29th September 2008, 29th Ramadhan 1429H

Hari ke-29 umat Islam berpuasa bagi tahun 1429 H

Hari melihat anak bulan Syawal di Malaysia..tp klu ikut perkiraan tarikh, raya jatuh pd hari Rabu (lusa)

Kalau betul lusa raya, dapatlah sekali lg kita bersolat terawih malam ni..semoga bertemu lg dgn Ramadhan yg akan dtg...ameen

Hari ni genap 16 hari Ahmad Hasanuddin di lahirkan.. Alhamdulillah, dia sihat walafiat & menjadi penyeri keluarga kami, lebih-lebih lg dgn kedatangan Syawal tak lama lg

29 September 2008 juga hari ulangtahun kelahiran yg ke-25 bagi kawan saya, Noor Illiey yg kini berada di Manchester. Sekalung tahniah utk beliau kerana dengan rasminya telah bergelar PhD student di UMIST. Moga terus sukses & bahagia. Happy Birthday!!

Wassalam

Muhasabah di akhir Ramadhan

Ahad, 28 Ramadhan 1429 H... Bulan Ramadhan masih berbaki 2 hari sebelum ia meninggalkan kita, dan sebelum Syawal menjelang. Terasa sayu jugak bila mengenangkan Ramadhan bakal pergi sedangkan banyak amalan yg masih kurang sempurna kali ni bila nak bandingkan dengan Ramadhan pada tahun-tahun sebelum ni, i.e. di SMSD dan di UIAM. Rasanya saya telah menulis satu tajuk khas sempena Ramadhan tahun lepas, iaitu 'Episod Ramadhan Hidupku', yg menceritakan pelbagai pengalaman di bulan Ramadhan di pelbagai tempat yang pernah saya lalui.

Setiap episod Ramadhan pastinya ada perbezaan. Kalau tahun lepas, buat pertama kalinya saya menyambut Ramadhan bukan sebagai seorang student lagi, Ramadhan kali ini pula saya sambut sebagai seorang suami. Malahan pada 13 Ramadhan kali ini juga, saya telah pun bergelar seorang bapa. Alhamdulillah, segala nikmat kurniaan datangnya dari Allah yg Maha Kaya.

Sepanjang 5 tahun yg lepas saya menyambut Ramadhan di UIAM, tapi kali ni tidak lagi di sana. Ramadhan tahun ni disambut tatkala sekali lagi saya bergelar seorang student, menuntut di USM, Penang. Ia satu pengalaman baru berpuasa di sini, bersama teman-teman baru. Namun Ramadhan ini juga ada sedikit kesayuan kerana buat pertama kalinya saya tidak bersama dengan ma, abah & adik-adik di kampung. Walaupun begitu, Allah telah gantikan mereka dengan seorang isteri yg cukup pengasih & perihatin, serta baby lelaki yg comel dan juga keluarga isteri yg sangat baik di Taiping. Terasa kemeriahan berbuka puasa bila abang-abang & kakak-kakak ipar serta anak-anak saudara balik ke sini. Riuh-rendah jadinya!

Muhasabah diri..

Kita sememangnya perlu sentiasa muhasabah diri, menilai prestasi diri dari semasa ke semasa, samada ia semakin baik ataupun sebaliknya. Muhasabah bukan hanya di bulan atau waktu tertentu. Mana yg kurang, seharusnya kita tingkatkan & perbaiki. Ya, itu teorinya, yg mana sgt sangat senang untuk diungkapkan! tapi bila tiba praktikalnya, tanpa kekuatan rohani yg mantap, amat sukar utk kita laksanakan.

Seawal bulan puasa kami telah pun berada di Taiping, membuat persediaan menyambut kelahiran baby pertama kami. Jadi kenalah berulang dari Taiping ke USM setiap hari. Memang memenatkan, perjalanan sejauh 54 km yg ambik masa sejam++. Perjalanan adakalanya menguji kesabaran. Course plk makin lama makin susah rasanya..pening. Kalau tak buat revision lepas kelas, memang K.O. Bila sampai di rumah, biasanya pukul 5.30 pm ke atas, dah tak larat nak buat apa lagi, cuma tunggu waktu berbuka jelah.

Dek kerana keletihan, apatah lagi selepas berbuka, maka payahlah nak mengerah tulang empat kerat untuk bersolat jemaah di masjid. Sedangkan di bulan Ramadhan ni, pahala yg Allah janjikan berlipat kali ganda. Semoga Allah menerima amalan ibadah yg kita laksanakn dengan hati yg ikhlas kerana-Nya, juga dengan petunjuk yg telah ditunjukkan oleh Rasulullah walaupun masih banyak kurangnya. Puasa (bukan saja menahan lapar & dahaga, tp juga puasa hati, fikiran, mata, mulut, telinga & anggota-anggota badan lain), solat jemaah, solat malam, tadarus Al-Qur'an, bersedekah..semua dirasakan makin menurun prestasinya.

Dalam hadis kudsi, Allah berfirman: Semua amalan anak Adam untuknya, melainkan puasa. Ianya untuk-Ku dan hanya Aku yang membalasnya (riwayat al-Bukhari)

Mudah-mudah Allah juga mengira setiap langkah dan keringat yg gugur dalam menuntut ilmu sebagai salah satu kebajikan yg besar disisi-Nya..ameen. Ya Allah, panjangkanlah umur kami agar kami dapat sekali lagi bertemu dengan Ramadhan yg akan datang, dan berilah kekuatan kepada kami untuk terus istiqamah atas jalan-Mu.

Bersamalah kita hiasi hari raya yg bakal tiba dengan penuh kesyukuran & kesederhanaan, serta tidak melalaikan kita semua. Semoga Ramadhan ini mengajar kita erti kesabaran, kehambaan & kemanusiaan.

Firman Allah: (maksudnya) Dan sesungguhnya Tuhanmu (Wahai Muhammad) sentiasa melimpah-ruah kurnia-Nya kepada umat manusia tetapi kebanyakan mereka tidak bersyukur. (Surah al-Naml: 73)

Wassalam.

p/s: assignments ada yg kena submit, presentations, tests and final exams are coming very soon after hari raya..mencabar.

ISA, satu kezaliman?

Mufti Perlis: ISA tidak diperlukan untuk bela ajaran Islam

"Tuhan yang Maha Adil pun buat mahkamah di akhirat untuk setiap orang dibicarakan. Keadilan ditegakkan di dunia dan di akhirat. Tuhan yang Maha Adilpun memberi peluang untuk kita jawab kesalahan sedangkan Tuhan berhak buat apa saja. Jadi macam mana kita boleh tangkap orang tanpa memberi peluang mereka membela diri?"

Continue reading: Laman Mufti Perlis or mStar Online

Apex University

I've found an interesting opinion on Apex university from Prof. Ismawi's blog. It's always good to share, but in the end, we're the one who judge it.

----------------------------

APEX UNIVERSITY LAGI

So now it’s confirmed that USM is the Apex University of Malaysia. Congratulation to them. They thoroughly deserved to get the recognition as they had not only worked very hard but had been very innovative in their approach. You just need to read Prof. Dzul’s column to understand what I meant. Prof. Dzul stands out among the CEOs of universities; he leads rather than manage. USM is a different university the moment he took over. We certainly need more Prof. Dzuls if our universities are to really compete. He is not afraid to say his piece even if it’s not in currency with the government’s stand. Just look at USM’s transformation plan. Yes, I am happy for him, his colleagues and students - it’s a good start because it only shows tradition of excellence is not just about age but about good strategic plan, meticulous implementation, innovative management and most importantly inspiring leadership. Because it is all that, we can achieve it too if we care to be truthful to ourselves.

Having said that I still believe that it was a mistake to have this done bureaucratically; it must be achieved through tradition of excellence. Getting the status must be done through acclaim rather than selection by a panel of eminence persons who themselves, with all due respect, were not able to produce ‘excellence’ in their own times leading their own institutions. Yes, they said ‘apex’ here does not means ‘top of the pyramid’ but is an acronym for “Accelerated Programme for Excellence”, meaning the university selected is not yet at the top but will be enabled to be at the top. But why choose the word if you don’t mean it? Unfortunately when I was learning English, my teachers reminded me to choose each word properly because each English word has connotation. Just look at the comments made by the the students and lecturers of USM since yesterday. I rest my case on the subject when you see how they beat their chests like Tarzan who has just beaten a big bad ape.

While I believe in pushing our universities to the top to excellence, I can’t help feeling that the resources are from the same cake whose size is still the same. Which means that what are going to be allocated to the AU are going to be taken from others - and I don’t think that is the business of a government. A government business should foremost be looking at fair distribution of wealth and resources to all akin parents giving fair treatment to all their children. In fact it is natural to expect that the parents to give more attention to the young ones because the older ones are expected to be able to look after themselves. If one is going to be putting in more resources on them then it should be their own resources and on their own steam and I believe USM is ready for both without government fiscal help; all they need is to just give them the autonomy so that they can do things they want to do with their accumulated wealth so far. Unlike us where the business arm seems never to be over suckling the teats of the mother, USM has a very profitable business arm, run by professionals and answering directly in business terms to the CEO. This is what happens in the British Top Universities and in American Ivy League!

Talking about the ”Ivy League”, just look at the name they chose i.e. IVY. It has no connotation of being on the top but ‘resilience and breakthrough’. Ivy (Hedera helix) is a common English plant that climbs walls and trees to get light and can survive on minimal nutrients, least of all it needs is help from other plants. That’s what we are supposed to be! APEX has the connotation of being on the top spot of a pyramid, meaning that the rests are the blocks of the structure and may be those whose sins and fault are only because they were born much later and located at places full of disadvantages so that they cannot yet accumulate much in terms of wealth and research products are probably at the base. Given the positive discrimination that actually favour those higher in the hieararchy, they are probably doomed to be Atlases supporting the world.

I must make it clear that this is not about schuldenfraude; I don’t envy USM for its achievement because they deserve it. But how in the world are they going to operate with all that expectations if they are still govern by the same AUKU that governs the rest of us. Can they use English? Can they have 20% international students if they still use Bahasa Malaysia? Can they have a different system of governance? Unless of course they intentionally ignore AUKU. Then the next question is how is one institution being allowed to flout the law of the land in the name of pursuing for excellence when others are expected to toe the line? Doesn’t that sound Michellivian when our culture demands that means must be right to justify the end? Is it really right that while one is led loose on a liberal mode, others are being held on a tight leash. Obversely the question asked may be: how do we expect the others to catch up when one is having a very favourable handicap while others are tied to the pole? I was hoping that after the March 8 tsunami, the government would rethink this whole plan whose strategy heaping resources on the rich at the expense of the poor which was started by the previous administration (as seen in the mega and glamorous projects that have the net result of extending rather than closing the socio-economic gaps of our people). Alas, they don’t seem to have learn anything at all, and that is to bring to mind that Islam requires that the state emphasizes on supporting the less endowed (is Islam Hadhari diagonally different?).

The next question is how did we miss it? From inception IIUM is set to be an international university. Foreign students and staff are our ethos. Our media of instructions are international languages. Our curricula are benchmarked on international standards and our students and lecturers are already on international pedestals. We have more PhDs compared to any other universities. Our alumni are making waves not only in Malaysia but at the world stage. Our campus and facilities are among the best in planning, design and construction. We have strategic plans that chart our transformation into very term of excellence by 2015 because we have now the Balance Scorecard and ISO audits in place. What else do they require of us? Unfortunately, we didn’t even make the shortlist as only those who are already on Research Universities are on the shortlist. Doesn’t that prove my point on the widening of the gap as result of bureaucracy and that classification is discriminating because it heaps unfair advantages on one group while ‘penalizing’ those who are in real need of support. The Apex University excercise was comparing and evaluating universities against the same set of criteria when we know fully well what the result would be: it is like comparing a grand old oak and the acorns that get splluttered by the winds beneath it. All these left bitter taste in the mouth: were we penalized for daring to be different?

I honestly believe that this is a wrong prescription for a sickness that was wrongly diagnosed. The mediocrity in the universities is because we cannot attract top-notch scholars to our institutions because the pay scheme is simply not attractive enough. We lost one to Brunei recently! They keep on saying that they are going to look into this matter for eons already now and nothing has moved; we are where we are. Until such time when knowledge creation and construction is considered as the prime mover of development as in developed countries, nothing is going to change our our universities. With what is on offer we can only attract those that are ‘regular’ rather than ’special’. If we do take them when they are young, they are going to be enticed to greener pasture when they are peaking in their productivity or just before that and the university has to do the staff development all over again. This is going to change for AU but not for others and you can be sure that excellent staff from the ‘regular’ like us will be migrating to them - making gap even bigger.

There is also a suggestion that universities take in senior people who have retired from civil service. If I may say, this is a proposal that show total ignorance on what academic life is all about. Next to the fallacy of making academicians work like bureaucrats, this only prove how our so-called policy makers continue making blunders in the name of the pursuit of excellence. It also shows their total misunderstanding on who academicians are or is it because they have very little regard for the academicians that just any Tom, Dick and Harry who are at the end of their productive age, could be repainted (not even, refurbished) into academicians? This is like one making actors into cinematography technicians; for more than 30 years they are used to doing things in a certain regime and for them to be academicians where demands for research and publications are part and partial, it is not a surprise that they failed miserably to deliver in universities, unless of course the measurement is based on the number we gave prolonged employment. Of course their networking is good and we can use them in that capacity. We should concentrate on the youngs and develop them into top-notch scholars and researchers and give them the financial and infrastructure support to retain them there. Our problem now is we are attracting too many people that others don’t want or who have no business to be academicians because they don’t have the passion for knowledge!

There was a very high expectation on the amendments to AUKU to free the creativity of lecturers. Alas it proved to be a mirage. One great man say: “If you want to be excellent, look for criticsm not praise’ but the reverse is exactly expected when they are asked for opinions on important issues affecting the nation. With the act introduced by Tun Mahathir during his tenureship as Minister of Education, we have managed to turn our lecturers into parrots and not the brains to spur the country to greater height. It’s effect is even more pronounced among our students who are to all intent and purpose the bigger versions of school children as they pursue, some time resorting to unethical practices, as many As as possible without really getting the import of knowledge. These are the problems and if these are addressed and not being pushed under the carpet because we don’t like to thing that we have failed ourselves so far, then we don’t need the synthetic AUs to create excellence.

Source: Prof. Ismawi's blog

New Theme

Alhamdulillah, I had decided to change to a new theme as I received few comments from friends that the old one wasn't really working-out, which I actually downloaded it from blog templates webpage. I guess that those who used Internet Explorer 6.0 and below, both the background and the fonts would turn to be very bright in color, hence create difficulty in accessing the contents. I've experienced it also when I used IE 6.0 in computer lab. It wouldn't be a problem for those who used either Internet Explorer 7.0 or Mozilla Firefox browsers (as well as other browsers)

New look

But now I'm back using the default template provided by Blogger. It's much better to use a simple and easy-to-read design, rather than just attractive, but not really working-out. Comments are most welcomed!

USM granted Apex University

Have you ever heard about Apex University? Personally, I just heard when my supervisor mentioned about it last week. Then I started looking here and there to have some ideas on what Apex university is. Many people have predicted that UM will be the one - Apex University, which has the potential to be world-class university. And today, what a big surprise, USM has been announced as the Apex University.

Congratulation to USM for the great achievement, and of course I'm proud being one of the USM students. It also indicates that I've chosen the right university (among local universities) to pursue my study.

And as an alumni, as well as a staff of IIUM, I wish that IIUM will do better, and improve the performance, so that we can compete with other great universities in the future, insya Allah. For the sake of improvement, nothing's wrong to imitate the good things practiced by others.

---------------------------

The Star: USM granted Apex University

PUTRAJAYA: Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has been granted apex status and hundreds of millions of ringgit in additional funding to transform it into Malaysia's first world-class university.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said that both quantitative and qualitative criteria were used to select USM under the accelerated programme for excellence (apex).

"The selection committee evaluated each university's state of readiness, transformation plan and preparedness for change.

"After a thorough evaluation, the committee decided that only one university truly met all the criteria, namely USM,'' said Khaled Wednesday in a press conference at his ministry. The Cabinet agreed to the decision at its meeting on Aug 27.

The university given apex status is one that has the greatest potential among Malaysian universities to be world-class, and as such, would be given additional assistance to compete with top-ranked global institutions, added Khaled.

With apex status, USM will be expected to move up the World University Rankings with a target of top 200 in five years' time and top 100, if not top 50, by 2020, he said.

Read more at The Star.

Bernama: USM Is Malaysia's Apex University

PUTRAJAYA, Sept 3 (Bernama) -- Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) was Tuesday chosen for the Accelerated Programme for Excellence (Apex), beating three other universities, including the country's oldest, the University of Malaya (UM).

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said USM was selected based on the university's transformation plan and its preparedness to make changes to its proposal paper.

"The selection for the Apex programme is not only based on past achievements and excellence, but more on the planning for the future and whether the university is able to achieve a world-class status within the stipulated period of five years," he said when announcing USM's selection for the programme.

During the five-year period, USM must be able to put itself among the world's Top 100 universities and among the Top 50 by 2020, he said.

He was confident that USM would be able to achieve a world-class standard.

"Let's see how USM fares and then we will decide whether to choose another for the programme," he added.

Mohamed Khaled said USM's selection for the programme did not mean that other universities were sidelined.

On the other hand, this should spur them to further improve their position, he said when asked why UM was not selected.

Nine public universities nationwide had submitted their application for the programme but only four -- USM, UM, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia -- were shortlisted.

USM's winning proposal paper is titled "Transforming Higher Education for a Sustainable Tomorrow".

The Apex university programme is proposed in the National Higher Education Strategic Plan where universities will be divided into three groups namely Apex University, Elite University and Competitive University.

An Apex university is a university of excellence used as a yardstick in higher education worldwide.

Under the programme, the Apex university was promised autonomy in finance, service scheme, management, student intake, study fees and determining the top leadership.

----------------------------

Wassalam.