Time checked : 4:09 AM

We were making our way to the car after dinner at the coffeeshop near changi beach area, and the time was around 7:15PM...just a few minutes to maghrib, when we heard a chatter of noisy crows "fighting" somewhere in the many trees near the carpark.

Naturally, my lil' sister's attention drew towards the noise. I keep warning her in my heart "Don't look up. Don't look up." But she did. And her feet was planted on the ground beside the car as my mom and myself helped ourselves to the car. Then she exclaimed "Wau...!!! Look at the gagak! There are alot of black ones around one beautiful white gagak with black stripes!!". And my mom snapped at her to get in the car immediately. Once the door was closed i said "Don't look up the trees when it's maghrib". I know i shouldn't have tegur her at this point of time when we're like just below that tree, but i did. I just had an uneasy feeling there. And, of course she didn't understand.

The thing is, the "noise" i heard, didnt really sound like crows. Tho, yes, the sound was coming from that flock of crows. In my ears, it sounds very distinct unlike the other crows at that time. Wallahu'alam.

Was just flipping through a book that i randomly picked from my shelf when I came across this. Perhaps a little something to keep our hearts ever-semangat to what we're driving at. Knowledge.

Long ago, the poet Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma said; "A man's tongue is half of him, and the other half of him is his heart; What is left is nothing more than the image of flesh and blood."

This means that a person is essentially composed of his heart and his tongue, in other words what he thinks and what he says. Hence the importance of taking care of one's mind and supplying it with all kinds of beneficial knowledge is quite clear.

The Muslim woman is responsible just as a man is, so she is also required to seek knowledge, whether it is "religious" or "secular", that will be of benefit to her. When she recites the aayah:

"...But say, O'my Lord! Advance me in knowledge." (Quran 20:14)

And hears the hadith,

"Seeking knowledge is a duty on every Muslim," (A hasan hadith narrated by Ibn Majah)

She knows that the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah are directed at men and women equally, and that she is obliged to seek the kinds of knowledge that have been made obligatory for individuals and communites (fard'ayn and fard kifaayah) to pursue them from the time that this obligation was made known to the Muslim society.

The excerpt from this chapter also mentioned about women in Rasullulah (s.a.w) 's time when they were seeking knowledge. The Muslim women had a keen desire for knowledge, and they never felt too shy to ask questions about the teachings (ahkaam) of Islam, because they were asking about the truth, and,

"Allah is not ashamed [ to tell you ] the truth" (Qu'ran 33:53)