I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company. It was fascinating. The team spent an hour trying to decide on a new pricing strategy for their main product line. One of the divisions, responsible for the company’s large accounts, was requesting data about a recent experiment that had been conducted by another division. They were upset because this other team had changed the prices for small accounts to make the product more affordable. The larger-account division wanted to move the pricing in just the other direction – making the low-end products more expensive, so their large customers would have an increased incentive to upgrade.

Almost the entire meeting was taken up with interpreting data. The problem was that nobody could quite agree what the data meant. Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too. The more they were asked to explain the details of each row on the spreadsheet, the more evident it became that nobody understood how those numbers had been derived.

Worse, nobody was quite sure exactly which customers had been exposed to the experiment. Different teams had been responsible for implementing different parts of it, and so different parts of the product had been updated at different times. The whole process had taken. And by now, the people who had originally conceived the experiment were in a separate division from the people who had executed it.

Listening in, I assumed this would be the end of the meeting. With no agreed-upon facts to help make the decision, I assumed nobody would have any basis for making the case for any particular action. Boy was I wrong. The meeting was just getting started. Each team simply took whatever interpretation of the data supported their position best, and started advocating. Other teams would chime in with alternate interpretation that supported their position, and so on. In the end, decisions were made – but not based on any actual data. Instead, the executive running the meeting was forced to make decisions based on the best arguments.

The funny thing to me was how much of the meeting had been spent debating the data, when in the end, the arguments that carried the day could have been made right at the start of the emeting. It was as if each advocate sensed that they were about to be ambushed; if another team had managed to bring clarity to the situation, that might have benefited them – so the rational response was to obfuscate as much as possible. What a waste.

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. And who can blame them? The data warehousing team was producing classic waste – reports that nobody read (or understood). The project teams felt these experiments were a waste of time, since they involved building features halfway, which meant they were never quite any good. And since nobody could agree on each outcome, it seemed like “running an experiment” was just code for postponing a hard decision. Worst of all, the executive team was getting chronic headaches. Their old product prioritization meetings may have been a battle of opinions, but at least they understood what was going on. Now they first had to go through a ritual that involved complex math, reached no definite outcome, and then proceeded to have a battle of opinions anyway!

When a company gets wedged like this, the solution is often surprisingly simple. In fact, I call this class of solutions “too simple to possibly work” because the people inside the situation can’t conceive that their complex problem could have a simple solution. When I’m asked to work with companies like this as a consultant, 99% of my job is to find a way to get the team to get started with a simple – but correct – solution.

Here was my prescription for this situation. I asked the team to consider creating what I call a sandbox for experimentation. The sandbox is an area of the product where the following rules are strictly enforced:

1. Any team can create a true split-test experiment that affects only the sandboxed parts of the product, however:
2. One team must see the whole experiment through end-to-end.
3. No experiment can run longer than a specified amount of time (usually a few weeks).
4. No experiment can affect more than a specified number of customers (usually expressed as a % of total).
5. Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics.
6. Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens.

Putting a system like this in place is relatively easy; especially for any kind of online service. I advocate starting small; usually, the parts of the product that start inside the sandbox are low-effort, high-impact aspects like pricing, initial landing pages, or registration flows. These may not sound very exciting, but because they control the product’s positioning for new customers, they often allow minor changes to have a big impact.

Over time, additional parts of the product can be added to the sandbox, until eventually it becomes routine for the company to conduct these rigorous split-tests for even very large new features. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The benefits of this approach are manifest immediately. Right from the beginning, the sandbox achieves three key goals simultaneously:

1. It forces teams to work cross-functionally. The first few changes, like a price change, may not require a lot of engineering effort. But they require coordination across departments – engineering, marketing, customers service. Teams that work this way are more productive, as long as productivity is measured by their ability to create customer value (and not just stay busy).
      
2. Everyone understands the results. True split-test experiments are easy to classify as successes or failures, because top-level metrics either move or they don’t. Either way, the team learns immediately whether their assumptions about how customers would behave were correct. By using the same metrics each time, the team builds literacy across the whole company about those key metrics.
    
3. It promotes rapid iteration. When people have a chance to see a project through end-to-end, and the work is done in small batches, and has a clear verdict delivered quickly, they benefit from the power of feedback. Each time they fail to move the numbers, they have a real opportunity for introspection. And, even more importantly, to act on their findings immediately. Thus, these teams tend to converge on optimal solutions rapidly, even if they start out with really bad ideas.

Putting it all together, let me illustrate with an example from another company. This team had been working for many months in a standard agile configuration: a disciplined engineering team taking direction from a product owner who would prioritize the features they should work on. The team was adept at responding to changes in direction from the product owner, and always delivered quality code.

But there was a problem. The team rarely received any feedback about whether the features they were building actually mattered to customers. Whatever learning took place was happening by the product owner; the rest of the team was just heads-down implementing features.

This led to a tremendous amount of waste, of the worst kind: building features nobody wants. We discovered this reality when the team started working inside a sandbox like the one I described above.

When new customers would try this product, they weren’t required to register at first. They could simply come to the website and start using it. Only after they started to have some success would the system prompt them to register – and after that, start to offer them premium features to pay with. It was a slick example of lazy registration and a freemium model. The underlying assumption was that making it seamless for customers to ease into the product was optimal. In order to support that assumption, the team had written a lot of very clever code to create this “tri-mode” experience (every part of the product had to treat guests, registered users and paying users somewhat differently).

One day, the team decided to put that assumption to the test. The experiment was easy to build (although hard to decide to do): simply remove the “guest” experience, and make everyone register right at the start.  To their surprise, the metrics didn’t move at all. Customers who were given the guest experience were not any more likely to register, and they were actually less likely to pay. In other words, all that tri-mode code was complete waste.

By discovering this unpleasant fact, the team had an opportunity to learn. They discovered, as is true of many freemium and lazy registration systems, that easy is not always optimal. When registration is too easy, customers can get confused about what they are registering for. (This is similar to the problem that viral loop companies have with the engagement loop: by making it too easy to join, they actually give away the positioning that allows for longer-term engagement.) More importantly, the experience led to some soul-searching. Why was a team this smart, this disciplined, and this committed to waste-free product development creating so much waste?

That’s the power of the sandbox approach.

Read More »

If you could have seen her, you would have thought she'd struck it rich. Ava bounded out of bed this morning, a morning she'd waited for an excruciating two days to arrive. The anticipation was just too much for her to take, which is why I typically don't tell her about things-- exciting things (like ice cream) and upsetting things (like shots) until they are imminent. Both because the anticipation is almost more than she can bare and because heaven forbid if plans should change. Even slightly.

But announcing these particular events were out of my control. They were preschool events...and ever since she learned about them at preschool on Tuesday, she's been asking, on the hour, "When will it be Thursday?" Well, today it was. These were the big events, in order:

1. School pictures
2. The firefighters came for a visit (and were going to let the kids, "climb all over their firetruck, mommy!".
3. Her day to "show and tell"

Many of you know how fascinated my daughter is with anything having to do with firefighters. Given her peculiar fear of smoke detectors, I wonder if she hasn't made a deal with them: I'll idolize firefighters and do whatever they tell me to do so long as you promise to never ever ever go off in my presence. We try to hold up their end of the bargain by a) changing the batteries twice per year; and b) cleaning our oven regularly so that when I do cook over 400 degrees, the drippings from the sweet potatoes don't smoke us out.

Usually when I ask her anything about preschool, what she did, what she learned, what she loved best, she replies, "I don't know." Then, later on, she'll usually give me dribs and drabs of details..."Ellie went home sick; the nurse told us to sing Happy Birthday while we wash our hands; I didn't get picked to be the line leader today..."

And today, even with so much to tell, her response wasn't any different. But here's what I did learn from her intermittently throughout the rest of the day:

She was a little nervous about the school pictures. "Why were you nervous?" I asked her.

"Because I didn't want the flash to go off in my eyes."

Ugh. I remember that flash. I mean, I had forgotten, but then I remembered. Then came the next detail:

"Did you have to sit in a chair?" I asked.

To which she replied, "Nope. I had to sit on a stool."

I completely forgot about THE stool. The school-picture-taking-stool! Whoa. What a flashback. Instantly, I was six years old with a home-job haircut, sitting on the stool that was so hard to sit on (and keep still!)

I also learned (through one of her imaginary play moments) that the firefighters must've told her that she had to wait for a second turn; that there were other children who hadn't had one yet. That kind of made me smile. She couldn't wait to get her little self all over that shiny red fire truck and she was going to try again and again and again to experience it. She's not going to let an opportunity go untapped; even if its thwarted, she's at least going to give it a try.

I was also pleased to hear that she asked where the lady firefighters were. I don't consider myself a feminist in the radical sense, but I must say, in this world, I'm psyched to have a daughter who only sees what she CAN do, not what only other people do. (Although I want her to be a firefighter about as much as I want to imagine the day she leaves home. In fact, her daddy has already made her, at three years old, SIGN an agreement that states: I will let my daddy come to college with me and sleep on my floor all the days I'm there.)

And then, there's show and tell. Ironically, she had planned three weeks ago to bring in her fire hat and her firey red dancin' shoes for the occasion. I guess the stars were aligned with the firefighters coming for a visit and all.

Now, as I write, she's upstairs getting a story and a song (or two, or three). Probably asking her daddy questions like, "What dangerous things did you do as a little boy?" and, "Why were the firefighter's hats yellow today?"

And when I go to bed, I'll remember how excited Ava was when she woke up in the morning. How in love with the day she was before she even knew what it would bring. She did strike it rich. She strikes it rich every single day.

I think she's onto somethin'.
Read More »

I've been trying very hard to avoid turning this blog into a travelogue. Normally, I try to make my post-event writeups more than just a transcript, by including reactions and comments. On this speaking tour, that's been simply impossible, so I've decided to let the following collection of videos, podcasts, and slides batch up for a little while. If you're interested in more real-time updates during my speaking tour, please tune into my twitter feed.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy all this multimedia content. In addition to some of my recent talks, you can learn more about the Startup Visa movement and enjoy two really interesting lean startup case studies.

My Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar courtesy of Stanford Ecorner (audio podcast only for now, video coming soon):

if you'd like to follow along with slides, they are here:

2009 09 29 The Lean Startup At Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar

View more presentations from Eric Ries.

From high atop the BT Tower in London, this brief BT Tradespace interview:


Why do we need a Startup Visa? A Tale of 2 Erics:


Also in London, I took up a lot of airtime during day two of Seedcamp. You can read highlights on their blog, or watch this short video:


Seedcamp - Day 2 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.


Or watch my full #leanstartup presentation at Seedcamp in London:


And two bonus videos that are well worth watching (weally):

Timothy Fitz, who worked for me at IMVU, giving an in-depth presentation on the details of the continuous deployment system that we built there.


With accompanying slides:

Continuous Deployment

View more presentations from TimothyFitz.

pbWorks (formerly pbWiki) was one of the first companies that ever invited me to join their advisory board. I like to think that had some small part in causing their subsequent success. Judge for yourself by watching David Weekly's #leanstartup case study (pbWorks):


Thanks to everyone who has helped plan, organize, record and attend these many events!
Read More »

Beware! I have detected a secret virus in your CPU. Due to an interaction effect between your hardware, solar flares, and quantum flux, this virus will crash your computer and erase your hard drive sometime soon. There is only one way to prevent disaster: you must click the subscribe button over on the right there. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Did you do it? Good. Now you’re safe from that dastardly virus. How do you know my solution worked? Just wait. See, no crashing. You should really say thank you.

Now, I know some of you didn’t believe my urgent virus warning, and therefore didn’t take my proposed solution. But you’re not safe. That virus is still out there, lurking. It could strike at any minute. And when your computer eventually crashes, you should feel bad that you didn’t listen to me.

OK, I admit it. There is no virus. I did my best to exaggerate this claim without saying anything disprovable, in order to illustrate the curse of prevention. Imagine for a moment that you believed my claim about the dangerous virus. After investing in my proposed solution, you probably would be grateful that I “prevented” the problem from happening. In an example this ludicrous, that hopefully sounds funny. But companies make this mistake repeatedly.

Let’s take a common real-world example. It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems. That’s every bit as crazy as the bogus claim I made earlier. How do you know the problem was actually prevented? Isn’t it just as possible that it never would have occurred in the first place? Or, if it really was prevented, what was the opportunity cost of choosing to prevent it ahead of time?

In other words, there is a formula for evaluating the success of any proposed prevention:

IF

cost of prevention < (probability of problem occurring) * (cost of problem)

THEN

do it

ELSE

ignore it

The killer thing about this formula is that every single term in it is unknown. And in most situations, there is significant cost involved in negotiating over the right estimates to plug in.

I have been present for these kinds of negotiations many times in my career. They are usually among the most heated arguments a company has. Like other situations that I’ve written about, they tend to devolve into competing all-or-nothing camps. One side insists that we should build things the right way, and that failure to anticipate problems is an abdication of responsibility. But the other side wants to get things done, and doing things right somehow, always, every time seems to involve postponing useful work. Both sides suspect that deep down, secretly, the other side is using their arguments over architecture (or planning, or roadmaps, or specifications) to advance a secret agenda. Ever notice how people’s pet projects seem to be exempt?

Why do they harbor that paranoia? It’s easy to see. Say you want to derail someone else’s project. Just start enumerating corner cases. Imagine everything that might go wrong, and insist that those things be prevented before the project is launched. It’s a win-win: you either dramatically increase the proposed cost of the project, making it easier to get cancelled, or you can rely on some “I-told-you-so’s” when the project does launch and encounters inevitable problems, which gives you credibility in future such arguments. On the other side, if you want a project to go forward, you can suddenly "discover" all kinds of extra efficiencies that make this particular project an especially good deal. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. that now makes it a simple matter to add this feature without much risk of corner cases. Right.

Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup. There are just so many ways for a startup to fail. I’ve lived through the over-architecture failure – where attempting to prevent all kinds of problems wound up delaying the company from putting out any product at all. And I’ve seen companies fail the other way – the so-called Friendster effect: having a high-profile technical failure just when customer adoption is going wild.

Most of the advice I’ve heard on this topic has been a kind of split-the-difference approach. The theory is that there is some truth in both camps, and the right way to manage the disagreement is to sprinkle a little bit of both into our plans. A little planning, but not too much. Prevent some corner cases, but not others. The problem with this advice, as I’ve experienced it, is that it’s pretty hard to give a rationale for why we should anticipate this problem but ignore another one. To the people being managed that way, it feels like the boss is being capricious or arbitrary. And that feeds the conspiracy feeling that decisions have an ulterior motive.

So I’d like to lay out a systematic way to avoid death-by-corner-case without sacrificing the company’s ability to grow. In other words, a principled way to combine agility with stability.

The first shift required is a change in orientation from prevention to fast response. Many problems are catastrophic only if allowed to fester. Imagine you hear from an engineer that they are worried that a certain payment subsystem is unreliable, and will therefore double-charge some customers. One way to evaluate this fear is to spend time on analysis: how many customers will be affected? What is the maximum amount of overcharging that will happen? How upset will those customers be? How much will it cost to solve this problem now? In this framework, we’ll tend to either invest in the proposed prevention or do nothing.

But there is another way. Imagine we asked the following question: if this problem does materialize in the future, how will we know? In a lot of systems, it might take days or weeks to uncover a problem-in-action. Maybe we already have a mechanism for customers to report this kind of problem, or maybe we could invest in a simple alert counter that increments whenever the problem happens, and sends a notification if it happens often. Then, we’d know immediately if the problem ever manifests, and get a simultaneous report on its severity.

We can also ask: how would we fix the problem if it does occur? If we’re practicing continuous deployment, we can be confident that we’ll be able to rush an emergency fix into production without risking introducing further problems. If not, maybe an investment in that direction would be more warranted. In other words, you can always invest in process, batch size reduction, and agility as an alternative to preventing a specific problem.

There are two principal reasons why this second approach is better. The first is that it allows us to make variable-sized investments in response to a feared corner case. Instead of “do the fix” or “hack it up” we can choose increments of investment anywhere in-between. That gives teams a lot more flexibility in the face of the numerous corner cases that come up. Second, investing in fast response is a more resilient strategy. If we’re wrong about the corner case, the investments we’ve made in fast response will allow us to respond faster to whatever problems do appear. By contrast, most investments in traditional prevention are designed to anticipate and fix a specific problem.

But investing in fast response doesn’t solve the whole problem. That’s because there’s still a lot of judgment involved in choosing the right level of investment to make in any given case. It can feel  incongruous to people who are used to the traditional model because it has a built in paradox: you will encounter a lot of cases where you know a problem exists, and you know how to solve that problem, and you are investing time related to that problem but are not investing in the solution. To a lot of smart engineers, that sounds crazy.

That’s why it’s essential to pair the fast response aspect of this approach with a disciplined commitment to root cause analysis. Regular readers of this blog will know the specific methodology I recommend, called Five Whys. But regardless of the technique you use, it’s essential that you get regular feedback about how your prevention decisions are turning out in practice. When you’re heavily investing in prevention, you need to evaluate whether that’s causing your team to go faster. If it’s not, then you’re investing too much in one-off solutions and not enough in process. And if you’re having a lot of problems, you need to have a mechanism for ramping up your investment in prevention to avoid having your whole team dragged down into firefighting. Systems like Five Whys create a natural feedback loop: when you're going too fast, causing a lot of new problems, it slows you down to invest in prevention. As those preventative efforts pay off, the team naturally speeds up.

The most dangerous situation you can find yourself in is investing in prevention and also firefighting all the time. That’s why there is a third essential component to this approach. You need to have a long-term vision of where you’re headed. That’s because not all investments are created equal. In most real-world situations, any particular problem (or proposed problem) will have multiple kinds of solutions that you could invest in. Take your typical scalability bottleneck. It could be fixed by refactoring the code itself, or by partitioning the data horizontally or vertically, or by adding additional capacity at the point of the bottleneck, or by shaping end-user demand, or even by removing the feature itself. At any given point in time, which is the right solution? Here’s my belief: the right solution is always the one that moves you closest to your vision while simultaneously solving the problem. Thus it is unacceptable to choose a solution that solves the problem but makes not progress towards the end-state, just as it is unacceptable to invest in a solution that builds a beautiful vision but doesn’t solve today’s problem. Finding such a solution is sometimes challenging, but that’s the moment when it really pays to spend some time thinking through alternative approaches. In my experience, where there is a will to find a synthesis solution, there is always a way.

Read More »

Suatu pagi di tahun 2006.

Salam
Umair, kenapa kau senyap je sekarang? Lama betul tak sms aku? Kau ade problem ke?

Sebuah sms tiba-tiba menerjah masuk ke inbox. Sesaat aku terdiam memikirkannya. Terjemahan Al-Quran yang sedang dibaca, diletakkan ke tepi. Lalu jemariku mula menekan-nekan papan kekunci handphone 3310 ku.

Salam,

Takde la. Biasa je. Sibuk dengan SPM yang dah nak dekat kut.

Ye la nk SPM pn, takkanla sampai senyap macam ni. Pelik aku tengok ko sekarang, dah tak mesra macam dulu.

Alamak, macam mana la aku nak terang kat minah sorang ni. Ya Allah, bantulah aku menyampaikannya.

Alah, biasa je. Prasaan ko je kut. Em, ko tau aku clash kn?

Ade gak dengar. Tapi kau tak cakap apa-apa pun. Aku diam je la. Selalu kan kau cerita semua masalah kat aku. Kata kawan.

'Memang kau kawan aku. Tapi kau perempuan. Aku lelaki. Aku tak senang nak luahkan perasaan kat kau.' Kata-kata tu hanya terlintas di dalam hati.

Erm, kau tau kenapa aku clash kan..?

Tau. Kau clash sebab couple tu haram kan? Tapi takkanla sampai kawan dengan aku pun jadi haram jugak?

Alamak, nada dia ni dah lain macam.

Bukanla macam tu. Boleh je kawan. Kalau ada masalah study, leh je bincang. Nak tanya pendapat ke, leh je sms. Cuma aku takde la nak sms saje-saje. Gurau-gurau macam dulu.

Ye la. Macam tu sama je macam tak berkawan. Ape-ape la. Suka hati kau. Hilanglah seorang kawan..~~ ok..

Salam..

Ika, aku tak bermaksud macam tu.

Tiada lagi mesej yang hadir.

Aku menarik nafas dalam-dalam.

Aduh..macam mana ni. Berat betul rasa hati ni. Ya Allah, aku tidak mahu menyakiti hati hamba-hambaMu namun aku khuatir andai aku tidak mampu menjaga hatiku. Ya Allah, Engkau Maha Mengetahu bahawa kelemahanku adalah wanita. Aku tidak kuat menghadapi mereka. Berbicara dengan mereka sahaja menyebabkan hatiku berbunga-bunga. Dan aku tahu itu merupakan sebagian daripada zina. Sedangkan hati juga boleh berzina.

“Nasib anak Adam mengenai zina telah ditetapkan. Tidak mustahil dia pernah melakukannya. Dua mata, zinanya memandang. Dua telinga, zinanya mendengar. Lidah, zinanya berkata. Tangan, zinanya memukul. Kaki, zinanya melangkah. Hati, zinanya ingin dan rindu, sedangkan faraj (kemaluan) hanya mengikuti atau tidak mengikuti.”

[Sahih Muslim, hadith ke 2282.]

Aku malu Ya-Allah. Apabila berbicara denganMu ketika solat, hatiku tidak berbunga seperti itu. Ketika berdoa kepadaMu, hatiku tidak sebahagia ketika aku ber'SMS' dengan kekasihku dahulu. Malah di setiap saat dan ketika aku lebih banyak mengingati kekasihku daripadaMu. Sedangkan Engkau telah berfirman :

Hai orang-orang yang beriman, janganlah harta-hartamu dan anak-anakmu melalaikan kamu dari mengingat Allah. Barang siapa yang membuat demikian maka mereka itulah orang-orang yang rugi.

[63:9]

Ampuni aku Ya-Allah...

"Umair, kenapa kau termenung je ni?" Tanya Zulhakimi.

Aku memandang kepadanya. Masih terdiam.

Dia ni pengerusi Badan Dakwah dan Kerohanian (BDK) sekolah aku. Dulu dia ni antara orang yang aku cukup anti. Asyik-asyik ajak orang turun subuh, baca ma'thurat, tegur itu ini. Ramai juga yang tak suka dengan dia sebenarnya. Tapi sekarang dah jadi antara kawan-kawan yang selalu berbual dengan aku. Dan aku pun dah mula jadi macam dia. Tegur-tegur orang. Bagi tazkirah. Sampai kawan-kawan semua pun ramai yang pelik tengok aku. Siap yang anti aku pun dah ada. Sedangkan memberi peringatan itukan perintah Allah,

Dan tetaplah memberi peringatan, karena sesungguhnya peringatan itu bermanfaat bagi orang-orang yang beriman.
[51:55]

Dan kalau aku tak mengingatkan, nanti aku akan dipertanggungjawabkan:

Dan (ingatlah) ketika suatu umat di antara mereka berkata: "Mengapa kamu menasihati kaum yang Allah akan membinasakan mereka atau mengazab mereka dengan azab yang amat keras?" Mereka menjawab: "Agar kami mempunyai alasan (pelepas tanggung jawab) kepada Tuhanmu, dan supaya mereka bertakwa".

[7:164]

Mengapa mereka sebegitu sekali memusuhiku?

Aku dah berubah. Ya. Aku memang dah banyak berubah. Sejak dengar ceramah motivasi Kem PureBase Training Center untuk program kecemerlangan SPM SMAPL 2006 tu, aku memang betul-betul merasakan diri perlu berubah.

*****

Penceramah itu seorang doktor perubatan biasa, namun ceramahnya penuh dengan ayat Al-Quran dan hadith. Seolah-olah dia menghafal Al-Quran! Yang membuatkan aku amat tertarik, dia menyatakan dengan spesifik di mana ayat Al-Quran itu terletak di dalam Al-Quran. Gayanya tidak ubah seperti Dr. Zakir Naik yang amat aku kagumi.

Aku amat terkesan dengan kata-katanya,

"Sekarang ni umat Islam amat jauh daripada Al-Quran. Dan ini memang strategi orang kafir. Mereka menjauhkan umat Islam daripada Al-Quran. Tahu apa yang jadi pada orang-orang yang tidak menjadikan Al-Quran sebagai panduan? Syaitan akan menjadi teman karibnya. Ni bukan saya yang kata, Allah yang kata. Lihat dalam surah Az-Zukhruf, Surah ke-43, ayat ke-36. Hah, kamu, tolong bacakan."

Tiba-tiba dia point kat aku.


Aku pun baca lah,
Barang siapa yang berpaling dari pengajaran Tuhan Yang Maha Pemurah (Al Qur'an), Kami adakan baginya setan (yang menyesatkan) maka setan itulah yang menjadi teman yang selalu menyertainya.
[43:36]

'Ya Allah, lama aku tak jadikan Al-Quran sebagai teman. Adakah sebab tu aku banyak betul buat maksiat?' Detik hatiku.

Doktor itu menyambung,

"Sebenarnya ramai orang yang ada sekarang ni pandai ilmu agama. Ramai yang sekolah agama. Ramai yang dah tahu halal haram. Tapi kenapa mereka masih bermaksiat? Kenapa kemungkaran masih bermaharajalela? Kerana tiada Da'i yang muncul untuk memberi peringatan. Semuanya takut untuk bersuara. Tiada yang kemudiannya bersungguh-sungguh untuk mentarbiyah ummat yang kita semakin rosak. Bila kita terus ikut hawa nafsu, dan menjadikannya tuhan, maka Allah akan membiarkan kita sesat. Cuba kita sama-sama hayati surah Aj-Jatsiah, surah ke-45, ayat ke-23."

Alif yang berada di sebelahku membacakannya:

Maka pernahkah kamu melihat orang yang menjadikan hawa nafsunya sebagai tuhannya, dan Allah membiarkannya sesat berdasarkan ilmu-Nya dan Allah telah mengunci mati pendengaran dan hatinya dan meletakkan tutupan atas penglihatannya? Maka siapakah yang akan memberinya petunjuk sesudah Allah (membiarkannya sesat). Maka mengapa kamu tidak mengambil pelajaran?

[45:23]

Entah kenapa ayat itu amat-amat menusuk ke dalam hatiku. Tiba-tiba mataku berair. Aku amat terkesima. Aku terbayang segala dosa-dosa yang aku dengan sesuka hati melakukannya. Mataku, apa yang telah aku lihat dengannya. Tanganku, untuk apa telah aku gunakan ia. Telingaku, apa yang telah aku dengar dengannya. Dan yang paling aku takuti, apakah aku akan disesatkan? Kerana bermaksiat kepadaNya dalam keadaan sedar. Sengaja memilih untuk bermaksiat? Astaghfirullah...mataku terus berair. Tanganku terus melaju mencatat ayat-ayat yang dibacakannya.

Selesai ceramahnya, aku mendekatinya.

"Doktor, tadi doktor kata, Allah akan sesatkan mereka yang menjadikan hawa nafsu sebagai tuhan. Saya dah cuba menguasai diri, tapi selalu juga melakukan maksiat. Adakah Allah akan menyesatkan saya?"

Mataku semakin membanjir. Entah kenapa begitu lunak sekali hatiku ketika itu. Sambil memegang bahuku, dia berkata,

"Akh, orang bertaqwa tu bukannya orang yang tidak pernah melakukan dosa, tetapi dia adalah orang yang apabila melakukan dosa, dia melihat kesalahannya dan tidak mengulanginya lagi. Lihat ayat ni:

Dan bersegeralah kamu kepada ampunan dari Tuhanmu dan kepada surga yang luasnya seluas langit dan bumi yang disediakan untuk orang-orang yang bertakwa,

(yaitu) orang-orang yang menafkahkan (hartanya), baik di waktu lapang maupun sempit, dan orang-orang yang menahan amarahnya dan memaafkan (kesalahan) orang. Allah menyukai orang-orang yang berbuat kebajikan.

Dan (juga) orang-orang yang apabila mengerjakan perbuatan keji atau menganiaya diri sendiri, mereka ingat akan Allah, lalu memohon ampun terhadap dosa-dosa mereka dan siapa lagi yang dapat mengampuni dosa selain daripada Allah? Dan mereka tidak meneruskan perbuatan kejinya itu, sedang mereka mengetahui.

[3:133-135]

Maksudnya, mereka ni buat dosa tak? Buat kan? Tapi bila tersedar, mereka beristighfar, minta ampun daripada Allah dan tidak mengulanginya lagi.

"Saya menyesal, tapi selalu buat lagi."

"Akhi, kita kena berusaha meninggalkan maksiat yang kita lakukan. Setiap kali terfikir mengenainya, beristighfar, kan Allah kata dia akan menambahkan kekuatan kita apabila kita beristighfar? Tengok ayat ni:

Dan (dia berkata): "Hai kaumku, mohonlah ampun kepada Tuhanmu lalu bertobatlah kepada-Nya, niscaya Dia menurunkan hujan yang sangat deras atasmu, dan Dia akan menambahkan kekuatan kepada kekuatanmu, dan janganlah kamu berpaling dengan berbuat dosa."

[11:52]
Jadi banyak-banyak beristighfar, insya-Allah nta akan mampu meninggalkan maksiat itu."

Aku terus menangis teresak-esak. Perasaan sedih, bahagia dan terharu bercampur-baur menjadi satu.Sedih, mengenangkan dosa yang dilakukan. Bahagia, kerana terlihat sedikit sinar di hujung laluan. Terharu, kerana masih ada manusia yang seperti doktor ini. Aku terus menangis tanpa menghiraukan puluhan mata yang memandang ke arahku. Di saat itu aku berazam untuk meninggalkan segala kemaksiatan yang masih kulakukan.

*****

Mataku tiba-tiba berair. Setiap kali mengenang peristiwa bersejarah itu pasti mataku akan berair. Hati bertahmid syukur kerana Allah memberi peluang untukku menyedari kesilapan dan meninggalkan maksiat yang kulakukan.

"Umair, kenapa kau menangis? Ada masalah ke? Ceritalah kat aku." Dia kembali bertanya. Semakin pelik dengan diriku yang tiba-tiba menangis.

"Takde la. Aku tengah fikir sesuatu. Susah betul nak berubah ni kan."

"Nak cari redha Allah memang susah. Banyak benda yang kita kena tinggalkan. Kan hadith sahih yang diriwayatkan oleh  Bukhari tu jelas. 'Dihiasi syurga itu dengan perkara-perkara yang dibenci. Dan dihiasi neraka itu dengan syahwat.' Dan memang banyak benda yang manusia suka tu adalah syahwat. Dan itu memang kita kena cuba jauhi."

"Betul cakap kau Kimi. Terima kasih kerana mengingatkan."

Zulhakimi tersenyum. Wajahnya begitu menenangkan. Agaknya inilah wajah orang yang dekat dengan Allah. Bersih, bercahaya lagi membahagiakan orang yang manatapnya. 'Ya Allah, kurniakan aku wajah yang bercahaya sepertinya.' Bisikku di dalam hati.

Fikiran tiba-tiba melayang ke peristiwa di dalam kelas tempoh hari.

*****

Aku  membuka loker buku di belakang, ada sekeping nota.

'Assalamu'alaikum. Lama betul tak dapat nota daripada awak. Kenapa, senyap je. Nota last saya awak tak reply pun?'

Aku dan Min ketika itu masih membahasakan diri dengan 'saya-awak'. Kami tidak kelihatan lebih daripada sekadar kawan biasa. Di dalam kelas tidak pernah bertegur sapa. Namun secara 'underground', kami sangat kerap berhubung. Aku yang memulakan tradisi ini. Aku menyelitkan nota kecil di dalam lokernya. Aku memulakan langkah untuk mendekatinya kerana ingin memenangi hatinya.

= = = = = = = = =

Assalamu'alaikum, saya ni tuan loker atas awak. Nak berkawan boleh?

Itulah kali pertama aku menghantar nota kepada seorang perempuan. Jantung aku amat berdebar-debar ketika itu. Macam nak tercabut pun ada. Mulanya aku dah nak kecewa sebab tiada reply keesokkan harinya.

Setiap kali ke loker aku berdebar-debar untuk membukanya. 'Dia dah reply belum ni?' Tetapi sehari sebelum cuti pertengahan tahun, tiba-tiba..

Wa'alaikumussalam. Boleh je. Kenapa, sebelum ni kita bukan kawan ke? Sorry tak reply sebelum ni. Nanti cuti kalau ada masa hantarlah email kat saya. Ni email saya:

si_gadis_itu@yahoo.com

Awak balik naik bas ke? Balik baik-baik ye. Selamat bercuti.

- MIN-

Dia reply! Wah..tak tergambar kegembiraan aku masa tu. Berbunga-bunga habis hati.Sejak itu kami sering berbalas-balas nota.

Namun akhirnya kami hanya berakhir sebagai kawan. namun hatiku tetap berbunga-bunga setiap kali mendapat nota-nota daripadanya.

= = = = = = = = =

Nampaknya tindakkan aku mendiamkan diri tidak berjaya menyampaikan mesej yang jelas.

Wa'alaikumussalam.
Saya tak reply sebab macam rasa tak perlu pun. Tak penting pun kan? Lagipun susah nak jaga hati bila berinteraksi dengan awak. Awak pun tahu macam mana perasaan saya terhadap awak dulu kan. Sejak clash aritu saya dah banyak berubah. Maaflah, saya dah berubah. Saya bukan Umair yang dulu lagi. Kita masih kawan, tetapi takla macam dulu lagi. Nak mintak saya ajar addmath mungkin boleh la. Tapi baik awak mintak tolong Ain. Dia lagi pandai kan? Bukan ape, saya rasa dia lagi layak ajar awak. Dia perempuan, awak perempuan. Saya lelaki. Dalam Islam, lelaki dan perempuan sepatutnya tidak berinteraksi tanpa tujuan yang jelas. Sepatutnya kita yang belajar di Sekolah Menengah AGAMA Persekutuan ni amat memahami situasi ni. Jadi saya harap, kalau bukan ada apa-apa hal yang penting, tak perlulah awak hubungi saya ya. Maafkan saya andai selama ini ada tersilap kata atau tersalah bahasa.

Seorang kawan,

-UMAIR-

Keesokkannya dia hanya membalas dengan nota yang cukup pendek,

Ok. Saya faham. Lepas ni saya tak hubungi awak lagi. Ni nota terakhir.
Hilanglah seorang kawan...
Assalamualaikum.

-MIN-

*****

Beratnya hati menghadapi segala situasi ini. Meninggalkan sesuatu yang sudah mendarah daging di dalam jiwa merupakan sesuatu yang amat perit. Umpama hati ditoreh-toreh oleh pisau belati. Memang bahaya apabila dunia diletakkan di dalam hati. Kerana itu, biarlah ia hanya di tangan. Agar mudah kita mengurusnya.

Teringat kata-kata Al-Ghazali:
Jangan resah andai ada yang membencimu, kerana masih ramai yang mencintaimu di dunia. Tetapi resahlah andai Allah membencimu, kerana tiada lagi yang mencintaimu di akhirat.

Ya Allah, bantulah aku untuk terus berubah mencari redhaMu. Tiada yang lebih indah daripada mendapat redhaMu. Seindah apapun kenikmatan dunia, jika Engkau tidak meredhainya, tentulah ia hanyalah sia-sia. Ya Allah, biarlah seluruh dunia membenciku, tetapi Engkau mencintaiku Ya Allah..

Maafkan aku wahai kawan-kawanku...tidak pernah terniat untuk menyakiti hati kalian. Tujuanku hanya mencari redha Allah. Kalian tetap adalah kawan-kawanku yang kucintai, sebagai muslim. Semoga kalian dibimbing oleh Allah ke jalan yang benar. Mohon doakan untuk diri ini juga.

-umairzulkefli-

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"Umair, lama betul kau tak update blog kau. Kau dah malas menulis ke?"


"Idea tu ada je. Tapi sibukla."


"Sibuk bukan alasan, kalau nak menulis, boleh je. Pandai-pandaila uruskan masa."


"Erm.."

Mungkin ini delema yang dihadapi oleh beberapa blogger yang ada di tanah air.


Pada hakikatnya mereka bukan tidak mahu menulis, tetapi mungkin ada di antara mereka yang terlalu mementingkan kualiti. Namun akibatnya blog dibiarkan bersawang di alam maya.


Tiada artikel baru.


Tiada cerita terkini.


Tiada apa yang menarik untuk disinggahi lagi.


Cuma yang tinggal adalah koleksi artikel-artikel lama.


Mungkin saya adalah salah seorang daripada mereka yang bersikap seperti itu. Idea yang datang mencurah-curah tetapi tidak pernah diabadikan ke dalam blog.

Juga mungkin kerana saya amat mencuba mengurangkan penulisan 'Open Diary Blog'. Menceritakan hari-hari kehidupan diri sendiri. Saya lebih cenderung untuk menulis perkara-perkara yang 'difikirkan' berfaedah namun hakikatnya saya terkurung dalam cara berfikir yang sempit.


Menulis hanya artikel ilmiah.


Menulis hanya artikel tazkirah.


Menulis hanya cerpen dakwah.


Ramai yang terlupa bahawa teknik penceritaan boleh mendatangkan kesan yang baik kepada pembaca. Dan semua orang pasti suka membaca cerita. Sebab itu artikel-artikel berbentuk cerpen amat diminati ramai orang. Lihat sahaja top artikel di iluvislam.com, semuanya cerpen-cerpen. Dan tambahan, artikel tentang percintaan.^_^

Remaja Malaysia amat sensitif tentang cinta. Saya akan bahas dalam post yang berlainan tentang soal cinta ini.


Untuk kawan-kawan yang menulis blog, mari sama-sama cuba menyampaikan yang terbaik kepada para pembaca.


Selamat menyambut Hari Raya Aidilfitri.

Semoga kita sama-sama kembali kepada fitarah insani.

Fitrah seorang hamba.


Ampun maaf dipinta.


Sekian
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There are only two opportunities left this year to see a Lean Startup presentation in the US - for free. In order to make those events the best they can be, I'd like to ask for your help.

This Wednesday, I've been invited to give a lecture as part of Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. I'm really honored to be included in this program, as it's one I've admired and enjoyed for many years. They produce fantastic video podcasts, which you can explore here. And in mid-November, I'll be speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. Once again, this will be a web2open hybrid session; I'll post details for how to register as soon as I get them.

I'd like to incorporate feedback into these presentations, and so here's my request for help. If you've seen me present in any format (online or in-person), would you take a few minutes to fill out the following short survey?

Click Here to take survey

If you haven't seen any of my presentations before, feel free to take a moment and peruse the video, audio, or slides available on this blog. As always, if you can come to one of these events, please come say hello and let me know that you're a reader. Hope to see you there!
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Beliau adalah Asma’ binti Ma`d bin Tamim bin Al-Haris bin Ka`ab Bin Malik bin Quhafah, dipanggil dengan nama Ummu Ubdillah. Beliau adalah termasuk salah satu di antara empat akhwat mukminah yang telah mendapat pengesahan dari Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam dengan sabdanya: "Ada empat akhwat mukminat yaitu Maimunah, Ummu Fadl, Salma dan Asma" . 

Beliau masuk Islam sebelum kaum muslimin memasuki rumah al-Arqam. Beliau adalah istri pahlawan di antara sahabat yaitu Ja`far bin Abi Thalib, sahabat yang memiliki dua sayap sebagaimana gelar yang Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam berikan terhadap beliau. Rasulullah Shallallâhu 'alaihi wa sallam manakala ingin mengucapkan salam kepada Abdullah bin Ja`far beliau bersabda :

‘Selamat atas kamu wahai putra dari seorang yang memiliki dua sayap (Dzul janahain).”

Asma’ termasuk wanita muhajirah pertama, beliau turut berhijrah bersama suaminya yaitu ja`far bin Abi Thalib menuju Habasyah, beliau merasakan pahit getirnya hidup di pengasingan. Adapun suaminya adalah juru bicara kaum muslimin dalam menghadapi raja Habasyah, an-Najasyi.

Di bumi pengasingan tersebut beliau melahirkan tiga putra yakni Abdullah, Muhammad dan Aunan. Adapun putra beliau yaitu Abdullah sangat mirip dengan ayahnya, sedangkan ayahnya sangat mirip dengan Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam, sehingga hal itu menggembirakan hati beliau dan menumbuhkan perasaan rindu untuk melihat Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam. Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda kepada Ja`far :

“engkau menyerupai bentuk (fisik)-ku dan juga akhlakku.”

Ketika Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam memerintahkan bagi para muhajirin untuk bertolak menuju Madinah maka hampir-hampir Asma’ terbang karena girangnya, inilah mimpi yang menjadi kenyataan dan jadilah kaum Muslimin mendapatkan negeri mereka dan kelak mereka akan menjadi tentara-tentara Islam yang akan menyebarkan Islam dan meninggikan kalimat Allah.

Begitulah, Asma ‘ keluar dengan berkendaraan tatkala hijrah untuk kali yang kedua dari negri Habasyah menuju negeri Madinah. Tatkala rombongan muhajirin tiba di Madinah, ketika itu pula mereka mendengar berita bahwa kaum muslimin baru menyelesaikan peperangan dan membawa kemenangan, takbirpun menggema di segala penjuru karena bergembira dengan kemenangan pasukan kaum Muslimin dan kedatangan muhajirin dari Habsyah.

Ja`far bin Abi Thalib datang disambut oleh Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam dengan gembira kemudian beliau cium dahinya seraya bersabda :

“Demi Allah aku tidak tahu mana yang lebih menggembirakanku, kemenangan khaibar ataukah kedatangan ja`far.”

Asma’ masuk ke dalam rumah Hafshah binti Umar tatkala Nabi menikahinya, tatkala itu Umar masuk ke rumah Hafshah sedangkan Asma’ berada di sisinya, lalu beliau bertanya kepada Hafshah, ‘Siapakah wanita ini?” Hafshah menjawab, “Dia adalah Asma’ binti Umais? Umar bertanya, inikah wanita yang datang dari negeri Habasyah di seberang lautan?’ Asma menjawab, “Benar.” Umar berkata; ‘Kami telah mendahului kalian untuk berhijrah bersama Rasul, maka kami lebih berhak terhadap diri Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam dari pada kalian. “Mendengar hal itu Asma’ marah dan tidak kuasa membendung gejolak jiwanya sehingga beliau berkata: “Tidak demi Allah, kalian bersama Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam sedangkan beliau memberi makan bagi yang kelaparan di antara kalian dan mengajarkan bagi yang masih bodoh diantara kalian, adapun kami di suatu negeri atau di bumi yang jauh dan tidak disukai yakni Habasyah, dan semua itu adalah demi keta`atan kepada Allah dan Rasul-Nya shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam.”

Kemudian Asma’ diam sejenak selanjutnya berkata: “Demi Allah aku tidak makan dan tidak minum sehingga aku laporkan hal itu kepada Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam, kami diganggu dan ditakut-takuti, hal itu juga akan aku sampaikan kepada Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam, aku akan tanyakan kepada beliau, demi Allah aku tidak berdusta, tidak akan menyimpang dan tidak akan menambah-nambah.”

Tatakala Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam datang, maka berkata Asma’ kepada Nabi shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam, “Wahai Nabi Allah sesungguhnya Umar berkata begini dan begini.” Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam bertanya kepada Umar, “Apa yang telah engkau katakan kepadanya?”. Umar menjawab, “Aku katakan begini dan begini”. Rasulullah Shallallâhu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda kepada Asma`:

“Tiada seorangpun yang berhak atas diriku melebihi kalian, adapun dia (Umar) dan para sahabatnya berhijrah satu kali akan tetapi kalian ahlus safinah (yang menumpang kapal) telah berhijrah dua kali.”

Maka menjadi berbunga-bungalah hati Asma’ karena pernyataan Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam tersebut lalu beliau sebarkan berita tersebut di tengah-tengah manusia, hingga orang-orang mengerumuni beliau untuk meminta penjelasan tentang kabar tersebut. Asma’ berkata: “Sungguh aku melihat Abu Musa dan orang-orang yang telah berlayar (berhijrah bersama Asma’ dan suaminya) mendatangiku dan menanyakan kepadaku tentang hadits tersebut, maka tiada sesuatu dari dunia yang lebih menggembirakan dan lebih besar artinya bagi mereka dari apa yang disabdakan Nabi shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam kepada mereka.”

Manakala pasukan kaum muslimin menuju Syam, di antara ketiga panglimanya terdapat suami dari Asma’ yakni Ja`far bin Abi Thalib. Di sana di medan perang Allah memilih beliau di antara sekian pasukan untuk mendapatkan gelar syahid di jalan Allah.

Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam mendatangi rumah Asma’ dan menanyakan ketiga anaknya, merekapun berkeliling di sekitar Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam, kemudian Rasulullah mencium mereka dan mengusap kepala mereka hingga kedua matanya melelehkan air mata. Berkatalah Asma’ dengan hati yang berdebar-debar menyiratkan kesedihan, “Demi ayah dan ibuku, apa yang membuat anda menangis? Apakah telah sampai suatu kabar kepada anda tentang Ja`far dan sahabatnya?” Beliau menjawab, “Benar, dia gugur hari ini.”

Tidak kuasa Asma’ menahan tangisnya kemudian Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam menghiburnya dan berkata kepadanya: “Berkabunglah selama tiga hari, kemudian berbuatlah sesukamu setelah itu.”

Selanjutnya Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda kepada anggota keluarga beliau: “Buatkanlah makanan bagi keluarga Ja`far, karena telah datang peristiwa yang menyibukkan mereka.”

Tiada yang dilakukan oleh wanita mukminah ini melainkan mengeringkan air mata, bersabar dan berteguh hati dengan menghaarapkan pahala yang agung dari Allah. Bahkan sewaktu malam beliau bercita-cita agar syahid sebagimana suaminya. terlebih lebih tatkla beliau mendengar salah seorang laki-laki dari Bani Murrah bin Auf berkata: "Tatkala perang tersebut, demi Allah seolah-olah aku melihat Ja`far ketika melompat dari kudanya yang berwarna kekuning-kuningan kemudian beliau berperang hingga terbunuh. Beliau sebelum terbunuh berkata:

Wahai jannah (surga) yang aku dambakan mendiaminya
harum semerbak baunya, sejuk segar air minumnya
tentara Romawi menghampiri liang kuburnya
terhalang jauh dari sanak keluarganya
kewajibankulah menghantamnya kala menjumpainya

Kemudian Ja`far memegang bendera dengan tangan kanannya tapi dipotonglah tangan kanan beliau, kemudian beliau membawa dengan tangan kirinya, akan tetapi dipotonglah tangan kirinya, selanjutnya beliau kempit di dadanya dengan kedua lengannya hingga terbunuh.

Asma` mendapatkan makna dari sabda Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam yang pernah berkata kepada anaknya : "Assalamu`alaikum wahai putra dari seorang yang memiliki dua sayab."

Rupanya Allah menggantikan kedua tangan Ja`far yang terputus dengan dua sayap yang dengannya beliau terbang di jannah sekehendaknya. Seorang ibu yang shalihah tersebut tekun mendidik ketiga anaknya dan membimbing mereka agar mengikuti jejak yang telah ditempuh oleh ayahnya yang telah sayahid, serta membiasakan mereka dengan tabi`at iman.

Belum lama berselang dari waktu tersebut Abu Bakar Ash-Shidiq datang untuk meminang Asma` Binti Umais setelah wafatnya istri beliau Ummu Rumaan. tiada alasan lagi bagi Asma` menolak pinangan orang seutama Abu Bakar Ash Shidiq, begitulah akhirnya Asma` berpindah ke rumah Abu Bakar Ash Shidiq untuk menambah cahaya kebenaran dan cahaya iman dan untuk mencurahkan cinta dan kesetiaan di rumah tangganya.

Setelah sekian lama beliau malangsungkan pernikahan yang penuh berkah, Allah mengaruniai kepada mereka berdua seorang anak laki-laki. Mereka ingin melangsungkan haji wada`, maka Abu Bakar menyuruh istrinya untuk mandi dan meyertai haji setelah Rasulullah shallallâhu ‘alaihi wa sallam memintanya. Kemudian Asma` menyaksikan peristiwa demi peristiwa yang besar, namun peristiwa yang paling besar adalah wafatnya pemimpin anak Adam dan terputusnya wahyu dari langit. Kemudian beliau juga menyaksikan suaminya yakni Abu Bakar memegang tampuk kekhalifahan bagi kaum muslimin sehingga suaminya merampungkan problematika yang sangat rumit seperti memerangi orang murtad, memerangi orang-orang yang tidak mau berzakat serta mengirim pasukan Usamah dan sikapnya yang teguh laksana gunung tidak ragu -ragu dan tidak pula bimbang, demikian pula beliau menyaksikan bagaimana pertolongan Allah diberikan kepada kaum muslimin dengan sikap iman yang teguh tersebut.

Asma` senantiasa menjaga agar suaminya senantiasa merasa senang dan beliau hidup bersama suminya dengan perasaan yang tulus turut memikul beban bersama suaminya dalam urusan umat yang besar.

Akan tetapi hal itu tidak berlangsung lama sebab khalifah Ash-Shidiq sakit dan semakin bertambah parah hingga keringat membasahi pada bagian atas kedua pipi beliau. Ash-Shidiq dengan ketajaman perasaan seorang mukmin yang shiddiq merasakan dekatnya ajal beliau sehingga beliau bersegera untuk berwasiat. Adapun di antara wasiat beliau adalah agar beliau dimemandikan oleh istrinya Asma` binti Umais, di samping itu beliau berpesan kepada istrinya agar berbuka puasa yang mana beliau berkata: "Berbukalah karena hal itu membuat dirimu lebih kuat."

Asma` merasa telah dekatnya wafat beliau sehingga beliau membaca istirja` dan memohon ampun sedangkan kedua mata beliau tidak berpaling sedikitpun dari memandang suaminya yang ruhnya kembali dengan selamat kepada Allah. Hal itu membuat Asma` meneteskan air mata dan bersedih hati, akan tetapi sedikitpun beliau tidak mengatakan sesuatu melainkan yang diridhai Allah Tabaraka Wa Ta`ala, beliau tetap bersabar dan berteguh hati.

Selanjutnya beliau menunaikan perkara penting yang diminta oleh suaminya yang telah tiada, karena beliau adalah orang yang paling bisa dipercaya oleh suaminya. Mulailah beliau memandikan suaminya dan hal itu menambah kesedihan dan kesusahan beliau sehingga beliau lupa terhadap wasiat yang kedua. Beliau bertanya kepada para muhajirin yang hadir, "Sesungguhnya aku sedang berpuasa, namun hari ini adalah hari yang sangat dingin, apakah boleh bagiku untuk mandi?" mereka menjawab, "Tidak."

Di akhir siang sesuai dimakamkannya Ash-Shidiq tiba-tiba Asma` binti Umais ingat wasiat suaminya yang kedua yakni agar beliau berbuka (tidak melanjutkan shaum). Lantas apa yang hendak dilakukannya sekarang? sedangkan waktu hanya tinggal sebentar lagi, menunggu matahari tenggelam dan orang yang shaum diperbolehkan untuk berbuka? apakah dia akan menunggu sejenak saja untuk melanjutkan shaumnya?

Kesetiaan terhadap suaminya telah menghalangi beliau untuk mengkhianati wasiat suaminya yang telah pergi, maka beliau mengambil air dan minum kemudian berkata: "Demi Allah aku tidak akan melanggar janjinya hari ini."

Setelah kepergian suaminya, Asma` melazimi rumahnya dengan mendidik putra-putranya baik dari Ja`far maupun dari Abu Bakar, beliau menyerahkan urusan anak-anaknya kepada Allah dengan memohon kepada-Nya untuk memperbaiki anak-anaknya dan Allahpun memperbaiki mereka hingga mereka menjadi imam bagi orang-orang yang bertakwa. Inilah puncak dari harapan beliau di dunia dan beliau tidak mengetahui takdir yang akan menimpa beliau yang tersembunyi di balik ilmu Allah.

Dialah Ali bin Abi Thalib saudara dari Ja`far yang memiliki dua sayap mendatangi Asma` untuk meminangnya sebagai wujud kesetiaan Ali kepada saudaranya yang dia cintai yaitu Ja`far begitu pula Abu Bakar Ash Shidiq.

Setelah berulang-ulang berfikir dan mempertimbangkannya dengan matang maka beliau memutuskan untuk menerima lamaran dari Abi Thalib sehingga kesempatan tersebut dapat beliau gunakan untuk membantu membina putra-putra saudaranya Ja`far. Maka berpindahlah Asma` ke dalam rumah tangga Ali setelah wafatnya Fatimah Az Zahra dan ternyata beliau juga memiliki suami yang paling baik dalam bergaul. Senantiasa Asma` memiki kedudukan yang tinggi di mata Ali hingga beliau sering mengulang-ulang di setiap tempat, "Di antara wanita yang memiliki syahwat telah menipu kalian, maka aku tidak menaruh kepercayaan di antara wanita melebihi Asma` binti Umais”.

Allah memberikan kemurahan kepada Ali dengan mangaruniai anak dari Asma` yang bernama Yahya dan Aunan, berlalulah hari demi hari dan Ali menyaksikan pemandangan yang asing yakni putra saudaranya Ja`far sedang berbantahan dengan Muhammad bin Abu Bakar dan masing-masing membanggakan diri dari yang lain dengan mengatakan, "Aku lebih baik dari pada kamu dan ayahku lebih baik dari pada ayahmu." Ali tidak mengetahui apa yang mereka berdua katakan? Dan bagaimana pula memutuskan antara keduanya karena beliau merasa simpati dengan keduanya? Maka tiada yang dapat beliau lakukan selain memanggil ibu mereka yakni Asma` kemudian berkata: "Putuslah antara keduanya! "

Dengan pikirannya yang tajam dan hikmah yang mendalam beliau berkata: "Aku tidak melihat seorang pemuda di Arab yang lebih baik dari pada Ja`far dan aku tidak pernah melihat orang tua yang lebih baik dari pada Abu Bakar." Inilah yang menyelesaikan urusan mereka berdua dan kembalilah kedua bocah tersebut saling merangkul dan bermain bersama, namun Ali merasa takjub dengan bagusnya keputusan yang diambil Asma` terhadap anak-anaknya, dengan menatap wajah istrinya, beliau berkata: "Engkau tidak menyisakan bagi kami sedikitpun wahai Asma`?" Dengan kecerdasan yang tinggi dan keberanian yang luar biasa ditambah lagi adab yang mulia beliau berkata: Di antara ketiga orang pilihan, kebaikan anda masih di bawah kebaikan mereka."

Ali tidak merasa asing dengan jawaban istrinya yang cerdas, maka beliau berkata dengan kesatria dan akhlaq yang utama berkata: "Seandainya engkau tidak menjawab dengan jawaban tersebut niscaya aku cela dirimu."

Akhirnya kaum mislimin memilih Ali sebagai Khalifah setelah Utsman bin Affan, maka untuk kedua kalinya Asma` menjadi istri bagi seorang khalifah yang kali ini adalah Khalifah Rasyidin yang ke empat, semoga Allah meridhai mereka semua.

Asma` turut serta memikul tanggung jawab sebagai istri khalifah bagi kaum muslimin dalam menghadapi peristiwa-peristiwa yang besar. Begitu pula dengan Abdullah bin Ja`far dan Muhammad bin Abu Bakar berdiri disamping ayahnya dalam rangka membela kebenaran. Kemudian setelah berselang beberapa lama wafatlah putra beliau Muhammad bin Abu Bakar dan musibah tersebut membawa pengaruh yang besar pada diri beliau, akan tetapi Asma` seorang wanita mukminah tidak mungkin meyelisihi ajaran Islam dengan berteriak-teriak dan meratap dan hal lain-lain yang dilarang dalam Islam. Tiada yang beliau lakukan selain berusaha bersabar dan memohon pertolongan dengan sabar dan shalat terhadap penderitaan yang beliau alami. Asma` selalu memendam kesedihannya hingga payudaranya mengeluarkan darah.

Belum lagi tahun berganti hingga bertambah parah sakit beliau dan menjadi lemah jasmaninya dengan cepat kemudian beliau meninggal dunia. Yang tinggal hanyalah lambang kehormatan yang tercatat dalam sejarah setelah beliau mengukir sebaik-baik contoh dalam hal kebijaksanaan, kesabaran dan kekuatan.

(Diambil dari buku ‘Mengenal Shabiah Nabi’, terbitan Penerbit at-Tibyan, dengan sedikit penambahan atau pengurangan)

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Hello, we are David & Sheri Burns from Long Lane Honey Bee Farms in Central Illinois.
Today, I want to address a few controversial issues about preparing a colony for winter. For example, screen bottom boards are of tremendous benefit in reducing mites in the summer, but should we leave these open for the winter winds? And, what about feeding bees in the winter? How can we feed bees without the sugar water freezing? Before I address these and other issues, let me remind you of our upcoming beekeeping class.













Those of you who have visited us know why we are called Long Lane Honey Bee Farms. We live down a long lane, a long gravel lane and with heavy trucks coming and going, our road is constantly full of potholes. So, we added Thomas the Tractor to our arsenal against potholes. A 1958 Case 800 tractor with a front pallet fork and a rear box scraper. I'm a penny pincher. When we first moved here, I had 5 loads of gravel dumped in piles down my lane and for weeks, my son and I used shovels and rakes to smooth it out. I've been working on Thomas for a couple of weeks, repairing hydraulic lines but now the old tractor has joined the work force at the honey bee farm.
LESSON 66: Screen Bottom Boards In The Winter & Fall & Winter Feeding
In a previous lesson, I shared several approaches on how to prepare for winter. In this lesson I want to go into more detail about screen bottom boards and winter feeding.
Screen bottom boards prove to be very beneficial in the summer for reducing mites and for increasing ventilation. But do they pose a threat to a colony during the winter? That's a debated issue. Some cover their screen bottom boards while others leave them open. A few years ago, we did a simple test. We placed covers over 3 colony's screen bottom board and left the others open. We lost all three that were covered. So we always leave our screen bottom boards open all winter. It is our opinion that an open screen bottom board cuts down on excessive moisture. Cold air sinks and warm air rises, so the threat of an open screen bottom board, in our opinion, is minimal.

If your hive is up in the air 6 or 8 inches, then you want to prevent cold wind from curling up and blowing onto the cluster. This can be accomplished by building a wind block around your hive.
Remember, that a winter cluster warms only the cluster and not the inside of the hive. On an extremely cold night, the air several inches away from the cluster will be the same as outside the hive. The bees consume honey, and vibrate by flexing their muscles to generate heat, much like we do when we shiver. That heat is transferred throughout the cluster. They will be able to accomplish generating the cluster heat with or without the screen covered.
WHAT ABOUT WINTER FEEDING?
Many beekeepers allow their colonies to become extremely undernourished. Pollen and stored honey is essential to winter survival of colonies. In the fall, I work to beef up my colonies. It's tricky for me because of the number of colonies in one location. Even an inside top feeder can create a robbing frenzy. In the fall, boardman feeders placed in the front of hives is a certain robbing disaster.
So my approach is two fold. 1) During the fall only, after most nectar is no longer available, I want to prevent robbing, and 2) I want to beef up my colony nutrition for winter.
You can click on the images for a larger view. My approach is simple. I do use boardman feeders, but I place them on stands throughout the bee yard. And on dry days, I pour dry pollen out on the feed stands. My sugar mix is two parts sugar and one part water for fall. I have to make the holes bigger in the lids for the syrup to pass through. I also add one teaspoon of Honey-B-Healthy.
Winter-Bee-Kind For Winter Feed For Bees

In The summer of 2011 we introduced our Winter-Bee-Kind after several years of studying overwintering hives. We could barely keep up with production they were in such demand. We still make them right here at Long Lane Honey Bee Farms but we've expanded our production methods to keep up with demand. So many beekeepers told us that these were the only thing that got their hives through the winter. This year, it's time for the 2014 production year. We even mix the sugar and pollen and right here and pour the candy into the Winter-Bee-Kinds. WHAT IS A WINTER-BEE-KIND? It is a one piece candy board that provides food, ventilation, upper insulation and an upper exit/entrance to help bees remain healthier during the winter. Someone said it insulates, ventilates and feed-i-lates. With the built in upper vent, you don't have to worry about snow covering up your hive's lower entrance. The bees can still go in and out through the top vent spacing. We avoid shipping Winter-Bee-Kinds in hot weather and start shipping each September-March. You can place our Winter-Bee-Kinds on your hive anytime, even in the winter. Because it goes on top of the hive in place of the inner cover, and you are NOT removing any frames, it can be placed on the hive in cold weather. Just do it fast. Open the top, remove the inner cover and place the candy side down and the vent slot toward the front of the hive and you're done. Click here to order your Winter-Bee-Kinds Some form of a candy board has been around for a long time. Beekeepers of long ago placed candy in their hives to provide enough food for their bees to survive the long months of winter. There are various mixtures and receipts for candy boards. Some are made with soft candy and some with hard candy. The end result is still the same. The bees will consume the sugar as they need it. We've always been concerned about the amount of condensation that can develop in the hive during the winter. The bees produce heat within their hive and as the temperature is very cold outside the hive, condensation will develop on the warm side, just above the bees on the inner cover or top cover. This condensation can accumulate and drop down onto the winter cluster of bees below. Bees can stay warm in the winter but they must remain dry. If this cold water drips down onto the bees, it can reduce their ability to keep their cluster warm. The insulation on our Winter-Bee-Kind helps reduce the excessive moisture and even puts some of that moisture to work, as it accumulates on the candy and makes it easy for the bees to consume the sugar. Thus, a Winter-Bee-Kind can help lessen two winter stresses, the lack of food and excessive moisture. We make our Winter-Bee-Kinds with sugar and a healthy amount of pollen powder. Many beekeepers make the mistake of only feeding their bees sugar in the winter, but the bees also need protein which they obtain from pollen. Our Winter-Bee-Kinds come with pollen mixed in with the sugar.. Click here to order your Winter-Bee-Kind today. We recommend that you place candy boards on your hive any time between Oct-March.


Commonly Asked Questions
Q: Which way does the candy face in the hive?
A: The candy faces down just above the winter cluster. Normally, this means that the Winter-Bee-Kind would be placed on the brood box that contains the cluster. For example, if you overwinter your bees in a single deep hive body, the Winter-Bee-Kind would be placed on this deep hive body with the candy facing down toward the cluster. If you are using two deep hive bodies to overwinter, then the Winter-Bee-Kind would be placed on the top deep hive body. It is best to disregard the use of an inner cover, and simply place your top cover over the Winter-Bee-Kind.

Q: What about winter moisture?
A: Moisture can develop in the winter from condensation, a contrast of the heat the bees produce in the hive and the extreme cold temperature outside the hive. Condensation accumulates on the warm side, which means moistures collects on the inner cover or top cover above the hive. This can drip down on the bees and chill them during the winter. A Winter-Bee-Kind takes the place of an inner cover and any moisture that develops from condensation aids the bees in consuming the candy.

Q: How long will a Winter-Bee-Kind last on a hive?
A: On average about 3 weeks. However, a colony that has ample stored honey may not consume the candy board as fast or not at all until they need it. A colony close to starvation may consume a Winter-Bee-Kind within a week or two.

Q: Since Winter-Bee-Kinds are placed or replaced on the hive in the winter, can I open the hive up on a cold day?
A: It is best to place the candy boards on a hive when the temperature is above freezing and try to place the candy board on and have the hive sealed back up within 1-2 minutes. It should not take over 1 minute. Do not remove any frames in cold temperatures, only place your Winter-Bee-Kind on and off quickly. If you can choose the warmest day during the winter, that would be best. Try to avoid very cold, windy or rainy days.

Q: How do I refill a candy board?
A: It is best to send back your candy board and we will refill it for $7 plus shipping. If you are a good candy maker, you can do it yourself.

Q: How do I get one with a pollen?
A: Our Winter-Bee-Kinds contain pollen as well.

Q: Can I make my own?
A: You can, but you must experiment, because you do not want the candy to be too hard or too runny. The exact mix depends on your altitude, heat source and other conditions so it will be different from one location to another.

Q: Why was some liquid sugar dripping out of my Winter-Bee-Kind when I received it?
A: It is the nature of candy boards to be a bit on the dripping side even though the top may be hard. Do not be concerned if you see liquid sugar dripping out of your boards when you receive it. It usually means it was left on end during shipment for a prolong period of time. The bees will clean everything up and enjoy this soft liquid.

Q: How much sugar is in one Winter-Bee-Kind?
A: Approximately 5 pounds

Q: When do I put a Winter-Bee-Kind on my hive?
A: Any time! Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb are good months to place on the boards.

Q How often should I check my Winter-Bee-Kind?
A: Every three weeks, take a peek.

Q: Do you make Winter-Bee-Kind for 5 frame nucs or 8 frame hives?
A: Yes, check out our website to order, but carefully read the description to make sure you are ordering the correct size and type.

Q: Can the candy break loose from the board on the hive?
A: It rarely happens, but during extreme winter weather, the candy and separate from the board while on the hive. This is not a problem. The bees will continue to consume the sugar.

Q: When I place it on the hive, do I use my inner cover. Just how does it go on?
A: Winter-Bee-Kind takes the place of your inner cover. Simply place the Winter-Bee-Kind on the top of your upper hive body or super with the candy facing down, then place your top cover on top of the Winter-Bee-Kind. Be sure to use a rock or brick to make sure the wind does not blow your top cover off. There is overwhelming enthusiasm about our Winter-Bee-Kinds. Click here to order now.
Feel free to order your hives for the spring by calling us at 217-427-2678. We take credit cards over the phone, or you can order online by clicking here.
We always appreciate your business, whether it is for your woodenware hive needs, queens, packages, nucs, clothing or extraction equipment, we always appreciate your loyalty.
Here's how you can contact us:
Phone: 217-427-2678
Email: david@honeybeesonline.com
Web Address: http://www.honeybeesonline.com/
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Until next time, remember to BEE-Have yourself!

David & Sheri Burns
Long Lane Honey Bee Farms
Fairmount, Illinois
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