KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia Group Bhd Chief Executive Officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes left quite a buzz on Instagram when he posted a photo of him reading a book about the most prominent figure of Islam, Prophet Muhammad.
The book, believed to be Imam al Tirmidhi’s Al-Shama’il al Muhamaddiya, features a compilation of 415 hadiths on the life, appearance and conduct of Prophet Muhammad.
(The hadith is a record of the traditions or sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, revered and received as a major source of religious law and moral guidance, second only to the authority of the Quran.)
Netizens expressed surprise over the reading selection of the 55-year-old founder of Air Asia during the Movement Control Order (MCO) , but Fernandes, a Catholic, clearly believed it was a good a time as any to spend on understanding “my brothers, sisters and their religion”.
“Time for all of us to understand and learn and be tolerate. Amazing book. Use your time to improve yourself and learn more,” he said in his Instagram post on Apr 22.
As of today, the post garnered nearly 22,000 likes and 673 comments from netizens.
Many applauded Fernandes’ open-mindedness and effort to learning about the religion of others, with users like @aminuddinazhar_cainpain saying Malaysians should take a leaf from his book and dedicate more effort towards understanding each other.
User @seera_wakui wrote: “Thank you for learning about us, so as we also learn about others. That’s the beauty of being Malaysians.”
User @asrulanwaranas, meanwhile, commented that there should be more leaders like Fernandes while @nik_hairizal called him an exemplary leader. - Bernama
