Assalamualaikum
Watched a movie last night with LOML. Eat, Pray, Love ~ Julia Roberts. Cool movie. Anyway you can see the movie or read the review or the book about it. This is what I think....
Sometimes in life you will have something that you do not expect. You need someone to push you to see things. Like in the movie she went to see a healer and looked into the future and it seemed that she believed in it. Funny, in the story the healer predicts correctly.
However it may be true, my point is, as a Muslim we are to believe in our faith (beriman) in Qada' and Qadar. Allah told us that our life has been written as it is. But Allah gives us mind and heart to think and feel what is right and what is wrong and make better out of it.
In the real life of a Muslim, like me, I believe that Allah already set my life for me. How it's going to be and what things that I have to face in life. Allah also have given me a good set of mind and heart for me to think and judge what is the best for me.
The difference between me and Elizabeth (Julia Roberts) is that we come from different race and culture. The way both of us are brought up by our parents is different and in the movie she is bold in making the decision to leave 2 men in her life who loves her. She knows what she wants. Further with an advantage of not having kids of course. But if you look in our culture, this is where we are weak I should say. The lack of knowledge of Islam and mixing both religion and culture is the weakness.
I studied Islamic law for 3 years and it is stated that if you don't like someone you can ask for a divorce or leave. The only thing is Islam asks us to be responsible in taking care of the person that we leave, men, women or even children. However in the Malay culture, it becomes some kind of a taboo and we look down on divorced people. And also the perfection of Islam is it allows men to marry more than one for it is a way to accept men's nature of living. But again, Islam have set rules to be obeyed for the women not to be disregarded. Fairness is required.
By mixing both culture and religion, we will never be able to live our life as expected by Allah. Sad, but this is what is going around us. The attachment of family, the fear of society's point of view and also the worry of society's acceptance around us makes us weak and scared to make any decisions in a relationship.
Allah have set rules to ease human kind but we are the one who makes it difficult. Of this is only my point of view.......
Wassalam.
