Sunday, January 22, 2012

Something about polygamy

As usual, before I dwell myself into the topic which is stated in the title above, I would divert myself by talking about random stuff before proceeding with the main topic. So now lets begin with a number of things that I would like to say, express, or share.

#Random Post Number 1
Now, why in the world do people write something in their blogs? Obviously everyone have their own reasons. Some simply wants to share their life experience, people say sharing is caring, I say sharing is attention-whoring. I'm not saying its not good, in fact, attention-whoring is perhaps one of my greatest hobby if I may say so myself. Psychologically speaking, this can be explained through the human's hierarchy of needs. What is it? Well, basically it is a pyramid which states the needs of humans which is separated into 5 different categories ascending from the bottom to the top in relevance to their level of need. The image below will help you understand a bit more about it.

As you can see from the image above, the middle section of the pyramid emphasizes on the social needs of human beings. Majority of bloggers simply use blog as a medium to attain social acceptance and the idea of self-belongingness in cyberspace.

Now, the second reason why most bloggers blog is because they want to use it as a method of improving themselves in terms of their writing, creativity, or maturity. Most of the time, it usually appears like a very interesting idea to do this for newbies. But little do they know that most of the time, when these people get older, they will be disgusted, irritated, annoyed, and even ashamed of themselves in their past writing. Thus most of them usually decides to delete or renew their blog.

Have you guys noticed that the number of bloggers had amazingly decreased throughout the years? This is due to the existence of facebook itself. Most people simply write blogs so that others would read and comment about their posts. With the help of facebook, that is very easily attainable without the need of much effort. PLUS! Only a little amount of people manage to become successful bloggers, whereas others simply have blogs which people never visit and comment (one of the sad examples would be my blog, *sniff sniff*). So, people usually divert their attention towards the use of facebook to write short status updates in replacement of their usual blogposts.

#Random Post Number 2
I wonder how much of you guys actually know about SOPA?

#Random Post Number 3
Getting into an argument is perhaps one of the most useful ways of improving your debating skills. But there are some individuals and some topics of arguments that you should refrain yourself from participating into, for example, having a religious argument with an atheist. Why? Because no one can win. Plus, each party will ignore the opposition's argument since they do not accept their points. It is almost as if you are seeing a deaf person arguing with a blind person. The deaf person is arguing that with the ability if sight, you can best see the true beauty of the world by looking at the color of rainbows an etc. Whereas the blind person argues that with the ability of hearing, you can best see the true beauty of the world by hearing the beautiful sounds of nature and musics. Each won't be able to convince their points to one another thus the arguments will be never-ending. Now the true question here is, how does a deaf person argue with a blind person?

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Polygamy
I am not from a religious school and I was always oblivious of whatever which is happening around me during my days in school. The first time I actually paid attention to and understood the meaning of polygamy was during my school days when I was 16 years old (form 4). At that time, my teacher wanted the class to argue with one another in front of the class about polygamy, whether or not it should be applicable for men. Two male students (supporting polygamy) and two female students (disagree with polygamy) went in front of the class to argue with one another. At first I was like, what in the world is polygamy? After they started to argue, only then that I knew it actually refers to a term that describes a man having more than one wife.

The dudes argued that polygamy should be supported because the amount of women is more then men, some will be single and forever alone if polygamy is not applied (not to mention the amount of those men who died before marriage and homosexuals at large). They also argued that if a women became a widow, it is most likely that no single man wants to marry that woman, thus the more reason why polygamy should be applicable because an experienced married men know how to manage a family and are most likely to accept the widow as their wife.

The girls on the other hand argued that MEN are not RESPONSIBLE enough to handle polygamy. They were speaking from their own self-experience of having a father who neglects their family because he was more attentive towards the other wife. So they argued that men won't be able to properly practice fairness and this would invite trouble and unnecessary problems to the family.

Towards the end, of course the teacher says that Polygamy should be supported because it is the Islamic rule that Allah has provided.

I believe that the arguments being done was not pleasing since the girls end up feeling as if they are still correct since their argument was not countered by the male students. I was quite disappointed by the male students because they were supposed to represent us, in fact they self-willingly went to the front of the class to do so. I was bewildered by the stupidity of the dudes who were obviously whoring for attention instead of standing for polygamy. I was also astonished by the stupidity of the girls for daringly trying to prove that polygamy (the law that Allah himself had established) should be abolished.

When we argue with these kind of people who's against polygamy, it is obvious that by simply stating about statistical facts and saying that this is the law of Allah will not be enough to properly convince them. So lets just be nice and try to see things in their perspectives and be in their shoes for a second. Now, the first thing you should do is agree with them a bit by saying that what they are trying to say is understandable. It is true that guys will most likely fail in terms of properly taking care of their wives and families in complete fairness. Thus polygamy usually leads to broken families in Malaysia.

However, we should not refer to those failures to ultimately represent what polygamy is all about. Now, what is the role of a husband and a father? We know that once a man marries a woman, he carries all the sin of his wife and also carries the sin of his daughters if he so fails to guide them. Even if he were to spread the teachings of Islam and converts people into Muslim, when the time has come and he wants to enter heaven, his wife and daughter will cling to him and say "why did you not guide us properly and leave us damned to hell? Why did you spread the teachings of Islam to others but ignore us as we do sins everyday? We demand that you enter the depths of hell with us because you did not perform your duty as a husband and a father" (well, something like that).

One should know how HIGH the responsibility of a HUSBAND actually is. One should know how PREPARED a MAN must be before he performs his MARRIAGE. One should know how DIFFICULT it actually is to perform the role of a husband. If one knows about all these, then one knows that MARRIAGE is for a MAN who is fully PREPARED to held the full RESPONSIBILITY of being a husband, and things like dishonesty and cheating should be nothing to worry about.

In the age we are living in, marriage is looked upon as if a normal thing. They fail to see the actual beauty behind marriage itself and what it symbolizes. It symbolizes the wife entirely devoting her life to help her husband and lend him her trust, hoping that he would be the one who will properly guide her to heaven. It symbolizes the husband willing to carry the entire burden of being responsible for all of his wife's sin, and guide her until the day he dies. Nowadays, people only see money and commitment as the key factor in marriage. They pay less attention to the actual responsibility one should carry once they are married and the consequences if one were to fail.

Seeing how HEAVY a MARRIAGE actually is and how HIGH the REQUIREMENT that one should reach to actually get married... Then one should know that POLYGAMY is not for any average Joe. Polygamy is indeed a special case that should only be practiced by few who are actually capable of doing so. Women usually disagree with polygamy because they believe that men are not capable of practicing equal-fairness, that is only true because they simply refer to the kind of man that they usually meet in real life. In reality, not every man can carry the responsibility of a husband in polygamy. We should know that Allah is all-knowing and He would not establish a law with flaws. In fact, Allah is all-knowing he establishes Polygamy because He knows the ABSOLUTE TRUTH.

There is a limit to reasoning with our human intellect when it comes to religion, that is where faith and the pillars of Iman plays into context. You try to reason too much in terms of logic, then you will end up like those in the Western countries who supports Human rights and ends up being filled with homosexuals and free sex. That is how far human reasoning can bring you without the help of religion.

Thus, it is obvious that if a man actually performs his requirements and does all his role as a husband in Polygamy, then nothing will go wrong. In fact, polygamy is actually a beautiful thing but people as such as us who are too focused on the concept of ONE TRUE LOVE (too caught up with Western movies and modern relationships), will not be able to see and appreciate the true beauty of polygamy. That is indeed very sad...

However, that is understandable. Because even by knowing all this, I find it hard to appreciate the beauty of polygamy as well. I know the beauty of it, but it is hard to internally appreciate it with all honesty because I am not familiar with it. When it comes to religion Islam, we need knowledge, faith, and effort to fully accept, see, practice, appreciate and love Islam as a WHOLE. Some people fail to appreciate the true beauty of hari raya korban, they fail to appreciate to beauty of hudud, and many other stuff due to the fact that they are too caught up with human reasoning alone. Most Muslims still haven't reached this state because they are too caught up with "life", they fail to see that life on earth is simply a temporarily station to collect deeds before we go to our next eternal location which might be heaven or hell.

In Islam, just KNOWING is NOT enough. It requires MORE than that, more than my words can say. That is one of the true beauty of Islam, which many others fail to see and haven't reached. I myself haven't reached this level and am still in the struggle of achieving such position. Because I am simply not strong and willing enough to offer my love and affection to other women out there other than Arinah Rozhan who I believe will be my future wife that I will guide in the future. But for those out there who wants to practice polygamy, I will give you my full support in doing so :D.