Mengenai riba (an Utusan.com.my article)

source: http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2006&dt=1224&pub=Utusan_Malaysia&sec=Bicara_Agama&pg=ba_01.htm

If there are nonmalaysian readers out there who wishes me to translate this article, buzz me up.

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Mengenai riba
Oleh: DR. ASYRAF WAJDI DUSUKI

Masyarakat Islam Malaysia umumnya amat mengambil berat soal halal dan haram dalam isu pemakanan. Rata-rata umat Islam hari ini amat prihatin terhadap makanan yang dimakannya agar tidak terkandung elemen-elemen haram yang boleh menjejaskan keberkatan.

Persoalannya, apakah cukup sekadar memperakui barangan makanan bertanda halal tetapi wang yang digunakan untuk membelinya masih lagi bersumberkan perolehan yang haram? Sejauh manakah keprihatinan mengenai halal dan haram ini turut diterjemahkan dalam kegiatan muamalah yang lebih penting seperti urus niaga harian dan perolehan pendapatan?

Hakikat yang tidak dapat dinafikan, kesedaran umat mengenai halal dan haram dalam aspek perolehan pendapatan masih di takuk yang amat mendukacitakan. Umat lebih memperhitungkan soal barangan berlabel halal berbanding dengan sumber perolehan mahupun pendapatan.

Apa yang pasti, kesedaran mengenai sumber rezeki yang halal amat penting bagi menumbuhkan rasa keterikatan dengan hukum dan peraturan yang ditetapkan Allah. Rezeki yang diperoleh dengan cara halal tanpa merugikan orang lain pastinya akan membawa barakah atau keberkatan. Sedang yang haram termasuklah perolehan daripada sumber penyelewengan, penipuan, rasuah, pecah amanah dan riba hanya akan membawa padah dan kecelakaan.

Dalam konteks ini, penulis lebih cenderung memfokuskan isu riba dalam penulisan kali ini. Bagi penulis, tahap kefahaman umat mengenai riba masih terlalu rendah. Walaupun kerajaan telah berusaha menyediakan pelbagai insentif galakan dan membangunkan prasarana kewangan berpandukan syarak seperti institusi perbankan Islam, realitinya umat Malaysia masih ramai yang tidak mendukung sistem muamalah Islam yang diperkenalkan.

Laporan Bank Negara 2005 jelas membuktikan senario ini. Penguasaan pasaran sistem perbankan Islam yang bebas riba umpamanya hanya dalam lingkungan 11 ke 12 peratus berbanding jumlah umat Islam di Malaysia hari ini yang melebihi 65 peratus. Ini bermakna masih ramai umat Islam yang kekal mengamalkan urus niaga dengan perbankan konvensional yang berasaskan riba.

Bank Negara Malaysia sendiri secara sederhana meletakkan sasaran bagi tahun berakhir 2010 untuk sistem perbankan Islam meningkatkan penguasaan pasaran perbankan hingga ke tahap 20 peratus.

Ini juga memberi indikasi penting bagi 27 institusi-institusi perbankan dan kewangan Islam yang sedia ada untuk melakukan promosi secara besar-besaran bagi meyakinkan bukan sahaja umat Islam bahkan masyarakat bukan Islam untuk turut melabur dan menyimpan dalam institusi-institusi yang menawarkan produk-produk yang menepati syarak.

Dalam konteks ini, umat Islam sendiri terutamanya harus disuntik dan dipertingkatkan kesedaran mereka mengenai kepentingan berurus niaga secara halal tanpa melibatkan elemen riba. Umat harus difahamkan betapa besarnya dosa melibatkan diri dalam urus niaga yang mempunyai unsur-unsur riba tidak kira sama ada berbentuk pelaburan, simpanan mahupun pembiayaan.

Ini kerana Islam amat tegas memerangi unsur-unsur riba dalam sistem muamalah manusia. Pernyataan keras di dalam al-Quran bahawa Allah dan Rasul-Nya mengisytiharkan perang terhadap golongan yang mengamalkan riba jelas menggambarkan betapa beratnya dosa riba yang sememangnya boleh mendatangkan penganiayaan dan ketidakadilan dalam hubungan sesama manusia (al-Baqarah: 279).

Malah dalam sebuah hadis sahih riwayat al-Hakim dinyatakan bahawa: “Riba mempunyai 73 jenis. Yang paling ringan antaranya menyamai kesalahan berzina dengan ibu kandung sendiri”. Terdapat sekurang-kurangnya 12 ayat yang secara khusus membincangkan isu riba dalam al-Quran. Malah terlalu banyak hadis yang memperincikan urus niaga muamalah yang bebas daripada elemen-elemen riba dan penindasan. Pengharaman riba turut ditegaskan sekali lagi dalam khutbah terakhir Nabi dalam peristiwa Haji Wida' sebelum kewafatan baginda.

Berdasarkan dalil-dalil inilah, sesetengah ulama menyatakan bahawa tahap pengharaman riba adalah lebih serius dan berat berbanding bentuk pengharaman lain seperti minum arak, judi mahupun makanan haram seperti babi. Ini kerana, Allah tidaklah sampai menegaskan secara keras seperti pengisytiharan perang terhadap mereka yang minum arak, berjudi mahupun memakan barangan haram seperti babi berbanding pengharaman riba.

Justeru, sudah tiba masanya kerajaan melihat perkara ini secara lebih serius. Kurikulum pendidikan agama di sekolah-sekolah umpamanya harus mulai diperkemaskan bagi membincangkan aspek muamalah Islam dengan lebih luas dan bukan sekadar menitikberatkan aspek ibadah fardu ain semata-mata.

Ini amat menepati aspirasi syarak atau disebut Maqasid as-Syariah yang amat menitikberatkan bukan sahaja pemerkasaan dalam konteks ibadah semata-mata tetapi turut memastikan kehidupan muamalah sesama manusia sentiasa berteraskan prinsip keadilan, kesaksamaan sekali gus menghindari sebarang bentuk penindasan dan penganiayaan.

Hanya dengan meningkatkan kesedaran dan kefahaman umat secara tuntas mengenai prinsip-prinsip muamalah berpandukan syarak sahajalah mampu merealisasikan impian kerajaan untuk menjadikan Malaysia sebagai peneraju sistem kewangan Islam pada masa depan.

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My comments:

the mentioning of Al-Baqarah 279 brings an intriguing question to my mind: It is often claimed that Islam upholds peace above all, and won't attack unless violated (or at least during the Prophet's own times, when Islam was at its purest form... can't say much about the seemingly trigger-happy later times Ottoman Empire though...). So if Al-Baqara 279 says that the Prophet is ready to wage war against usury-practicing people, how do we consolidate that with the peace-loving concept? time to seek out the knowledgeable people...

my Nusantara 2006 article in RPI's Poly Newsletter

I was requested by the Poly's journalist to write an article about our Nusantara 2006 event last April... (doh, our original intention of calling up the Poly is for THEM to write a coverage of our event...). Almost forgot about this article's existence, until I stumbled upon it again, in digital form. Here it is, reproduced for your reading pleasure...

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Malaysian students unite with Nusantara <-- (Not my original title btw...)
Posted 04-12-2006 at 7:09PM
Nik Mohamed Nizal
Special to The Poly

Malaysians at RPI are quite an odd bunch. You may see some of them around campus; the girls with bright-colored headscarves scuttling around, always at least in twos or more; the guys who are generally more mild-mannered and sometimes easily mistaken for Mexicans in terms of looks. You might even be familiar with some of them through class or work. The consensus seems to be that yes, they are quite an amiable lot once you get to know them, and they do cook great food, but overall they are somewhat ... withdrawn.

Then came Nusantara 2005. All of a sudden, the West Hall audience was bedazzled with explosions of color and rhythms, of bewitching motions and of artistic postures, of exquisite culture and of mystical myths. For three hours, the people in the audience were transfixed in their seats as we bombarded them with all-out Malaysian-ness like they never experienced before—transfixed, that is, save for the times when we mercifully gave them some pauses to blink, breath, and get some quick refreshments from the food stalls at the back. The event was a tremendous success despite being the first of its kind, and the first of such a large scale—we employed close to a hundred people to run the event, audience turnout was well over 400, and we pulled in about $1200, all of which we donated toward the Tsunami Relief efforts.

That was last year, and with over 30 senior Malaysian students having graduated soon afterward, we were not sure whether we could pull off something of that scale again. Accordingly, we adjusted our approach, and when we held Nusantara II: Rojak! last Saturday, we focused more on the food (which has always received favorable reviews) as well as games, which relies on the cunning formula of letting you entertain yourself rather than us spoonfeeding it to you—more interactivity and active brain processing for you, and less burden for us. There were still onstage shows for those who desired the couch potato style of immersion, only this time, we held the reins a bit; we did not want the performers, who were probably going to both design and assemble the props, handle the stage lighting or some other logistics, and cook and sell food for the night as well.

We did go wild with the room decorations though. Seeing the sheer amount of decorations we had put on all around the McNeil Room, one can’t help but be absorbed in the atmosphere of rustic villages juxtaposed with cosmopolitan cityscapes; what with the handconstructed thatch hut in the games area bordered with picket fences and dotted with river rocks and rolling expanses of paddy fields in the background view; what with a model of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center Twin tower, the world’s second tallest building, gracing one of the pillars and the Kuala Lumpur Tower on the other one; what with the realistic rural-style food stall design contrasted against the city-bound ones, all lined up on the side of roads complete with margin markers and traffic signs.

Nusantara II: Rojak! signifies medleys on many layers as the name indicates. Rojak is a Malaysian cuisine that involves mixed fruit cuts dipped in hot and sweet sauce. Likewise, our event that night featured mixed themes of shows as well as mixed themes of food. There were nine food stalls selling over 15 different dishes covering all aspects of a full-course meal, all authentically Malaysian in their exuberance of taste and freshness of texture, lovingly made with human hands and rich natural ingredients instead of cold industrial machines soaked with artificial chemical substitutes that typify the modern food of the West.

Nusantara II: Rojak! started off with the traditional Dikir Barat, where 10-15 people sat crosslegged (a feat which I heard many westerners find hard to do, if I may smugly remark) on the stage and sang out jovially while letting only their upper body dance. Then it was followed by a humorous wayang kulit (shadow puppet) show, voiced over by none other than the MCs themselves, Kwattz and Mitch. There was then a half an hour break to allow the audience to rush the foodstands. The show continued afterward with a selamat datang (Welcoming) Dance, a colourful performance embedded with many cultural welcoming gestures, if one was to observe carefully. As martial arts demonstrations are the staple of cultural shows, we also took the opportunity to perform ours, with a unique twist of female warriors dominating the show. Another break ensued, and then we had the bagaikan puteri (Like a Princess) Dance, based off from a contemporary Malaysian pop song.

Next was the highlighted How Hot Can You Go contest, a Fear Factor style competition of tongue endurance against increasing levels of hot and spicy Malaysian sauces. The ultimate challenge was called “the Chip’s Sauce” in recognition of the person concocting it, who was notorious for at least one occasion of making sauces so hot yet so good that people can’t stop eating it, even though it resulted in them having diarrhea for two weeks. Incidentally, there was also a hilarious mix-up before the contest when some hopeful youth turned up asking about the “Hot cheerleading competition,” probably due to the misleadingly alluring imagery portrayed in the contest’s posters.

After the contest was the Endang dance, symbolizing the motions of eight ladies washing clothes at a river bend. Yes, for us Malaysians, even the dreary affairs of laundry can be done in an exquisite style. Following that was a short session of auctioning of Malaysian Handicrafts, where half of the profit goes to charity. The last show of the night was a band performance of the song Eyelash, a suitably soothing lullaby to the event’s closure.

Overall, we had about 200 people in attendance. Since each food vendor kept all the profits for their sales, there is no total figure yet, but the charity auction and donation booth collected over $450, which shall be channelled toward United Nation’s World Food Programme, which seeks to address world hunger issues.

http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=4793&part=1