Setiap perbuatan dalam ibadah haji sebenarnya mengandung rahasia, contoh seperti ihrom sebagai upacara pertama maksudnya adalah

Setiap perbuatan dalam ibadah haji sebenarnya mengandung rahasia, contoh seperti ihrom sebagai upacara pertama maksudnya adalah bahwa manusia harus melepaskan diri dari hawa nafsu dan hanya mengahadap diri kepada Allah  Yang Maha Agung.
Memperteguh iman dan takwa kepada allah SWT karena dalam ibadah tersebut diliputi dengan penuh kekhusyu’an
Ibadah haji menambahkan jiwa tauhid yang tinggi
Ibadah haji adalah sebagai tindak lanjut dalam pembentukan sikap mental dan akhlak yang mulia.
Ibadah haji adalah merupakan pernyataan umat islam seluruh dunia menjadi umat yang satu karena mempunyai persamaan atau satu akidah.
Ibadah haji merupakan muktamar akbar umat islam sedunia, yang peserta-pesertanya berdatangan dari seluruh penjuru dunia dan Ka’bahlah yang menjadi symbol kesatuan dan persatuan.
Memperkuat fisik dan mental, kerena ibadah haji maupun umrah merupakan ibadah yang berat memerlukan persiapan fisik yang kuat, biaya besar dan memerlukan kesabaran serta ketabahan dalam menghadapi segala godaan dan rintangan.
Menumbuhkan semangat berkorban, karena ibadah haji maupun umrah, banyak meminta pengorbanan baik harta, benda, jiwa besar dan pemurah, tenaga serta waktu untuk melakukannya.
Dengan melaksanakan ibadah haji bisa dimanfaatkan untuk membina persatuan dan kesatuan umat Islam sedunia.

Sumber : http://deluk12.wordpress.com

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CHAN Umar, laki-laki 43 tahun, asyik mencongkel-congkel selembar papan yang diletakkan di atas meja kerjanya dengan pahat. Sesek

CHAN Umar, laki-laki 43 tahun, asyik mencongkel-congkel selembar papan yang diletakkan di atas meja kerjanya dengan pahat. Sesekali tangan kanannya meraih tukul (penokok) kayu yang terletak di atas papan untuk memukul pahat, melubangi papan sesuai motif. Terkadang ia mengganti jenis pahat yang lebih selusin tergeletak di depannya. Perlahan namun pasti, selembar papan dari kayu surian yang sudah diketam itu berubah menjadi ukiran khas Minang di tangan Umar.n sehari-hari Chan Umar, pemilik bengkel “Ukiran Chan Umar” di Nagari Pandai Sikek, Kabupaten Tanah Datar. Pandai Sikek adalah daerah yang terkenal di Sumatra Barat sebagai sentra kerajinan tradisional songket dan ukiran khas Minangkabau. Meski daerah ini termasuk dalam wilayah Kabupaten Tanah Datar tetapi Pandai Sikek lebih dekat, hanya 20 km dari Kota Padangpanjang menuju Bukittinggi. Pilihan Hidup Di Pandai Sikek ada 6 bengkel ukiran tradisional dan Chan Umar dengan bengkelnya merupakan yang paling menonjol.Konon, menurut Chan Umar, Pandai Sikek sendiri memperoleh nama dari kepandaian Si Ikek mengukir interior dan eksterior rumah gadang. Si Ikek adalah seorang lelaki di daerah itu pada zaman dulu yang sangat mahir mengukir di atas kayu. Pandai Sikek sebagai sentra kerajinan ukir Minang yang banyak digunakan untuk ukiran Rumah Gadang (rumah adat Minangkabau) dan kerajinan songket yang sudah ada sejak zaman dulu hingga era Kolonial Belanda, sempat terhenti di zaman Penjajahan Jepang (1942-1945). Kondisi ini terus berlanjut sampai 1960-an. Agresi Belanda Kedua, dan kekacauan politik dalam negeri, dari tragedi PRRI (Pemerintahan Revolusioner Republik Indonesia) hingga pertentangan dengan Partai Komunisme Indonesia (PKI), membuat suasana mengukir dan bertenun di Pandai Sikek benar-benar terhenti.Bahkan sebagian besar untuk rumah gadang yang dibangun pemerintah, seperti museum dan renovasi rumah gadang bersejarah. Di antaranya rumah gadang Museum Adityawarman di Padang, rumah gadang Museum Kebun Binatang Bukittinggi, dan Istana Pagaruyung di Batusangkar. “Namun setelah itu hampir tidak ada lagi proyek pemerintah dan pesanan ukiran rumah gadang, kecuali pesanan rumah gadang di beberapa tempat seperti di Nagari Sulit Air, Solok yang dibuat beberapa orang perantau,” kata Umar. Beberapa perantau Minang yang kaya tetap ada yang merenovasi rumah adat lama mereka yang rusak dengan yang baru, atau membuat rumah di kampung bergaya rumah adat dan sanggup mengeluarkan uang Rp400 juta untuk ukirannya untuk interior dan eksteriornya,” ujarnya. Sama dengan Motif Songket Chan Umar menetapkan harga ukirannya Rp500 ribu hingga Rp1,5 juta per meter bujur sangkar. Mahal-murahnya ukiran tergantung besar, kecil, dan rumitnya motif yang dipesan. Kayu yang digunakan adalah surian, kualitasnya sedikit di bawah jati, yang banyak terdapat di hutan Sumatra Barat. Sedikitnya Chan Umar membutuh dalam satu hari 5 kubik surian. Meski di Sumatra Barat sentra kerajinan ukir tradisional Minangkabau tak hanya terdapat di Pandai Sikek, juga di Candung (Agam), Cupak (Solok), dan Lintau (Tanah Datar), namun Pandai Sikek jauh lebih berkembang, dan Chan Umar merupakan pengukir terkemuka. Keunggulan produk yang dihasilkan Umar adalah hasil dari kecermatannya menorehkan motif dan menentukan warna. Pengerjaan kedua seni kerajinan ini di bawah kolong rumah gadang pada masa lalu membuat motif saling mempengaruhi dan umumnya serupa. Diperkirakaan ada 200 motif tradisional untuk ukiran, namun yang sering dipakai hanya sekitar 20-an. Masing-masingnya memiliki filosofi sendiri. Misalnya motif ‘itiak pulang patang’ (itik pulang sore) memiliki filofosi masyarakat Minangkabau akan teringat dengan kampung halamannya dan selalu seiya-sekatu (bersatu). Chan Umar sangat optimistis kepandaian kerajinan ukir yang dimilikinya dan orang-orang di Pandai Sikek akan selalu menjadi andalan perekonomian di daerah itu. Meski di Pandai Sikek 70 persen mata pencarian penduduk adalah di sektor pertanian dan 30 persen di sektor kerajinan (tenun dan ukir), namun karajinan telah membuka banyak lapangan pekerjaan.“Biasanya seorang perajin hanya mampu bertahan selama 15 tahun, setelah berkeluarga dan kebutuhan ekonomi bertambah, ia mencari usaha lain, kebanyakan tak lagi mengukir,” katanya. Karena itu, selain Chan Umar, para pengukir umumnya berusia di bawah 40 tahun. Meski begitu, tangan-tangan terampil mereka tak pernah berhenti menorehkan motif khas minang di selembar kayu untuk sebuah ornamen seni yang enak dipandang mata dari generasi ke generasi.

HOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.

So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.

Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.

He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.

It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.

But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.

China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining.

But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.

“So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon.

With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said.

Australia, a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness.

“We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense.

“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”

That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters.

“The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily, a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.

Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three.

Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names.

In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed.

In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.

China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009.

“The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.”

Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years.

To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft, outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice.

China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave.

Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site.

“China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica.

Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.

But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon.

Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators.

But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.

Under Mr. Michelin’s leadership, which ended when he left the company in 2002, the Michelin Group became the world’s biggest tire maker, establishing a big presence in the United States and other major markets overseas.