Perjalanan Mencari Nilai

Sejak kaum kulit hitam mula diberi layanan sama kelas seperti yang dinikmati kaum kulit putih(walau diskriminasi masih berjalan hingga masani), dunia sudah menyaksikan beberapa nama hebat lahir dari kaum ini.

Oprah Winfrey dengan Shownya, Micheal Jackson, pencipta Moon Wallk, Mr. President Barrack Obama, Michael Jordan dalam NBA dan Tiger Woods dengan kayu golfnya.

Semua imej ini mewakili potret kejayaan dan keunggulan dalam lapang masing-masing. Namun di balik pencapaian hebat mereka dalam menggapai kemewahan material, nyata terdapat jurang luas di sisi moral.

Tiger Woods, di balik deretan kejuaraan dan tajaan, mengejutkan dunia dengan skandalnya- bukti terbaru kegagalan material membeli kebahagiaan.

Berikut adalah catatan Leopold Weiss, seorang Yahudi asal Lwów yang telah melalui perjalanan spiritual hebat mencari nilai sebelum kembali menemui Islam seperti yang dicatat dalam bukunya 'Road to Mecca' kemudian dicatat kembali oleh Dr. Safwat M. Halilovic dalam karya 'Islam and The West From Asad's Point of View'

One day- it was in September 1926 - Elsa and I found ourselves travelling in the Berlin subway. It was an upper-class compartment. My eye fell casually on a well-dressed man opposite me,apparently a well-to-do businessman, with a beautiful briefcase on his knees and a large diamond ring on his hand. I thought idly how well the portly figure of this man fitted the picture of prosperity which one encountered everywhere in Central European those days: a prosperity all the more prominent as it came after of inflation, when all economic life has been topsy-turvy and shabbiness of appearance was the rule. Most of the people were now well-dressed and well fed, and the man opposite me was therefore no exception. But when I looked at his face, I did not seem looking at a happy person. He appeared to be worried: and not merely worried but actualy unhappy, with eyes staring vacantly ahead and the corners of his mouth drawn in as if in pain - but not in bodily pain. Not wanting to be rude, I turned my eyes away and saw next to him a lady of some elegance. She also had a strangely unhappy expression on her face, as if contemplating or experiencing something that caused her pain; nevertheless, her mouth was fixed in the stiff semblance of a smile which, I was certain, must have been habitual. And then I began to look around at all the other faces in the compartment - faces belonging without exception to well-dresses, well fed people: and in almost every one of them I could discern an expression oh hidden suffering, so hidden that the owner of the face seemed to be quite unaware of it.
This was indeed strange. I had never before seen so many unhappy faces around me: or was it perhaps that I had never before looked for what was now so obvious and nearly vocal? The impression was so strong that I mentioned it to Elsa; and she too began to look around her with the careful eyes of a painter accustomed to studying human features. Then she turned to me, astonished, and said: 'You are right. They all look as though they were suffering torments of hell...I wonder, do they know themselves what is going on inside them?'

I knew that they did not - for otherwise they could not go on wasting their lives as they did, without any faith in binding truths; without any goal beyond the desire to raise their own standrard of living';without any hopes other than having more material amenities, more gadgets, and perhaps more power...

When we returned home, I happened to glance at my desk on which lay open a copy of the Qur'an I had been reading earlier. Mechanically, I picked the book up to put it away, but just as I was about to close it, my eye fell on the open page before me, and I read


You are obsessed by greed for more and more Until you go down to your graves. Nay, but you will come to know! Nay, but you will cone to know! Nay, if you but knew it with the knowledge of certainty, You would indeed see the hell you are in. In time, indeed, you shall see it with the eye of certainty: And on that Day you will be asked what you have done with the boon of life [At-Takathur 1-8]


For a moment I was speechless. I think the book shook in my hands. Then I handed it to Elsa. 'Read this. It is not an answer to what we saw in the subway?' It was an answer! An answer so decisive that all doubt was suddenly at an end. I knew then, beyond any doubt, that it was a God-inspired book I was holding in my hand: for although it had been placed before man over thirteen centuries ago, it clearly anticipated something that could have become true only in this complicated, mechanised, phantom-ridden age of ours... This, I saw, was not the mere human wisdom of a man of a distant past in distant Arabia. However wise he may have been, such a man could not, by himself, have foreseen the torment so peculiar to this twentieth century. Out of the Qur'an spoke a voice greater than the voice of Muhammad...