: tersangat kasih Yang Maha Mulia

kepada segala hamba dan sahaya

hatinya murah lagi bahagi

tiada memandang harta dunia

[4] Di dalam nazam ‘Nuru al-Anam’, Syaikh Ahmad menyebut tentang tanggung-jawab pihak pemerentah:

maka celakalah rakyat dengan celaka raja* tiada hukumkan rakyat dengan adilnya ia

jadi dosa rakyat jadi dosalah ia* sebab tiada disuruh dan tegah akan dia

lagi pula dihukum dengan zalimlah ia* maka raja yang zalim besar dosalah ia

maka raja yang adil ikut hukum yang mulia* pada hari kiamat dapat syurgalah ia

dengan hukum yang adil akan rakyatnya ia* dengan mengikut syara yang dihukumkan Dia

maka dapat untunglah dengan jalan bahagia*dengan hukumnya syara yang diikutkan dia

demikian pula segala wazirnya ia* dengan kerja yang zalim masuk nerakalah ia

[ Syeikh Ahmad al-Fathani Pemikir Agung Melayu Dan Islam . Jil 2 m/s:42]

[5]TDK menyebut: Terangganu Dar al-Iman nama negeri

Sultan nan sangat bijak bestari

Alim termasyhur bijak bistari

Dengan yang lain sukar dicari

[6] Syaikh mengkagumi Sultan ini kerana factor utamanya ialah faham agama pada baginda. Syaikh menyebut di dalam kitabnya as-Siyasatu wa at-Tadbir “urusan Islam adalah yang pertama-tama dan utama,urusan-urusan lain adalah sambil-sambil sahaja [secara relatif-nya].Barang siapa mendahulukan urusan-urusan lain daripada Islam agamanya, maka telah khianat pada agamanya” (m/s 50 Wawasan Pemikiran Islam Ulama Asia Tenggara- Jil 2).

Sebagaimana juga yang terkandung dalam surat Syaikh kepada muridnya Nik Mahmud Ismail al-Kelantani yang ketika itu menuntut di Masir: “dan mudah-mudahan ankanda meninggikan hemmah pada mendapat barang yang sayugia mendapat dia bagi seumpama diri anakanda di dalam ini masa, supaya terangkat [kedudukan]dengan demikian itu oleh jenis Melayu. Berat dan terhebat dengan dia oleh siyasah mereka itu sebagai tamaddun yang muafakat dengan syara” (ibid)

[7] M/s;83 Syeikh Ahmad al-Ftani Pemikir Melayu dan Islam Jil.2

[8] Terdapat bukti yang kuat untuk kekal mengatakan Syarah Hikam itu karangan Tok Pulau Manis. Mengikut Dr. Shafie Abu Bakar selain daripada itulah pegangan sebahagian ulama dan keturunan Tok Pulau Manis, memang diketemui manuskrip-manuskrip kitab ini yang lainnya di Terangganu. Tentang gaya bahasa dan beberapa perkataan Acheh yang terdapat di dalam kitab ini dapat difahami ianya berlaku kerana Syaikh Abdul Malik, Tok Pulau Manis memang menuntut ilmu di Acheh, syaikhnya yang masyhur ialah Syaikh Abdul Rauf Singkel, yang dikenali sebagai Syaikh Kuala. Pengaruh gaya bahasa dan perkataan boleh sahaja berlaku sebagaimana penulis-penulis yang pernah belajar di Indonesia atau banyak membaca karya-karya dari sana sekarang inpun telah terbawa-bawa dengan gaya bahasa dan perkataan di sana. Lihat sahajalah penggunaan istilah ‘mandiri, mampan, lestari,kesenimbungan dan lain-lainnya. Di dalam hal ini Syaikh Ahmad telah menunjukkan sifat amanah terhadap ilmu yang sangat tinggi, beliau akan mengakui sesuatu ‘kekhilafan’ sendiri apabila terdapat maklumat yang menunjukkan ke arah itu. Wallahu ‘alam