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 Mesaj Başlığı: The silent sermons / by Nena Muslim
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The silent sermons

By Nena Muslim

Sun, 11/22/2009



"Are you coming with us?" a lady sitting beside me on the floor of the mosque said in a low voice.

I answered her with another question. "Will it take long? I'm afraid I can't stand breaking my wudu."

"No, it won't. We'll get home just after salat jenazah."

Breaking wind makes an ablution void. If I did, I couldn't go to the funeral prayer. But I didn't tell the truth, that actually I hated death.

"All right then, I'm coming."

I just couldn't say no, so I went to offer my prayers for the first time in my life. That was a year ago.

***

I was moved to a new branch office of a private bank in Bumiayu last year. The village is a valley kampung at the foot of Mount Slamet, surrounded by mountain ranges, characterized by the roaring sound of the wild wind blowing almost day and night, particularly in the dry season.

When the wind is blowing, the air feels colder than when it is calm. When it is raining hard and the wind is blowing wildly, it is horrible. Bumiayu means "beautiful land" - and it is, with good-quality groundwater and delicious rice.

Sometimes after fard prayers at the mosque, villagers offer congregational funeral prayers to express condolences to families. The first time I offered a funeral prayer was after the early morning prayers at around 4:15 a.m. While we were offering du'a after this fard prayer, a death was announced over a loudspeaker and the congregation was called to the house of the deceased not far from the mosque. We went on foot, the men wearing sarongs and peci, the women in white mukenah. The wild winds blew, and the cold air and darkness created an atmosphere suited to death.

On the way, we met many other members of congregations from other mosques. The crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves. They had small conversations about the deceased - all good things because one may not speak ill of the dead. Sometimes they laughed gently. I was silent, and shocked because my own mind was full of fear. I wondered why they didn't seem affected by it; before and after the funeral prayers, they kept joking a little bit. The prayer itself was performed in solemnly, and condolences expressed politely and humbly. Before going home, the beautiful batik covering the corpse was open to show the face of the deceased one last time. I turned my face the other away.

***

Ibardi and I were standing at the front of the door, about to enter Ibardi's house.

"No, no, no. You can't be a Sufi without being a Muslim, or a Benedictine without being a Christian. And there is no a Vedanta or a yoga without Hinduism or a Zen without Buddhism," said a man in the house.

"I don't fully agree with you," replied a woman. "The fact is, in recent times you can easily find Sufism without Islam or a yogi without Hinduism, in a variety of forms."

"But those vain procedures have obviously .." The man's voice continued.

"You have guests? By the way, what are they talking about?" I asked Ibardi.

"No, they are my family. They are discussing mysticism or spirituality in religion. They want to write a book."

"Wow! But, aren't we interrupting them?"

"It's all right. Come on in." Ibardi opened the door.

"Assalamu'alaikum.!" We greeted the members of the family.

"Waalaikumusalam..!"

"Hi, guys! Let me introduce you my friend, Bintang!" Ibardi said before turning to me. "This is my uncle Mang Hanif, my eldest sister Kak Farah, and my older brothers Mas Adam and Mas Ibra."

"Hi, Bintang!" Ibardi's sister smiled at me. I smiled back at her, shaking her hand and nodded to the rest of the family saying "Nice to meet you".

"Well, we dropped by to get a book I left," Ibardi said. "We are going to Ustadz Iman's ceramah.1"

"OK, goodbye! Bye, Bintang..!" They waved.

***

It was a brief encounter, but meeting Ibardi's family impressed me. Ibardi told me his great-grandfather was the founder of a nearby big pondok pesantren - a nonprofit foundation with a vision to be the science and technology-based Islamic dormitory. The dormitory had thousands of santri2 from all over the country. The santri ranged from junior high school students to high school students, and were divided into scientific, social-economic and religious classes.

All santri were obliged to speak English or Arabic in daily conversation. Another rule was that if any santri stole or was caught with a girl or boyfriend, they would be dismissed from the school. After school, the santri's main activity was mengaji.3 The dormitory also provided lessons in practical skills such as welding, fashion design, ICT, fisheries and English teaching, with excursions to big private and state-owned companies. Ibardi told me that since the New Order regime, many government officials had visited the pesantren, especially in the lead-up to elections.

Ibardi was one of my bank customers, an ICT engineer. He was a nice guy and I had a soft spot for him. He said he had just customized a certain German SAP licensed software with a pesantren's ICT systems - providing a more effective way to manage the pesantren's programs. He was also a teacher. He gained his master's degree in sharia from Al-Azhar University, Cairo.

We were close friends although we rarely went out together. One thing that irritated me was his habit of telling me his dreams. He was often preoccupied with looking for the meaning of his dreams from Ibnu Sirin's book. Born in 653 AD in Bashrah, Iraq, Ibnu Sirin is a well-known dream interpreter in the Muslim world. Many scholars, including Ibardi himself, were sure this book was not genuine and that there were many distortions. I wondered why, with such a good education and family background, Ibardi was so concerned about his dreams.

One day he called me to say that in his dream he was dead. While lying in a coffin in the guestroom, he could see all that was going on around him. He saw me and his family crying. I was in a corner, alone, even when the funeral prayers were offered. As four pallbearers carried the coffin to the cemetery, he was feeling extremely happy inside the coffin, because he was going to see God in the Great Beyond.

"That's not funny," I said in a low voice. I couldn't imagine losing him.

Around a month after the dream, Ibardi was in a motorcycle accident, and died after one week in hospital. Only God knows if the accident had something to do with his dream. It was just too fast. I couldn't believe he was gone forever. I kept whispering: "O, God. Thee are the First and the Last, the Outwardly Manifest and the Inwardly Hidden. Inna liLlaahi wa inna ilayhi raaji'uun.4"

***

Ibardi never made any promises. It surprised me when his mother visited me. We went out for lunch. On other occasions, she took me to religious public forums in dormitories or mosques. She once even took me to the funeral prayers of one of her relatives.

***

Today everything was different. Soon after Ibardi was gone, I could feel what he felt when he was inside the coffin in his dream. And by offering many other funeral prayers in this valley kampung, I could be as calm as the villagers in dealing with them. I found that the more I reminded myself of death, the more I felt my heart was alive. It was a silent sermon that helped me relieve the sadness and pain of life. And through death, here I also found that the sound of the valley was not the roaring of the wild wind but that of dhikr,5 the prayer of the heart as remembrance of God.

1. Public forums

2. Pupil

3. Learning and practicing religious instructions

4. Surely we belong to Allah and to Him shall we return (Al-Ayah)

5. Invocation

http://www.thejakartapost.com/


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