Sunday, August 10, 2008

The religion of Islam is meant to guide man to achieve happiness in this world and at the day after, outer and inner happiness, prosperous in this world and enter the heaven at the day after. Religion is indeed set up for people who have inner and outer (lahir dan batin) dimensions, physical and spiritual dimensions, syahwah and nurani dimensions. Therefore, Islam also has a shariah dimension regulating external aspects of people’s living and a value (essence) dimension stressing on substance of religious’ teachings.

Laypeople almost always busy with external shariah, active in doing religious activities, but they very seldom basically understand the philosophy of what they do. Meanwhile, khawash people stress on essential dimension of religious teachings, and fulfilling the external dimension only as required by the universal (minimum) standards. Laypeople often occupy themselves with formal aspects of religion, ignoring substantial aspects of it, while khawash people occupy themselves by not putting stress on formal aspects. The comparison can be seen in terms of fasting

1. Laypeople fast by not eating, drinking, and doing sexual interactions (only)

2. “Special” people fast not only by not eating and drinking but also by avoiding inappropriate words, their hands fast by avoiding wrongdoings, their feet fast by avoiding unnecessary trips, their ears fast by avoiding to listen gossips and slanders, their eyes fast by not seeing aurat, and so on.

3. Meanwhile, khawash people (prophets and Islamic saints/ “walis”), in addition to doing those kinds of fasts mentioned above, their hearts also fast by not remembering anything except God. While fasting, in their hearts nothing moves across except Allah.