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Monday, March 08, 2004

dipetik dari blog Iznan Shamsudin

Japanese imam understands true meaning of Islam


Yasutaka Takeda

TOKYO — In the predawn darkness in the city of Kasukabe, about 30 kilometers north of Tokyo, 31 Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka gathered for prayers in a white mosque.

Ibrahim Ken Okubo, one of only a few Japanese imams (Islamic prayer leaders), conducted the session at the small three-story mosque along Tobu Railway Co's Isezaki Line near Ichinowari Station on the first Sunday in June.

One of the Asian Muslims, facing toward Mecca and with his index fingers in his ears, sang Athan (call to prayer) from a staircase landing — "Allahu Akbar (God is great), Ashhadu Allah ilaaha illa-Lah (I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship but God)."

The Athan began at 3:35 a.m., a good one and a half hours before the first train for Asakusa in downtown Tokyo rattles noisily past the mosque.

The Muslims have been asked to be careful not to let their singing of Athan and reciting of the Koran be too audible outside the mosque, which has no sign showing the building is a sacred place for Muslims. The mail box states only that it is a training center.

"I hope to avoid quarrels with my neighbors if I can, so I picked this location along the railway line where the noise would mingle with our own voices," the 36-year-old Japanese imam said.

The Ichinowari mosque is one of about 60 small mosques built across the country in the asset-inflated "bubble" 1990s when Muslims were increasingly finding jobs and settling down in Japan, a predominantly Shinto and Buddhism land. Since then, the Isezaki Line has been nicknamed the Islam Line.

But there were no facilities for worship or mosques in the northern Kanto region neighboring the Tokyo metropolis, where about 50 Muslims including Okubo were obliged to gather for prayers every Saturday in a two-room apartment rented by a Pakistani at the street of Minami-Urawa, about 5 km southwest of Kasukabe.

Some of the participants stayed overnight in sleeping bags outside the apartment in the winter. "The neighbors were adamant in their opposition to our gathering, and the apartment owner expelled us from the facility, citing expiry of the contract as the reason," Okubo said.

The Okubo-led group's dream of having their own mosque was realized in 1992 when they converted a cram school with donations from group members, putting them at the forefront of the nationwide mosque-building movement.

Okubo had previously lived abroad with his parents who had been assigned overseas. On returning to Japan he went to a public junior high school in the western city of Kawanishi in Hyogo Prefecture when he was a second grader, after attending schools in London and Vienna.

"My Japanese peers bullied me and told me, 'You are different from us.' Everybody objected to what I said...I thought then that there is something wrong with a society that imposes uniformity on its members and rejects more heterogeneous communities," Okubo recalled of his school days.

He began to work as a manual laborer in Tokyo after senior high school despite strong opposition from his father, who recommended he study at a university. Okubo converted to Islam when he was 20, having been impressed by the way of life of Pakistani members of the Tabligh (Islam Renaissance Movement).

Eventually he graduated from a university in Japan after he was recommended to study at a university by a Tabligh member, who said, "You should obey what your father wants you to do," during his stay in Pakistan for training as a Muslim.

But he has never worked for long in any Japanese company due to his Muslim beliefs. In according with Tabligh teachings, Okubo has undergone long-term training overseas and has made a pilgrimage (hajji) to Mecca three times.

"Islam mean peace in Arabic. Originally Islam is a belief in anti-violence and obedience only to God," Okubo stressed, deploring the public tendency to regard Islam as a dangerous religion in the wake of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Okubo complains that the Japanese media's discussions of Islam are based on ideas borrowed from the U.S. and European media. Just prior to the World Cup finals in June, Okubo was grieved at the news that a Muslim who had overstayed his visa had been fired by a manager at a factory in Saitama Prefecture in response to a police call.

"Okubo is both sincere and gentle," said Abdur Rahman Siddiqi, 64, who heads the International Muslim Center of Japan in the western Tokyo city of Machida. Siddiqi graduated from the state-run Hitotsubashi University in the 1950s, and has been involved in Japan for nearly 45 years.

On June 25, he gave a lecture to about 60 local citizens on the difficulties facing Muslims trying to live in Japan according to Islamic teachings, including food restrictions, praying daily five times and finding suitable burial sites.

There are about 100,000 non-Japanese and Japanese Muslims living in Japan, according to the Japan Muslim Association in Tokyo. The first mosque was built in Kobe in 1935, and the first in Tokyo three years later.

Siddiqi is one of many Muslims shocked at the events of Sept 11. "The Japanese, who have been unconcerned about Islam, have started to develop an interest in the religion despite such an awful occurrence. I'm trying to see the bright side of it."

Siddiqi seldom wears Pakistani ethnic dress Shalwar Kamise at a time when he speaks to Japanese audience, while Okubo always walks in the streets of Ichinowari in white Arabic clothes. "Nobody sees me as a Japanese. I hope Japan will become a society where Arabic clothes are accepted as nothing special," Okubo said.

Okubo and his Thai wife have a son, who turned one year old on Aug 13 and has an Islamic name, Huthaifah. Okubo hopes he will grow into a Japanese citizen with a strong Muslim heart. (Kyodo News)

posted by eksp  # 7:42 PM

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