By Aida Zemani
GOMBAK, 6 April 2018 – Epic Charity Night, a prestigious programme conducted to inspire students through remarkable talks and performances representing various countries in IIUM, was held at Main Auditorium here on Wednesday (4 April) night.
The event was attended by three prominent speakers – Dr. Zakir Ahmed, youngest Khateeb in IIUM Shah Mosque, Mizz Nina, a Malaysian fashion designer, humanitarian and a co-founder of Dopstv, an Islamic lifestyle channel, as well as Caprice, the founder of Jihad in Education and several other applications.
Touching on Islamic brotherhood and unity, Dr. Zakir Ahmed shared a story of a great imam from the United States of America with his son.
He told the audience, “The imam was trying to think of a topic for his Friday khutbah but was disturbed by his son. So, he tore a world map on his desk and gave it to his son to put the pieces back together to distract him, but the son did it within only five minutes. The imam did not expect his son to do it so fast and asked him how he did it.”
“His son told the imam, who is his father, to turn the other side of the map which is a picture of a human being. Therefore, he put the hand, the leg, the body and other parts of the human, and finally he put the world together. The imam then realised that he was inspired by what his son taught him where, ‘If a man comes together, the world gets together.’”
Dr. Zakir Ahmed related the story with his topic saying that the world would be a great and a wonderful place if each and every single person on earth were to fix themselves, spread peace and connect the ties and bonds with relatives and other people.
Shazrina Azman, also known as Mizz Nina, decided to embark into the journey of Islam.
One of the deepest impressions left by Mizz Nina during her talk was, “When you decide to really embrace Islam and search for the deen, do it for the right reason. Do it for Allah.”
Mizz Nina gave out two pieces of advice, “reset your intention” and “think of the reason when you are doing something as well as have an attitude of vanity”.
Ariz Ramli, better known as Caprice, also shared his Jihad in Education which is to find and feed the mind of young kids all the values already found in our religion.
Caprice talked about how non-Muslim countries like Japan and the US have more Islamic values in terms of cleanliness, being nice and friendly, and looking for knowledge and innovations in their life than those in Muslim countries.
“A prominent scholar which I can’t recall his name once said, ‘When I look east, I see Muslims but I don’t see Islam. When I look west, I see Islam but I don’t see Muslims,” he shared.
He added that to become great is not that difficult, as it has already been written in the Quran and we can always refer to Quran for guidelines.
In between the talk and sharing session, there were performances from various countries like Malaysia, China, Middle East and Indonesia.
The event was conducted by Takaful Project IIUM and proceeds from the programme will be used to assist students who cannot afford their daily meals.***