REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, By: Ahmad Syafii Maarif

On September 11, 2010, Prof. Brain Cox (44 years old) from the University of Manchester, England, asking the following questions to Stephan W. Hawking (73 years old), the famous disabilities physicist, "Is there something in the knowledge of your field that you think that all people should know?”

Hawking’s answers were recently referred to himself as an atheist were "science was able to explain the universe without the need for a creator." In another part of the discussion, Hawking repeats, "The laws of physics could explain the universe without the need of God."

In other words, the concept of God that taught all religions since thousands of years ago was considered to be obsolete, replaced by a god of science. However, whether modernity is indeed moving toward the absolute atheism?

The Western world became rowdy by Hawking's statement, particularly the churches in Europe which was facing a wave of aggressive atheism. One comment from the church to Hawking read as follows "Stephan Hawking may have a high IQ but there's Someone with an IQ that can’t be measured. His name is the Lord Jesus Christ!”

In Europe, on the mid-19th century, Friedrich Nietzshe already said that "God is dead". So Hawking was not a new phenomenon for them. The possible of new thing was just the formulation which was wrapped in a blanket of science.

If in Europe, all people are free to talk about anything, including the freedom to deny the existence of God, in the Arab countries, Muslim had another that smothering: the clash of Shia versus Sunni in the name of God. Both of these groups will definitely get mad if they were said as godless, but the bloodshed between them in the name of God is still in progress, something that is shameful and perverse. But it is a fact of history.

In this space I've often talked about disunity of Muslims which aged dozens of centuries and has not looked signs for peace. Then, in my mind flashed a very serious anxiety in the form of a question: whether Muslims had indeed worshiped history which always triggers a split, not the worship of God that could unite hearts?

In my reading, Islam in robe of Sunnism, Shi'ism, and kharijism was a creation of history as a result of power political disputes among the elite of Arab Muslims in the early period by denying the Quran and prophetic message. Indeed the hostile parties always were quoting sacred texts, but that were applying in the field were a betrayal of the texts, as I wrote in the "Resonance" before this.

Getting older of my age, the anxiety in the above felt increasingly tense that "we are indeed worshipping history", while Allah as the true god with all His commands have long been neglected. Allah through His word ordered that the believers to keep the brotherhood (see for example in Quran Surah al-Hujurat, verse 10), but in reality that was applicable was a betrayal of the sacred teachings.

Studying history was very ordered by Quran, but not for worship. It was fully intended that humans take moral lessons from the history of the event. So that everything was good to be taken and forwarded and everything bad and ruins to be abandoned.

Phrase of Quran, “Laqad kana fi qashashihim 'ibra liuli 'l-albab.” (Surah Yusuf verse 111). (Indeed in their stories there was a moral lesson for they whose were far-reaching thoughts) was one of the verses on the importance of history. In the perspective of this paragraph, a prolonged dispute between the sects in Islam which had destroyed the people brotherhood building synonymous with neglecting and abusing the moral lessons, something that emphasized by Quran.

Finally, if the Muslims wanted to have a bright future, respected, and dignified, they should worship Allah with a sincere heart, and do not worship the history that has brought the prolonged havoc.

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