Enlightening Hearts and Minds

Haedar Nashir

· 6 minutes read

Once, the Prophet Muhammad encountered a person who was abusing a slave while fasting. The Prophet politely told the person to eat. The person, a Muslim, then confidently said, “Dear Prophet, I am fasting,” to which the Prophet replied, “Many people are fasting but get nothing except hunger and thirst.”

This was an ibrah (spiritual lesson) about the difficulties in adhering to fasting values in one’s actions in daily life. All fasting Muslims must deconstruct their religiosity to find out whether or not the annual rite truly builds their piety, which is the essential goal of fasting.

Many Muslims may fast numerous times, including during Ramadan, on Mondays and Thursdays, fasting in the style of Prophet David (fasting every other day) and other types of fasting. They also practice various fardhu (obligatory) and sunnah (highly encouraged) prayers intensively and campaign expansively for communal prayers. They read the Quran every day. Many of them can recite it by heart.

Religiosity is indeed on the rise across Indonesia. Haj and umrah (minor haj) are becoming increasingly popular. People even need to wait for years just to join the haj. More and more people want to flaunt their Islamic identity, including by wearing Islamic clothes. The concept of hijrah blossoms into a phenomenon of populist religiosity. Everyone exhibits their religious zest in ever-increasing and ever-expanding verbal and ritual intensity.

The simple answer is, of course, yes. How can a pious person commit something that contradicts religious values?

However, have the values of fasting and various other religious rites built our piety? Piety, in its authentically religious definition, comprises a soul, thoughts, behaviors, sayings and actions that radiate spiritual virtues and primary morals in everyday life. The simple answer is, of course, yes. How can a pious person commit something that contradicts religious values?

Ironic behavior

Alas, the world is never simple or linear. Religiosity is no exception. Intense religiosity should lead to significant and authentic piety.

However, it is deeply ironic that the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation is still filled with corruption, anger, intolerance, violence and shallowness in religious behavior. Politics of religion and religious ideology has yet to show uswah hasanah (good examples) that glorifies futuwah (chivalry), peace, unity, kinship, compassion and other primary virtues.

The world is indeed a lowly and inferior place. In this mortal world, the descendants of Adam show complex behaviors. All kinds of events take place, from the easily understandable to the deeply enigmatic.

Allah, the Creator, called the world a al-mata al-ghurur (playground). Sociologist Erving Goffman called such an ironic world a dramaturgy in his book Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959).

In the world of dramaturgy, humans play roles on stage. People will present themselves in certain ways on the front stage: kind, heroic, religious and mighty, and show traits that easily charm the public.

However, backstage, it is another story entirely. The public may never know how these actors behave in real life. They act one way on the public stage and another way entirely in the arena of hyper-reality, which Jean Baudrillard called the simulacra.

Dramaturgy and simulacra enter a new chapter in the worlds of social media and public politics. Online media and politics serve as arenas where actors can speak and act the most freely. Contestations of conflicting political interests and religious interpretations fill the air.

Haoxes, tajassus (digging for others’ mistakes), ghibah (gossiping), belittling others, name-calling, suspicions and the politicization of everything becomes daily consumption. Religion, in all its glorious sanctity, becomes the most valid legitimation in power struggles. Voices of peace, tolerance and compassion are deemed absurd and weak.

Opinions, prejudices, shallow data and subjectivity becomes public truth, constructed as absolutes in the era of post-truth.

Public conscience is destroyed by short-fused logic that provokes, oppresses, excoriates and spreads anger and enmity. In time, this becomes a collective bad behavior for the nation. Opinions, prejudices, shallow data and subjectivity becomes public truth, constructed as absolutes in the era of post-truth.

Hardened cult figures become new idols amid the structured, massive and systematic public culture of stupidity and silence of reason. Values of truth, goodness and authentic ethics are defeated by demagoguery and all forms of pseudo-heroism against subjectively-constructed evils.

Enlightenment

In a world filled with ironies that undermine the principal foundations and values of life, actualization of religiosity that authentically enlightens the hearts and minds of pious people is necessary. Make fasting and all rites of Ramadan and Idul Fitri a spiritual way to enlighten our hearts and mind to achieve noble characters that spread blessings for the universe.

After all, the main mission of the Prophet for the End of Times was “to perfect the noble characters of mankind” and to spread blessings for the universe.

Muhammad was the most actual and storied role model in proving that Islamic values must enlighten the hearts and minds of all humanity. He was humble, polite, compassionate, honest, loyal, intelligent and an ulul azmi (strong-hearted leader). The Prophet, despite firm and hardened, had noble a character (QS Al Qalam:4) and was the finest example (QA Al Ahzab:21).

The Prophet never held grudges against his enemies and one hadith has him saying: “The persons most hated by Allah are those who violently and abusively fight one another.” (HR Bukhari).

In a life filled with moral crises, teachings that enlighten hearts and minds are important in the framework of al-akhlaq al-karimah in Islam, which is manifested in nobility in speech and behavior.

The enlightenment of hearts and minds comprises honesty, loyalty, justice, goodness, compassion and other noble values that are important in the often-paradoxical life.

In reality, the behavior of Muslims is often inconsistent with Islam’s teachings. Truth and goodness are too often used to measure others’ religiosity, while one sees oneself through a highly ironic holier-than-thou perspective.

Islam teaches justice, goodness, peace. However, many Muslims often act ruthlessly and with vile and hostility against one another. Islam teaches compassion, mutual assistance and kinship, but Muslims often engage one another and those of other faiths in hostility.

In narratives, Muslims intensively pray, fast and do other religious rites. In reality, Muslims often behave angrily, viciously or hatefully. Islam then becomes nothing more than verbal teaching without being practiced in everyday life. Such behavioral paradoxes are not enlightening and it will only anger Allah. (QS Ash-Shaff:3).

This nobility meshes with kind behavior, resulting in virtues that go beyond.

After Ramadan and Idul Fitri, all Muslims must improve their faith, good values and noble characters as a basis for enlightening their hearts and minds to spread kindness and blessings for the universe. This nobility meshes with kind behavior, resulting in virtues that go beyond.

He knows the rights from the wrongs, the good from the bad and the appropriate from the improper. He is sincerely honest, does not act haphazardly and does not mask himself in fakery. Pious people reborn through fasting are consistent in their words and actions. They radiate wisdom for the whole universe.

Haedar Nashir, Chairman, Muhammadiyah

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