One fine Friday afternoon

One fine Friday afternoon, I found myself at the Sri Mungkal Mosque, Tanjung Ipoh for my Friday prayers. I sat almost at the same time when the khutbah was about to commence. The khatib announced that the title of the khutbah (sermon) would be “AIDS”. I was rather intrigue by the choice of subject matter to be talked about. I was keen to know the substance of it.

My verdict – not bad at all; considering I was back in my kampong. Think about the kind of crowd that the message was channelled to. I wasn’t sure how many were processing as the khatib went on. Silently I was pondering, how far we have come. Sure that we are not liberal country, but who wants that anyway. Thinking far back 20 years ago, we would not imagine the words in the like of “kissing”, “bodily fluid” etc. would stand among the Quranic verses cited as an integral part of the khutbah.

To inject a little fear, the content cited some stats, from one or two isolated cases in Malaysia in 1986, we have so far recorded 80,000 odds HIV+ people in Malaysia at present. It was simply amazing.

Suddenly I took my thought a bit further than that. I think we can use this medium to diffuse knowledge on all sorts of things that impact the society at large regardless of racial background, social status, education background and others. One that is quite close to us is technology impact on us all.

Take for an example – a khutbah around mobile phone use and abuse. That is somewhat simple but the angle can be from the misuse of it. As to date people are misusing the mobile phones to take and circulate obscene pictures using those to blackmail etc. The khutbah can be used to channel guiding principles in using mobile phones and the repercussion around the misuse. At the same time, it would be music to ears of the mobile operators if the khatib reiterate the importance of being a part of this technological shift in life to reap the benefit of it such as to communicate more efficiently.

With that, I am so looking forward to come across my next observation in life and talk about it on this blog.