Announcement! My Little Brother is 10

After reading the comments on my favourite blogger, Helen Ang’s post titled, ‘Announcement‘, I felt the need to write this post.

First, I would like to thank Aunty Helen for being very responsible by telling her reader that every body need to mind their language now since my 10 years old little brother is reading her blog.

User-generated-content (i.e. your comments) must endeavour to comply to a Universal rating, particularly those Dapsters who like to curse and swear. And the same standard applies to me too.

My family and I really appreciate and respect Aunty Helen’s concern that adults should not curse and swear in front of children. Since children look up to adults; it is just fair that adults show good examples to the children. Moreover, I believe that cultured adults do watch their language, even when they are angry.

However, I can’t stop laughing when I read various comments posted by her readers about my little brother. It seems that people find it so unbelievable that a 10 years old boy reads and writes about politics and is an active blogger.

So, I dedicate this article to my little brother, Ahmad Ali Karim and share with you some cute pictures of him 😀

Aunty Helen said that Ahmad Ali Karim is not the ‘nasty Ali Karim’. Ahmad Ali Karim is a young boy who had been brought up by a cultured and well-mannered pair of parents, who hate bad and harsh words.

By the way, I am very familiar with Ali Karim’s style of comments since he (or she?) tried to ‘harass’ me with his rude words. My little brother could not be ‘creative’ enough to write those comments because he do not understand those words.

You can read his comments by clicking the picture. He is a coward, actually. He was not happy with my opinion of who is actually the extremist but dare not answer my question of “Siapa Ekstremis? and why?” Instead of answering, he again condemned JAIS and others.

Read Ali Karim’s comments and compare them with the articles written by Ahmad Ali Karim at his blog.

When my elder sister, Aiman and I went to school, we were stunned to hear our friends using the words ‘aku’ and ‘engkau’ or ‘kau’ on regular basis. Our parents told us not to use those words and only use ‘saya’ and ‘awak’ as ‘aku’ and ‘engkau’ are rude words and not to be spoken by well-mannered people.

Then we started to learn more and more harsh and rude phrases like, “kepala otak kau”, “padam muka” and so on. As naive and innocent children, all those words and phrases absorbed into our minds. Our concerned mother told us that it is really rude to use those words and phrases. Even if our friends use them, we must not follow them. Allah loves those who speaks politely and so as Muslims, we have to show good behaviour to others.

To those who doubt the fact that my little brother writes his own articles in his blog, please read his blog from the beginning and see how he improves over the years. Writing needs a lot of practice and keeping an active blog like my little brother’s is not easy. He need to work real hard and be very disciplined. There are times when we need to give him a push to motivate him.

Well, Ahmad Ali and my elder sister, Aiman Amani are both great writers. One advantage that Ahmad Ali has is that he had been trained by our mother since he was very young to brush up this talent.

My mother taught us to read at a very, very young age and yes, we have lots and lots of books at home. My little brother wrote his first short story titled, ‘The Pink Elephant’ when he was 3 years old because he saw his big sisters were writing stories. He begged my parents to let him start his own blog when he was 5 years old; because our eldest sister Aiman who was 13 years old at the time, has started her blog.

So his writing gears had always been running and have not gone rusty because everyday, those gears are polished by new tips and information which makes his writing becomes better and better.

My elder sister on the other hand has not been trained to write as early as Ahmad Ali. Anyway, once she started, she can write very professionally and is way better than mine. You can read her blog here: Aiman Amani’s Weblog

This is Ahmad using the Microsoft Power Point at 5 years old.

I’m sad and sorry to see how some adults think about children and have no respect for their intelligence. Why can’t children be taken seriously and be taught to think intellectually since they are young?

We always have intellectual discussions at home. We discuss politics and current issues. My father also took us to lots of seminars, book launches, talks and we met and had the chance to speak to great writers, journalist, lawyers, politicians, ulama’s and wonderful people who helped us grow wiser.

We do not watch much TV; in fact when we were younger, all that we watched were videos that our dad bought for us or taped such as ‘Adam’s World’, Barney, ‘Magic English’, ‘Sesame Street’ and some others. And I’m at lost when my friends talk about Siti Nurhaliza or Justin Bieber. And my little brother does not watch Ben 10, Upin dan Ipin, and BoBoiBoy; and would not wear a Ben 10 or any superhero T-shirts.

He reads a lot since he was small. And he reads good books.

I’ve always found it weird when my friends could not think of anything interesting to talk about other than ‘hot, juicy gossips’. That could be one of the reasons why I do not have much friends of my age. I had always been considered as weird for not knowing the names of popular singers and their songs.

Ahmad Ali and Uncle Nasha.

Just because my little brother is a blogger, reads some political blogs and writes about politics, it doesn’t means that our parents do not keep an eye on us. I dare say, that the contents of what ‘normal’ teens read about are more worrisome. We are under our parents surveillance for 24 hours and our parents are very strict on what we read and they approve Aunty Helen’s blog.

My cute little brother at a FedEx office in Palo Alto, California when he was three years old. For some unexplainable reasons, my little brother really loves FedEx when he was younger.

Our parents train us (force us to be exact) to think intellectually and talk mostly of useful things. Our brains are stuffed with important issues everyday. And apart from learning Mathematic, English and the usual stuff, we, including Ahmad Ali were taught the basic of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia; such as Article 3(1), Article 11, Article 153, Article 160 and so on. That is why Ahmad Ali always uses those articles in his writing. And he is even familiar with certain important cases like the ‘Che Omar Che Soh’ case that is usually wrongly interpreted by the Pakatan.

We are lucky because we are also able to get the advises from Uncle Naser Disa, who is an expert in Constitutional Law of Malaysia and Uncle Azril Mohd. Amin, who is an expert in the Human Rights issues.

Ahmad Ali with two of his many lawyer friends.

Life is not only about having fun, money and fame. As Muslims, we carry three responsibilities in life which are, to make ourselves good, help others become good and make the world good, clean and beautiful, pleasing to Allah. And so we must use each and every second that we have to do good things.

We also learn to choose friends. Make friends with the people who can help to make us a better person and not those who will just waste our time and turn us into bad and useless people.

My father’s friends always take my little brother seriously. Ahmad Ali is in deep discussion with Ustaz Ismail Mina after a meeting.

To the commentators on Aunty Helen’s blog who are wondering how the 10 years old Ahmad Ali Karim is able to write those articles on his blog, my answer is talent, lots of reading, hard works, great parent and with Allah’s help.

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And that is 1272 words (minus captions and quotes) Aunty Helen!

Please Read:

• A Smart Boy Learning To Count
• About Ahmad Ali Karim