this
news on Sufiah Farooq is a bit old i know but a few things come across my mind reading it dat i have to pen it down
almost everyone know the story of this gifted child who made it into Oxford at tender age of 13. it is sad to see how she turn out to be like this today but stories of child prodigy taking the unseemingly path is not a new news in itself. ever heard of
Asia Carrera? or closer to home, the boy genius who adopted by Prof Ungku Aziz but now is flipping roti canai for living. i am no genius myself but one thing i can understand is they been put under a lot of pressure by ppl who doesn't even know them to perform well in their life. to use their gift to benefit others. ever wonder about what they want?
if u were to dig deeper into sufiah past, u'll find what seems to me a ridiculous ideology her parents esp her father imposed on her n her siblings. yes, it's good to develop your child potential to its max but with all that rules n confines? no wonder she acted so rebellious as she did. well, all of us who is average being at some point of our life, mostly during our teenage years went thru this rebellion stage. we do as we please. we do things to make our parents feel bad. the worst they feel about our action, the better. maybe what sufiah is going thru here is her own version of rebellion phase. this is not her first time doing something out of expected, she went mia a couple yrs back, abandoning her studies just like dat
sure one can argue of all the ways to make a decent living, why she choose this path? she can use her gift/curse but she decided not to. why? dats the question only sufiah and sufiah alone can answer. and to say she didn't know wat she's doing is wrong, she was brought up with a good Islamic teaching so i really can't fathom her decision but then again, i'm not in her shoes.
what i don't understand here has nothing to do with her. i dun understand why Malaysian government is so eager wanting to help her. wat's with all this Safe Sufiah prog n all? she is not even a Malaysian by birth or by any means. the only link she has is her mother who went to study oversea (is it under scholarship?) n nvr return n probably no longer a citizen of Malaysia. i dun even see the need to give her scholarship in the first place. it's not like she gonna come back to Malaysia n gave back to our nation other than the mere mention of her mother birthplace. not dat i'm saying she doesn't deserve it but there is more than Malaysian gov already can handle in their own backyard. why not focus there first before reaching out for this half Malaysian population who doesn't even set a foot on Malaysia soil until the awarding of scholarship (itu pon sekali tu jer). if it were up to me, i wouldn't even acknowledge her as a Malay. she was not born a Malay n never raised as one, so when ppl labelled her as a Muslim Malay, for me dat is a one big wrong label. if the government said they are doing it because she is a Muslim, then why aren't other Islamic country doing the same? then again, look at our own backyard, is government doing anything to help Malay Muslim girls whose in the same situation as her?
