MUHAMMADIYAH.ID, YOGYAKARTA - Secretary of the Central Board of Muhammadiyah Agung Danarto encouraged Islamic preachers to remember grassroots of Muhammadiyah. He conveyed that dakwah of Muhammadiyah often uses advanced vocabularies so that a view of Muhammadiyah dakwah should be shifted to target the people.

A survey by Al-Qur’an Study Institute (IIA) of Jakarta reveled that 65 percent of Indonesian Muslims cannot recite Al_Qur’an. This condition must become a concern of Islamic institutions and organizations. Agung stated that progressive dakwah which becomes an identity of Muhammadiyah may not be a barrier to answer the fundamental issue.

According to Agung, the survey finding should trigger Islamic preachers, particularly Muhammadiyah preachers, to deliver dakwah in accordance with conditions of the targets. Today’s dakwah often does not meet people’s need, and the preachers only seeks for fame.

“We actually possess a historical connection with writing and language of Al-Qur’an. We called it ‘pegon’, (an Arabic script used to write the Javanese and Sundanese),” informed Agung on Thursday (11/7) at Office of Muhamamadiyah, Jalan Cit Ditiro 23, Yogyakarta.

As a Malay family, Indonesia is well-known for its east culture and arts as Arab civilization. One of them is Arabic grapheme arts. Noticing the survey result, Agung was not surprised since he has personally recognized that many Muslims around us are not able to recite Al-Qur’an.

Besides reciting and writing letters of Al-Qur’an, closely related culture between Arabic and Indonesian is regarding vocabularies. Some of Indonesian words are derived from Arabic words. Nevertheless, an Indonesian identity is not an Arabic identity since Indonesia has its own culture emerging from its local wisdom.

Agung, who is also a lecturer of Hadith Studies of Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, expected the Islamic preachers to seriously concern with the issue of high illiteracy of Al-Qur’an.

“We see that a trend of Al-Qur’an education program (TPA) decreases. We need to make a breakthrough to trigger enthusiasm of young generations to get familiar with Al-Qur’an,” he asserted.