Tari Saman

بِسْــــــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِارَّحْمَنِ ارَّحِيم



Islam by Karen Armstrong

kecil dan padat buku ni...saya bawa ke mana2. dlm handbag, nak pegi kelas. yet, still I haven't got the chance to finish it. baca sket, rasa mcm baanyak sgt reflection kene tulis. kene tulis. Buku ni di tulis oleh seorang prominent scholar of Islam, karen Armstrong. Ayah la yg introducekan dia. Buku ni ada timeline form the beginning of Islamic era hingga ke pemerintahan Islam in the 20th century. Sayang la buku ni. Buku library. I asked myself, sejak bila plak la aku into the politics of Islam ni. The thing is, Islam is soo great of a matter that it cannot help but be politicized on. It involves an individual and the entire nation's lifestyle. Kenapa aku baca buku ni. Rather, kenapa aku nak study dan buat reflection upon the author's words? Tak boleh baca as a bed time story ke? Sesungguhnya, amat tak boleh. Why do we reach out to our history? There's a desperation of going back to our tradition. There's a yearn to look back, into Nabi Muhammad SAW's and his sahaba's leadership in order to attain the true salvation and solve our crisis that seems perpetual. What made our history once upon a time, so great? The reality is, it hadn't always been rainbows and butterflies. If only we knew. If only we take time for a deeper introspection.

The Closer You Look at Something, The More Complex It Seems to be

The reality is that, sungguh, Nabi Muhammad sallallahualayhi wa salam, habibullah, dihantar sebagai rahmah, mercy to the world and everything's in it. :'( I mean it. Right after Nabi wafat, all the great sahabat, isteri Nabi sendiri, Aishah radiallahuanha terlibat dalam suatu kemelut. Never mind sebelum Islam direvealedkan lah. Kita nampak zaman kegemilangan Islam, dlm pemerintahan Abbasiyah, yang hebat dengan discoveries of new ilms. Tapi pernah tak terfikir kenapa Zaman Khulafa Ar-Rasyidin, dimana berlakunya pelbagai fitnah (The Temptation), Nabi kata adalah panduan kita? Disebalik graf ISK, there is so much underlying info yang kita kena ambil iktibar. The arab spring yang kita nampak harini, dah berlaku suatu ketika dahulu. Muslims killing muslims hari ini, dah berlaku, in fact, that of which took away the lives of the greatest sahabat2 Nabi sendiri right after he deceased. Tercabar, tak? Terkilan tak?

Last thursday I said I had a lot of reflections. One of them is this. I was required to go for an art exhibition opening called the Art Converge. Basically it was about the fusion of Asian and Asian/American artworks that involved the use of different media e.g, installation, soundscape, visual arts, theatrical performance. Tari Saman was one of them. Tgk tarian tu, suddenly my eyes went watery. Saya teringat kata2 Karen Armstrong..:'(

"It is significant, however, that al-Farabi was a practising Sufi. The different esoteric groups tended to overlap and to have more in common with one another than with the more conservative ulama. Mystically inclined Shiis and Faylasufs tended to gravitate together, as did Shiis and Sufis, who may have had different political views but shared a similar spiritual outlook. Sufism, the mysticism of Sunni Islam, is different from the other schools that we have considered, since it did not develop an overtly political philosophy. Instead, it seemed to have turned its back on history, and Sufis sought God in the depths of their being rather than in current events. But nearly all religious movements in Islam take off, at least, from a political perspective, and Sufism was no exception. It had its roots in the asceticism (zuhd) that developed during the Ummayad period as a reaction against the growing worldliness and luxury of Muslim society. It was an attempt to get back to the primitive simplicity of the ummah when all Muslims had lived as equals. The ascetics often wore the kind of course woolen garments (tasawwuf) that was standard among the poor, as the Prophet had done. By the early ninth century the term tasawwuf (which gives us our "Sufi") had become synonymous with the mystical movement that was slowly developing in Abbasid society. 

Sufism was also probably a reaction against the growth of jurisprudence, which seemed to some Muslims to be reducing Islam to a set of purely exterior rules. Sufis wanted to reproduce within themselves that state of mind that made it possible for Muhammad to receive the revelations of the Quran. It was his interior islam that was the true foundation of the law, rather than the usul al-fiqh of the jurists. Where establishment Islam was becoming less tolerant, seeing the Quran as the only valid scripture and Muhammad's religion as the one true faith, Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in their appreciation of other religious traditions. Some, for example, were especially devoted to Jesus, whom they saw as the ideal Sufi since he had peached a gospel of love. Others maintained that even a pagan who prostrated himself before a stone was worshipping the truth (al-haqq) that existed at the hearts of all things. Where the ulama and the jurists were increasingly coming to regard revelation as finished and completed, the Sufis, like the Shiis, were constantly open to the possibility of new truths, which could be found anywhere, a God of strict justice, Sufis, such as the great woman ascetic Rabiah (d. 801), spoke of God of love. "

Joe: If there's a country you wish to go to other than the US, what would it be?

Turkey.

Why? Because Islam is not All About Dogma.

A group of South East Asia students performed Tari Saman. I was introduced to it just earlier this year and fell in love with it. I've been intrigued with these kinda traditional tarian, to name one, Malaysian dikir barat. Tari Saman ni adalah satu medium yg digunakan oleh (asalnya) orang Acheh, Indonesia utk sampaikan pesanan. Selalunya nasihat yang berunsurkan islami diterap. In other words, it's a form of dakwah, macam nasyid, cuma nasyid ni lagu. Bila dah involvekan body movement, it becomes tarian, a form of dance which reminded me of the Sufism dance.

Sufism. I once talked to a sis who's inshallah going to do her Masters in Psychology with concentration in Neurology. Her thesis is inclining towards the study of the brain is the state of Kusyuk. So I asked her, what is kusyuk to you? She replied, "Love." Subhanallah. Terrelate pulak dengan status along kat FB, "Hudhur e-qalbi or presence of the heart, is when your heart, your mind and focus are in the presence of a concept". Just like being in love kot, one way of seeing it. But fear pon boleh jadi juga. A phobia could take control our lives if we let it.   Macam kata Anthony Robbins, pain and pleasure are the greatest motivators in our lives. What if I don't to this and that? How would it ache me? Usually we respond to pain more. "The heart is like a bird; love as its head, and its two wings are hope and fear", bak pepatah Ibn Qayyim.

How we are all so desperate to feel possessed by His presence. How are we all desperate to get that focus. In this case, other than solah, the sufi "dancers" tried to find alternatives that they think would work for them best in order to achieve that state of mind. Betapa kita sendiri ada kemelut yang melanda diri that kita terkapai2 mencari jalan penyelesaian yang sometimes kita tak perasan we're contradicting ourselves and beliefs...betapa kita mencari ketenteraman hati itu. Moga dengan panduan yang dihadiahiNya kepada kita, Dia bantu kita utk mentaatinya dan moga dengan itu, Allah Ta'ala tunjukkan kita jalan yang lurus. Amin.