Festschrift for Syed Haroon Aljunied

A Muis Icon

Syed Haroon Aljunied, our longest serving secretary is, by all measure, an icon. He served Muis for 20 years, 3 Ministers, 5 Presidents and 7 Councils. Not many in Muis, and certainly not the post-65ers have gone through the thick and thin of Muis’ managing of Muslim affairs – but Syed Haroon had been instrumental for many of the what (we) Muis officers, and the Muslim community take for granted now.

From kampong mosque demolition to mosque development at HDB estates, exhumation of graves, different days of Eid Fitr in Singapore, amendments to AMLA, charter of planes for Haj pilgrims, non-arrival of kambing, Madrasah and the CE issue, SARS, JI and the list goes on – he had been there, and done it.

He is an icon – simply because for many of us, Syed Haroon is a walking encyclopedia of AMLA, Muis, and to a large extent, the historiography of Muslim organisations and the community.

Best Kept Secret

How many of us are aware that it was Syed Haroon who spearheaded the computerization of Muis administration to transform Muis from an electric typewriter outfit with a typing pool and stenos into what is now a fully computerized “every person with a PC on their desktop” organisation. How many in the community know that it was his idea to engage architects from the private sector to make our mosques architecturally superior.

What is that best kept secret that makes and moves the man? Allow me to offer my take – first, his soul partner and wife, Kak Saleha, and second, his missionary zeal that can be traced back to his WAMY-HBI Islamic work training during his younger days.

Syed Haroon has taught us that our spouse and children are a significant source of energy for our work in Muis – and their support and sacrifices are key and crucial to our well-being and organizational performance. For this, we can never adequately thank Kak Saleha and his children for their sacrifices and support and for sharing Syed Haroon’s 20 years of his working life with Muis.

Secondly, beyond the meetings, papers, functions, salaries and bonuses, Syed Haroon has always reminded us, that there is greater and higher purpose for working in Muis – to serve Allah as His vicegerent. And that we must never lose sight of this purpose or diminish it through bigger pay packets.

For this, we ask Allah to reward him with the best of rewards.

The Raging Flesh and Spirit

Physically, Syed Haroon is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. But this has not prevented him from long-distance air travel and trekking difficult terrains and climate – snow and sleet in Chicago to negotiate with IQRA Foundation and hot and dry weather in Saudi Arabia to serve as Head of Delegation for Haj in 2003. When I fetched him at the airport on his return from Saudi, I felt humbled by his strength – both his physical and spiritual strength, both in the flesh and spirit.

Syed Haroon never fails to amaze me with his delightful sharing of his overseas travel and holidays. His last sharing was about his trip to Geneva, Paris and Istanbul, although his last overseas trip was to Myanmar. Most of us do not know that he is almost a modern-day Ibn Battuta – he had traveled from one city to another across countries and continents, from New Zealand in the South, to Canada in the North, from Hawaii in the East, to Scotland in the West.

Syed Haroon has defied the age-old adage – the flesh is weak but the spirit is willing. Giving it a new twist – to him, I say, your flesh and spirit not only are willing, but also raging, my friend.

And A Big Heart

Syed Haroon despite his small frame has a big heart – if measurable, it may exceed the XXL size mark! Let me ask a question and cite an example: Whom do we see for approval when Muslim organisations appeal to us to buy a table for their charity dinner? More recently, Syed Haroon took upon himself to gather funds amongst friends to help a first year medical student when she wrote to Muis for a loan and donation to pay for her fees.

If I am limited to one trait to attribute Syed Haroon, it will have to be his generosity. He pays special attention to humanitarian efforts, the orphans and the poor and needy. For humanitarian effort, Syed Haroon traveled to Medan and Aceh on a Mercy Relief mission to deliver aids to Tsunami victims. For orphans, he sits on the MTFA board and through his generosity I got to travel on a sampan over choppy waters with the late Hj Sidek (Ust Mahmoud Matlub’s father) and Nazirin to deliver fidyah funds to feed poor students at a pesantren in Riau.

Minister in-charge of Indian Muslim Community

One of the many Syed Haroon’s achievement was undoubtedly his ability to lead and motivate leaders of the Indian Muslim community to produce the IMC plan with the intent to help the community. For this assignment, he earned the honorific title of Muis’ Minister in-charge of Indian Muslim Community.

One would expect that he deserved unqualified support from the leaders of the community, but the relationship is at best one of love-hate. Let me cite an incident – once I was on the MRT train on my way home from a dialogue session for community leaders chaired by PM Goh at Kallang Theatre, I bumped into a former chairman of an Indian mosque. It appeared that he too was at the session but instead of reflecting on the messages and issues discussed during the dialogue, I had a non-stop late night Syed Haroon bashing session from Kallang to Tampines MRT station for the redevelopment project of the mosque which he chaired.

But Syed Haroon never gave up on the IMC. He represented them and sought every opportunity to advance their interest, be it making our full-time madrasah Indian Muslim children friendly, aLIVE classes delivered in Tamil, ROSS for Indian Muslim students at Gontor and asatizah development and networking with imam and religious teachers of Indian Muslim mosques.

Like the icing on the cake, he demonstrated mastery when he answered a query from a participant during the recent Workplan Seminar. Syed Haroon’s convincing reply had a turnaround effect on the participant when he thanked Muis for all the efforts to help the Indian Muslim community. And for that, Syed Haroon deserved the man-of-the-match title for our Workplan Seminar 2007.

Syed Haroon will always be remembered as our “Minister in-charge” of Indian Muslim Community for his contribution and dedication to align and mainstream IMC.

Passion for Arabic

When I joined Muis some seven years ago, Syed Haroon was studying Arabic, every Wednesday evening after the Muis usrah, on the 7th floor – and out of ignorance, I asked a colleague who was working very closely with Syed Haroon, then – isn’t he an Arab? This colleague replied jokingly but affectionately – I quote, “Syed Haroon can only swear in Arabic!”

His unrelenting pursuit to master the Arabic Language is exemplary – he is still attending classes till today. But language, particularly Arabic is not for any Nazirin, Samad and Bakri (the Malay equivalent for the proverbial Tom, Dick and Harry, and by the way – they are also the dropouts from Ust Syed Mustafa’s Arabic class at Al-Falah Mosque sometime ago) and Syed Haroon gives us hope that someday we too will be able to converse and read in Arabic, if we persevere and emulate his passion for learning and for the language.

I thank him for giving us confidence that as dropouts, we can one day eventually speak Arabic, and for me, it reaffirmed my belief that I not stupid!

Festschrift

One of Syed Haroon’s many creative sparks in Muis is in the area of asset development and revenue generation. After corporatisation of Warees, Syed Haroon’s current interest is in social entrepreneurship. His concern over mosque financial sustainability drives him to think of ways to pool surplus mosque funds to create sustainable revenue streams in addition to public donations.

Social entrepreneurship indeed is one of the potential breakthroughs for financial sustainability but it requires creative capabilities including a kind of synthetic creativity. To quote Landry and Bianchini (1995), “…we need a completely different type of creativity, as increasingly we know more facts but understand less. In particular, we need the creativity of being able to synthesise, to connect, to gauge impacts across different spheres of life, to see holistically, to understand how material changes affect our perceptions, to grasp the subtle ecologies of our systems of life and how to make them sustainable”.

Many ideas are floating about – including pooling all available and unused mosque ancillary spaces particularly classrooms for rent to training providers. This idea is now realized when I saw Al-Nitak (Faizal’s company for learning astronomy and Islam) now based in one of the rooms at An-Nadhah mosque.

Syed Haroon has repeatedly asked us to create VWO-type outfits for our kindergartens and part-time Islamic education classes so that we may benefit from national funding and insisted that all programmes should be self-funded.

Muis has benefited significantly from Syed Haroon’s synthetic creativity and his self-funding mantra.

Syed Haroon is a social entrepreneur before social entrepreneurship.


Albakri Ahmad
11 May 07