What drives me to be a novelist?

YouTube has its own role to make who I am today. It is absolutely because of Allah’s mercy upon me. But Allah makes an Islamic lecture video on YouTube accessible to me. It helped me a lot to know who is Syeikh Khalid Basalamah and Syeikh Adi Hidayat (May Allah bless them with a long life so they can spread khair and knowledge even more). I was at 18 I guess when I started listening to Syeikh Khalid Basalamah. What he taught me, I tried to do my best. He spoke about sunnah and the forbidden things. I tried to follow and avoid. Almost everything. I believe he is none other than a syeikh who continues warning the ummah. Every syeikh is a representative of the Prophet PBUH on this earth. Syeikh Khalid showed hadith about what make drawing, dating, and such haram. Long story short, I am becoming a practicing muslim.

Drawing is something I am good at, but after knowing the hadith I stopped. But when hearing that reading novel is such a waste of time (I do agree on him in a certain aspect), I followed him. It has nothing to do with the deen. But writing is something that I am good at and even I used to think that it can be my carrier. I was kind of forgetting my writing carrier. Some authors I knew back than continued asking me like ‘we have new projects, would you like to join?’.

I knew writing is something that I tried to avoid but not as strict as avoiding music. Some time I found myself went to library and took novels from the specific shelf (my favorite place I have to admit). I decide to read novel only in my period time comes so it won’t disturb my worship time. It keeps continuing until today (the schedule I made).

I am not totally losing my dream to be a novelist. I still find myself in my semester break writing something but until it reached fifteen chapters I didn’t continue it.

I realized that what Syeikh Khalid Basalamah’ says are true and for good’s sake. But what Syeikh Adi Hidayat’s says are even more logic. When Syeikh Adi Hidayat was asked is music haram? He said it depends. I was in shock. There are people of Quran who must avoid music so their memorizations do not get distraction. But for those who struggling to have faith, you have no idea how is Allah’s plans to give them hidaya. There was a non-muslim man reverted to Islam because he felt there is something on nasheed even the nasheed was extremely bad because the singer is a woman and it is added music instrument. But we don’t know Allah’s plan in turning someone’s heart.

At that time I couldn’t relate this. But lately when I am looking for my intention (what drives me to be a novelist) cuz it is important to have a reminder what drives me so one day I will have the right intention and focus on it.

I remembered the first novel I fully read is Ayat-ayat Cinta (the verses of love). I read that novel from library on my high school. It is an amazing story about an Indonesian who studies in Egypt, Al Azhar University finding his loved ones and going through hardships and tests from Allah. I have to admit that that’s the only view and knowledge I have about Islam. My parent wouldn’t teach me. My teacher hadn’t a good approaches when it comes to “giving a dawah”. I was studying in islamic schools but I never have a love in Islam before reading that novel. That novel makes me realize that being a devout muslim like Fahri or Aisya is one hundred percent cool. I found myself started to perform salah. And I remembered my mom said to me “Instead of reading novel, you must read your book from school,” and I cried and replied “I started praying after reading this book.” I cannot remember for detail. But that was it. This what drives me to be an Islamic novelist. I hope to reach another Dinda out there.