As we Malaysians settled on the acceptance and hope of Anwar’s new Unity Government, we had to say silent prayers for the victims of the Batang Kali incident and the floods that are wreaking havoc on the East Coast of Semenanjung.

I thought the floods and the horrible landslide that took the lives of children and families were heart-wrenching, but then I came to hear and watch of the horrible winter storm that took the whole large American continent by surprise, killing now more than 50 people.

That people die in a winter cold is not really unexpected because of old age and other causes. But to die leaving the grocery store or just coming home from work in a car in the modern cities of the wealthiest and most advanced nation on earth is not only heart-wrenching but also a shock to many.

Now, there are news of bodies found on the streets and the whole picture conjures up the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” when the climate dramatically changed to create the next ice age from the pollution that was brought about by man himself.

I have a soft spot for the US because of three reasons.

The first is because it was there that I studied for three years towards an architecture discipline, but it was also there that I discovered the real Islam from its sources of the Qur’an and the Sunnah while being indoctrinated by Islamic Reformist Malays of the MISG or Malaysian Islamic Study Group.

Secondly, the US was also where I witnessed freedom of speech at the university and in the public realm as well as saw American presidents taking the oath of office in minus degree Celsius in front of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, not in the comfortable halls of a palace in front of a king and queen.

Thirdly, it was also about a winter storm incident that almost cost my wife and I dearly that stayed in our memories forever.

Of all these incidents, I draw an important spiritual lesson for all of us into the uncharted future of 2023 and beyond.

America is important to me because who I am presently was brought about by my readings of Islam there, my involvement with Islamic activism and my musings and thoughts about life and living in a global community of different faiths, cultures and lifestyles.

The six years were my formative periods of my personal growth in politics, in education and in spirituality.

I had asked many questions about being a Muslim, being a Malaysian and being there in the US as part of growing up into a maturity that I am today.

If I were in Malaysia, in a public university and having a government job, I would probably be like most Malays with a racist and bigoted mindset about how my race is more superior and my religion must not be challenged by others.

Instead, I became someone who can accept all, respect everyone and posses a dynamic framework of thinking as well as a matured sense of spiritual growth and inclusiveness.

America was also the place where I saw freedom of speech and responsibility of governance during a time where the internet was still a dream in some nerd’s mind, the computer a fantasy and the smart handphone…a miracle.

I participated in student activities in Islamic and Malaysian student organizations. I read about other faiths and rediscovered Islam through the eyes of political reformists like Abul a’la Maududi, Ismail, Faruqi, Ali Shariati, Syed Qutb, Hassan Al-Banna and our own Abu Urwah.

It was there that I went to “training camps” for young Malay Muslims listening to voices like Pak Imaduddin, Hadi Awang, Fadzil Noor and Anwar Ibrahim.

America was my birthplace of Islamic Reformist thinking that started my path through a rediscovery of Islam as a social force but also became a strong basis of what being a Malaysian was about after the 1998 declaration of Reformasi by Anwar.

Without my American sojourn, I would not be the person I am today.

Although a decade later I was to spend three years in Scotland for my PhD, that stay had little to contribute to who I am compared to the impact my six-year studies in Green Bay and Milwaukee had done to me.

The Christmas storm that became a fixed memory to me and my wife was in 1982.

We must grow out of our petty politics of identity and embrace the spiritual lessons of humanity.

My “girl friend” (before she became my wife) and I went to a local cinema to watch a movie. I loved watching movies that is of the science, disaster and alternate universe genre. We went at 12.00 in the afternoon by bus and caught the 2 pm show after some lunch.

When we went out from our apartments, it was a crisp 10 degrees and there was no need to wear any thermal undergarment. We just wore our fall gloves and not the thick winter kind.

But when the show ended at 4 pm, we came out to a commotion that a sudden winter storm had blown in with temperature plummeting to minus 10 degrees and lower.

There were reports of many vehicles stalled and that some buses were also affected.

As we both stood outside in the freezing arctic winter, I was in a full panic mode because there was no transportation to look forward to for the next twenty minutes before a bus would arrive.

A few minutes were already hellish as we could not stand the cold with our fingers and toes beginning to throb with pain. We could hardly feel our ears and faces.

I tried to stop and asked for rides in any car that passed but the few that I asked turned us away.

When a car with a German student stopped, I was so thankful to her that I hardly felt the tear escaping from my eyes.

When we both got home, we had to sit quietly and painfully for two hours before our fingers and toes stopped throbbing with pain.

I cannot imagine the ordeal of the people in the US without power and trapped in their cars with thick snowdrifts covering them.

We all have heard of the Texas winter storm that also caught many by surprise. But this storm has put almost the whole country of the US in a state of panic and uncertainty.

Our prayers should be for all of the people in the US and may God give an easier way for the people to help each other and wait the storm out.

Our own Batang Kali incident was brought about by continuous rains that I myself have never witnessed in my entire life.

Almost all who died were non-Malays but the rescue workers were almost all Malays.

These lessons in tragedy should give us a new perspective of how we should relate to one another.

True spiritual growth cuts across any identity of race, faith or nationality. We are all in pain of the Batang Kali tragedy and we all should also be in pain with the 50 deaths from a sudden winter storm of the greatest of proportions thousands of miles away.

We must grow out of our petty politics of identity and embrace the spiritual lessons of humanity as one in suffering and one in mutual help as well as acceptance.

The landslide in Malaysia and the storm in the US are natural affairs of nature trying to remind us of our own human frailty against our narrow arrogance of self and identity.

When disaster strikes, there is no identity and it places the silliness and pettiness of race, nationality and religious faith as arbitrary concepts of classification that in truth has no significant meaning whatsoever.

In the New Year, we must come together to mourn for our lost, pray for the victims and celebrate the idea that we should all be one or we shall all be none.

(Prof Dr. Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at a local university and his writing reflects his own personal opinion entirely.)