Another Chinese Muallaf...: The First Step Is Always The Hardest

Since I was registered myself as muslim, this year is going to be my 5th Ramadhan fasting month. I was eager to study as much as I can regarding Islam, however I was stuck at bottleneck that most people won?t tell you the difference between cultural and Islam. I am fully believed that Islam is the righteous religion, a way of life, ad-Din. Whenever I?m dealing with complication between cultural and Muslim, there are hardly anyone may explain about it regardless of self-esteem customs and community perception. Although Islam principle can be easily adopted by all walk of life, the controversy aroused whenever a ?custom made Islamic cultural? being applied on a reverted muslim.

Last year December, I received an email from Must Read publisher, a local publisher that involved in Islam genre. They asked me whether I?m interested to write a book in Malay language. I was hesitated due to my Malay language is merely fit the required writing and speaking standard, still a very long way to go with professional writing. Despite of language matter, another concern is what kind of book should I write? Whether it?s just a personal travelogue or blogging alike article? As most readers realized that my article is focus more on current issue and cultural matter.

Also, lack of experience in writing Malay article into any magazine or book is the bottleneck. I have no idea what should a formal article looks like, also what kind of content may get rid by publisher. After a deep thought about it, I agreed to write a book with Must Read publisher. Since I have to work at daylight, my writing journey is fully launched at nighttime. Dealing with English-Malay language is really challenging me, there are few specific words hardly translated into Malay word, sometimes it need to be described into a long way around just to suit the same meaning. For an example:

Optional = mempunyai lebih daripada satu pilihan

In order to describe this word ?Optional? into Malay language, I used more than 3 words to express the same thing. I had a funny thought that just write some English article then translate it into Malay article, it turn out to be my absurd idea. There will be looks like ?Google Translate? article that translating words directly without taking care of the whole layout. The whole interpretation is gone without a proper layout in written article.

After finished writing a Malay article, I was asking help from my wife and Malay friends to correct the grammar mistakes. Apparently there were a few ?Creative phrases? that is confusing them, thus I had to explain what I wanted to express exactly and rewrite the article. Sometimes I took more than one week to finish a 4 pages article.

Alhamdulillah, my first book ever ?Dengan Lafaz Dua Kalimah Syahadah? is going to be published at next month. Although it was planned to release on May, it needs much longer time to furnish the product. Out of coincidence, I embraced Islam back in Ramadhan month while my book will be released on the same holy month. It took me 5 years to achieve my dream, struggling from being blank about Islam until I share my thought about it.

According to my personal survey about reverted Muslim writers, most of them disappeared after their books being published for one or two titles. Very few reverted Muslim still consistent in writing books and most importantly, there are always be readers who interested at their books. Ironically, books growing fast to suit what readers desired to know about. Which mean the awakening of Faith like Tawheed is easily overlooked by most readers, as if being Muslim is fully granted to realize the Greatness of Creator, regardless of certain act or speech that might spoil our Tawheed unconsciously.

Therefore, I choose the different way of writing in my project. Asides my travelogue as a reverted Muslim, I do writes about intermarriage and community perception against reverted Muslim. I?m still uncertain that would my book being best selling or end up as my last writing project, at least I will keep on update my blog and never asking payment from my blog readers (including those annoying advertisement).

Hence I would like to thank everyone who sharing a lot great story with me whether via email or blog comment, also my friends who voluntarily checking my grammar mistakes. As one of my friend who work at publishing company told me that ?Writing book won?t make you rich, but sharing your thoughts with public is priceless.?

Keep on writing, inshaAllah.

Source: http://lifemualaf.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-first-step-is-always-hardest.html

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