Guess what? I had 19 out of 20 score for the presentation, and only a
few of us, probably no more than three did. Alhamdulillah, by His grace and
mercy, this made my day. It seems that
the Prof and most of the class find our way of giving fatwa to be quite
interesting. To know that we have a board of Fatwa Committee appointed by the president
of Singapore himself was quite unusual in some other countries. In fact we have
other committee members with different specialization and from various
backgrounds and orientations. Some of them are surprised too, to find that Singapore
is actually half the size of Connecticut where we are in.
The girls in our class seem to have some concern on female issues. They
were inquiring if females were around too in the fatwa committee. We had a chat
with one of them and found out that previously she was a Unitarian before
converting to Islam. She was in all girls’ college and grows up in an
environment where lesbians are the way to go. According to her, she has not
find any lesbians who chose to be one but the situation and environment made them
what they are. She finds it hard to accept that Islam forbids homosexuality. It
seems unfair to those girl she grew up with, who had no intention of being one,
and God is, as we know, the Most Just.
I have no idea how to react and respond to that. All I can think of was,
then how do we make sense the story of the people of Lut community. If we were
to say strictly a no to them, they will just walk away from Islam. It is not
that simple. To make things worse, LGBT is arising in Singapore, with Pink Dot
movement and their sympathetic videos. How then do we deal with this kind of
issue maturely?
This is not easy at all. But probably next week I will be able to see
how other faith leader from the Abrahamic religion deals with such issue here,
not to take exactly how they do it because I think all their efforts made are
obviously failing, but to modify, enhance and improvise what has been done.
InsyaAllah.
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