By Farah Radzuan and Syakir Nizam
GOMBAK, 27 September 2017: The main inspiration behind her book “99 Cahaya Langit Eropa” was to show the beauty of Islam within the minority Muslim community in the country like Austria, a writer who earned best selling for her novel, Hanum Salsabiela, revealed on Monday (25 September).
“I choose to do a travelogue write-up because I want to leave something for good. There are so much facts and information on Islamic civilisation that most Indonesians still do not know about,” Hanum shared her views during the screening of the film “99 Cahaya Langit Eropa”.
The writer highlighted that having passion is the most crucial thing in writing, besides “putting our feelings or sharing of our experience into it”.
“When we want to write a book, do not expect it’s going to be the best selling book. But, we need to give the touch of dakwah inside the book. That is the most important thing for me,” Hanum emphasised.
“The reason why we put our novel in visual form is because not all of us love to read, so when we changed it into film, and our target audience became wider, and we are able to spread the dakwah, not only among the Indonesians but also the international audience like Malaysia,” said Rangga Almahendra, who is the co-writer for the film and the novel.
Other than that, both shared their experiences when they were living in Vienna, Austria. Rangga Almanhendra told the audience about his experience facing his friend who was an atheist. He said that he needed to use indirect method of dakwah like using the analogical reasoning.
“99 Cahaya Langit Eropa” is a film adaptation from the bestselling novel written by Hanum Salsabiela and Rangga Almanhendra. This film became box office in Indonesia and the book was published for the 10th time respectively.***