Assalamualaikum wbt
One day during my
internship in The Garden, I was asked by the Nepalese staff over there,
"Jie Jie, why
do you sit down when you're drinking?"
And I have quite a
hard time explaining to him because… he does not know what is sunnah, or who is
Muhammad SAW, and he doesn't even know what is prophet! How was I going to
explain??!
At last, "Ermm.
Islam teach us to do this.". Simple, but not a satisfaction definitely,
and he just said "Ohhh" and nodded.
Few days after,
while I was drinking, he called me, "Jie jie, why you no sit down?".
At that time, I
could only say, "Oh! I forgot!". But I immediately thought,
"Shame on you lah!"
Because 'yesterday'
you explained about it with enthusiasm, and 'today' you do not practice what
you've preached. You are being inconsistent. However, on the positive side of
it, it served as a reminder for me.
Carrying yourself as
a Muslim in a place where people do not understand your religion can be tough,
but that's the challenge, and that's perhaps a way for me to always remind
myself to show good vibes and examples for the non-Muslims especially.
And from that day onward, more questions were being asked. I couldn't explain with the correct
terms, but as long as he understood, that was good enough for me. And the best
thing is, he would always be asking " Jie jie, you pray already?" or when he needed to walk on a narrow area,
"Jie jie, excuse me pleaassseeee. I want to walk. Cannot touch touch
maaa".
There =)"I'm not a good Muslim, but I'm a practicing Muslim"
