Saya baru saja mulai membacanya malam ini. Masih jauh dari selesai. Jadi tulisan ini bukan review. Ini adalah sebuah catatan kecil karena ada sebuah cerita yang bagi saya sangat mengesankan. Begitu terkesannya, sampai-sampai saya merasa harus berhenti membaca dan menuliskannya di sini. Saat ini juga.
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Ini kisah ketika Muhammad Asad (ketika itu belum memeluk Islam) tinggal sementara waktu di kediaman pamannya di Yerusalem. Tetangga sang paman, seorang Arab yang dipanggil Haji, kerap menjadi melakukan shalat berjamaah di pekarangan rumahnya. Muhammad Asad mengamati ibadah itu dengan takjub.
Several times a day he assembled them for prayer and, if it was not raining too hard, they prayed in the open: all the men in а single, long row and he as their imam in front of them. They were like soldiers in the precision of their movements -they would bow together in the direction of Месса, rise again, and then kneel down and touch the ground with their foreheads; they seemed to follow the inaudible words of their leader, who between the prostrations stood barefoot on his prayer carpet, eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, soundlessly moving his lips and obviously lost in deep absorption: you could see that he was praying with his whole soul.
Muhammad Asad terusik menyaksikan sebuah ibadah yang berupa gabungan doa dan gerakan tubuh, hingga akhirnya ia pun tergugah untuk bertanya pada orang tua itu tentang shalat.
It somehow disturbed me to see so real а prayer combined with almost mechanical body movements, and one day asked the hajji, who understood а little English:
“Do you really believe that God expects you to show Him your respect by repeated bowing and kneeling and prostration? Might it not better only to look into oneself and to pray to Him in the stillness of one’s hearth? Why all these movements of your body?”
As soon as I had uttered these words I felt remorse, for I had not intended to injure the old man's religious feelings. But the hajji did not appeal in the least offended. He smiled with his toothless mouth and replied:
“How else then should we worship God? Did He not create both, soul and body, together? And this being so, should man not pray with his body as well as with his soul?”
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Muhammad Asad terusik ketika melihat ibadah shalat dan menanyakan mengapa muslim beribadah tidak dengan hanya ‘hati’ dan doa yang lirih, tapi juga gerakan badan yang menyeluruh.
Saya juga terusik: Mengapa saya, yang lahir sebagai muslim dan telah diajarkan shalat sejak kecil, tidak pernah menanyakan hal yang sangat mendasar dan penting dari ibadah yang saya lakukan itu. Lebih memalukan lagi, saya juga tidak tahu apa jawabannya.