Doa.

Yesterday was the first Muharram, 1433 Hijriyyah. I remembered people used to encourage the practice of reading doa awal dan akhir tahun. I read the "end-of-year" doa and was attracted to the meaning of it,

"Wahai Tuhan, apa yang telah aku lakukan dalam tahun ini daripada perkara-perkara yang Engkau tegah daripada aku melakukannya dan aku belum bertaubat daripadanya. Sedangkan Engkau tidak redha dan tidak melupakannya. Dan aku telah melakukannya di dalam keadaan di mana Engkau berupaya untuk menghukumku, tetapi Engkau mengilhamkanku dengan taubat selepas keberanianku melakukan dosa-dosa itu semuanya. Sesungguhnya aku memohon keampunanMu, maka ampunilah aku. Dan tidaklah aku melakukan yang demikian daripada apa yang Engkau redhainya dan Engkau menjanjikanku dengan pahala atas yang sedemikian itu. Maka aku memohon kepadaMu."

Definitely a beautiful prayer, as I read the doa in Malay, it hit me in every possible way.

However, I stumbled upon a post saying that it shouldn't be practised, as it is the practice of Syiah. So today I googled and read a few opinions, indeed, it turned out that there's no hadith that can be related back to the Prophet S.A.W. Even so, an article mentioned that if it is the sunnah of the Prophet S.A.W, 'nescaya para sahabat dan tabi’ien berlumba-lumba untuk melakukannya demi mengarap kebaikan disebalik amalan tersebut yang kononnya hebat fadilatnya.' [taken from here]

It also states that the hadith that recommend this practice is not true. And most of the people in Malaysia are religiously practising this doa, some even following the instructions that the 'start-of-year' doa should be read after Asr on the last day of Zulhijjah, three times. So basically, if we intended the prayer as an act of obeying the Prophet's sunnah, it's not right, what's even worse is when we're too obsessed of the practice that we forgot why we did it in the first place.

So, I'm just saying, berdoa is not limited to certain times or days. Some say that the prayer above shouldn't be read at all, but I think, it shouldn't be read ONLY during the end of Zulhijjah, in fact, we should practise it with the intention of seeking His forgiveness, regardless of days. Kalau niat nak ikut Syiah, memang la haram. Ke cane?

I like this snippet:

"Yang penting, kita tidak boleh mengaitkan do’a ini kepada Nabi . Berdo’alah dengan apa sahaja permintaan berdasarkan dalil umum galakkan berdo’a adalah dibenarkan, tidak terbatas kepada awal atau akhir tahun," [here]

Bila makin tua, wirid makin singkat, doa makin pendek. Hoi camna nak jadi imam and contoh to our babies in the future. Opps. hee. Salam Awal Muharram 1433h! :)