Muhammad SAW & Napoleon Hill

Semua pecandu sukses hampir dipastikan pernah baca buku klasik karya Napoleon Hill: Think & Grow Rich yang ditulis tahun 1937. Melalui buku ini Napoleon Hill kemudian diakui sebagai salah satu pelopor dari ilmu sukses di Amerika Serikat. Saya pertama kali mengenal buku ini versi terjemahannya dulu jaman saya kuliah. Namun waktu itu saya tidak membacanya secara sungguh-sungguh. Kemudian belakangan saya juga mendownload versi asli nya dalam bentuk ebook dan baru mulai membaca secara lebih serius. Ternyata buku ini memang luar biasa. Di dalam nya termuat garis besar kaidah-kaidah untuk sukses. Mulai dari DESIRE sebagai kunci awal, kekuatan FAITH, pentingnya AUTO-SUGGESTION, kegunaan IMAGINATION, melakukan ORGANIZED PLANNING dan take DECISION, pentingnya PERSISTENCE, hingga soal kelompok MASTER MIND (ini yang belakangan sering disebut2 oleh rekan2 pebisnis di TDA) sampai bagaimana mengalahkan FEAR, semua ada di buku ini.

Pertama kali membaca, sebagai muslim saya cukup kaget karena sebagai contoh ilustrasi soal PERSISTENCE, Hill memuat riwayat Nabi Besar Muhammad SAW. Suatu contoh yang menurut saya sangat tepat. Meskipun cara penuturan nya sangat "sekuler" dan sedikit bombastis.

Kemarin sewaktu ke toko buku, saya tertarik dengan versi baru terjemahan buku klasik ini. Apalagi dibumbui embel2 "Edisi Revisi & Update Untuk Abad 21". Saya pun langsung membeli. Ternyata memang betul buku nya sudah di update oleh Arthur R. Pell. Alasan nya masuk akal, karena pembaca modern akan lebih mudah memahami jika ilustrasi yang diberikan adalah dari contoh2 kisah sukses modern. Maka Arthur Pell pun menyelipkan kisah-kisah ikon sukses modern seperti Bill Gates, Ray Kroc, Steven Spielberg, Arnold Swazheneger, Howard Schultz, dsb. Penambahan tersebut membuat buku ini terasa semakin relevan bagi pembaca modern.

Yang saya sayangkan adalah, Arthur Pell menghilangkan kisah Nabi Besar Muhammad SAW dari Bab 9 tentang Ketekunan (PERSISTENCE). Sebagai ganti nya ada kisah sukses Howard Schultz pemilik Starbuck. OK. Kisah Howard Schultz cukup inspiratif, tapi kisah Muhammad sang entrepreneur, sang filosof, sang politisi, sang jendral dan sang pembaharu sejati yang telah memperlihatkan persistensi dan dedikasi luar biasa menurut saya amat sangat layak disimak. Kalau kita terbiasa mengutip kisah luar biasa dari Mother Theressa atau Mahatma Gandhi, menurut saya kita juga jangan sungkan mengutip kisah kegigihan Muhammad.
Kalau Anda baca kisah Muhammad versi Karen Armstrong misalnya, dapat kita rasakan betapa beliau telah menjadi teladan kegigihan yang luar biasa.

Sungguh sayang Arhur Pell menghilangkan narasi tentang Muhammad, padahal dalam versi asli nya Hill sendiri mengatakan:
"Consider, for example, the strange and fascinating story of Mohammed; analyze his life, compare him with men of achievement in this modern age of industry and finance, and observe how they have one outstanding trait in common, PERSISTENCE!"
Lebih jauh, kisah Muhammad digambarkan oleh Hill sebagai: "story of one of the most astounding examples of the power of PERSISTENCE known to civilization."

Saya bayangkan, betapa sayangnya generasi sesudah saya nanti jika membaca buku Napoleon Hill tidak menemukan kisah yang demikian inspiratif. Tapi its OK lah, sebagai ganti nya di bawah saya kutipkan versi asli penutup Bab 9 buku Think & Grow Rich, semoga meskipun cerita ini dihilangkan dari buku nya, namun akan tetap menjadi inspirasi di hati kita.

THE LAST GREAT PROPHET
Reviewed by Thomas Sugrue

"Mohammed was a prophet, but he never performed a miracle. He was not a mystic; he had no formal schooling; he did not begin his mission until he was forty. When he announced that he was the Messenger of God, bringing word of the true religion, he was ridiculed and labeled a lunatic. Children tripped him and women threw filth upon him. He was banished from his native city, Mecca, and his followers were stripped of their worldly goods and sent into the desert after him. When he had been preaching ten years he had nothing to show for it but banishment, poverty and ridicule. Yet before another ten years had passed, he was dictator of all Arabia, ruler of Mecca, and the head of a New World religion which was to sweep to the Danube and the Pyrenees before exhausting the impetus he gave it. That impetus was three-fold: the power of words, the efficacy of prayer and man's kinship with God.
"His career never made sense. Mohammed was born to impoverished members of a leading family of Mecca.
Because Mecca, the crossroads of the world, home of the magic stone called the Caaba, great city of trade and the center of trade routes, was unsanitary, its children were sent to be raised in the desert by Bedouins. Mohammed was thus nurtured, drawing strength and health from the milk of nomad, vicarious mothers.
He tended sheep and soon hired out to a rich widow as leader of her caravans. He traveled to all parts of the Eastern World, talked with many men of diverse beliefs and observed the decline of Christianity into warring sects. When he was twenty-eight, Khadija, the widow, looked upon him with favor, and married him.
Her father would have objected to such a marriage, so she got him drunk and held him up while he gave the paternal blessing. For the next twelve years Mohammed lived as a rich and respected and very shrewd trader.
Then he took to wandering in the desert, and one day he returned with the first verse of the Koran and told Khadija that the archangel Gabriel had appeared to him and said that he was to be the Messenger of God.
"The Koran, the revealed word of God, was the closest thing to a miracle in Mohammed's life. He had not been a poet; he had no gift of words. Yet the verses of the Koran, as he received them and recited them to the faithful, were better than any verses which the professional poets of the tribes could produce. This, to the Arabs, was a miracle. To them the gift of words was the greatest gift, the poet was all-powerful. In addition the Koran said that all men were equal before God, that the world should be a democratic state— Islam. It was this political heresy, plus Mohammed's desire to destroy all the 360 idols in the courtyard of the Caaba, which brought about his banishment. The idols brought the desert tribes to Mecca, and that meant trade. So the business men of Mecca, the capitalists, of which he had been one, set upon Mohammed. Then he retreated to the desert and demanded sovereignty over the world.
"The rise of Islam began. Out of the desert came a flame which would not be extinguished— a democratic army fighting as a unit and prepared to die without wincing. Mohammed had invited the Jews and Christians to join him; for he was not building a new religion.
He was calling all who believed in one God to join in a single faith. If the Jews and Christians had accepted his invitation Islam would have conquered the world. They didn't. They would not even accept Mohammed's innovation of humane warfare. When the armies of the prophet entered Jerusalem not a single person was killed because of his faith. When the crusaders entered the city, centuries later, not a Moslem man, woman, or child was spared. But the Christians did accept one Moslem idea— the place of learning, the university."