Brotherhood of Humankind

Al-Azhar and the Vatican created important historical ink through the signing of a document on humankind brotherhood in Abu Dhabi on Feb. 4.

The signing of the "Abu Dhabi Declaration" symbolically marks a new era in the relationship between Muslims and Christians worldwide. The two communities are expected to live together side by side in peace and work together to fight humanitarian challenges, including the enemy of all humanity, namely terrorism (Kompas, February 6, 2019).

How should we give meaning to the monumental event above?

Essence of universalism

Brotherhood of humankind is a key concept that reveals many basic things. This concept primarily rests on the understanding that all human beings are basically the same and are brothers. As a result, a man who cruelly treats his neighbor; ceteris paribus, is doing the same for all humanity. Therefore, it is not easy to imagine the magnitude of the dimensions of damage that has been caused by terrorism, which has led to destruction to many places and souls.

Logically, the brotherhood of humankind is easy to understand. All humans have the same element. It is built from the unity between physics and spirit. Physics itself is a bodily entity, not independent. It totally depends on the existence of the spirit. During sleep or post-factum of death, the body becomes a pile of meat and bones that does not have any function.

Therefore, the brain and senses are only means and are not the controllers. The process of thinking, thus, is physically an amazingly complicated phenomenon. However, in essence it is very simple. It is the spirit that makes the brain think and apply the mind creatively. This perspective negates the classical Cartesian understanding, which worships reason that is centered on the physical abilities of the brain, cogito ergo sum.

As is known, the human body comes from an elementary structure from the ground quintessence. It starts from the meeting between the ovum and seed that takes place in the "great glass palace", namely the womb. Modern medical science has proven that the meeting of the two above-mentioned things continues to form a pool of blood, then becomes a pile of meat, then becomes a super tiny human body structure or fetus, then becomes an embryo.

According to the latest gynecological research, at the age of 4 months and 10 days of the fetus, there is usually an astonishing transformation of "humans": life begins to occur complete with all its markers. A fetus, who at that age "gets" the spirit as a source of life, will survive as a baby, who is ready to be born, vice versa will fall off and decay.

The life above, which is academically undeniable, is brought about by the presence of the spirit. It is the gift of the Supreme Creator as an inexorable pleasure for all humankind without exception. It is the light that brings humankind from darkness (infidelity) which is the basic character of the ground entity, towards "truth". This spirit cannot choose to be blown in whose body and where, complete with all its ascriptive attributes.

This is entirely the supraprerogative area of the Creator. As a result, diversity and difference are extraordinary presents given by God to all humankind. Logically easy to understand, if the Supreme Creator wants to make all humankind the same is not difficult. Humankind is created in different formats for only one purpose, namely "reading" the greatness of God in the process of understanding and making peace with one another.

Humans, who submit to the Creator and make peace with others, have the core of an educated spirit. The educating spirit is not in a human-created educational institution. It is a product of its encounter with the Creator in a ritualistic or non-spiritual arena in His Palace at whole times.

In this context, religion, which is revealed by God from the prophet to the prophet -- through revelation -- is in order to educate the spirit so that its light is always glowing grandly over the darkness. Thus, the mind and reasoning shine as a beautiful form of love, peace, and spread kindness to others and the natural surroundings.

Religion as the essential right of the relationship between the spirit and the Supreme Source has been intervened by the power of human interpretative thought. This is increasingly weakened by the phenomenon of religion that manifests itself into a social institution, complete with a variety of purposes in the capacity of their interests. Furthermore, the reduction of religion in a certain cultural identification is an amazing stupidity, which is beautifully packaged to deny the essence of light called "truth". Religion in practice, thus, is often trapped in the daydream of textual narrative interpretation wave of divine law in the middle of the cradle of institutional involution prison.

The two things have thus perfectly mixed up the essential religious goals with the tools to achieve them. Fanaticism and religious militancy and the schools within them have made humankind to be horrifyingly compartmentalized. In this context, hostility often arises in everyday life. In fact, religion does not carry a difference gene, which is sourced only in one treatise.

In short, the Abu Dhabi declaration is a revolution of honest recognition by the two important world religious institutions on the essence of human brotherhood. The conception of God the Creator may be constructed differently in every religion, sect, and school milieu. However, God who creates nature and everything in it must be the same.

This understanding is of course to penetrate primus interpares truth claims. It at the same time has shifted the attention of humankind from sibling quarrels, to substantial cooperation to deal with the threat of destruction of civilization itself.

Humanitarian challenge

Religious people are like a group of passengers who quarrel with each other on a leaky boat that runs towards the island of hope. They are not looking for a point of equality of fate, to jointly close the leak and guarantee the safety of shipping;

but instead, further fighting claims over the island of hope which is still uncertain. Therefore, the Abu Dhabi declaration is in puncto reflexionis a symbol, which ends the fight of humankind as well as is sparked by a glance of optimistic hopes of building a better future together.

For example, the earth planet, which has been around four billion years old, is characterized by the vulnerability of being overwhelmed by excessive loads. It can ideally support the presence of around 4.5 billion people. However, the population of the earth has now approached twice the capacity. Human beings need food, clean air rich in oxygen, mobility, space, and so on. Every inch of the above needs carries a dimension of damage.

The population that increases uncontrollably has an implication to the greater damage it can cause. In fact, most human beings are transformed into creatures of carpe diem, who pretend to forget that the future fate of the earth must be maintained and guarded together. It seems that this is a challenge for the religious communities to move together towards a synergistic point in order to respond to the above challenges.

Another example of a scientific revolution is like a double-edged knife. Michio Kaku, for example, suggests that Einstein\'s theory of relativity is not closed by a point, but a comma. He speaks that optimism for the future is born of the womb of the wonders of science and technology. He feels the future civilizations, which are higher and faster, thereby instantly changing the patterns of old life.

At a time with the mouth is still open, another surprise approaches. New patterns emerge based on extensive use of data, artificial intelligence and supermicro technology such as nano and genomes. The challenge of science and technology is the fact that worship in the human brain moves so far away that it forgets the fundamental forces that move it. The wilderness of science and technology is a space of unlimited exile. On the one hand, it provides solutions to technical limitations, on the other hand it minimizes the natural function space of human beings. Thus, science and technology have an unimaginable evolutionary impact.

No less important is the appearance of the humanitarian challenge from the fact that the liberal-capitalistic life system has brought life to fantastic imaginary bubbles. There is truth in Fukuyama\'s classic image a quarter of century ago about

the danger of a single system after socialism downfall in Cold War arena. There is also a truth on the liberal-Western dichotomy with Huntington\'s version of Islamic puritanism. Both of the above thoughts dissolve in the thesis of capitalism to become a silent, but expansive force with crunchy power. It is even unwittingly able to package humanity beautifully into commodities and separated and divided into prices.

Finally, universal humanity is facing challenges and even serious threats from the spread of terrorism, drug abuse, midnight gripping explosions of wars based on mass destruction weapons, widespread infectious diseases such as AIDS, and so on. It is time for humankind to now determine the fate equation to close the leaky holes in a boat that is being shared.

Proposal

How beautiful if the important symbolic steps above can be followed up jointly by both parties seriously. The main thing is mutual "closer" understanding of the nature of the brotherhood of humankind itself. This movement should then be followed by socialization and application among religious "elites" so that the echo could even be transmitted to the most basic grass roots. As a result, religionists and their followers can move to the same point of awareness about the importance of responding to humanitarian challenges as an inherent responsibility.

In the above condition, efforts to safeguard the earth from the damages will meet with the increasing quality of humankind. Therefore, they will be able to become wise controllers of the revolutionary mercy of science and technology. The two of them can even meet in balance between the gentle nature of human care and the wildness of liberal market practices.

At this point, humankind always strives to stand on its humanity as the controller of various "tools" and to not get lost in its intoxicating seduction. Finally, challenges and threats should be responded to with the construction of wise character as a manifestation of "spirit" being maintained by the Supreme Creator. Thus terrorism, drug abuse, war based on mass destruction weapons, and the spread of AIDS can be minimized.

Gumilar Rusliwa Somantri, Sociologist at the University of Indonesia