Married men in a position of power who look for women and xxx beyond their marriage are an enigma.  It’s almost as if, by having all of their basic needs met, they embark on testing the limits of what they can get away with.  It is like a challenge they take on because stability is too boring.  I used to think that lying by omission is forgivable until I was lied to in this way. Suddenly, lying by omission falls under my list of despicable acts.

I am angry with SM.  Angry that he looked for another woman after he had me.  Angry that he was dumb enough to jeopardize his own career with his quest for yet another conquest.  Angry that he put his cock before his head. I have not heard a single utterance of apology for what that has happenned.  This is not surprising though because apologizing would be an admission of guilt.  And to people like SM, he has not guilt.  ”What we can do” is his defense for anything that goes wrong based on his own foolish maneuvers.

SM is living in fear.  Fear that his horrible secrets will come out.  I suspect that he has, in his mind, let me go but is too afraid to tell me for fear of repercussion.  He knows I have a lot of dirt on him – a lot of proof of our union – I have the evidence they need to bring him down.  So, he plays this – let’s take a rest game – thinking that I am that gullible.  Allah will be my defender.  If my suspicions are wrong then ALlah forgive me.  But my gut has been very accurate of late.  Allah has showed me things, on my own, I would not have been able to figure out.

SM – you need to be honest.  If you love someone, say so.  If you don’t then, be man enough to set the record straight.

You have hurt me beyond belief.  You have lied to me more than what I could have ever imagined. You have abused my love in ways that is only rivalled by what Shakur had done.  You and Shakur are birds of a feather.  You don’t know what you have until you lose it.  Well, if your job, family, stature is more important than me, then I wish you well with them.  The next time you yearn for a BJ, don’t come crying to me.

Allahummansurni ‘ala man baghaa alayya….Sheikh or no sheikh, justice will prevail.

There is a saying in Malay – “sepandai-pandai tupai melompat akhirnya jatuh ke tanah jua”…(The smartest squirrel can leap so high but he will finally land squarely on the ground).  This is exactly what has happenned.

SM thought he was infallible.  Yes, he was wise, smart and resourceful. But he didn’t think that he would come up against a woman who dared to to stand up to him.  When he cast his bait to catch fish number 3, he didn’t realize he was had reeled in a school of sharks (and I don’t mean this in a bad way).  Just that SM bit off more than he could chew.

MB is a wonderful woman.  She has beauty, wealth, intelligence – everything a man could ever want.  SM no doubt saw this and could not resist pursuing this woman even though he was already married and had a secret relationship on the side.  After all, he was THE S.  Everyone loved him, no one could resist him.  He had the charm, the poetry, the sweet words all in his love arsenal.  He preyed on independent, divorced women who looked up to him for his knowledge of the religion.  In MB’s words “He is a man of God” and women trusted him explicitly.”  Using the same modus operandi as he had used with me, he swept MB off her feet and took her on as no. 3.

SM never told me about his indiscretion but it seemed he overstepped the religious bound on this affair.  He kissed her before they were united through religious vows.  He visited her unchaperoned at her house before they were legally bound.  He committed the biggest crime any religious scholar could do which is to “Do the things that he preached to others NOT to do” and justified it on the basis of Allah will forgive.

It is none of my business but Allah showed me that SM bedded this woman behind my back and behind UM’s back.  He let his groin do the thinking and left his brains at home.  He  betrayed not one woman but two and as it turned out, he betrayed  number 3 as well.  I don’t actually know what made him do it but he hastily d-ed her exactly 11 days after the union – no explanation to her, no apologies, nothing.  Just a brutal severance that hurt MB to the core.

Well, a woman’s scorn knows no bounds but no one ever said anything about the wrath of the daughters of the woman scorned.  SM is facing the worst moments of his life – risking shame, loss of honor and a hard fall from grace due to his indiscretion with MB.  Her daughters have waged a battle to avenge what, in their view, is the wrongful treatment of their beloved mother.  In their minds, he must be stopped and they have made it their battle-cry to stop him.

Just as Hosni Mubarak was toppled by the generation of youth who had enough of his abuses, it does seem that the youth have struck yet again.  This time to stop a Religious Leader from abusing the Quraan in return for xxxual favors.

So, where have I been in all of this.  By the sidelines, watching as events unfold, assuring SM that I will support him and love him no matter what.  Unfortunately, SM is too blind and too callous to sacrifice himself for true love.  The fact of the matter is, he has told too many lies, that even he can no longer distinguish the truth from the lies.  He is in self preservation mode now and no one else matters but himself.

The worst for me is yet to come – but in my heart of hearts I know that SM never really did love anyone but himself.  He loved the chase, he loved going in for the kill and he loves having a fan club of adoring women.  It is a hard lesson to learn but I have learnt that everything is in the ‘hand’ of Allah and we do the best we can with the final outcome determined by Him.  When Allah chooses to humiliate someone and expose their sins, He will do so and nothing can stop it from happening.   Allah protects who He wills.  In this case, I fear for SM that Allah is giving him a hard lesson on HONESTY.  A lesson that could cost him dearly.

For me, the worst is yet to come….but I will surrender myself to the Will of Allah.  Allah knows my intention to have a husband who will teach me Quraan and Arabic and love me unconditionally and be a father to my kids.  May Allah preserve SM for me  but then again Allah has always given me what is BEST, and if SM is no longer the best for me, than I will wait patiently for Allah to send me The One, according to His Timetable.

In the meantime, make doa’ and be thankful for all the blessings Allah has given you – your health, iman, children who need you to teach them Quraan, rizq, and that I shared a bed with a man who memorizes the Quraan.  Allah increases the ni’mah to those who are grateful to Him and I want to be among those people, bi ithnillah.

I married SM in September 2009 after a summer courtship period that started end July.  You could call it a whirlwind romance where SM, with his erudition, sense of humor and expressive nature, swept me off my feet.  So enamored was I with this Al-Azhar scholar, that I actually relaxed what was supposed to be, for me, a non-negotiable rule of having nothing to do romantically with a married man (Rule no 21 in THE RULES book for you Rules Girls out there).  I had learnt- the hard way- from my first marriage that polygamy, though allowed in Islam, doesn’t work in the 21st century.

No, I’m not trying to be rebellious and reject what Allah has allowed, it’s just the reality of things are that men of the 21st century are not capable of handling this previlage ordained for them in the Quraan.  My mom’s battle cry was ” Bila nak kawin, ikut nabi, tapi yang lain, ikut babi”.  Harsh huh, well Mama (may Allah forgive her and care for her soul) always called a spade a spade and she never saw a man implement polygamy with justice in her lifetime.  Her own husband married two other women behind her back and her only daughter (me) sufferred emotionally and financially at the hands of a man who was also a polygamist.

Back to the present.  Since my divorce from DS (not to be associated with Nintendo), I had vowed to never, ever be a second wife to anyone ever again.  I even made a checklist of 17 criteria for my future husband where criterion numero uno (Number one) stated in no uncertain terms that the man must be unencumbered – no living wife. Yet, when SM proposed marriage to me after declaring that he was already married, instead of just replying NO, I found myself saying “I will consider if your wife tells me in person that she accepts this and is fine with it”.  To my chagrin, Mrs SM, actually invited me to her house during which she confirmed that she was ok with my marrying her husband.

And so that is how I ended up, yet again, as wife No. 2.

Did my friends support me on this? Not all of them.  The secular ones thought I was nuts, the non-secular ones asked me to do Istikharah and go from there.  So, I did and as if there was some invisible divine force at work, we were married in a quiet ceremony consisting of 2 witnesses on a sunny, Sunday morning in September  2009 (Ramadhan).

I never thought I would be so naive as to believe someone the way I believed his words. People like that are good with words but those words are just hollow shells. They can never live up to what they say. I have loved and somehow lost – twice. It doesn’t matter. I am still in tact as a human being. Broken hearts do heal and I have no doubt, this time it will heal just like it did last time.

I am at peace, by myself.

Some people have blindspots when it comes to their own family members. To them, their family members can do no wrong. Others are at fault for doing this, that or the other but if their own son or wife does the same thing, then it’s ok.  The rationale is that for their own family members, the good in that individual outweighs whatever weakness they may have. 

I write this because I am disappointed that the person you think is your defender, your knight in shining armor turns out to be the one who minimizes your feelings and not only does he not bother defending you, he also takes the side of his own, yup you guessed it, family members.  I am always wrong and they are always right. If they back-bite me, the response is ‘you must excuse her’….but if I choose to rattle of my own steam at his family’s harsh treatment of me, then it’s shame on me.

I always knew I was an outsider but thanks to the recent turn of events, I now know for certain that he has never for one second regarded me as anything more than just that – an outsider.  Some people are good with words and say things to achieve their objectives. I am once again a succor for kind words and fell for the bait of words meant to sweep one of one’s feet such that one’s mental faculty becomes impermeable to facts.

Actually, it’s not all that surprising. When someone treats you with so little respect by not acknowledging your role in his life, then why would you ever expect that person to go the extra mile to defend your honor? He will let others trample on you, insult you, be rude to you and not even blink an eye much less shudder at the horrible way you are being treated. I guess between blood and water, blood definitely runs thicker.

 I tell myself, The One, will not let people treat me with disrespect without intervening and standing up for me. The One would acknowledge me among the people rather than pretend that I am nothing to him. The One would care about my feelings more that the feelings of others around him. The One certainly would not yell at me and ignore my words and shrug of the hurt I feel inside.  I am sad that you are not The One. Will I ever find The One? Hopefully, I will be able to see clearer in the future and find The One, and not be prone to blind-spots introduced by kind words that intoxicate.

Well, my first inclination was to go see her and deliver two tight slaps across her ruddy face. I am so much older than she is and I AM married to her father. She could do with showing me some respect. the twitch. Still, I consoled myself purely by replying with a short email to say I will not be offerring any more help where it is misconstrued and harshly judged. I copied it to her father. If he is wise he will address this matter with his daughter and take her down a peg or two. If he is weak, he will let it pass and tell me to ignore her inane behavior.  Moment of truth will come tonite.

It never ceases to amaze me how someone who is supposedly brought up in an Islamic environment can be so ignorant about common courtesy among people. Her behavior is so typical of an arrogant Arab. It’s like the adage, if you ain’t arabuch, you just ain’t worth much.  Although in this case, her lack of concern for her father’s happiness also played a role because she certainly wasn’t doing the dance when her dad proposed and married me. So I guess I have to cut her some slack. Slack given to the young and foolish.

I am at the point where I really don’t care about sustaining relationship with this brat. If she thinks of herself as being too good for others then so be it. I’m not about to grovel to this infant and without an apology for her rudeness, all bets are off. She needs to learn to respect her elders, Arab or not and I pray that Allah will give her that lesson in a way that shocks her into realizing that she doesn’t have the monopoly on smarts. And that English literature degree is wasted on her given the lame way she blogs….haha, now I’m just being ostentatiously obnoxious to relieve my own stress.

The need to do something, anything, can sometimes lead us to more problems than we realize.  I have a friend, who suspicious about her husband’s relationship with his ex, decided to do some private investigating to unravel evidence that would confirm her suspicions.  Sure enough, if you are willing to do the digging, you will certainly find something that, rightly or wrongly, might be construed as incriminating evidence.  So, she takes it on to herself to confront her husband about this supposed clandestine communication with his ‘ex’.  When her husband remains silent or denies it, she naturally doesn’t believe him leading to even more distrust and more bones of contention coming out of the closet.

Question is, if you dig and find crap, and the crap contaminates you, should you really blame the person who you tried to get dirt on, or should you really blame yourself? Hmmm…think before you answer.  It’s not as obvious as you might imagine.

The relationship between husband and wife is a very delicate bond.  It is easily damaged by sentiments of distrust, suspicion, harshness and neglect.  The hardest thing to do when a relationship is in crisis is to be patient with your other half.  The sheer thought of being lied to, of being cheated on, of being taken for a ride is so unbearable that just doing nothing, or being patient, and riding the wave doesn’t seem like a palatable option.

Yet, little do we realise that the secret in achieving success in a relationship and success in this life is to be patient when confronted with a difficult situation.  It is so counter-intuitive to our ‘go getter’ mentality that doing nothing and patiently enduringly a seemingly bad situation can make us a winner in the long run. We are so conditioned by today’s society that if you don’t do anything to defend yourself against someone who does wrong to you, then you are a loser, with a capital ‘L’.  On the contrary, some problems, especially those that involve other people, whose behavior is outside our realm of control to change, are really more effectively solved by ‘just  being patient’.

What does this mean exactly? Well, being patient entails 3 main behaviors to make it a beautiful patience (sabrun jamiilun). First, to not retaliate unkindness with unkindness. Second, to continue behaving kindly and lovingly to the instigator of the trouble.  Third, to place the difficult situation squarely in the ‘hands’ of the One who created that individual (Allah or the Ultimate Deity).

Sounds easy enough to do? Maybe not, but rest assured if you can train yourself to do this in your relationship with others, you will always come out the winner in any situation.  What is important to remember is that the people who win the battle but lose the war are the real losers in any conflict. So, if you want to win the war, then be prepared to lose the smaller battles and trust that patience will lead you to the Winner’s circle, ultimately.  The only caveat is, don’t attach a time frame to all this since things happen in due course, and on a timetable that is not ours to dictate.

An impatient person never wins.  The old adage “good things come to those who wait” has proven to be true time and time again and it is a wonderment that we still haven’t picked up this lesson and continue to want to rush things rather than having unwavering faith that most of our relationship ills can be cured by just one of the conflicting parties exercising the extra mile in being patient. And to do so with a smile because you are sure that Allah swt has promised to be with those who are patience (الصابرين)

May Allah guide whoever is reading this (me, especially) to be among those who master the art-form of SABRUN JAMIILUN (beautiful patience). Amiin.

Inviting others to Islam, like any other acts of goodness, begins at home.  We must first be a good daa’i to our family members, teaching our children, educating our spouses in a manner that is not patronizing nor insulting.  Our dialogues with those in our household should contain advice, reminders and kind words that bring them higher in awareness of the beauty that the deen of Islam brings to our lives.  There is no other way of living worthy of consideration except Islam because that is what was ordained by Allah, our Creator (Al-Khaaliq) and the Owner of All that is in the Universe (Rabbal ‘aalamiin).

So, for those who entertain the notion that doing da’wah is hard, and it’s not for me, and it’s best left to the professionals, THINK AGAIN.  We all have a role to play. We act according to our means. The main thing is to remember to do it – at the family level, at least.  When our house is in order, then take the next step and start inviting your neighbors and those in your society to the beautiful message of Tauhid.  It’s our job, whether we like it or not.

I think the technique worked well.  The kids memorised at least half of the names of the 25 rasul.

For anyone who wants to try this method, here are the names categorised by alphabets.

A: Nabi Adam, Ayyub

D: Daud

H: Harun, Hud

I: Ibrahim, Ishaq, Ismail, Ilyas, Ilyasa’, Isa

L: Lut

M: Musa, Muhammad (S.A.W)

N: Nuh

S: Shuaib, Sulaiman

Y: Yusuf, Yunus, Yahya

Z: Zulkifli, Zakaria

The popcorn words I am trying to teach are:

salat, shahadah, rasul, nabi, malaikat

We go over the words, talk about the meaning and put it in context to reinforce.

I also ask everyone to make a sentence with the word, to check comprehension.