When the night was getting dark, one time in Bangkok, I was telling a story with a friend. The friend said that humans were as far away as mountains. "From a distance the mountain looks green, but when you get closer it turns out there are brown, black and other colors." What this means, my friend said, is that the image of a human being is not as clear as what is seen from a distance. From a distance we think we are good, but when we get close we might find out that humans are not as good as we think from a distance.
However, I don't want a story about mountains and human characters. I want to tell you something else. In a book by Dr. Amru Khalid, he told me about the prayer beads of the mountains. "Once, when the Prophet David (AS) read the book of Zabur, something amazing happened," he wrote. The mountains then glorified. The people who were in front of Prophet David (as) (who was reading the Zabur book) also felt the power of Allah. They heard the sound of the prayer beads of the mountains. Birds in the sky also gathered around them from various places. There was even a bird that perched on the head of the Prophet David (AS), flapped its wings, and also did something: glorify.
Allah Almighty immortalized the story in the Qur'an. He said, "Indeed, we subdued the mountains to glorify with him (David) in the evening and morning" (Shad: 18). In verse 19, Allah also continues the story in His noble words, "And (We also subdued) the birds in a gathered state, they were very obedient to Allah." Everyone who gathered there, both Prophet David (as) and the mountains, glorified Allah alone. They read the sentence, "La ilaha illallah...La ilaha illallah, which means "There is no god but Allah...There is no god but Allah."
In the surah Al-Isra verse 44, there is a verse that explains that everything that exists glorify Allah. Allah says, "And there is nothing but glorifies Him with His praise." In fact, what is in us, our bodies are also very likely to glorify Him in their own ways. We may not hear it, but as His creatures all of them glorify, praise the truth of their Creator. What we don't see is not necessarily not there, right? Also what we don't hear is not necessarily not there. There are so many things that we don't have time to think, but he is there, his existence is in our midst.
In another story, there is a narration from Abu Hurairah that the Messenger of Allah saw took some pebbles. The companions near him heard that the pebbles were glorifying Allah, saying "La ilaha illallah". The Messenger of Allah then gave it to Abu Bakr. After he took it, the pebbles were also glorified. The pebbles were given back to the Messenger of Allah.
Next, the Messenger of Allah gave it to Umar bin Khattab. Umar Al-Faruq put the pebbles in his hand, and the same: they also glorified . Some companions then took the pebbles, but the tasbih of the pebbles was no longer heard. The hadith narrated by Thabrani narrates that "the pebbles only tasbih when they are in the hands of the three people." Namely, the Messenger of Allah, Abu Bakr, and Umar bin Khattab.
Those stories seem unreasonable, but in Islam there are many things that are considered unreasonable by ordinary reason but they exist. Faith directs the soul to believe in things that are sometimes out of the ordinary and out of the human mind is like the prayer beads of the pebbles, and also the prayer beads of the mountains.
It is also very possible that the objects around us are also reciting tasbih when we are reading this writing. They are reciting tasbih in praise of the Creator. The only question is, have those who read this writing recited tasbih a lot on the day when this writing was read?
YANUARDI SYUKUR is an Indonesian writer who is also a lecturer, editor, researcher and speaker at various conferences and expert resource person on several Indonesian television stations and ministries. He has participated in various international programs in Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, the United States, as well as Ukraine. He is an anthropologist at Khairun University who is interested in various global issues. He is currently also active as Vice Chairman of the Islamic and Middle East Research Center (IMERC) of the University of Indonesia and is active in the Commission on Foreign Relations and International Cooperation of the Indonesian Ulama Council. E-mail: yanuardisyukur@gmail.com.
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