Why Malaysia? Why to leave Japan?

Life is a short path and it has many decision junctions. One decision may have significant influence on the rest of the life. The decision that I made recently was leaving Japan and move to work in Malaysia. I canceled my contract in NIES "National institute of Environmental studies" in Japan to move to "University Malaysia Pahang". I moved from a world wide known national institute to work in a new established university. For many people including my wife it is a crazy decision. She always repeats: "I told you! It is a wrong decision." But for me it was more than a decision. It was a hope. In this post I will try to explain why I love being in Malaysia although I am living in the university Campus which is close only to a small village called Gambang. I live in a place which is about half an hour by car from the nearest city "Kuantan" which is a very small city. It is - for us - a very small city even when compared with the very small city of Tsukuba where we used to live in Japan.

Did I leave Japan because it is annoying to live there? Actually 7 years, 4 months and about 20 days were maybe the best in my life. It is the period I spent in Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken, Japan before coming To Malaysia. It is where I got my master and PhD from University of Tsukuba. Tsukuba is the city where I got married and lived with my wife. My wife became pregnant there. I had my first professional work after PhD as research associate in Tsukuba. I spent a lot of time in Tsukuba Masjid. It was not annoying in general. Actually I miss all my colleges and teachers. I miss the real brothers whom I met in Tsukuba Masjid. I can't mention all the names because it will be a very long list. I miss many things in Japan a lot. Japan is the best place in "dunia" to live in. Even though this all came to an end, and I decided to leave.

Am I satisfied with life in Malaysia? Actually on work level, doing research here is not good comparing to the easy research atmosphere in Japan. Getting a grant for research takes a lot of time. It takes more than 6 months sometimes. On the other hand, here the important is the quantity not the quality. "How much papers did you publish?" is the question to hear. The impact factor of the journal is more important than the content of the article. In Japan things were easier. A good plan as my supervisor in NIES told me is to say "one paper per year", because one good paper is better than low quality 2 or 3 papers. In my field impact factor is a problem. Most of our journals are less than 3 in impact factor. For Example: The Impact Factor of "International Journal of Impact Engineering" - elsevier is 1.681. For "Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing" - elsevier it is 1.824. And for one of the highest important IEEE publications " IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine" it is 3.758.

Work organizing is better in Japan. Usually Professors have Laboratories. In research institutes there is a research groups and sub-groups with leaders and sub-leaders. The professor is the leader of a laboratory and he has a team of researchers in the laboratory. The new graduated PhD holders join the team which includes hierarchically: A Professor, Associate professors, Assistant teachers, PhD students, Master Students, and last year undergraduate students. They all work on different topics sometimes but under the general topic of the lab. Each lab have enough fund according to the number of students and the needed materials and instruments. Moreover, some labs have other ways of funding besides to the university's. Companies support related labs for research which is of benefit for the company. Here in Malaysia you have to apply for a fund for a project and then attend an interview and actually a "bargain" about the fund. You apply for RM30,000 but at the end you may get 13,000 or even 9,000. There is bigger grants from the Ministry of Higher education, but it is also taking long time to be approved with less chances for young researchers and expatriates. Of course if you have an interesting and important project you get the fund but not as easy as local experienced professors. More over getting an administrative position is almost impossible for expatriates. Expatriates can't be head of a department, head of research institute or even head of a research lab. In japan it is difficult but possible. In Malaysia it is almost impossible. Actually it is not a bad point for me, because I don't like such positions. So for me it is an advantage. But in general it is less attractive situation for expatriates to work in Malaysia.

Although of all these difficulties I still feel satisfied to work for a Malaysian university. Actually, there is a lot to speak about regarding Malaysia, Japan and other countries. But in this post I want just to summarize why I am happy to work in Malaysia. Mainly it is because of two reasons:

1. Among Malaysian people, you can find real brothers and sisters. Some of the kindest brothers I have met in Japan were one of the reasons to decide to work in Malaysia even before finishing my study in 2010. I visited Malaysia two times before moving to work here. Malaysians in general are very respectful and kind people. Japanese actually are same, but living in Islamic atmosphere is more important for me specially after my baby girl was born. With all the facilities in Japan one of the most important difficulty was finding Halal food. Pork products are used widely in Japan in all kinds of biscuits and similar products. Halal meat is not easy to find too.
2. Teaching, researching and publishing results is the work I chose for the coming period of my life. I feel more happiness when I affiliate my work to Malaysia. I feel that countries like Japan, Europe, USA are full with high ranked researchers. My small research effort is not really important to be affiliated to them. On the other hand, Malaysia is developing quickly and hasten to be a developed nation. My contribution here is more needed. At the end research results will be published globally for all humans, but the affiliation is counting for me and for them as I hope. Moreover, I hope to get Ajer from Allah for teaching Malaysian students who will participate in developing an Islamic country. This is not due to a racism or sectarianism point of view. But the idea is that we Muslims are very lag behind in research and education. We should change from Consumers to Producers. We should help the humanity by contributing in improving the world. We should kick away the ideas of fighting the whole world which it adopted by ignorant groups. We should spread peace and collaboration aspect of Islam. I hope I can contribute in this. Malaysia is the best Islamic country for me in terms of scientific research. Maybe it is difficult to say that, but it is better than my own country and many other Arabic countries. Maybe Japan is the best, but in one Hadith of Prophet Mohammad SAAS he says: "whosoever leaves something for the sake of Allah then Allah, the Mighty and Magnificent, will replace it with something better than it". I left Japan for the sake of Allah and I am sure Allah will will replace it for me with something better.

One final point to mention: I didn't come to Malaysia because of the problems in Syria. If I want to escape from the situation in Syria and not to come back home, Japan would have been better place. In Japan I can apply for Asylum and became a refugee. Malaysia rejects political asylum for refugees. My decision of coming to Malaysia is not related to political or safety issues. It is related to scientific research issues. I hope to participate in supporting Islam with scientific work and to make a small contribution in supporting Islam through education. I think being in Malaysia will make this intention easier to perform.