IIUM PHILOSOPHY

We have decided to choose our blog’s name as the Catalyst towards Jannah. It reflects the concept of Islamization in the International Islamic University Malaysia’s philosophy. We have shared our knowledge in our blog so that other people can access and read to get additional information. According to MacMillan Dictionary, catalyst can be referred as something that causes something to happen or change. As we know, seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every Muslim and Allah will raise our ranks if we are knowledgeable. As Allah says:

"Allah will raise up, to (suitable) ranks and (degrees), those of you who believe and who have been granted knowledge. And Allah is well-acquainted with all you do." (Qur'an, Al-Mujadilah 58:11)

It is reported as well in Sunan Abu Dawood that the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said:

"If anyone travels on a road in search of knowledge, God will cause him to travel on one of the roads of Paradise. The angels will lower their wings in their great pleasure with one who seeks knowledge. The inhabitants of the heavens and the Earth and (even) the fish in the deep waters will ask forgiveness for the learned man.”

When we have knowledge, we will appreciate Allah’s creations even more and we become more acquainted with Allah’s attributes and qualities. It can be regarded as well as the foundation of faith to Allah. Besides that, learning knowledge is an endless process and it is very important to develop human knowledge in accordance with Islamic principles and values. As the vicegerents and servants of Allah, we surely have to rule this universe in accordance to Allah’s will and not contradict to it. Then, we will live in the correct path as ordained by Allah SWT. Therefore, each day will be full of barakah and hasanah.

In this course, ENGL 4740, we get the chance to engage in technology. In other words, we learn new knowledge of computer application. For instance, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Computer Mediated Communication, Corpus Linguistics, Concordancer and many more. All these knowledge of computer application can be applied to develop Islamic knowledge. For example, Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) samples like Email, Facebook, Twitter, Blog and many more enable us to spread the Islamic knowledge worldwide. We can also produce and discuss about Islamic Literatures and Poets like Tariq Ali, MirzaGhalib, Daniel Moore and others to expose the people the Islamic Literatures rather than the Western Literatures only. In order to islamize the knowledge, we can look and discuss the Western literatures from the Islamic perspective and exchange our opinion with the people on that matter. People will read the Islamic knowledge that we have posted in our Facebook or blog for example and they will learn at least the gist of what we have posted.

In this era, technology plays a crucial role to spread the da’wah and also serves as a platform of sharing knowledge just by a click. Here, we have included our reflections and assignments regarding to the computer application knowledge and thus, we really hope that by sharing our knowledge in our blog, many people can benefit from it and apply it for the development of the society all over the world. In this perspective, it is inevitable that acquiring knowledge that follows Allah’s command will be the catalyst for us to be in Jannah Al-Firdaus.

InsyaAllah. If Allah’s will.  

IIUM PHILOSOPHY (ISLAMICISATION OF KNOWLEDGE)

OVERALL REFLECTION

From the first day of our class, we have been introduced with various knowledge including Computer Assisted Language Learning, Computer Mediated Communication, Corpus Linguistics, Concordancer and many more. We did our reflections after each class to recap on what has been taught by our lecturer. We managed to finish one presentation on lesson plan and the other presentation will be started on 28 April 2015. Our main project, which was producing a blog, was quite challenging as we need to include all the assignments, presentations, reflections in it. However, all the assignments given have been completed with the guidance of our lecturer and the cooperation of our group members. Madam assisted and monitored our blog progression from times to times so that we could improve our blog contents effectively.

Our lecturer also gave a very good explanation for every single topic and she related the discussion to our daily lives in order to enhance our understanding on the topic. For example, she encouraged us to think about the availability and the comprehensiveness of Forensic Linguistics within our society. Without hesitation, we could say that this topic is one of the interesting options to make if we would like to further our Master in the future. We also felt very lucky as we got the chance to listen to madam’s advices during the classes as an extra knowledge and motivation.

Nevertheless, towards the end of finishing our reflection, we were having problem as we did not really know on how to use the concordancer. Then, after we have explored various software of concordancer, we came to know which type of concordancer were the easiest and hardest ones to analyze huge amount of data.

Producing our own blog was an interesting experience because as we learned new knowledge, we managed to share it with other people as well. Indeed, spread the knowledge is so vital for the betterment of the society.

REFLECTION 11

Our next class was held on  21^st  of April 2015, madam  Rozina had  make  a quick view on Concordancer . Before she started a new lesson,  she was also reminded the students about the weekly reflections that we need to complete as soon as possible. The day for presentation to take place was too near and all the reflections must be completed during the time given. So basically  the nature  of the computational stylistics that we have learnt during the last class was to highlight the style of the text and and  to deliver the message to people. We can also engage this stylistic study by looking into non-literary text. For example, by referring to the theory of transcendentalism which emphasizes on Self-Reliance written by Emerson, we have to look at all of his works that governed by him. Sometimes the computational stylistics was functioned as something to convey meaning such a foregrounding of poems from various poets that the students need to understand literary.

Under this topic also we were looking at the biggest corpus and bringing computer technology into analysis. Let say we do ask ourselves on what can we do based on the theories that has been exposed  in our subjects that we have taken within our period of study.

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Questions:

Based on the analysis that you have done in Literature class, did you make a conclusion on that particular author?

a)      We had made an analysis on the writer called DH Lawrence. Most of his works are associated with pornography themes. His works later had been supported by other authors of literature and they often regarded his findings as freedom of speech.

How do you think that what you have done in literature class be beneficial to us today?

a)      Yes. This is because the lecturer will somehow relates and includes the Islamic Perspectives in their lecture to enhance their comprehension so that they will not go astray from the right path.

b)      At the same time, the lecturer also responsible for Islamicizing the content of the lesson during the class so that the students will grasp the gist of the learning.

c)      In addition to that, we can deliberately expressed our thoughts, feelings and viewpoints through literature context rather than we do the irrelevant things.

d)     It can be not beneficial if we tend to be influenced from the bad parts of literature. For example, the DH Lawrence’s works that we have explained just now. So we cannot totally rely on his materials because it contained a lot of pornography elements in it. Therefore, we as a students of English Literature and Linguistics we would not benefit from these kind of literature even though we had been exposed to it for all this while.

How can you bring grounded all those findings and knowledge for the need of the society?

a)      We can produce our own  Islamic Literature and indirectly our generation will benefit from it rather than they rely on Western’s work.

b)      For example, Literary criticism, The lecturer showed the picture of two different authors for instance, Shakespeare and Usman Awang. Students could recognized the first picture which was the picture of Shakespeare. However, they could not recognize the picture of Usman Awang.

            On 24^th of April 2015, we had been briefing on the lists of the groups that will present their blogs first. The rubrics of how the marks will be given were meticulously explained by madam Rozina on that day. Meanwhile, she also highlighted to us that for CMC, we must give the gist of it and every groups must be focus on the power points presentations. All the groupings’ blog have been checked by madam Rozina and she reminded us to post our philosophy about 400 to 500 words in the blogs. The group that will go first on Tuesday nextweek was Ashraf’s group. Finally, we got to add one more major reflection on our blogspot.

REFLECTION 10

React to the concordance that you used. Which one is the easiest? Which one is the hardest?

The concordance that we selected is from papyr.com because among the sample of concordance that we attempted, this one is easiest. This is because when we click to the link that been provided, then, its already there with the concordance instruction in one page. It is very comprehensive and straightforward website so that the students do not have to waste their time to search many things regarding the concordance. Apart from that, it is quite simple because this website is already provided an easy file upload utility with the concordancer, hence, the students can easily upload the file.

Meanwhile, the hardest one is from Corpora4learning.net. The website is quite comprehensive and organized in a way that it is easy to discover. Nevertheless, there are several links that have been provided that lead to unaccess to the website. Besides, if we click at some of the links, its show the website or page are not available and cannot be accessed. Therefore, its show that the concordance does not updated all the progress of its page. Then, it will make it more complicated and hardest to us.

Is there such a thing as forensic linguistics in Malaysia? How extensive is it? Is there a case in Malaysia which involves forensic linguist?

No, there is no such a thing as forensic linguistics in Malaysia. That is why it is not extensive because it is still being an issue of admissibility whether it is relevant to conduct it in Malaysia or not. However, there is a research that was conducted by Ramalinggam Rajamanickam and Anita Abdul Rahim from Faculty of Law, The National University of Malaysia that seeks to identify the forensic linguistics evidence and its extent of admissibility under the Malaysian law. According to their findings, the use of forensic linguistics to solve a crime case can refer to the process of applying knowledge and theories of linguistics to certain crimes including ransom notes, threatening messages, extortion letters or other crime-related communications. Nevertheless, there are two significant criteria that plays a role if courts want to apply forensic linguistic in solving the case which are relevancy and reliability. Besides that, we think that it is good to Malaysia to apply the concept of forensic linguistics in solving any crime cases but it is also need to be highlighted on the capability of the judges whether they can successfully evaluate and judge the evidence when there is a crime case that can involve forensic linguist.

Reference

Rajamanickam & Anita (2009). Forensic Linguistic Evidence and its Admissibility in Malaysia.  Retrieved on April 27, 2015 on http://www.ijens.org/Vol_13_I_04/133204-7676-IJBAS-IJENS.pdf

CMC Assignment Part 3

CMC Assignment Part 2