We’ve Never Felt Islam Like This | Life in Malaysia as a Muslim

Assalamualaikum everybody. Welcome back. Today we are going to talk about why Malaysia is the most tranquil place in the entire world, at least that we've discovered, for a Muslim family to live. So we're going to list off a couple of the reasons why we personally chose Malaysia and we have actually traveled to several Muslim countries and Malaysia always fit the bill at the very top of our list. Really the biggest reason for us is if you're a practicing Muslim you are visibly Muslim and what I mean by that is that five times a day you have to pray. So if you're out and about and the time for salah, time for prayer comes, you have to pray. And if you're in Canada, for example, that can be a daunting task depending on who you are and depending on where you are. For us here in Malaysia it literally doesn't matter where we are. You'll most of the time hear the adhan, the call to prayer and simply within walking distance there will be a surau which is like a small mosque basically, not an official place of worship but in every mall, most businesses, airports, shops, like you could be at like a pool or a rec center and you'll find a surau there. Dentists. Literally dentists. You could be in a medical center. Anywhere you'll find somewhere to pray. So that feeling that you get when you don't have to worry about hiding who you are or you might feel insecure. You know as a Muslim woman I always found it one, I'm just going to be honest, this is how I feel, embarrassing to pray in public because you don't want people watching you. You know you're making sajda and just all those things. It's like running through your mind all the time. Is someone watching me? Like are people giving me looks? It's just that fear in the back of your mind and then you don't have that concentration in your prayer when you're constantly thinking about other people looking at you. So that's something I always struggled with. Yeah and that's a requirement of prayer is concentration and devotion right. It's really hard to concentrate if you're praying in a non-Muslim country. I'll give you an example. I started a new job in aviation and the time for prayer came and I was like what do I do? I was like okay. So at the end of my table in the lunchroom full of people, I just put my prayer mat down and I prayed Maghrib Salah and Alhamdulillah because I never had that fear because I'm a man so I mean go ahead and say something right. But you feel awkward. You don't feel what you're supposed to feel and that is that complete contentment and that peace that you get from praying. So that being in Malaysia now, it's like literally last night we were out and it's like oh it's asr time. Just ask the random guy hey where's the surah? Over there. Go pray. Come back. Like no issue. It's such a tranquil feeling. Yeah it doesn't matter where you are. You can always find a place to pray and it's a wonderful feeling for sure. Never having to look over your shoulder. Never having to feel embarrassed or what are people thinking because everybody knows. There's no issue. Yeah and the thing is people are probably going to leave a comment. They're going to say oh well the whole world is a masjid. You can pray anywhere. Yeah absolutely you can pray anywhere but that doesn't make it easy especially for like we said Muslims living in the west. We prayed in very awkward places whether it's parking lots on top of snow on a mountain pass like you name it. We've probably prayed there so and that doesn't make it easy. Yeah and again guys it's not about it's about the tranquility that comes with being in a place because you're always going to have struggles no matter what but it's that tranquil feeling that you get that you just don't find and like hardly any other places. So the second thing is halal food and just the the ability to just go anywhere and eat without having to ask a million questions. Like in Canada we go to a restaurant and we're asking literally 21 questions to the waitress. Can you fry it like this? Can you cook it separate? Can you do this? Can you do like we don't have to do that here and like everything by default is halal other than restaurants that specifically say non-halal and they it's like every establishment has to have that on their restaurant if they are not halal like maybe it's a Chinese restaurant and they're not halal and they serve pork or something like that they have to say it on the outside but everything else by default every fast food joint when you go to the mall wherever it is everything is halal. The food in Malaysia will be the death of me hopefully not literally just figuratively um so but yeah it's it's so cool like being able to and and this is you know what this is another I think fairly exclusive point to Malaysia in that I mean we've been to again so I think I've been to like 12 or 13 different Muslim countries um but it's really hard to find Chinese food in Istanbul or to find um you know XYZ and ABC country whereas Malaysia just is this huge melting pot that just has like everybody's food and that's what they're known for right and it's so amazing you want Chinese food today Turkish food tomorrow oh you got to food the next day like Lebanese food whatever you want you will find here and it is so incredible to have like the taste of the world in one spot it's tranquil and and literally just going to the grocery store picking up anything that you can you can actually go to the grocery store and everything in the grocery store is halal except one little section that they usually have in the back of the grocery store and there'll be a big sign that says non-halal food and the non-Muslims can go in there and they can find their non-halal food or the shady Muslims or Muslims or yeah we did a short um like a YouTube short TikTok about that last time we were here last year and it was like whatever the light touches is yours yeah except for the elephant graveyard like stay away from the time and that's got like millions and millions of views but it's true yeah I mean you don't have this you're not like checking ingredients on every single thing it is it's a nice feeling like it's it's a really nice feeling and I think it's gotten to the point where we're kind of spoiled because when we traveled to Thailand recently we we like went to a mall for instance and we look around we're like wow we literally can't eat anything here like literally nothing number three water parks so we've been to water parks in Dubai and we've been to water parks in Malaysia and they are totally different even though they're both supposedly Muslim countries questionable yeah so water parks here they still have standards like they have modesty standards so they'll tell you you have to wear a minimum of this this this and the nice thing is is you'll you'll go to water parks for instance and you'll see the non-Muslims in at least a t-shirt and shorts like that's great like for they're respecting the culture yeah they're respecting they're respecting the culture and that's really really nice and you don't have our little kids being like walking around like this with blinders on the whole time because it's awkward like for a Muslim kid I mean people can leave whatever comments they want on this and say oh well women can wear whatever they want that's absolutely true but when it comes to Muslim standards like we have certain requirements of what should be covered and especially around kids it's really nice for kids to just be able to just openly just enjoy a water park without having to look down every two seconds because there's a butt in their face yeah I just have to just have to throw you remember the stairs slide oh my god like you're going up this big staircase and you're waiting because you're in line right and it's stairs and then like the kids are standing there and it's packed and they're like standing there and there's like people's like naked butts like right in their face like where do you go when you can't do anything it's disgusting it's disgusting yeah it's not it's not nice so that's lovely here is you don't have to worry about anybody saying anything to you because you can wear your fully covered swimsuits and everybody's totally cool with it the next point is hijab just so openly everywhere like everywhere you can literally walk into uniclo here and you'll see hijabi models on their posters which is like really cool so modest fashion here is amazing so just having our kids being able to be comfortable wearing hijab and not having to worry like they stick out like a sore thumb like in Canada for sure in the community that I grew up in I stuck out like a sore thumb because I was the only one in the entire city to wear it but you don't have to worry about that here like there's everybody's wearing hijab it's just normal so that part is amazing for Muslims and one thing that I've noticed and you've probably noticed it too since being here is the involvement of Malay fathers with their children I don't think I've seen that anywhere else in the world like the amount of of dads with baby carriers on here oh I love it is phenomenal and for somebody who has always always carried my kids it's such a cool sight to see that that fathers are so involved with just the day-to-day and it's it's just a normal thing yeah so big shout out to Malaysian dads for that because it's such a cool thing to see love that last thing is just the respect for all religions you know as Muslims we respect all religions and all ways of life and so when you're in Malaysia you genuinely see it and feel it so if it's Christmas time you'll walk in the mall there'll be Christmas decorations up if it's Diwali you'll walk in the mall there's Diwali decorations if it's Eid or Ramadan you'll see Ramadan decorations like they celebrate everyone and I love that I think they just I think they just do it as an excuse to get days off of work because there's so many holidays here but yeah the diversity is amazing and the fact that even if you go through some of the comment sections and some of the past videos that you'll see like Malays take pride in in respecting other people's beliefs and not imposing their beliefs on them which is such a cool thing because again in the west it's more like you have to believe what we believe or you're just not one of us you're an outsider which is totally ridiculous so they definitely do it right here and yeah respect is is big I think a lot of that has to do with the Asian culture too you know people are just brought up differently so yeah it's just a beautiful culture in general and the fact that they've preserved their own culture they've preserved you know everything else in Malaysia it's phenomenal and guys so our plan isn't just to sit and do talking videos like this we're really going to start transitioning into more family vlogs to show you guys not just talk about it but genuinely show you what we're talking about in the beauty of this country and I think one other point that we should mention is the musjids obviously okay pause the musajids no no still no s still no s absolutely amazing like they are next level clean and next level beautiful architecture just just amazing so that's something that we're also going to be doing on our channel is masjid hopping and showing you guys how beautiful the mosques are here so just like Will said like we're going to start you know going around and showing you the surahs and musallas that are in malls and you know showing you the food that's available here and showing you the mosques and just everything like we really want you guys to actually feel what it's like to live here as a muslim and we really we really want to be able to show to the world just how amazing this country is I know some people don't like that because they're like no keep everybody away we love our country the way that it is but I think it's definitely fair time where people do get an understanding of just how wonderful this place is and how amazing the people are and the culture in general but yeah so stay tuned for that because it's going to be fun that is it for this particular video and we will see you in the next one give the video a thumbs up if you did enjoy anything that we had to say about it bye guys you