Rashid the Artist.

Whenever  I spend time with my artist friend Rashid, who I consider to be one of the best in the State as a portrait painter, he would talk religion and politics. Sometimes he keeps repeating the same story again and again over the years that i have known him and it is through his tales that i pretty much learn all I need to know about Islam, the politics in Malaysia and last but not least Art. Out of politeness and the need for his company I paid attention to his stories with more and more enthusiasm as I am beginning to realize that my  friend is a genuine scholar in his own right more so than most i know of. He is genuinely sincere in his studies of these topics and spends hours reading over the Internet. All I need to do is ask a question like hit the search button and he is off into the specific time zones and relevant episodes of his life in relation to what was asked. Rashid is an Anwar Ibrahim's man and never get him off on that topic!
This evening as always we had coffee at a shop around the corner from the Malay Art gallery on Chulia Street. This is where we would sit right by the main gate of the Kapitan Kling Mosque which later at night turns into the Nasi Kandar Beratur a most famous place for the local specialty of Nasi Kandar. In the evening usually there is not many customers and so we have the place pretty much to ourselves and Rashid went through his whole narratives covering topics from the times of the Prophet of Allah and the cause for the rift between Shiah and Sunis, the ursenic to kill Anwar ibrahim and how he was privileged to learn all about the psychological warfare from the UMNO political machinery and how he had worked as a customs officer and witnessed the corruption way back when. I have no choice but to believe him simply because of how he repeats these stories time and again and they always were the same. He told me of his days with the Anak Alam group of artist in Kuala Lumpur and how he had known Latiff Mohideen back then and the crazy thing they were doing together. Rashid is the strongest supporter of Anwar Ibrahim the opposition leader who was at one time the deputy prime minister of the country and who toady is still being haunted by his sodomy trials. In this manner i am being kept upsated of the events that i am writing about in my Blog without having to read too much about them, my source of refference knows more details than most.
In return Rashid is the one person I would let all my feelings show, someone i can share all my crap with if and when I get the chance to tell my story because normally i would just listen while he tells his stories. One of the topics that intrigues me in our conversation is the sectarian differences of shiah and Suni and how this came to be and Rashsid has been making this his point of focus of late as he browse the  You Tube on the subject and read all the articles from various Ulama and Ustaz, Sheikh and religious historians from all over the Muslim world. This evening he again talked of how it was that the prophet's wife Aishah was a real duce bag who most shiah believes might have even poisoned the Prophet. he was telling me of how she had been instrumental in the demise of the second and third  Khaliph according to shiah historians.
Islam would have been a more dominant religion had it not been for the sectarian conflict that has haunted the religion for centuries. Today more than evr the religion is at the mercy of  unscrupulous Muslim leaders who exploited the sectarian issue to divide and conquer for their own self interest and all over the Muslim world this division of faith is like a cancerous virus eating away at the Ummah and its Unity.The violent manifestations of such conflict has given Islam its worse image as a terrorist religion among other things. The Christian and western world feeds on this dilemma that Islam faces making the religion seemed aggressive and often violent and unapproachable.But to those who knows the religion and its principles it is a far cry from what the religion is really about, it is a religion of Peace and Unity no matter what its followers may chose to do.There is no doubt that islam is a threat tot Christianity and other religions around the world, but it is not from its violent nature as accused by non muslims but from the teachings and tennets of the religion itself; most westerners convert to Islam because of its principles.

I found that for every question I could raise, Islam had a convincing answer.
My path was through books, I came through the theory. It was a rational choice, not an emotional choice. I looked at the information which was out there, compared and contemplated. Islam was the answer to every question. -By Nourdeen Wildeman

Muslim Revert - The Netherlands

" His voyage to Mecca helped him discover the atoning power of Islam as a means to unity as well as self-respect: “In my thirty-nine years on this earth,” he would write in hisautobiography, “the Holy City of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a complete human being.” - of Malcolm X