The Holiday that was at UNSW...

Assalammualaikum wbt..

Tomorrow's gonna be class... arghhh... holiday's ended...

Didn't really move away from my house this holiday... just stuck at UNSW the whole week...

Why??

Bcoz of...

Islamic Awareness Week 2009!!


My first ever experience working with international muslims!! What an eye-opener!!


The aim of this week is to spread the message of Islam, especially in removing myths and falsehood about Islam. We set up stalls everyday from Monday to Friday in front of the library lawn, we OWNED that walkway for the whole week, yeah!! (*some even say we owned the Christ Week that was coincidentally on the same week as ours)

I came on Monday carrying my 24" lcd monitor that they want to use, arrived at Library Lawn... and... wow!! What a beautiful stall~ with the banners all around~ MasyaAllah...

Basically, the main thing is to entertain any questions people will have about Islam at our stall either from muslims, non-muslims or atheist. Different kind of people dropped by our stall, some really interested to learn... some just came to say Assalammualaikum... some came just to slam us and satisfy their ego (but we manage to defend ourselves..)

Not just people coming to our stall, some of the brothers (and sisters) even go to the Christ Week stalls and attacked them!! Not physically, but using words and evidences from Quran and rational thinking to compare Islam and Christianity~ and they did it well!!

In addition, some of the sisters actually went to the people hanging around the library lawn and giving them da'wah materials without even feeling shy about it (tak malu-malu kucing pon bak kate org melayu), MasyaAllah... they really have no fear in spreading the truth, despite having to do it places where the majority are non-muslims.

Me? Even in Malaysia where the majority are muslims, still am kinda of shy + afraid to spread the truth bravely to non-muslims (or muslims).

I didn't really get much "customer" the whole week, maybe 3 that I really have a chance to talk to.. most of the time, when I greet someone, another brother step in and snatch them away.. haha.. not that I mind though, I totally agree that the other brother are way more experienced and knowledgeable then me~ but I'm hoping to get some experience this year, Alhamdulillah I still get some.. especially on Friday~

All the lectures during the week were awesome!! The number of non-muslim attending the lectures slowly but steadily increases from Monday to Friday, especially during Sharia' Law and the debate.

We also had BBQ on Tuesday handled by brothers, and the atmosphere at that time was MasyaAllah very beautiful, I suddenly see a lot of muslims and non-muslims getting together eating happily around the BBQ area... wonderful~ Thanks to TJ for sponsoring us!!

On Wednesday we had Falafel Lunch handled by sisters, which is also a great success~ Food is always a major attraction for people~


The final Day:

On friday, the final event was the Great Debate: Does God Exist? by Brother Uthman Badar(muslims) versus Alan Zaino (atheist), the turnout by both muslims and non-muslims was Alhamdulillah very good!! We filled the whole lecture theater... The debate however...

On the Muslims side it was marvellous, brother did a very good job presenting his points especially since he used a rational thinking side to deal with atheist, not focusing much on the Quran (since they dont believe in the Quran)

The atheist side was however pretty dissapointing, he didn't really prepared well for his topic, and decided not to have a rebuttal session with brother Uthman... which really... sort of makes the debate strange...

However, during the Q&A session, questions were raining down on both side, and Alhamdulillah brother Uthman managed handled it well~ Ending it with something for the atheist to think about (if they are really open-minded as they claim they are)


The rainy night:

As I leave the lecture hall that night, it was raining... not really a depressing rain, but it gives off a really nice atmosphere to end our Islamic Awareness Week...

It got me thinking...

One of the most wonderful thing I witnessed this week (and during Ramadhan) is that how just because we are muslims... you can see another muslims came and helped out with all using 100% their capabilities even though we have never met each other before and they are not in the IAW committee... some of them are not even from UNSW, some came from McQuarie Uni, we never met them, but they are MasyaAllah such a great helper...

I saw... how the brotherhood in Islam is not restricted to any boundaries... strangers became best of friends in an instant~

Then, I reflected back on how...

I met a lot of new brothers from different backgrounds throughout this week...

I learned a lot from them on how to give Da'wah...

I now know more on how other people see religion and life...

I now am more confident to spread the truth of this beautiful way of life~

What's left is to improve myself to increase my iman and knowledge~!!!



The preparation for this week took months... its pointless to ask the question:

"was it all worth it?"


Alhamdulillah~