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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Even as a high school student, Dave Goldberg was urging female classmates to speak up. As a young dot-com executive, he had one girlfriend after another, but fell hard for a driven friend named Sheryl Sandberg, pining after her for years. After they wed, Mr. Goldberg pushed her to negotiate hard for high compensation and arranged his schedule so that he could be home with their children when she was traveling for work.

Mr. Goldberg, who died unexpectedly on Friday, was a genial, 47-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built his latest company, SurveyMonkey, from a modest enterprise to one recently valued by investors at $2 billion. But he was also perhaps the signature male feminist of his era: the first major chief executive in memory to spur his wife to become as successful in business as he was, and an essential figure in “Lean In,” Ms. Sandberg’s blockbuster guide to female achievement.

Over the weekend, even strangers were shocked at his death, both because of his relatively young age and because they knew of him as the living, breathing, car-pooling center of a new philosophy of two-career marriage.

“They were very much the role models for what this next generation wants to grapple with,” said Debora L. Spar, the president of Barnard College. In a 2011 commencement speech there, Ms. Sandberg told the graduates that whom they married would be their most important career decision.

In the play “The Heidi Chronicles,” revived on Broadway this spring, a male character who is the founder of a media company says that “I don’t want to come home to an A-plus,” explaining that his ambitions require him to marry an unthreatening helpmeet. Mr. Goldberg grew up to hold the opposite view, starting with his upbringing in progressive Minneapolis circles where “there was woman power in every aspect of our lives,” Jeffrey Dachis, a childhood friend, said in an interview.

The Goldberg parents read “The Feminine Mystique” together — in fact, Mr. Goldberg’s father introduced it to his wife, according to Ms. Sandberg’s book. In 1976, Paula Goldberg helped found a nonprofit to aid children with disabilities. Her husband, Mel, a law professor who taught at night, made the family breakfast at home.

Later, when Dave Goldberg was in high school and his prom date, Jill Chessen, stayed silent in a politics class, he chastised her afterward. He said, “You need to speak up,” Ms. Chessen recalled in an interview. “They need to hear your voice.”

Years later, when Karin Gilford, an early employee at Launch Media, Mr. Goldberg’s digital music company, became a mother, he knew exactly what to do. He kept giving her challenging assignments, she recalled, but also let her work from home one day a week. After Yahoo acquired Launch, Mr. Goldberg became known for distributing roses to all the women in the office on Valentine’s Day.

Ms. Sandberg, who often describes herself as bossy-in-a-good-way, enchanted him when they became friendly in the mid-1990s. He “was smitten with her,” Ms. Chessen remembered. Ms. Sandberg was dating someone else, but Mr. Goldberg still hung around, even helping her and her then-boyfriend move, recalled Bob Roback, a friend and co-founder of Launch. When they finally married in 2004, friends remember thinking how similar the two were, and that the qualities that might have made Ms. Sandberg intimidating to some men drew Mr. Goldberg to her even more.

Over the next decade, Mr. Goldberg and Ms. Sandberg pioneered new ways of capturing information online, had a son and then a daughter, became immensely wealthy, and hashed out their who-does-what-in-this-marriage issues. Mr. Goldberg’s commute from the Bay Area to Los Angeles became a strain, so he relocated, later joking that he “lost the coin flip” of where they would live. He paid the bills, she planned the birthday parties, and both often left their offices at 5:30 so they could eat dinner with their children before resuming work afterward.

Friends in Silicon Valley say they were careful to conduct their careers separately, politely refusing when outsiders would ask one about the other’s work: Ms. Sandberg’s role building Facebook into an information and advertising powerhouse, and Mr. Goldberg at SurveyMonkey, which made polling faster and cheaper. But privately, their work was intertwined. He often began statements to his team with the phrase “Well, Sheryl said” sharing her business advice. He counseled her, too, starting with her salary negotiations with Mark Zuckerberg.

“I wanted Mark to really feel he stretched to get Sheryl, because she was worth it,” Mr. Goldberg explained in a 2013 “60 Minutes” interview, his Minnesota accent and his smile intact as he offered a rare peek of the intersection of marriage and money at the top of corporate life.

While his wife grew increasingly outspoken about women’s advancement, Mr. Goldberg quietly advised the men in the office on family and partnership matters, an associate said. Six out of 16 members of SurveyMonkey’s management team are female, an almost unheard-of ratio among Silicon Valley “unicorns,” or companies valued at over $1 billion.

When Mellody Hobson, a friend and finance executive, wrote a chapter of “Lean In” about women of color for the college edition of the book, Mr. Goldberg gave her feedback on the draft, a clue to his deep involvement. He joked with Ms. Hobson that she was too long-winded, like Ms. Sandberg, but aside from that, he said he loved the chapter, she said in an interview.

By then, Mr. Goldberg was a figure of fascination who inspired a “where can I get one of those?” reaction among many of the women who had read the best seller “Lean In.” Some lamented that Ms. Sandberg’s advice hinged too much on marrying a Dave Goldberg, who was humble enough to plan around his wife, attentive enough to worry about which shoes his young daughter would wear, and rich enough to help pay for the help that made the family’s balancing act manageable.

Now that he is gone, and Ms. Sandberg goes from being half of a celebrated partnership to perhaps the business world’s most prominent single mother, the pages of “Lean In” carry a new sting of loss.

“We are never at 50-50 at any given moment — perfect equality is hard to define or sustain — but we allow the pendulum to swing back and forth between us,” she wrote in 2013, adding that they were looking forward to raising teenagers together.

“Fortunately, I have Dave to figure it out with me,” she wrote.