4 . Arranged Marriage

In an arranged marriage, the choice of a husband or wife is made by parents or elders. What do you think of this practise in today’s society? Discuss.

Marriage? Such an interesting topic to be discussed. In this century, we always heard that marriage is a pure relationship between two people in love. However, what is our first impression when it comes to arranged marriage? I believe, most will say, "arranged marriage?What nonsense! Arranged marriage in this millennium era? Such an old school and silly thing". But, do not eagerly make early judgement without thinking about it deeply, it can be relevant and irrelevant too. So, let’s have our chat about pro and cons before jumping to any conclusion.

Based on the statistic that had been made by a non-government organisation, almost 61%of the women in Malaysia faced a common problem which is late marriage. Late marriage had been an issue because many female or male workers are worried on finding a partner in their life as they are not getting much younger. Eventually, it will affects their working performance. So, by choice of a husband or wife by their parents or elders, thus can avoid the women from been getting involved in late marriage whether they live in village or in metropolitan city. Besides,the women do not need to be worry to be ‘andartu’ as the parents will find and arrange the marriage for them. So, in today society, this is very practical because a lot of successful person do not have time to find their life partner based on their busy life.

Besides that, probability of parents making the right choice on choosing a right spouse is usually 0.9. Parents are more experience in this journey of life and they do know us better than ourselves. They are the one who take care of us since we were born, and absolutely they want the best for us. Therefore, there is no doubt that they decide an arranged marriage for us is because they love,care about us. And there is no reason for them to choose wrong or bad person to be our life partner. People might say that the choice by our parents may be the wrong one but of course that is not their intention. So, why not we trust our parents by knowing their candidate first before deciding anything because parent’s choice usually comes with full of blessing.

The cons from this situation is those who are involved in arranged marriage,could not cooperate well with their partner . So, this situation is leading towards divorce and based on the survey that had been made by Syariah Council officers, almost 75% new partners that had been involved in arranged marriage sign in to divorce every 3 months. What a shocking result? This shows that not all arranged marriage is always successful.

Based on the points given it shows that arranged marriage has it's pros and cons and we can evaluate ourselves whether to be involved with it or not. For some remote area such as in orang asli community, arranged marriage is a symbolic to their culture. If you think that arranged marriage is good for you, then practice it. If not, do not risk yourself as marriage is not only about falling in love and blissful events,it is also about how to accept the incomplete of the other half of you.Last but not least, think carefully before involved in arranged marriage.

3 . Smoking Habit Among Youngsters

Question : A survey was conducted among young smokers in Town X. Study the findings of the survey and write an article to be published in a local daily. Your article should integrate all the in formation given below. You should write 150 to 200 words.

Smoking Habit among Youngsters in Town X

A survey on smoking habits among youngsters in Town X was conducted according to their age groups and gender. The finding portrays that the number of smokers increase as the age of youngster increase.

This survey shows that the smokers among the boys within age 10 to 12 is the lowest that is three people and increase to 13 people when reached the boys between ages 13 to 15. Meanwhile, on both of these groups show no girls are involved in smoking. However, the girls smokers started to appear at the age 16 to 18 with the number of smokers is six people, while the boys smokers keep increasing to 20 people within this ages. For the boys among the age of 19 to 21, there are an enormous numbers of smokers that is 40 with the girls increase to eight persons.

In conclusion, as the age increase, number of youngster smokers shows negative improvement. It also shows that majority of youngster smokers are the boys.

by : Humaira . Athirah . Muin .

( 166 words )

2 . Sexual Crime Involving Teenagers

Question : Recently the sharp increase of sexual crime involving teenagers has been shocking. Do you agree that teenagers should be blamed as they do not know how to protect themselves?

A 15 years old girl has been raped by her boyfriend and his friends in turn.Before, she told her mother that she wanted to go to her friend’s house for study group but instead she followed her boyfriend. But it turned to be a nightmare for her. This real and tragic story shows that the girl absolutely does not know how to protect herself. Unluckily, same goes to the most of teenagers outside there even we are now heading to the peak of modernization. As there are still teenagers, do you think we should still put the blame on their parents?Think wisely and most of us will admit hardly that the teenagers should be blamed for not knowing how to protect themselves as they don’t want to be controlled by their parents and peer pressure effects,culture shock and lack of practising religious teaching as well.

Adolescence phase can be said as the golden time for everybody. So, their soul tend to do anything exceed the barrier without their parents’ controlled. To be worst,wrong selection of peer can affect their behavior and action. As we know most of the teenager’s times is being spend with their friends instead of family. We cannot blame parents hundred percent on this issue as teenagers themselves spend most the time at school or college and even if their parents are really take care and give their attention to the children; they still have no power to take full controlled of their children from doing something unwanted. Therefore, it is the teenager’s role to learn how to protect themselves from being the victim of sexual crime and take a good effort to control their inquiry.

“Son, when I was your age, life was so different. We just stay in village; we not migrate to the big cities. Life then and life now is like opposite ends of the spectrum.”Today, a lot of teenagers had made decision to migrate to big cities as they think that they can survival in a new atmosphere. Surely, a black cat does not same as the white one. There are very big differing between social life at cities and village. These teenagers maybe would faced a culture shock when get in city life. For example, they would change their appearance due to the culture shock especially girls. From proper dress up; baju kurung into skimpy, tank top and mini skirt add with a pair of stilettos’. What’re pity teenagers? Indirectly from this situations, would give a large chances to teenagers to involve in sexual crime such as being raped and etc. This shows, culture shock had give a bad impact to the teenagers as they could be involved in sexual crime.

When we think about this issue deeply, we should realize that it can be solved only by practicing the real and beautiful religious teaching. But this kind of solving is really hard and take quite longer times as teenagers nowadays has been exposed to the negative side of the world. The teenagers actually have been taught with the religious teaching, but most of them do not understand, feel and practice it very well in their daily life. They do know rule of their religion but they are more tend to involve in hedonism and take their religion for granted. Taking one of the verses from Qoran,,"Lo! Allah changeth not the condition of a folk until they (first) change that which is in their hearts...." Therefore, it is the teenager’s mistakes for not overwhelming themselves with their religious teaching which can prevent them from involving in sexual crime.

In this day and age, the teenagers cannot be expected to lead sheltered, protected lives. They have to go about doing tasks outside the home, such as attending classes; therefore it is important that they learn how to watch out for themselves. While many of us may dismiss sexual crime involve teenagers as an insignificant matter, it would pay for all of us to sit up and take note of the fact that sexual crime does not just happen, it needs to be nurtured from young so that we could learnt how to protected teenagers from involving in sexual crime.