"A man was visiting his friend who worked abroad as a gardener at the house of a very rich man. They were allowed to look around the house and finally came to a corner of the room where there was a scale.. 'whatever hapens,' said the colleague,' 'please don’t step on it!''Why not?' asked the man.'Because every time my lady mistress does, she lets out an awful scream!'”"We all have defining moments—meaningful experiences that stand out in our memory. These moments seem to be the product of fate, luck, or maybe a higher power’s interventions that we can't control. Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories. When we cherish those great moments, we probably sit on the beach feeling the sun on our skin. Or sitting in the veranda looking at the stars and moon," said Cananga while looking at three books piled up on the table. The first book entitled 'Perjuangan Kita' [Our Struggle] written by Sutan Sjahrir, one of the Indonesian founding fathers. The second book, 'Madilog' written by Tan Malaka, an Indonesian National Hero. And the third book was 'Catatan Seorang Demonstran' (Annotations of a Demonstrator), a diary of a Chinese Indonesian activist, Soe Hok Gie. Then Cananga read the Decree of five judges which stated that there was no nepotism—even though everybody knew that someone had entered through the back door, no 'pork barrel' politics—even though everybody knew it happened, all relevant institutions had carried out their duties well—even though everybody knew that 'it was all set', and they suggested that everything was fine—and everybody knows that taghut will endanger democracy. It also proves Levitsky and Ziblatt's concern that 'democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.'If only the three authors of the book read it, you won't stop thinking, Tan Malaka would slam his Madilog and say, 'Bad and good are bad and good for society itself. It originates from society itself, from interactions between humans and humans in society itself. Good actions bring good consequences. Bad actions have bad consequences for society itself. Bad and good laws can be learned and formed from the history of all nations and countries, past and present. There is no longer any need for Ghosts or Gods as the beginning and end of humans and their morals. Instead, the Ghosts and Gods meet their end in humans and their real morals, which are based on society. Remember that from beyond the grave, my voice will be louder than on earth.'Sutan Sjahrir would say, 'The Republic of Indonesia that we fought for as a tool in our people's revolution gets its full price if we fill it with genuine democracy. For us, a meaningful victory is a victory that contains content, not just a victory for name and honor. The real guidance for our political struggle must be addressed to that content. National struggles in general are not free from the danger of being too influenced by name and appearance. Therefore, what is often called a national victory often proves empty for the people at large. If we price our Independent Indonesia at the price of genuine democracy, then in our political struggle against the world its contents are at stake. The Republic of Indonesia is only the name that we give to the content that we intend and desire.'Then, what about Soe Hok Gie? What will he do? It seemed he would not say anything, but immediately joined the demonstrators for the third time.People have a natural tendency to push back when they feel pushed. When the reactive pushing and pulling are stopped and seek out the best way to harness our power and allow others to do the same, the energy flows and win-win solutions are achieved. Having the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others, or the course of events, as the three people mentioned above did, is power. Every person has control of their power—if not, he will be a loser."The cycles of the sun, moon, and stars exist whether or not our planet's human inhabitants feel challenged to appropriate them to measure time. But if they did, as was usually the case, their societies' structuring of observable time was and is based on astronomy: the succession of days and nights punctuated by the waxing and waning of the moon, the movement of the sun and the rhythm of the seasons or a combination of the two. The rest is manipulation, the elaboration of mental constructs that are abstract things.The earliest people on the planet surely recognized the cycles of the most basic astronomical motions. The Sun and Moon rose and set each day, and moved through the sky with predictable patterns, and the weather followed a cycle related to the movement of the Sun concerning the stars. The units of days, months, and years naturally followed. With further observations, those watching the sky could visualize patterns in the stars and distinguish comets and 'stars' that 'wandered' among the others.Dramatic events such as solar and lunar eclipses were seen, and, in some cases, they were recorded and predicted, and their 'meanings' interpreted. The observation and measurement of these cycles were important for daily life, religious practices, and agriculture, and they became the bases for timekeeping and calendars.The development of calendars varied, depending largely on religion, culture, politics, and economics. Religious practices and holidays along with agriculture cycles have been defined in terms of lunar sightings, solar motion, and the appearance of the stars in the sky. Hence, calendars have been based on lunar or solar motions, or a combination of the two. Unfortunately, years, months, and days are not integral multiples of each other, and this has led to complications in creating calendars.There is enormous historical and contextual variation among calendars, says Barbara Freyer Stowasser, which may be less surprising than the similarities that can also exist among calendar systems of vastly disparate civilizations (such as the fact that the Mayan, Aztec, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Indian and Chinese calendars were all at one time or another rooted in a sexagesimal system of numbers). Some calendric parallelisms and similarities among civilizations have been and are coincidental, while others suggest the existence of often long-range but frequently obscure cultural influences.According to Stowasser, 'Time' is always structured for a purpose, and usually more than one. Historically, these have been a mixture of the economic, the political, and, in a broader sense, the ideological. The latter prominently involves religion; most calendars appear to have grown from some religious impulse, while a few of the modern secular ones (like the postrevolutionary French calendar) were designed in the combative mode of antireligion and usually had a short shelf life. (The French revolutionary calendar, introduced in 1793, had its epoch, or starting point, fixed on 22 September 1792, the day of the proclamation of the republic and date of the autumnal equinox; 13 years later, it was all over, when Napoleon reinstituted the Gregorian calendar, from 1 January 1806).Against this background, the lunisolar calendar of pre-Islamic Arabia (which started and ended in the autumn) was abolished. The pagan method of intercalation periodically wedged an additional month between the two sacred months of Dhu al-Hijja and al-Muharram, interrupting the sequence of the four sacred spring months (Dhu al-Qa'da, Dhu al-Hijjah, al-Muharram, and Rajab) of the lunisolar year.Science factor and the Islamic Calendar are closely related. Time measurement holds a prominent place among the rules and regulations of Muslim rituals. Its tasks can be achieved without knowledge of astronomy and sophisticated technology. But the very importance of predicting and defining lunar cycles and daily prayer times (and also calculating the correct local qibla, prayer direction toward the Ka'ba in Mecca) made astronomy an Islamic science of practical merit. The sophistication of astronomical and mathematical knowledge and discovery, even at an early date in Islamic history, derived in part from this tight linkage with religion that would often ensure funding for scientific projects endowed for the moral and spiritual well-being of the community. It also derived from the fact that the Islamic realm, by way of conquest and expansion, fell heir to several much older civilizations that had long traditions of scholarship in the theoretical and applied sciences. Among the reasons to embrace this ancient and foreign legacy, the religious motive was operative for many or most Muslim scientists, meaning that their motivation had deeper roots than mere practical utility. Astronomers saw their studies as a way of understanding Allah's plan for the world and of glorifying Him by exalting His works. For others, the main benefit of astronomical knowledge may have been the skills it lent to the practising astrologer. Perhaps the most constant and important impulse for the study of astronomy or any other science in the Islamic world at that time, however, was the ideal of science for its own sake. From an early date, Arabic Islamic culture was profoundly and solidly a scientific culture, and the translation movement of Indian, Persian and Hellenistic sources into Arabic, was a consequence rather than the source of this interest.The ‘largest’ time system of all, Islamic chronography, has received the least attention in the literature on Islam and time. Islam's calendar of years was established swiftly and early and quickly became a historical fact, yet it is remarkable and significant that this should have been so. When soon after the Prophet's (ﷺ) death, the Islamic realm expanded to include all of the Persian Empire, most of the provinces of the Byzantine Empire north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and most of the Iberian Peninsula, a new Islam-focused civilization took shape in these vast territories that privileged Islamic religion and Arabic language over older, indigenous cultural allegiances and linguistic heritages.One of the fundamental institutions that aided this new civilization in constructing its cultural unity over unprecedented distances was the ritual obligation for every free adult Muslim, if able, to perform at least once in his or her lifetime the pilgrimage to the Ka'ba, Allah's House in Mecca. This religion-mandated mobility created and facilitated the maintenance of regular contact between widely separated Muslim populations and fostered a sense of civilizational identity over large geographical distances.Another institution that held the Islamic world together was the Islamic calendar. One of its greatest advantages may have been that it was so low maintenance. By adopting a strictly lunar system, the beginnings (and thereby the ends) of the 12 months of the year, and therefore of the year as a whole, could be determined empirically, anywhere, by way of sighting of the new moon that signaled a new month's beginning. This produced months of uneven length in the year.By opting to go lunar, the official Islamic calendar was, of course, decoupled from the seasons. This created administrative and, especially, taxation problems from the start that Islamic states sought to resolve by adopting some sort of secondary calendar, varying from region to region, that was typically of pre-Islamic or otherwise extra-Islamic origin. The great benefit of the systemic simplicity of the Islamic lunar calendar, however – no matter how inherently fluid – was that it eliminated the need for complicated rules of calendar adjustments, as was the case with all solar calendars.In ancient Egypt, the new day began at dawn. To the Babylonians, it began at dusk. Even though their natural day began at sunrise and ended at sunset, and their hours were seasonal, the Romans started their civil day at midnight, which is the reckoning that underlay the Julian and now by extension the Gregorian calendar. Since the Islamic day begins at sunset, the night (layl) is therefore, the first part of yawm (‘full day’) (except that yawm can also signify ‘daylight hours’, that is, the daylight portion of the 24-hour ‘full day’). The convention to use the arrival of night as the date line fits well with the preeminence of the lunar cycle in the Islamic calendar as a whole, since the 12 months of the Islamic year, and so also the year itself, are calculated in terms of lunar cycles. Since 1925 astronomers have universally counted the day from the midnight hour. When in 1972 radio stations across the world began to broadcast their time in terms of Coordinated Universal Time predicated on Greenwich mean time, it became global practice to start the ‘official’ day at midnight.The Qur'an’s vision of time is likewise Allah-centred. Time is Allah's creation. There can be no abstract time because Allah, the Ruler of the universe Who is beyond time, is Rabb over time from the beginning to the end of Creation. While time is a function of Allah's Omnipotence, so is its measurement a divine gift that Allah created for the benefit of mankind. The Qur'an presents richly designed examples that prove Allah's authorship of all celestial movements and their utility to the human race as devices to measure (but not to control) time. Night and day and even the 12 lunar months of the year are ‘appointed times for the believing people’. Reading the sky for the prayers of the day and for the 12 months of the year is a constant reminder of Allah's Power and Providence.Time is not an abstract force. The pre-Islamic concept of dahr, death is bound by time is a pagan fallacy. Allah says,وَقَالُوْا مَا هِيَ اِلَّا حَيَاتُنَا الدُّنْيَا نَمُوْتُ وَنَحْيَا وَمَا يُهْلِكُنَآ اِلَّا الدَّهْرُۚ وَمَا لَهُمْ بِذٰلِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍۚ اِنْ هُمْ اِلَّا يَظُنُّوْنَ'And they say, 'There is not but our worldly life; we die and live [i.e., some people die and others live, replacing them], and nothing destroys us except time.' And they have of that no knowledge; they are only assuming.' [QS. Al-JAthiyah (45):24]The computation of days, months, and years is rooted in Allah's will. He, Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, says,اَلشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ بِحُسْبَانٍۙ وَّالنَّجْمُ وَالشَّجَرُ يَسْجُدَانِ'The sun and the moon [move] by precise calculation, and the stars and trees prostrate [they submit obediently to the laws of Allah].' [QS. Ar-Rahman (55):5-6]In another verse, Allah says,اَلَمْ تَرَ اَنَّ اللّٰهَ يَسْجُدُ لَهٗ مَنْ فِى السَّمٰوٰتِ وَمَنْ فِى الْاَرْضِ وَالشَّمْسُ وَالْقَمَرُ وَالنُّجُوْمُ وَالْجِبَالُ وَالشَّجَرُ وَالدَّوَاۤبُّ وَكَثِيْرٌ مِّنَ النَّاسِۗ وَكَثِيْرٌ حَقَّ عَلَيْهِ الْعَذَابُۗ وَمَنْ يُّهِنِ اللّٰهُ فَمَا لَهٗ مِنْ مُّكْرِمٍۗ اِنَّ اللّٰهَ يَفْعَلُ مَا يَشَاۤءُ'Do you not see [i.e., know] that to Allah prostrates whoever is in the heavens and whoever is on the earth and the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, the moving creatures and many of the people? But upon many the punishment has been justified [and therefore decreed]. And he whom Allāh humiliates - for him there is no bestower of honor. Indeed, Allāh does what He wills.' [QS. Al-Hajj (22):18]The 'Ummah' will always pay attention to time, and Allah give them the direction,هُوَ الَّذِيْ جَعَلَ الشَّمْسَ ضِيَاۤءً وَّالْقَمَرَ نُوْرًا وَّقَدَّرَهٗ مَنَازِلَ لِتَعْلَمُوْا عَدَدَ السِّنِيْنَ وَالْحِسَابَۗ مَا خَلَقَ اللّٰهُ ذٰلِكَ اِلَّا بِالْحَقِّۗ يُفَصِّلُ الْاٰيٰتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَّعْلَمُوْنَ'It is He who made the sun a shining light and the moon a derived light and determined for it phases—that you may know the number of years and account [of time]. Allah has not created this except in truth. He details the signs for a people who know.' [QS. Yunus (10):5]And also,يَسْـَٔلُوْنَكَ عَنِ الْاَهِلَّةِ ۗ قُلْ هِيَ مَوَاقِيْتُ لِلنَّاسِ وَالْحَجِّ ۗ وَلَيْسَ الْبِرُّ بِاَنْ تَأْتُوا الْبُيُوْتَ مِنْ ظُهُوْرِهَا وَلٰكِنَّ الْبِرَّ مَنِ اتَّقٰىۚ وَأْتُوا الْبُيُوْتَ مِنْ اَبْوَابِهَا ۖ وَاتَّقُوا اللّٰهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُوْنَ'They ask you, [O Muḥammad], about the crescent moons. Say, 'They are mawaqit [measurements of time] for the people and for ḥajj [pilgrimage].' And it is not righteousness to enter houses from the back, but righteousness is [in] one who fears Allah. And enter houses from their doors. And fear Allāh that you may succeed.' [QS. Al-Baqarah (2):189]Safar is the second month of the lunar Islamic calendar, in Arabic words, it means traveling or migration. In the pre-Islamic Arabian, houses were empty this time while their occupants gathered food. From an Islamic perspective, traveling can be obligatory if someone travels to perform Hajj, study, or visit parents. It is Sunnah if the intention to do good deeds such as visiting relatives and friends, performing Umrah, and helping fellow brothers and sisters. It is permissible if one wants to have recreation or something similar. It is makruh if the intention is only to increase wealth and worldly needs. And it is Haram if it is intended to carry out immoral acts. So, the priority of traveling depends on the intention and purpose.Traveling has several benefits, Imam Shafi'i (رحمه الله) said, 'Travel from your village to seek virtue. Go on a journey because there are five benefits to it: getting rid of boredom and earning a fortune, gaining knowledge, manners, and good friends.' Therefore, Fiqh also regulates the procedures of worship while traveling.We will continue our discussion in the next episode, bi 'idhnillah."Then, Cananga sang,Everybody knows the deal is rottenOld Black Joe's still picking cottonFor your ribbons and bowsAnd everybody knows *)
Citations & References:
- Sutan Sjahrir, Perjuangan Kita, 1991, Rumah Syahrir
- Tan Malaka, Madilog: Materialisme, Dialektika dan Logika (1943), 1951, Widjaya
- Soe Hok Gie, Catatan Seorang Demonstran, 1989, LP3ES
Barbara Freyer Stowasser, The Day Begins at Sunset: Perceptions of Time in the Islamic World, 2014, I.B.Tauris
- Dennis D. McCarthy & P. Kenneth Seidelmann, Time: From Earth Rotation to Atomic Physics, 2018, Cambridge University Press
*) "Everybody Knows" written by Leonard Cohen
