Am I the only one finding it very odd (perhaps even a tad arrogant) that Worldbadminton.net likens Hafiz with the "prodigal son"? The "prodigal son" is a biblical story. Hafiz is a muslim, correct? And surely the readers of WorldBadminton.net confess to a plethora of religions -- or, as in my case, none at all. (It's WORLD Badminton, after all)
According to Cambridge dictionary online http://dictionary.cambridge.org The prodigal son is a man or boy who has left his family in order to do something that the family disapprove of and has now returned home feeling sorry and regretful for what he has done. Nothing religious about the phrase. Don't get carried away. Herein the family could also mean his badminton coach and team.
Why should Hafiz be called a prodigal son? He is still an independant player playinf got nusa mahsuri, the only connection to the BAM he has now is common coach and they conduct some of their training sessions together. As for the topic posted, I'm no muslim but i believe many of the biblical characters are also found in the quran (Muslim holdy book). the recently celebrated aidil-adha (raya korban) is a celebration of abraham's abediance to god which is also found in the bible. Perhaps someone who knows can confirm if the prodigal son character is also found in the muslim history?
You're missing my point. The phrase would not even be in that dictionary if it weren't for the biblical story. The ethymology of the phrase is undeniably biblical.
Maybe they were just careless in their choice of words. I don't think there's any reason to be alarmed unless they are regularly doing something like this. Even then, the fact that dictionaries don't mention religion in their definition of the word "prodigal" suggest it has lost its religious meaning over the (many) years (centuries).
I agree with BRL, Considering the sensitive nature of some people, it could be considered very inappropriate. The first thing that came to my mind was it's religious context. Just thought it was a bit wierd in choice of words. Hope nobody gets too upset over it
Not sure if I should say things like these, but the elder man in question was educated for 10 years in an English environment for 10 years and is probably heavily influenced. Not all Muslims here feel very strongly about religion maybe half of them are. A lot of things in this world is Euro-Centric, eg. tournaments in China still use English for scoring and journalistss in the Star still refer to Japan and China as the Far East when it's just next door. I think it will continue to be so for a long time because of the affluence in the West. I don't think using of Biblical terms is offensive, in many Muslim countires, many Islamic concepts are force-fed to others like it or not.in Msia people are quite tolerant of things like that.
quote from the article Said Misbun candidly: “When Hafiz returned from the Commonwealth Games, he was more interested in celebrating his gold medal than improving his game. “His disciplined slackened. If training was scheduled at 6am, he would show up at 7am in shorts and slippers. “So I threw him out of my house. I was very sad because I had treated him like my own son. ... Like the prodigal son made good, Hafiz subsequently returned to Misbun, begging for forgiveness, two months before the All-England Championships. “He is a nice boy who was misled. So I took him back,” said Misbun If that doesn't have clear parallels to the story of the prodigal son, I don't know what does. To my (non-religous) mind, parables work on more than one level. Morally and religously. To put it rather simplistically: Morally, the prodigal son story says that if people are foolish, but are then sorry for their actions, they should be forgiven. Religously, the message is that God will accept sinners into heaven if they are repentant.
