Allah Swt telah menjadikan ibadah Haji sebagai salah satu kewajiban ibadah yang paling mulia dan merupakan bagian dari Rukun Islam yang dengannya Islam tegak di muka bumi ini hingga akhir jaman.

Mengerjakan haji adalah kewajiban manusia terhadap Allah bagi orang yang mampu baik dari sisi fisik maupun materi untuk bekal perjalanan dan untuk keluarga yang ditinggalkan. Mampu tidak berarti harus kaya raya karena banyak orang yang kaya namun belum berhaji, sementara banyak orang yang tidak kaya malah mampu melaksanakan Haji.

Ibadah Haji adalah puncak pencapaian spiritual seorang Muslim yang kegiatannya paling lengkap. Di dalamnya terdapat kegiatan fisik, lisan, dan rohani serta pengorbanan jiwa, waktu dan harta. Kegiatan fisik berupa Perjalanan dari tanah air ke Saudi Arabia yang menempuh jarak yang jauh dan biaya tidak sedikit serta kegiatan ibadah haji yang melelahkan karena harus bergerak dari satu tempat ke tempat lain dalam waktu yang singkat. Kegiatan lisan berupa lidah yang senantiasa mengumandangkan senandung talbiyah, takbir, dzikir, dan doa untuk menempatkan Allah di atas puncak kebesaran-Nya serta mengecilkan keinginan terhadap harta, wanita dan tahta yang kerap memalingkan kita dari nur Illahi. Kegiatan rohani berupa penjagaan hati agar selalu bersih, ikhlas dan lurus dalam upaya mencapai haji Mabrur serta penyerahan diri dalam rangka mencari ridho Allah.

Hakikat ritual haji diuraikan secara provokatif oleh cendekiawan Iran, alm Dr. Ali Syariati dalam bukunya berjudul Makna Haji. Ali Syariati menunjukkan kepada kita bahwa haji bukanlah sekadar prosesi lahiriah formal belaka, melainkan sebuah momen revolusi lahir dan batin untuk mencapai kesejatian diri sebagai manusia. Menurut beliau, makna Haji yang pertama adalah mengingatkan kembali hakikat kita sebagai manusia. Melalui thawaf, Allah mendemonstrasikan cara kerja alam semesta. Bagaimana bumi, dan planet-planet di jagat raya ini berotasi dan mengelilingi orbitnya masing-masing sesuai Sunnatullah agar selamat. Dengan thawaf, manusia diajarkan untuk tidak diam di pinggiran, melainkan harus meleburkan diri dalam pusaran kafilah manusia yang akan membawanya menuju Allah.

Melalui jumrah, kita ditunjukkan kepada Iblis yang dapat menjelma menjadi tiga wajah dalam bentuk  Fir’aun (lambang kekuasaan), Karun (lambang harta), dan Bal’am (lambang intelektualitas). Melalui Wukuf, kita diingatkan kepada kisah iblis yang melakukan tipu daya kepada Adam sehingga harus turun dari surga serta terpisah dengan Hawa. Melalui perjuangan tak kenal lelah, akhirnya Allah menerima taubatnya dan dipertemukan kembali dengan Hawa di Jabal Rahmah. Melalui mabit di Mina  kita akan dibawa kepada keteladanan perjuangan Ibrahim yang berhasil mengatasi berbagai ujian keimanan dan mengatasi bujuk rayu syetan dengan memberikan pengorbanan Terbesar dalam sejarah manusia yaitu Ismail as. Ibrahim lulus dari ujian tersebut hingga diangkat menjadi Kekasih Allah, imam dan panutan bagi seluruh ummat manusia.

Saat berhaji, Pastikan jiwa mana yang kita bawa. Jiwa yang hendak bertekuk lutut dan mengakui kehinaan di hadapan Tuhan, ataukah jiwa yang hendak ‘memperalat’ Tuhan demi status baru? Ataukah sekadar memperpanjang gelar yang disandang?  Orang yang sudah berhaji haruslah menjadi manusia yang “tampil beda” (lebih lurus hidupnya) dibanding sebelumnya. Jika tidak, sesungguhnya kita tidak lebih dari hanya sekedar wisatawan yang berlibur ke tanah suci di musim haji.

Haji adalah Tamu Allah.  Dengan melaksanakan haji, kita akan menjadi Tamu yang dimuliakan oleh Allah Swt., dan sebagai Tuan Rumah maka Allah berjanji akan memuliakan tamunya serta mengabulkan apapun yang diminta tamunya tersebut. Keutamaan Ibadah Haji disetarakan dengan keutamaan jihad, karena keduanya adalah orang-orang yang menjawab panggilan ketika Allah memanggil.

Karunia terbesar bagi orang yang berhaji adalah janji Allah untuk menghapuskan seluruh dosa tamunya yang bertumpuk sejak dilahirkan hingga selesainya melaksanakan Haji. Termasuk didalamnya dosa-dosa besar yang hanya dapat dihilangkan melalui pelaksanaan wukuf di Arafah.

Sumber : http://www.alimancenter.com

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Hockey is not exactly known as a city game, but played on roller skates, it once held sway as the sport of choice in many New York neighborhoods.

“City kids had no rinks, no ice, but they would do anything to play hockey,” said Edward Moffett, former director of the Long Island City Y.M.C.A. Roller Hockey League, in Queens, whose games were played in city playgrounds going back to the 1940s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the league had more than 60 teams, he said. Players included the Mullen brothers of Hell’s Kitchen and Dan Dorion of Astoria, Queens, who would later play on ice for the National Hockey League.

One street legend from the heyday of New York roller hockey was Craig Allen, who lived in the Woodside Houses projects and became one of the city’s hardest hitters and top scorers.

“Craig was a warrior, one of the best roller hockey players in the city in the ’70s,” said Dave Garmendia, 60, a retired New York police officer who grew up playing with Mr. Allen. “His teammates loved him and his opponents feared him.”

Young Craig took up hockey on the streets of Queens in the 1960s, playing pickup games between sewer covers, wearing steel-wheeled skates clamped onto school shoes and using a roll of electrical tape as the puck.

His skill and ferocity drew attention, Mr. Garmendia said, but so did his skin color. He was black, in a sport made up almost entirely by white players.

“Roller hockey was a white kid’s game, plain and simple, but Craig broke the color barrier,” Mr. Garmendia said. “We used to say Craig did more for race relations than the N.A.A.C.P.”

Mr. Allen went on to coach and referee roller hockey in New York before moving several years ago to South Carolina. But he continued to organize an annual alumni game at Dutch Kills Playground in Long Island City, the same site that held the local championship games.

The reunion this year was on Saturday, but Mr. Allen never made it. On April 26, just before boarding the bus to New York, he died of an asthma attack at age 61.

Word of his death spread rapidly among hundreds of his old hockey colleagues who resolved to continue with the event, now renamed the Craig Allen Memorial Roller Hockey Reunion.

The turnout on Saturday was the largest ever, with players pulling on their old equipment, choosing sides and taking once again to the rink of cracked blacktop with faded lines and circles. They wore no helmets, although one player wore a fedora.

Another, Vinnie Juliano, 77, of Long Island City, wore his hearing aids, along with his 50-year-old taped-up quads, or four-wheeled skates with a leather boot. Many players here never converted to in-line skates, and neither did Mr. Allen, whose photograph appeared on a poster hanging behind the players’ bench.

“I’m seeing people walking by wondering why all these rusty, grizzly old guys are here playing hockey,” one player, Tommy Dominguez, said. “We’re here for Craig, and let me tell you, these old guys still play hard.”

Everyone seemed to have a Craig Allen story, from his earliest teams at Public School 151 to the Bryant Rangers, the Woodside Wings, the Woodside Blues and more.

Mr. Allen, who became a yellow-cab driver, was always recruiting new talent. He gained the nickname Cabby for his habit of stopping at playgrounds all over the city to scout players.

Teams were organized around neighborhoods and churches, and often sponsored by local bars. Mr. Allen, for one, played for bars, including Garry Owen’s and on the Fiddler’s Green Jokers team in Inwood, Manhattan.

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

“We were basically street gangs on skates,” said Steve Rogg, 56, a mail clerk who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who on Saturday wore his Riedell Classic quads from 1972. “If another team caught up with you the night before a game, they tossed you a beating so you couldn’t play the next day.”

Mr. Garmendia said Mr. Allen’s skin color provoked many fights.

“When we’d go to some ignorant neighborhoods, a lot of players would use slurs,” Mr. Garmendia said, recalling a game in Ozone Park, Queens, where local fans parked motorcycles in a lineup next to the blacktop and taunted Mr. Allen. Mr. Garmendia said he checked a player into the motorcycles, “and the bikes went down like dominoes, which started a serious brawl.”

A group of fans at a game in Brooklyn once stuck a pole through the rink fence as Mr. Allen skated by and broke his jaw, Mr. Garmendia said, adding that carloads of reinforcements soon arrived to defend Mr. Allen.

And at another racially incited brawl, the police responded with six patrol cars and a helicopter.

Before play began on Saturday, the players gathered at center rink to honor Mr. Allen. Billy Barnwell, 59, of Woodside, recalled once how an all-white, all-star squad snubbed Mr. Allen by playing him third string. He scored seven goals in the first game and made first string immediately.

“He’d always hear racial stuff before the game, and I’d ask him, ‘How do you put up with that?’” Mr. Barnwell recalled. “Craig would say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ and by the end of the game, he’d win guys over. They’d say, ‘This guy’s good.’”