Krisis Lebah dan Keserakahan Manusia

Kamis 17 Mei 2007, salah satu stasiun TV mengabarkan kehebohan di Amerika tentang menghilangnya jutaan lebah. Akibatnya bukan hanya meruginya para pengusaha madu, akan tetapi banyak yang baru tersadarkan bahwa banyak tanaman bahan makanan seperti brokoli, apel dan sebagainya yang sangat bergantung pada lebah. tentunya akan mengganggu supply makanan di Amerika oleh karena itu para ahli berjuang keras menemukan jawabannya. Ternyata hal ini bukan merupakan hal yang baru karena gejalanya sudah timbul sejak bertahun-tahun yang lalu dengan sebutan Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) yang selain ditemukan di 27 negara bagian di Amerika Serikat, juga Canada, Brazil, Eropa dan Taiwan.

Jika hal ini terus berlanjut, bukan mustahil bahwa pada suatu saat buah dan sayuran yang membutuhkan lebah dalam penyerbukannya karena kelangkaanya akan menjadi komoditi yang sangat mahal.

Temuan sementara, konon menghilangnya lebah-lebah ini disebabkan karena pestisida yang digunakan oleh petani, yang sepertinya membuat lebah-lebah ini jadi kehilangan kekebalannya, sebagaimana AIDS menyerang manusia. Sebab lain yang mungkin adalah banyaknya pemancar untuk telepon selular yang gelombangnya mengganggu navigasi lebah, sehingga lebah-lebah pekerja ini menjadi tidak tahu arah dan tidak dapat kembali ke sarang, sehingga menyebabkan ratu lebah (sebagai pemegang peranan pusat dalam reproduksi) serta lebah-lebah muda kekurangan makanan kemudian mati.

Islam sendiri dalam Al Quran memberikan perhatian khusus pada lebah, sampai ada satu surat yang khusus di namakan An Nahl (lebah). Lebah sebagai hewan yang sangat berguna bagi makhluk lainnya, yang menghasilkan madu yang dapat menjadi makanan, minuman sekaligus obat untuk berbagai penyakit bagi manusia. Cendekiawan muslim Harun Yahya juga membuat kajian mendalam tentang keajaiban lebah. Sebegitu pentingnya, ada juga orang yang bilang "If the bees disappeared off the face of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left."

Ada makna di balik semua pertanda, ada maksud dalam setiap hal yang terjadi di dunia. Mungkin saja, menghilangnya lebah-lebah ini adalah peringatan bagi manusia tentang hari akhir yang pasti akan datang. Dan mungkin saja kondisi yang memburuk masih bisa diperbaiki andai saja manusia memberikan perhatian lebih pada sekitarnya, terutama pada makhluk kecil bernama lebah yang selama ini begitu berjasa pada manusia. Mungkin juga jika manusia tidak lagi egois dan berbagi alam dan seisinya dengan makhluk lain, memperhatikan keseimbangkan ekologi dengan teknologi yang bersahabat dengan lingkungan. Dan memang manusia egois, perlu kegawatan yang mengancam kelangsungan hidupnya sendiri seperti ini untuk bisa membuat mereka sadar.

If You Want to Be Understood, Listen! (Lesson Learned from Babel)

Few weeks ago I finally managed to watch the movie Babel until the end (I bought the pirated DVD in Jakarta last year). This movie tells about peoples in different parts of the world, with different language, different problems that relates one another.

One thing that I felt negative about the movie is that it's another Hollywood-US made movie, where in the main characters, American is described in a positive manner while in a contrary to the other representation of the world. The good looking American Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are depicted as the hero and innocent victim. A middle aged women that working illegal in the US as a nanny, a man that kill a chicken sadistically by a manual strangulation, party like crazy, and drunk driving while carrying American children illegally across the border is the Mexican. A little boy that shoots a bus and finally injured an American to test a rifle gun that supposed to be used to protect their cattle, a father who hits his children, police officers that brutally tortured people to get confessions, the government that panicly putting security measures afraid allegation of reference to terrorism by the US are the Moroccan (Arabs). A father that neglect his deaf mute daughter, and a rebellious difabled teenager who take off her panty in a fast food restaurant to get the opposite sex's attention, also to appear in full nudity in the front of a police officer to seduce him to have sex with her are Japanese. And I absolutely object with this scene, how the film maker can put an underaged in such manner (an Asian girl!).

The tagline of the movie is "if you want to be understood, listen". It seems like trying to explain that bad things happen to people's lives due to their inablity to meaningfully communicate with each other, even when they speak the same language.

The word Babel is mentioned in the Bible, Genesis 10:10 as the home city of Nimrod. According to Genesis 11:1-9, mankind that survive after the deluge (the big flood in the history of Prophet Noah), traveled from the mountain where the giant ark had rested, and settled in 'a plain in the land of Shinar' (or Senaar). Here, they work together attempted to build a city and a tower whose top might reach unto Heaven, the Tower of Babel. The attempt to build the Tower of Babel had angered God who, in his anger, made each person involved speak a different language which ultimately halted the project and scattered and disconnected the people across the planet. “Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9).

The destruction is not described in Genesis, but is mentioned in the Book of Jubilees. An interpretive account of the story explains the tower's destruction in terms of humankind's deficiency in comparison to God: within a religious framework, humankind is considered to be an inherently flawed creation dependent on a perfect being for its existence, and thus the construction of the tower is a potentially hubristic act of defiance towards the God who created them. As a result, this story is sometimes used within a religious context to explain the existence of many different languages and races. (Source: Wikipedia)

In Islamic perspective, the diversity of race, skin colours and languages are signs of Allah’s power. “And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Verily, in that are indeed signs for men of sound knowledge” (surah Ar Ruum [Rome] (30): 22). In another article in the Quran (which I embarassly forgot which one) it says that Allah create human beings in many varieties with different minds, tribes, customs, even religions so that they could know each other. This is quite confusing but at the same time amazing and make more sense to me. Allah with His powers could create all human beings in the same form, with the same language, custom and tradition, even sexual orientation and religion but Allah didn’t do it.

In reality human beings tends to relate with people with whom they have similarities, in the contrary they will minimize the the relation, even in conflict with people different from them. "Know" is not simply enough, but it has something to do with "understanding" and "tolerance". These things don’t happen spontaneously, but one must have a willingness to listen to the other, to understand what other people meant by words or an act, signs ore gestures. Maybe the tagline is right that if only everyone in that movie is able to effectively communicate with respect to each other, none of those disasters will happen. But as the scripture says, only the human being that uses their mind may understand and take lesson of anything that happen in their life.