NABI YUSUF YANG CEKAL

Nabi Yusuf adalah contoh yang baik, bagi semua manusia.  Semasa masih kecil, saudara-saudara beliau berdengki dengan beliau.  Akhirnya, mereka bersepakat membuang beliau ke dalam sebuah telaga buruk.

Nabi Yusuf ditemui oleh sekumpulan ahli perniagaan.  Mereka memungutnya dan mejualnya kepada Raja Mesir yang bernama Qithfir dengan harga yang murah.  Tuhan menceritakan dalam surah Yusuf ayat 20 yang bermaksud, "Dan mereka menjual Yusuf dengan harga yang murah iaitu beberapa dirham sahaja dan mereka tidak tertarik hati kepadanya."    

Selepas beberapa lama hidup di istana raja, beliau difitnah dan dipenjarakan.  Tuhan memberitahu dalam surah Yusuf ayat 35 yang bermaksud, "Kemudian timbul dalam fikiran mereka, setelah melihat tanda-tanda (kebenaran Yusuf) bahawa mereka sepatutnya memenjarakannya hingga ke satu waktu tertentu.

Semasa mengharungi ujian yang datangnya bertubi-tubi ini, beliau bersabar tanpa keluh kesah.  Berkat kesabaran  dan kecekalan itu akhirnya beliau dibebaskan dan menjadi Raja Mesir.  Tuhan menyatakan dalam surah Yusuf ayat 56 yang bermaksud,  "Dan demikianlah Kami memberi kedudukan kepada Yusuf di negeri Mesir. (Dia  berkuasa penuh) untuk pergi ke mana yang dia kehendaki di bumi Mesir itu.  Kami limpahkan rahmat kepada sesiapa yang Kami kehendaki dan Kami tidak mensia-siakan pahala orang-orang yang melakukan kebaikan."  Memang benar.  Tuhan tidak mensia-siakan kesabaran dan kecekalan manusia.

ISLAM: AN OVERVIEW

Islam is the second most widespread of the world's religion, with more than one billion adherents.  Muslim countries extend from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Muslims constitute the majority in forty-eight countries and are a significant minority in many others.  Though the Arab world is  often regarded as the heartland of Islam, the majority of Muslims live in Asia and Africa.  The largest Muslim communities are in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Central Asia and Nigeria.  Islam has grown significantly in the West in recent years, where it is now the second largest religion in many parts of Europe and the third largest in the United States.

The term Islam, is derived from the Arabic root s-l-m, which means "submission" or "peace."  Muslims are those who surrender to God's will or law, rendering them at peace with themselves and with God.  To embrace Islam is to become a member of a worldwide faith community (ummah).  Thus believers have a religious identity that is both individual and corporate as well as a responsibilty or duty to obey and implement God's will in their personal and social lives.

Islam stands in a long line of Middle Eastern prophetic religious traditions that  share uncompromising monotheism, belief in God's revelation, prophets, ethical responsibility, accountability, and the notion of a Day of Judgement.  Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all considered children of Abraham (Ibrahim), although they belong to different branches of the same family.  Jews and Christians are spiritual descendants of Abraham and his wife, Sarah, through their son, Isaac (Ishaq);  Muslims trace their lineage back to Ishmael (Ismail),  Abraham's firstborn son by his Egyptian servant, Hagar.  Ishmael became the father of Arabs in northern Arabia.  Muslims believe that Islam was the original monotheistic faiths, with Judaism and Christianity as tolerated offshoots.   

Islamic scripture, the Quran, was revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the seventh century.  Muslims believe it was revealed verbatim.  The centre and foundation of Islam is God, whom Muslims call Allah, or "the God".  Allah is believed to be the transcendent, all-powerful, and all-knowing creator, sustainer, ordainer and judge of the universe.  The absolute monotheism of Islam is preserved in the doctrine of unity (tawhid) and sovereignty (rabb, "ruler" or "lord") of God that dominates Islamic belief and practice.  As God is one, His rule and will or law is comprehensive, extending to all creatures and in all aspects of life.  God is not only powerful and majestic but also merciful and just.  Reward and punishment follow from individual ethical responsibility and accountability before God.  Islamic ethics follow from human beings' special status and responsibility on earth.

Islam emphasises practice as well as belief.  Law rather than theology is the central religious discipline and locus for defining the path of Islam and preserving its way of life.  The essential duties of all Muslims, the Five  Pillars, are profession of faith (shahadah, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God"), worship or prayer five times daily with community prayers at the mosque on Fridays, charity (zakah), fasting during the month of Ramadan, and pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once in a lifetime.  Jihad, or struggle in the way of God, is sometimes considered the sixth pillar.  Jihad includes both internal spiritual struggles and external war waged in defence of the Muslim community.

Contemporary revivalism is rooted in Islam's time-honoured tradition of renewal (tajdid) and reform (islah) embodied in Muhammad's leadership of the first Islamic movement, seventeenth - and eighteenth-century revivalism. and nineteen and twentieth-century Islamic modernist movement.  At the heart of the revivalist worldview is the belief that the Muslim world is in a state of decline owing to Muslims' departure from the straight path of Islam.  The proposed cure is to return to Islam in personal and public life so as to ensure restoration of Islamic identity, values, and power.  For Islamic political activists, Islam is a total or comprehensive way of life, stipulated in the Quran, mirrored in Muhammad's example and the nature of the first Muslim community state, and embodied in the comprehensive nature of  shariah, God's revealed law.  Islamic activists or Islamists believe that renewal and revitalization of Muslim governments and societies require restoration or reimplementation of Islamic law, which they believe is a blue-print for an Islamically guided and socially just state and society.  Revivalism continues to grow as a broad-based socio-religious movement, functioning today in virtually every Muslim  country and transnationally. Its goal is creation of a just society  through the Islamic transformation of individuals at the grassroots level.

SURAH 62 AL-JUMU'AH (FRIDAY)

THE SURAH OPENS WITH AN EXHORTATION to the believers to glorify and revere God Almighty.  It says:  "All that is in the heavens and on the earth gives glory to God, the Sovereign, the Holy One, the Almighty, the Wise" (1).  Whenever the call to prayer is heard, Muslims make their way to the mosque to join their fellow-Muslims in worshipping their Lord as an expression of praise to God and as a reflection of the unity of their community.

Friday is the highlight of the week for Muslims the world over.  It is a day on which Muslims are urged to bathe and smell pleasant, and in which, according to Prophet Muhammad, there is a blessed hour during which a Muslim's prayers are certain to be answered.

The opening statement is also an indirect criticism of those Muslims who, on hearing of the arrival of trade caravans in Madinah hastily left the mosque  to engage in trading.  The surah censures their action, saying:

And when they see commerce or some other diversion, they rush to it and leave you (Muhammad) standing alone. Say, "That which God has in store far better than any diversion or commerce, and God is the Best Provider." (11)

The surah asserts that Muhammad, the final messenger of God, was chosen from among the illiterate Arabs to convey God's final and universal message to mankind.  That honour was withheld from the Israelites and the Christians because of the breaches they had committed and the distortions they had introduced into their respective religiions.  Their arrogance, stubbornness and ignorance disqualified them.  They proved unable to reform, their own state, let alone be able to reform others or present a good example.  The Arabs of the sixth century AC, on the other hand, were simple people with limited material ambition and were, therefore, more receptive and willing to devote all their energies to Islam.  The surah says:

It is He that sent forth among the unlettered people a messenger from among themselves to recite to them His revelations and purify them and teach them the Book and wisdom, though they had hitherto gone astray. (2)

The Arabs did convey the message of Islam to other peoples all over the world and were assimilated into them, thereby  forming a propitious link between humanity and God's revelation.

The Israelites had become too ethnocentric, parochial, and materialistic.  The surah asserts:

Those who were entrusted with the Torah and subsequently failed to fulfill their obligations are like a donkey laden with books.  Wretched are those people who reject God's revelations.  God does not guide the wrong-doers.  (5)

    

Those qualities continue to be evident today.  The Israelites do not appear to be capable of representing God's message or leading mankind towards His path.  The surah adds:

Say to the Jews. "If you claim that, of all men, you alone are the true friends of God, then you should wish for death, if you are truthful."  But they will never wish for death because of what their hands have done.  (6-7) 

Sadly, many Muslims have today gone down that errant road, neglecting their responsibilities towards God's revelations and giving voice to materialistic, nationalist, and ethnocentric tendencies that have very little, if anything, to do with God or His message.

Those Muslims who are sincere should persevere and continue to work hard to revive the Muslim Ummah and enable it to play its proper role in the world and restore the sovereignty and prevalence of God's order over human life and world affairs.

         

SURAH 62 AL-JUMU'AH (HARI JUM'AT)

MUQADDIMAH

Surah Al Jumu'ah ini menerangkan tentang pengutusan Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. dan menjelaskan bahawa umatnya akan menjadi mulia kerana ajarannya, disusul dengan perumpamaan orang-orang Yahudi dan kebohongan pengakuan mereka dan kemudian diakhiri dengan kewajiban solat Jumu'ah.

Dalam Surah Al Jumu'ah umat Islam disuruh meninggalkan perniagaan untuk pergi solat Jumu'ah.