Critical Thoughts Retro

“What’s in a name?”, one might ask? For a Muslim, names mean a lot in reflecting a character of a person. I’ve been meaning to write for some time a brief breakdown of the meaning of my own name, “Mohd Elfie Nieshaem” (excluding my dad’s), as it was only recently (3 - 4 years ago) that I came to know the actual meaning of my name, which was a combination of choices by both my parents.

[Originally my dad wanted to name me “Mohd Nieshaem” at my birth, but my mom wanted to call me “Elfie Nieshaem”. Conflict resolved, eh? :)]

So here we go…the meaning of the phrases (as I came to know of and put together the pieces in later years), are as follows:

Mohd: A Malaynised simplification (dare I say corruption?) of the name “Muhammad”. We all know that “Muhammad” means “one worthy of praise” and that my namesake is the Prophet Muhammad (P), the Seal of the Prophets and of whom Allah says, “Wa-ma arsal-na ka-illa rahmatan-lil `aalameen” We have not sent thee [O Muhammad] except as a Mercy for all the worlds”. Needs no further elaboration

Elfie: Now this is a bit complicated. I have come to understand that this is a corruption of the Arabic alfun, which means “One Thousand”. Don’t ask me why my birth certificate says “Elfie” instead of “Alfun” as it should be.

Nieshaem: I have yet to find any corresponding meaning to it in Arabic, or any word that may have been corrupted from the Arabic into “Nieshaem”. The last part of the syllable corresponds to the Arabic shams, which means “sun”. But I am stretching things too far here. So let’s just ignore this part of my name.

Conclusion: If we take the first two phrases of my name, we will get “One Who is Worthy of Praise, One Thousand”. Hmmm….I am not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing

Speaking about names, however, I do hope that when I do get married in the far, far future and have a first-born son, I hope to name him “Mu`awiyah”, after the Caliph Mu`awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan who was the Companion of the Prophet(P) and the founder of the Ummayad Dynasty who spread Islam throughout the world. Then my kunya will be “Abu Mu`awiyah”, which is certainly what I hope for. Insha’allah, my dream will come true. What if it is a girl, you may ask? I think I should leave that to my wife to decide. LOL!

A new year has dawned upon us. Better opportunities and better hopes for the future, insha’allah. A great Awwal Muharram to all Muslims around the globe.

The year 1426H, especially the last few days of the calendar, has brought a lot of unexpected surprises, with the victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the sweeping, overwhelming coup d’etat via the ballot box of the “Change and Reform” list affliated with the Palestinian Hamas movement. Perhaps there is still hope for the Islamic movements and all is not yet lost. Insha’allah the year 1427H will see the resurgence of Islam and the death of secularism (or at least a fallback) in Muslim nations around the globe. Unless and until Muslims realise that secularism is the source of our current “malaise of the ummah”, as Ismail Faruqi would put it, and the reason for all the evils that has afflicted us all through these years, we will remain in this state until Allah brings another folk who is better than us in their imaan and taqwa….and wipe us all out.

And when that happens…heh, there is no use crying over spilt milk and there is no point blaming God for this, when the fault is ours and our failure to implement Islam as ad-Deen, a way of life.

Well I am still overjoyed (an understatement actually, “extreme euphoria” is more like it) at the Hamas victory in the Occupied Palestine Territories, the terrorist state United States of America doesn’t seem to have any respect for the democratic choice of the Palestinian people. I guess they were simply astounded that their plan to impose a corrupt-ridden Fatah party has backfired….rather badly too, I might add.

[Any possibility of exporting the Hamas victory to our shores and see Pas trumping the secular UMNO with an overwhelming majority? Insha’allah I pray that this will be so in the near future.]

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of this unexpected victory by Hamas, the Al-Quds newspaper ran the following cartoon:

The Arabic phrase on the right-hand corner reads as “Al-Intifadah Al-Demokratiyyah” (The Democratic Intifada).

Brother Usayd has developed the Islamic Praise plugin for Wordpress, which inserts the Islamic salla alayhi wassalam and subhana wa ta’ala behind names of the Prophet (P) and God Almighty respectively. Check it out!

This is amazing. It shows that all hope is not lost for Islamic movements around the world. I certainly did expect Hamas to win a large number of seats to force Fatah to form a coalition government with them. But for them to be the government and win with a landslide victory….now, that is something different altogether.

Prime Minister Mahmoud Zahar…I like the sound of that!