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DISCLAIMER: This article is in no way researched and is wholly anectodal, relying exclusively on my personal experiences and what I have gathered over the years I spent growing up in Malaysia. In light of the recent London attacks, I felt compelled to pen this short article.  I have said multiple times that the problem isn't with the religion, but with the people.  And that is true.  Up to a point. Violence and hate isn't born out of thin air.  It is taught, it is indoctrinated.  And where does this indoctrination come from?  Sadly, the scholars, khatibs [1] and imams, the leaders of our religious institutions, the men who we trust to know the religion inside out.  Sadly, some of these men are the ones who will condemn terrorism and extremism, yet fail to realize their impassioned sermons convey the opposite message. Back home in Malaysia, I never miss a Friday prayer.  There are so many mosques and the employers allow their Muslim staff to take some extra time off on Fr

I was inspired to write this after reading an article by my friend, Qyira, who is currently working with Teach for Malaysia.  TFM is an organization dedicated to engaging the youth in teaching future generations, to bridge gaps due to circumstance and to give back to society through education. At the end of the article, she talks about how one of the students she interacted with had concerns about her future.  She was concerned that the stream she was in had no future options.  Another was worried that her passion for sports had no viable future.  This to me, highlighted an issue I've noticed since I was in high school.  Even with my privileged upbringing, mastery of English, and overseas-educated parents, I was also lost and confused, but over why there seemed to be so few options. Almost every university that came to give a talk, every school program to help students determine a future path was focused heavily on either law, medicine, engineering, business, or mass communica

Thank you for being an amazing companion.  Thank you for always being such a loving cat, and for being amazingly adorable and caring.  You always greeted us every time we returned home.  You always wanted to be brought to the food bowl and you loved spending time with us. You were so charming and amazing my friends would always ask how you were doing.  Your intelligence, sweetness, and love captured the hearts of so many, even those who'd never met you personally. I know that whenever I left for Canada, you would go to my room looking for me.  You would do the same whenever one of us wasn't around for longer than usual.  You could count and you remembered people.  Whenever someone was home alone, they could be sure that you would be nearby, napping away, and occasionally pestering for food.  You were never needy in the way other cats were.  You enjoyed quiet moments when everyone was lounging about.  You loved being the centre of attention but you never wanted too many p

Yet it does.  As Ramadan comes to a close, I feel like I should pen this article.  It will most likely be a fairly short article. This past Ramadan, I have heard unsettling stories of people being harassed for eating in public.  Not just Muslims, but non-Muslims too.  I feel this is wrong.  One's fast is purely between themselves, and God.  You do not know what ailments the person may be facing that is preventing them from fasting.  For example, chronic hypoglycemia can lead to seizures and if emergency medical aid is not given, can lead to death.  For the ladies, they may be on their period, something which prevents them from fasting.  C'mon guys, we've learned this in school.  My 4 year old cousins know this.  Your actions are inadvertently telling me that you know/care less about your faith than a 4 year old.  That's embarrassing, bro. A common retort is that they are 'disrespecting' Muslims by eating in public.  Bullshit.  It is you who are weak-willed.

I've been thinking; since most of the articles I have been posting of late (despite the infrequency of my posts) are definitely of the... opinionated type, I will apply what I have learned in university.  By that I mean whenever I post an article, I will do my best to include sources. Will it be a pain to format the references section in this medium?  You can bet your bottom dollar it will.  But I feel that if I do not do this, my arguments lack credibility.  How many people read my blog?  Probably only a few.  But again, this blog was never really created as a platform to reach the masses.  It has always been a place for me to articulate some of my opinions.  In the past, I encouraged discussions in the past but due to Blogspot's somewhat annoying comment/reply system, the fact that I do not have many readers, and compounded by my general distaste of people who get riled up and leave nasty comments without presenting any valid arguments, such discussions have been very far a

In this era of hyperconnectivity and superfluous information feeds, there is literally more information pouring in to us than we could ever possibly process.  Thus, we pick what we feel is either a) important, or b) entertaining enough to give attention. This has led to increased awareness of racial and gender inequalities, systemic injustices around the world, so on and so forth, which is a good thing.  It is very important that even those unaffected by some of these injustices are aware of them. Naturally, one of the prevalent causes this generation has decided to rally around is racial discrimination.  It happens around the world.  Which is good as it teaches us that there exists races aside from which we grew up in.  Literally a whole world of different culture, languages, food, etc! On an unrelated side note; It has always bugged me how some movies portraying interplanetary relationships (such as Star Trek) have generally shown worlds with a homogeneous culture and yet on o