I know it’s a bit late for this post, but better late then never. I wanted to share some memories from our Crowd Community trip to Indonesia earlier this year. I had an opportunity to stay in Greater Jakarta with our team for two days. During the stay, we visited two of our projects that were funded by our Crowd. The visit to Kampung Islami Thoyibah (KIT) has been an amazing experience for me.
It was around three hours journey from our Jakarta office and we reached there almost at zuhr time. The project seemed to me like a small clean city inside a remote area. We roamed around the project area, met the residents, spent time with the kids, visited the school and prayed zuhr together with the KIT community.
The prayer area was consisting of two units in the project, which were made waqf (perpetual endowment) by an owner. The rooms were full despite a bit raining outside. After prayer, I was surprised looking at a shelf placed in the front. The shelf contained classical shari’ah scholarly books like ‘Fath al-Bari‘ – the famous commentary on Sahih al-Bukhari, the most popular book out of the six famous books of hadith. The commentary was compiled by the famous scholar Ibn Hajar al-Askallani. The shelf also included Tafseer Ibn Katheer, one of the most popular commentaries of Al-Qur’an, and many other books on fiqh and usul fiqh etc. Not to mention, some of those books are studied in universities for higher degrees on shari’ah.
I couldn’t stop myself but to find who studies those books. Upon discussing with the residents, I learnt that the community in KIT is a community of Tullab al-Ilm (Seekers of knowledge of Shari’ah). Most of the people staying there join weekly classes on classical shari’ah sciences together. There are Ustaadhs (teachers) who volunteer to teach those books every week. Both male and female attend the lectures. Most of them can understand Arabic and speak a bit as well.
Adding further to my surprise, I came to know that the community staying there in KIT has something which I’d call a social contract. The contract is placed in a large banner, right at the entrance of the project.
The contract says the following in Bahasa Indonesia:
Housing Rules in Kampung Islami Thoyibah:
- One must adhere to Al-Qu’ran and Sunnah.
- Males must pray five times a day in congregation at the masjid.
- No smoking.
- Females must wear hijab.*
- The area is free from music.
*Hijab provided in the security post.
The housing rules, or the social contract as I called it, are an example of high level of commitment among the community. I was wondering, what an amazing output of highly committed and disciplined future generation we’d get from such a community, insha’Allah.
KIT is one of the early projects of Ethis where people already started staying in. We recently raised funds for another project beside KIT, namely Taman Madinah. A bigger masjid is also being built near it, where around 2000 Muslims are expected to be able to pray together insha’Allah.
Apart from the site visits, we spent time at our Jakarta office, having several important meetings and training. I conducted a shari’ah training session on Mudharabah and Musharakah contracts, explaining the capital requirements, rules of profit and loss sharing, detecting and mitigating negligence, profit actualisation and disbursement, shari’ah risks etc. We discussed Istisna‘ and Murabaha contracts as well.
The creative marketing team at Jakarta had plans to record some videos as well. I was pulled in for a quality discussion on our technology at Ethis, concerning security, data privacy policy and other issues.
Jakarta is a nice city, highly crowded yet surrounded by happy friendly people. You’ll find people in the street and everywhere extending their helping hands with a happy smile whenever you need. It’s true that Jakarta has high traffic, but looks like they are improving. I cannot end this post without mentioning about the delicious food. 🙂
Overall, it has been a memorable trip. I felt like I had a real chance to see the impact that we create together with our Crowd at EthisCrowd.com. I firmly believe, change is never impossible if we work together.
