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Actual Opinion

Tuesday, 21 November 2017

Faith and social welfare

Faith and social welfare are two things that are affecting each other. So, a growing number of people who believe at the end it will improve the social welfare. And vice versa. Like a snowball effect that rolling which will get bigger and bigger. This article will further review the correlation between faith and social welfare.

As we know, majority of the population in Indonesia adhere the religions of Islam, then followed up by other religions such as Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. In fact, the percentage of the number of adherents of Islam in Indonesia has decreased, i.e. from around 88.2% in 2000, then dropped to 87.2% in 2010 and then further drop to around 85% in 2016.

There are several factors that cause a decrease in the percentage of Islam adherents in Indonesia, such as more population growth in the eastern region of Indonesia that is predominantly non-Muslim, massive cases of conversion from Islamic religion to non-Islamic and declining population growth of Muslim people.

Especially regarding the conversion from Islamic religions to a non-Islamic, some research has ever been done and showing a variety of data. For example, data from a Mercy Mission stating that each year there are approximately 2 million Muslims who converted to Christianity or Catholicism, although then the numbers 2 million is questioned by the Indonesian Islamic Teaching Community in London. However, it cannot be denied that there had been cases of massive conversion from Islamic religion, particularly in the area of Jogyakarta and Central Java, or that we are termed as ' Christianization ".

Looking at the phenomenon of decreasing number of adherents of Islam in Indonesia, our guru was ever give his comments that there should be a causal relationship from the convertion of Islamic religion into non-Islam that it is a direct impact of such low level of community welfare. According to our guru, in a society that has a low level of well-being, then the case of convertion of religion will be very easy to be happened and the trends will increase significantly. So, one of the indicators of very low level is the social welfare, is the high number of religion convertion of its inhabitants.

Someone who has been really a believer, then low levels of well-being are not going to make him convert his religion. He will consider it as a test of living in the world, and then ultimately even it will increase his faith level. However, most Muslims in Indonesia are not yet believers. Therefore, low welfare rates will drive them to convert their religion.

Although according to the statistics that gross domestic Income (GDP) from the Indonesian people are always increasing from year to year, but it turns out that in reality we encountered that the increase in income is only obtained by a small elite community in Indonesia. Distribution of income does not occur, so the gap of income level become bigger and distance between rich people and poor people become larger.

Due to the big gap of income distribution, the larger distance between the rich and the poor, then prices will go up, the cost of living is getting higher, but the purchasing ability of the poor is getting lower. Welfare for the majority of poor and middle-class society become worse. In the situation and condition of a society like this, so the only way out for someone to have prosperous is to become a rich man.

Hence on this day, almost everyone are struggling, they push each other and snatched away in order to achieve their goal to become a rich man. There is someone who love to cheat in his efforts, there is someone who does corruption or there is also some who built his business by way of bribing officials.

The ignorant will become criminals or sadist robber, so that he could become a rich man. And people who are clever will be deceitful or perpetrators of manipulation in order to gain wealth by all means. Traders will try to dig up as much profits as possible. A lot of artists will be no longer oriented on art but on how to get the material as easy as possible. In short, everyone no matter how circumstances and how his condition is, they will be struggling to become a rich man. Because only the rich could a man get prosperous.

Those are the portrait of our life condition in our country at this time. Of course, not everyone is like that, of course there are still people who are honest, who patiently faced the life pressure and sincere people who live life for what it is. But their number is very few.

Then, according to our guru, a developed countries are not countries that the whole people are all rich. But developed countries are countries which distributed their social welfave evenly. Being prosperous does not mean have to be rich. Easy to get food, easy to get well health care or easy in getting an adequate education, don't necessarily have to be rich. That's the social welfare of developed country that are distributed evenly.

So thus, then Indonesia community development should be directed there. Equitable distribution of income and social welfare. Not merely let a thief robbing the wealth of this country, not merely let the trader to dredge as big profits as possible, not merely let corruption of officials to be happened and not merely let any businessmen offering bribes.

While there is still a chance, before the country's boat was sunk by the depravity of her social condition, let us direct our development community towards equitable social welfare.

Ulamas, please do not teach or encourage Muslims must become a rich person. Because there is no obligation or the commands of Allah swt to oblige Muslims became a rich man. It should be enough to become prosperous, that should be enough to live a life in this world. By becoming prosperous, then the chance of increasing the number of people who believe will progressively increase.

Because welfare has a correlation with the number of those who believe, then realizing for equitable welfare is a mandatory. There had been a close correlation between the number of believers with the prosperous, so that the effect is like a ' multiplier effect '. Like a snowball rolling that it will increasingly grow as it rolls in the snow. So, the scheme will be like this: Prosperous -> more believers -> more prosperous -> and so on. So, the snowball rolls toward increasing of well-being.

وَلَوْ أَنَّ أَهْلَ الْقُرَىٰ آمَنُوا وَاتَّقَوْا لَفَتَحْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ بَرَكَاتٍ مِنَ السَّمَاءِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَلَٰكِنْ كَذَّبُوا
فَأَخَذْنَاهُمْ بِمَا كَانُوا يَكْسِبُونَ

"And if only the people of the cities had believed and feared Allah, we would have opened upon them blessings from the heaven and the earth; but they denied [the messengers], so We seized them for what they were earning." (QS 7:96)

In contrary, unprosperous will lead to apostasy and apostasy then will bring God's punishmen in a form of life difficulties, then these life difficulties will lead to more unprosperous, and so on. Like a snowball effect, unprosperous -> apostasy -> Life difficulties -> more unprosperous -> and so on. So, the snowball rolls toward the decline of well-being.

Well, to be able to drive the people from this kind of snowball effect to become like the first snowball effect, then it needs the power of a leader and voice of a wise and discerning of ulamas. It needs someone who understand and realize the direction toward light and enlightened road, not vague and dark road. This is actually the Mission of our guru, so may our leaders and ulamas will look at this and put their consideration on this. (AK/ST)

Posted by YAKDI (Foundation of AKHLAQUL KARIMAH DARUL IMAN) in INDONESIA at 23.32