A man recently raised concerns after discovering a student was handed a questionnaire regarding their father’s faith.
Mohd Fadli Salleh, in a Facebook post, said a friend of his shared the post attaching an image of a form handed by the child’s school, questioning how often does he pray.
Fadli voiced out that such forms could tarnish the father’s image and become “gossip” material based on the students’ answers.
“The child is not with their father all the time. If the child ticks “Never” even though the father does pray in the mosque,” it can be seen as slanderous,” he said in his post.
In the image, the form listed the type of prayers in Islam, namely, solat subuh, solat zuhur, solat asar, solat maghrib and solat isyak, as well as asking if the prayers were done in the mosque or the surau and whether the father attends congregational prayers (solat berjemaah).
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The form listed three options such as “Never”, “Rarely” and “Always” to indicate prayer frequency.
The student answered “Always” on all sections except for the part where he prays at the mosque or surau, marked as “Rarely”.
He added that if there were fathers who rarely pray and the child submits their answers honestly, it can turn into gossip as soon as anyone lays eyes on the form.
“Said gossip could be among students who read it, amongst teachers, ustaz and ustazah too, thus spreading their flaws. Is this even right or good?” Fadli said.
He also questioned the purpose of the form wondering if the parents who rarely or never pray would be called into the school to be given a lecture.
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Fadli also pointed out that he does not see any benefit of these forms being distributed, bringing about more bad than good.
Many users pointed out that the questionnaire was common for those planning to enrol in religious schools but some mentioned that the form was meant to see how often the student prayed instead of the parent.
With this, netizens suggested the questionnaire be directed to how many times the student prays instead of looking at how often the parents do so since they believe it serves no purpose.
Meanwhile, others were divided on the issue as several users believed the form could be a way to instill the importance of faith among students while others disagreed with the form also sharing sentiments questioning its purpose.
