Ibrahim Malik: A Santri Who Has Traveled To Nine Countries

Today I feel like telling you a fascinating real story about a santri whose achievements are extremely amazing and never have I met such a lucky student. I met him for the first time when I was joining “Dialog Pemuda Inspiratif” in Wanitatama, Sunday December 6, 2015 where five excellent santri shared their prestigious achievements in front of eight hundreds audiences. One of them has succeed in creating electric car controlled by android, another is the 1^st winner of Mahasiswa Berprestasi (Outstanding Student Election) of Gadjah Mada Universtity and the most inspiring student of Indonesia 2013 awarded by DIKTI, another is a difabel (different ability people) who enthusiastically wrote many books and got an honor opportunity to speak in Malaysia, another is a santri who got golden medal in Fire Fighting Robot games 2013 in USA, and the other is a santri who has traveled to nine countries and met Obama, the 44^th President of the United States. All of them are santri proving that santri have ability not only in religious knowledge, but also in other knowledge fields.

It is impossible for me to write down their stories one by one in this magazine for its limitation. In this page I would like to share what I have gotten from discussion with one of them, Ibrahim Malik. After the end of the dialogue, I immediately came close to and talked with him. I decided to visit him in his college two days later, and he told me a lot of things as well as motivated me.

His full name is Ibrahim Malik. He is from Bandung, and he is the 7^th semester student in the Faculty of Islamic Finance School of Architecture Islamic University of Indonesia. He graduated from Darussalam Gontor Modern Islamic Boarding School in 2010. After finishing his responsibility to be a teacher there in 2011, he tried hard to get fellowship to study in Egypt and Morocco, and he passed it. Unfortunately it was cancelled because of Arab Spring conflict happening in the middle-east. He was so disappointed. He still, afterwards, made every endeavor to find other fellowship from different countries, but no country accepted him. He was depressed, and then he abandoned his dream to study abroad and started to enroll in Indonesia universities through SBMPTN, but what a pity he was, he failed for the umpteenth time. He finally enrolled in Islamic University of Indonesia, Yogyakarta.

In the university he began both to rise and to set intentions as well as to write his dreams on his room wall. One by one his dream came true. In the first year being university student he established TPA, an Islamic school for children, which later became the best TPA throughout Yogyakarta. In the same year he pioneered CLI (Central Language Improvement) facilitating university student to improve their languages, last I heard news that 63 members of his CLI got occasion to go abroad too, following the footstep of the pioneer. He always said that success is the accumulation of what we have done in the past. He believed the goodness will be rewarded ten times as much as what we have done.

In April 2014 he became Indonesian delegation for JENESYS (Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths) program in Japan. He told me that he registered for the event four times, three times failed, and only in the fourth time he succeeded. Two months later, June 2014, Saudi Arabia ambassadors came to his college for public lecture. In question and answer session nobody was brave to deliver a question. He dared himself to raise his hand and began to ask them. Everyone was surprised and amazed with his ability to speak Arabic, so was the ambassadors. They unexpectedly called him and offered him to go with them to Arab. He, without much consideration, accepted the offer then flight to Mecca.

“The show must go on”, he principled. He still did his best to reach his dreams. Not once did he stay up all night.  In February 2015 he was invited to present his paper on Islam and Science in World Academy of Engineering and Technology, Malaysia. Scarcely had he gone to Malaysia when he was invited to attend Maritime Expo International, Singapore. Besides the international-scaled achievements he also became the first winner in debate on the scientific content of the Qur’an in National MTQ 2015 event, Jakarta.

“Life must be dynamic and work endlessly”, he said confidently. Two months later he, after trying very hard, was invited to be a speaker at International Conference of Building Architecture and Urbanism, Paris. No sooner did he spoke at the conference than he was invited to tour to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. What a lucky he is!

In the college he was named as the 2015 best student. Everything needs effort and hard work. He advised me that, “it is the process that makes us success not the result”. Finally, he was chosen to be one of ASEAN delegations to join YSEALI (Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative) in the United States. There he studied on leadership skill together with the young leaders of ASEAN for five weeks and met Obama, the 44^th USA President.  Unbelievable!

At the end of discussion he told me how to win in global game, they are:

1.      Communication

What he meant by communication is not requiring being clever at public speaking but languages. He furthermore said that language is the key to open the world. Without language we will stay only in Indonesia, I think.

2.      Multidisciplinary knowledge

Now people learning tend to dichotomy. He gave instance we study economics but we have to study other fields also such as politic, environment, culture, and so on. A political expert without studying Islam or an Islamic studies expert without mastering technology will not survive in this modern era. “We have to read books more”, he said.

3.      Network

Being success is not adequate by only associating with few groups but it also must have very wide networking from various groups. To get network we should often engage in some events such as seminar or dialogue where inspiring people get gather that we can take lessons from their experiences.

4.      Consistent

He also confessed that being consistent is not easy. One way to be consistent is writing our dreams on paper and gluing it on the wall. We read it every day, and our motivation will continuously increase.

Everyone hopes getting success in his or her life, but not many are willing to fight. Whereas everyone knows that “there is no success without a sacrifice and there is no success without hardness”. Ibrahim Malik, a santri with his myriad of achievements, often got failure but never has he given up. He surely believes that “every successful person must have a failure. Do not be afraid to fail because failure is a part of success”. At the end of this story I want to say, “a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”