Genset Foton Murah di Tangerang Selatan

tentang cinta pertama   Aku mengenalnya semenjak aku berusia 5 tahun, tapi mulainya rasa itu ada ketika aku duduk di

tentang cinta pertama

Aku mengenalnya semenjak aku berusia 5 tahun, tapi mulainya rasa itu ada ketika aku duduk di kelas 4 SD, semenjak itu aku merasa aneh, karena usiaku juga masih terbilang kanak2. Entah apa yang aku rasa saat itu, aku tak mengerti apa yang sedang terjadi kala itu, aku seperti orang yang tak tentu arah.

Saat aku sadari ternyata aku mulai suka, ya aku suka untuk yang pertama kali pada seseorang. Namun aku tak mampu melakukan apa yang ingin aku lakukan. Aku hanya mengaguminya dari kejauhan, aku hanya mampu melihat senyumnya dari sini dari tempatku duduk kala itu. Aku melihatnya tertawa dan melihat bermain bola di lapangan itu, apa lagi saat kita bermain dan kejar2an. Aku sungguh suka... Laki laki yang aku pandang terlihat tampan dengan gayanya yg khas dan aku suka itu. Matanya sangat indah, rambutnya yang agak kriting menambah getaran dalam dada ini. Huuuuh aku suka dia, benar-benar suka dia.

Rasa ini semakin hari semakin dalam. Setiap hari yang aku ingin hanya memandang wajahnya. Suatu hari aku melihat tatapan matanya, tatapan mata yang sangat sejuk. Yang mampu membuat jantung ini berdegup lebih cepat. Dan akhirnya aku mulai bisa dekat dgn dia, karena saat itu aku dukuk 1 bangku dengannya,1 minggu itu. sangat menyenangkan, aku merasa sangat bahagia.

Hingga suatu hari, apa yang aku takutkan terjadi, dia pergi. Pergi tanpa pesan terakhir. Kini, hanya ada aku dan kenangan itu. Aku hanya mampu mengingatnya, mengingat semua senyumnya dan tatapan indah itu. Aku berjalan gontai sambil meneteskan air mata, air mata kehilangan. Dia, takkan pernah tau betapa sakitnya aku saat itu, saat dia pergi dariku. Aku tak mampu berkata apapun, aku hanya menangis dalam diam, menyesali semuanya. Aku mencoba tegar, aku mencoba terus untuk menutup luka ini, luka yang kau beri. Aku mencoba bahagia dgn apa yg aku milikki saat itu. Aku mencoba bertahan dgn senyumanku.

"Yaa Allah, jaga dia selama dia jauh dari sisiku". Dan saat itu aku mulai sadar, inilah cinta pertamaku. Di dalam penantianku, ada seorang pria datang dgn membawa sejuta cinta. Aku masih ingin diam, dan diam menunggu cintaku kembali dalam pelukku. Namun kehadirannya membuat aku tertawa seperti dulu, tetapi sungguh dalam hati ini masih ada nama cinta pertamaku. Aku hanya mampu tertawa sesaat saja, setelah itu kembali menangis dalam diamku, dalam penantianku. Untuk sementara waktu, sakitku terobati oleh kehadirannya di dalam sepiku. Namun hanya sementara dan setelah itu kami berpisah...klik di sini untuk kelanjutan nya .

by yandre pramana putra

Oleh Ustadz Abu Ubaidah Al-Atsari HAJI MABRUR Dari Abu Hurairah Radhiyallahu ‘ahu bahwasanya Rasulullah Shallallahu &

Oleh
Ustadz Abu Ubaidah Al-Atsari

HAJI MABRUR
Dari Abu Hurairah Radhiyallahu ‘ahu bahwasanya Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda : “Umroh ke umroh berikutnya merupakan pelebur dosa antara keduanya, dan tiada balasan bagi haji mabrur melainkan surga” [HR Bukhari : 1683, Muslim : 1349]

Haji Mabrur memiliki beberapa kriteria.

Pertama : Ikhlas. Seorang hanya mengharap pahala Allah, bukan untuk pamer, kebanggaan, atau agar dipanggil “pak haji” atau “bu haji” oleh masyarakat.

“Artinya : Mereka tidak disuruh kecuali supaya beribadah kepada Allah dengan penuh keikhlasan” [Al-Bayyinnah : 5]

Kedua : Ittiba’ kepda Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam. Dia berhaji sesuai dengan tata cara haji yang dipraktekkan oleh Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam dan menjauhi pekara-perkara bid’ah dalam haji. Beliau Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

“Artinya : Contohlah cara manasik hajiku” [HR Muslim : 1297]

Ketiga : Harta untuk berangkat haji adalah harta yang halal. Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

“Artinya : Sesungguhnya Allah itu baik, Dia tidak menerima kecuali dari yang baik” [HR Muslim : 1015]

Keempat : Menjauhi segala kemaksiatan, kebid’ahan dan penyimpangan

“Artinya : Barangsiapa menetapkan niatnya untuk haji di bulan itu maka tidak boleh rafats (berkata-kata tidak senonoh), berbuat fasik, dan berbantah-bantahan pada masa haji..”[Al-Baqarah : 197]

Kelima : Berakhlak baik antar sesama, tawadhu’ dalam bergaul, dan suka membantu kebutuhan saudara lainnya.

Alangkah bagusnya ucapan Ibnul Abdil Barr rahimahullah dalam At-Tamhid (22/39) : “Adapun haji mabrur, yaitu haji yang tiada riya dan sum’ah di dalamnya, tiada kefasikan, dan dari harta yang halal” [Latho’iful Ma’arif Ibnu Rajab hal. 410-419, Masa’il Yaktsuru Su’al Anha Abdullah bin Sholih Al-Fauzan : 12-13]

HAJI AKBAR
Pendapat yang populer dalam madzhab Syafi’i, hari “Haji Akbar” adalah hari Arafah (9 Dzul-Hijjah). Namun pendapat yang benar bahwa hari haji akbar adalah pada hari Nahr (penyembelihan kurban, yakni 10 Dzul-Hijjah], berdasarkan firman Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala.

“Artinya : Dan (inilah) suatu permakluman dari Allah dan rosul-Nya kepada umat manusia pada hari haji akbar…” [At-Taubah : 3]

Dalam shahih Bukhari 8/240 dan shahih Muslim : 1347 disebutkan bahwa Abu Bakar dan Ali Radhiyallahu ‘anhuma mengumumkan hal itu pada hari nahr, bukan pada hari Arafah.

Dalam sunan Abu Dawud 1945 dengan sanad yang sangat shohih, Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa salam bersabda.

“Artinya : Hari haji akbar adalah hari nahr (menyembelih kurban)”

Demikian pula yang dikatakan oleh Abu Hurairah dan sejumlah shahabat radhiyallahu ‘anhum [Lihat Zadul Ma’ad Ibnul Qayyim 1/55-56]

GANTI NAMA USAI HAJI
Soal : Apakah hukumnya mengganti nama setelah pulang haji, seperti yang banyak dilakukan mayoritas jama’ah haji Indonesia, di mana mereka mengganti nama di Makkah atau Madinah, apakah ini termasuk sunnah ataukah tidak?

Jawab : Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam biasa mengganti nama-nama yang buruk dengan nama-nama yang bagus. Maka apabila jama’ah haji Indonesia tersebut mengganti nama mereka lantaran tersebut, bukan disebabkan usai melakukan ibadah haji atau karena berziarah ke Masjid Nabawi, maka hukumnya boleh. Namun apabila jama’ah haji Indonesia mengganti nama mereka lantaran alasan pernah di Makkah/Madinah atau usai melakukan ibadah haji, maka hal itu termasuk perkara bid’ah, bukan sunnah. [Fatawa Lajnah Daimah 2/514-515]

AIR ZAM-ZAM
Al-Humaidi rahimahullah berkata : Saya pernah berada di sisi Sufyan bin Uyainah rahimahullah, lalu beliau menyampaikan kepada kami hadits.

“Artinya : Air zam-zam tergantung keinginan seorang yang meminumnya”

Tiba-tiba ada seorang lelaki bangkit dari majelis, kemudian kembali lagi seraya mengatakan : “Wahai Abu Muhammad, bukankah hadits yang engkau ceritakan kepada kami tadi tentang zam-zam adalah hadits yang shahih?” Jawab beliau : “Benar”, Lelaki itu lalu berkata : “Baru saja aku meminum seember air zam-zam dengan harapan engkau akan menyampaikan kepadaku seratus hadits”. Akhirnya Sufyan rahimahullah berkata kepadanya : “Duduklah!”, Lelaki itupun duduk, dan Sufyan rahimahullah menyampaikan seratus hadits kepadanya. [Al-Mujalasah Abu Bakar Ad-Dinawari 2/343, Juz Ma’a Zam-Zam Ibnu Hajar hal. 271]

Semoga Allah merahmati Imam Sufyan bin Uyainah, alangkah semangatnya dalam menebarkan ilmu! Dan semoga Allah merahmati orang yang bertanya tersebut, alangkah semangatnya dalam menuntut ilmu dan sindiran lembut untuk mendapatkannya! [Fadhlu Ma’a Zam-Zam Sayyid Bakdasy hal. 137]

ASAL HAJAR ASWAD
Dari Ibnu Abbas Radhiyallahu ‘anhuma berkata : Rasulullah Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda : “Hajar aswad (ketika) turun dari surga lebih putih dari pada salju, lalu dosa-dosa anak Adam membuatnya hitam” [Shahih HR Tirmidzi : 877, Ibnu Khuzaimah : 1/271, Ath-Thabrani dalam Mu’jam Kabir 3/155, Ahmad 1/307, 329, 373. Lihat Silsilah Ash-Shahihah Al-Albani : 2618]

Kita beriman dengan hadits ini secara tekstual dan pasrah sepenuhnya, sekalipun orang-orang ahli filsafat mengingkarinya. [Lihat Ta’wil Mukhtalif Hadits Ibnu Qutaibah hal.542]

Sulaiman bin Khalil rahimahullah (imam dan khatib Masjidil Haram dahulu) menceritakan bahwa dirinya melihat tiga bintik berwarna putih jernih pada Hajar Aswad, lalu katanya : “Saya perhatikan bintik-bintik tadi, ternyata setiap hari berkurang warnanya” [Al-Aqdu Tsamin Al-Fasi Al-Makki 1/68, Asror wa Fadha’il Hajar Aswad Majdi Futhi Sayyid hal. 22]

Sungguh dalam hal itu terdapat pelajaran berharga bagi orang yang berakal, sebab jika demikian jadinya bekas dosa pada batu yang keras, maka bagaimana kiranya pada hati manusia?! [Fathul Bari Ibnu Hajar 3/463]

JEDDAH TERMASUK MIQOT?
Ada sebagian kalangan yang mencuatkan pendapat bahwa kota Jeddah boleh dijadikan sebagai salah satu miqot untuk jama’ah haji yang datang lewat pesawat udara atau kapal laut. Namun pendapat ini disanggah secara keras oleh Ha’iah Kibar Ulama dalam keputusan rapat mereka no. 5730, tanggal 21/10/1399 sebagai berikut.

Pertama : Fatwa tentang bolehnya menjadikan Jeddah sebagai miqot bagi jama’ah haji yang datang dengan pesawat udara dan kapal laut merupakan fatwa yang batil, karena tidak bersandar pada Kitabullah dan sunnah Rasul-Nya serta ijma’ salafush shalih. Tidak ada satupun ulama kaum muslimin sebelumnya yang mendahului pendapat ini.

Kedua : Tidak boleh bagi jama’ah haji yang melewati miqot, baik lewat udara maupun laut (miqot Indonesia adalah Yalamlam, pent) untuk melampauinya tanpa ihram sebagaimana ditegaskan dalam banyak dalil dan dilandaskan oleh para ulama” [Fiqh Nawazil Al-Jizani 2/317, Tisir Alam Al-Bassam 1/572-573]

NAMA MIQOT MADINAH
Miqot penduduk Madinah atau jama’ah haji yang lewat Madinah adalah Dzul-Hulaifah [1] sebagaimana disebutkan dalam banyak hadits. Adapun penamannya dengan “Bir Ali” sebagaimana yang populer di masyarakat maka hendaknya diganti. Sebab sebagaimana lafazh yang tertera dalam hadits itu lebih utama, apalagi kalau kita telusuri ternyata sumber penamaan Bir Ali (sumur Ali) adalah cerita yang laris manis di kalangan Rafidhah (Syi’ah) bahwa Ali bin Abi Thalib Radhiyallahu ‘anhu pernah bertarung dengan jin di sumur tersebut, shingga karena itulah disebut Bir Ali.

Para ulama ahli hadits telah bersepakat menegaskan batilnya cerita tersebut, seperti Syaikhul Islam Ibnu Taimiyah rahimahullah dalam Minhajus Sunnah 8/161, Ibnu Katsir dalam Al-Bidayah wan Nihayah 2/344, Ibnu Hajar dalam Al-Ishobah 1/498, Mula Ali Al-Qari dalam Al-Maslak Al-Mutaqossith hal. 79, dan lainnya. [Qashashun La Tatsbutu Masyhur Hasan Salman 7/95-119]

DZIKIR KETIKA THAWAF
Syaikhul Islam Ibnu Taimiyyah rahimahullah berkata : “Disunnahkan ketika thawaf untuk berdzikir dan berdo’a dengan do’a-do’a yang disyariatkan. Kalau mau membaca Al-Qur’an dengan lirih maka hal itu boleh. Dan tidak ada do’a tertentu dari Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam baik dari perintahnya, ucapannya, maupun pengajarannya, bahkan boleh berdo’a dengan umumnya do’a-do’a yang disyari’atkan. Adapun yang disebutkan kebanyakan manusia tentng do’a khusus di bawah mizab (talang Ka’bah) dan selainnya [2] semua itu tidak ada asalnya” [Majmu Fatawa 26/122]

PROBLEM ORANG YANG BOTAK
Telah dimaklumi, dalam haji ada syarat cukur/memendekkan rambut. Namun bagaimana dengan seorang yang botak dan tidak memiliki rambut untuk dicukur? Sebagian fuqaha mengatakan. Hendaknya dia tetap melewatkan alat cukur di kepalanya. Namun pendapat yang benar ialah hal ini dibenci, syari’at bersih darinya, (perbuatan itu) sia-sia dan tiada faedahnya, sebab melewatkan alat cukur hanyalah sekedar sebagai wasilah (perantara) saja bukan tujuan utama. Kalau tujuan utamanya gugur, maka wasilah tidak bermakna lagi. Persis dengan masalah ini adalah seorang yang lahir sedangkan dzakarnya sudah terkhitan, perlukah dikhitan lagi? Ataukah melewatkan pisau padanya? Pendapat yang benar adalah tidak perlu. [Lihat Tuhfatul Maudud bi Ahkamil Maulud Ibnul Qayyim hal. 330]

TITIP SALAM UNTUK NABI SHALLALLAHU ‘ALAIHI WA SALLAM
Budaya titip atau kirim salam untuk Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam kepada para jama’ah haji merupakan budaya yang perlu ditinggalkan dan diingatkan, sebab hal itu tidak boleh dan termasuk kategori perkara baru dalam agama. Alhamdulillah, termasuk keluasan rahmat Allah kepada kita, Dia menjadikan salam kita untuk Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam sampai kepada beliau di manapun kita berada, baik di ujung timur maupun barat. Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

“Artinya : Jangalah kalian jadikan kuburku sebagai perayaan, dan (jangan jadikan) rumah-rumah kalian sebagai kuburan, bershalawtlah kepadaku karena sesungguhnya shalawat kalian sampai kepadaku di manapun kalian berada”.

Hadits-hadits yang semakna dengannya banyak sekali. [Lihat Al-Mustadrak ‘Ala Mu’jam Manahi Lafzhiyyah Sulaiman Al-Khurosi hal. 231-232]

[Disalin dari Majalah Al-Furqon Edisi 05 Tahun VI/Dzul-Hijjah 1427 (Januari 2007). Penerbit Lajnah Dakwah Ma’had Al-Furqon, Alamat Maktabah Ma’ahd Al-Furqon, Srowo Sidayu Gresik Jatim]
__________
Foote Note
[1]. Nama sebuah desa besar di jalan Madinah dahulu (lihat Mu’jam Buldan 2/111). Di sana ada sebuah masjid yang Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam ketika berangkat haji, beliau shalat dan ber-ihram di sana. Jaraknya dari Madinah kurang lebih 3 mil, dijangkau dengan mobil sekitar seperempat jam [Lihat Al-Haj Al-Mabrur Abu Bakar Al-Jaza’iri hal. 32]
[2]. Seperti do’a/dzikir tertentu untuk setiap putaran thawaf dan sa’i, maka ini juga tidak ada asalnya. [Lihat At-Tahqiq wal Idhah Abdul Aziz bin Baz hal. 29, Manasik Haji wal Umrah Ibnu Utsaimin hal.119, Syarh Manasik Haji wal Umrah Sholih Al-fauzan hal.75, Tashih Du’a Bakar Abu Zaid hal.520]

Sumber : http://www.alquran-sunnah.com

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ate in February, Dr. Ben Carson, the celebrated pediatric neurosurgeon turned political insurrectionist, was trying to check off another box on his presidential-campaign to-do list: hiring a press secretary. The lead prospect, a public-relations specialist named Deana Bass, had come to meet him at the dimly lit Capitol Hill office of Carson’s confidant and business manager, Armstrong Williams. Carson sat back and scrutinized her from behind a small granite table, as life-size cardboard cutouts of more conventional politicians — President Obama, with a tight smile, and Senator John McCain, glowering — loomed behind each of his shoulders. (The mock $3 bill someone had left on a table in Williams’s waiting room undercut any notion that this was a bipartisan zone; it featured Obama wearing a turban.)

Bass seemed momentarily speechless, and not just because no one had warned her that a New York Times reporter would be sitting in on her job interview. Though she knew Williams — a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur who owns several television stations and a public-affairs business and who hosts a daily talk-radio show — through Washington’s small circle of black conservatives, the two hadn’t spoken in years until he called her two days earlier. He had been struggling to come up with the perfect national spokesperson, he told her. Then, at the gym, her name popped into his head; Williams was fairly certain she was the one. Sitting across from a likely candidate for president, Bass was adjusting to the idea that her life might be about to take a sudden chaotic turn.

“It’s like getting the most random call on a Monday that you simply do not see coming,” she said. “Oftentimes, that is how the Lord works.”

Carson concurred: “It’s always how he works in my life.” Carson is soft-spoken and often talks with his eyes half closed, frequently punctuating his sentences with a small laugh, even if the humor of his statement is not readily apparent. Bass told Carson that she had been a Republican staff member on Capitol Hill then worked for the Republican National Committee. In 2007 she started a Christian public-relations firm with her sister. She enjoyed working on the Hill, she said, but the pay wasn’t as high as the hours were long. “We figured that we worked like slaves for other people, and we wanted to work for ourselves.”

Carson stopped her. “You know you can’t mention that word, right?” Carson waited a beat, then laughed, and Williams and Bass joined in. He was getting to the point; he needed a professional who could help him check his penchant for creating uncontrolled controversy just by talking.

The Ben Carson movement began in 2013, when Carson, a neurosurgeon, whose operating-room prowess and up-from-poverty back story had made him the subject of a television movie and a regular on the inspirational-speaking circuit, was invited to address the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. With Barack Obama sitting just two seats away, Carson warned that “moral decay” and “fiscal irresponsibility” could destroy America just as it did ancient Rome. He proposed a substitute for Obamacare — Health Savings Accounts, which, he said, would end any talk of “death panels” — and a flat-tax based on the concept of tithing. His address, combined with the president’s stony reaction, was a smash with Republican activists. Speaking and interview requests flooded in. Carson, then 61, announced his planned retirement a few weeks later, freeing his calendar to accept just about all of them. In the months that followed, his rhetoric became increasingly strident. The claim that drew the most attention, perhaps, was that Obamacare was “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Bass’s own use of the word prompted Carson to ask her what she thought about that incident. She considered for a moment.

“If you want to reach people and have them even understand what you’re saying, there is a way to do it, without that hyperbole, that might be. . . . ” She paused. “I just think it’s important not to shut people off before they —”

Carson jumped in. “That doesn’t allow them to hear what you’re saying?”

Bass nodded.

Likening Obamacare to slavery — and slavery was incomparably worse, Carson said — had its political advantages for a candidacy like his. It was the kind of statement that stoked the angriest of the Republican voters: conservative stalwarts who can’t hear enough bad things about Obama. This, in turn, led to more talk-radio and Fox News appearances, more book sales, more donations to the super PAC started in his name, more support in the polls. (The day before the meeting, one poll of Republican voters showed Carson statistically tied for first place with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.)

Rhetorical excess was good for business, but Carson now wants to be seen as more than a novelty candidate. He has come to learn that such extreme analogies, while true to his views, aren’t especially presidential. They alienate more moderate voters and, perhaps even more damaging, reinforce the impression that he is not “serious” — that he is another Herman Cain, the black former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive who rose to the top of the early presidential polls in 2011 but then bowed out before the Iowa caucuses, largely because of leaked allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied but from which he never recovered. Cain lingers as a cautionary tale for the party as much as for a right-leaning candidate like Carson. The fact that Cain, with his folksy sayings (“shucky ducky”) and misnomers (“Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”), reached the top of the national polls — much less that he was eventually followed there by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who all topped one or another poll in the 2012 primary season — wound up being a considerable embarrassment for the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, and for the longtime party regulars who were trying to fast-track his way to the nomination.

Carson liked Bass and, without directly saying so, made it clear the job was hers for the taking. Carson’s campaign chairman, Terry Giles — a white lawyer whose clients have included the comedian Richard Pryor and the stepson of the model Anna Nicole Smith and who helped reconcile the business interests of the descendants of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — had assembled a mostly white campaign team, including many from the 2012 Gingrich effort, and Carson wanted a person of color to speak for him. Bass said she would have to mull it over, pray about it. Carson nodded approvingly. “Pray about it,” he said. “See what you think.”

Williams knew the party was intent on protecting the eventual 2016 nominee from the same embarrassment Romney suffered. Already, suspiciously tough articles about Carson were showing up in conservative magazines and on right-wing websites. “They’re protecting these establishment candidates,” Williams said. “This is coming from within the house. This is family.” At the very least, he wanted to make sure that Carson didn’t do their work for them. (Carson would commit another unforced error a week later, when he told CNN that homosexuality was clearly a choice, because a lot of people go in prison straight and “when they come out, they’re gay”; he later apologized.)

“We need somebody to protect him, sometimes, from himself,” he told Bass — laughing, but only half kidding.

A candidacy like Carson’s presents a new kind of problem to the establishment wing of the G.O.P., which, at least since 1980, has selected its presidential nominees with a routine efficiency that Democrats could only envy. The establishment candidate has usually been a current or former governor or senator, blandly Protestant, hailing from the moderate, big-business wing of the party (or at least friendly with it) and almost always a second-, third- or fourth-time national contender — someone who had waited “his turn.” These candidates would tack predictably to the right during the primaries to satisfy the evangelicals, deficit hawks, libertarian leaners and other inconvenient but vital constituents who made up the “base” of the party. In return, the base would, after a brief flirtation with some fantasy candidate like Steve Forbes or Pat Buchanan, “hold their noses” and deliver their votes come November. This bargain was always tenuous, of course, and when some of the furthest-right activists turned against George W. Bush, citing (among other apostasies) his expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, it began to fall apart. After Barack Obama defeated McCain in 2008, the party’s once dependable base started to reconsider the wisdom of holding their noses at all.

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This insurgent attitude was helped along by changes in the nomination rules. In 2010, the Republican National Committee, hoping to capture the excitement of the coast-to-coast Democratic primary competition between Obama and Hillary Clinton, introduced new voting rules that required many of the early voting states to award some delegates to losing candidates, based on their shares of the vote. The proportional voting rules would encourage struggling candidates to stay in the primaries even after successive losses, as Clinton did, because they might be able to pull together enough delegates to take the nomination in a convention-floor fight or at least use them to bargain for a prime speaking slot or cabinet post.

This shift in incentives did not go unnoticed by potential 2012 candidates, nor did changes in election law that allowed billionaire donors to form super PACs in support of pet candidacies. At the same time, increasingly widespread broadband Internet access allowed candidates to reach supporters directly with video and email appeals and supporters to send money with the tap of a smartphone, making it easier than ever for individual candidates to ignore the wishes of the party.

Into this newly chaotic Republican landscape strode Mitt Romney. There could be no doubt that it was his turn, and yet his journey to the nomination was interrupted by one against-the-odds challenger after another — Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul; always Ron Paul. It was easy to dismiss the 2012 primaries as a meaningless circus, but the onslaught did much more than tarnish the overall Republican brand. It also forced Romney to spend money he could have used against Obama and defend his right flank with embarrassing pandering that shadowed him through the general election. It was while trying to block a surge from Gingrich, for instance, that Romney told a debate audience that he was for the “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants.

At the 2012 convention in Tampa, a group of longtime party hands, including Romney’s lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, gathered to discuss how to prevent a repeat of what had become known inside and outside the party as the “clown show.” Their aim was not just to protect the party but also to protect a potential President Romney from a primary challenge in 2016. They forced through new rules that would give future presumptive nominees more control over delegates in the event of a convention fight. They did away with the mandatory proportional delegate awards that encouraged long-shot candidacies. And, in a noticeably targeted effort, they raised the threshold that candidates needed to meet to enter their names into nomination, just as Ron Paul’s supporters were working to reach it. When John A. Boehner gaveled the rules in on a voice vote — a vote that many listeners heard as a tie, if not an outright loss — the hall erupted and a line of Ron Paul supporters walked off the floor in protest, along with many Tea Party members.

At a party meeting last winter, Reince Priebus, who as party chairman is charged with maintaining the support of all his constituencies, did restore some proportional primary and caucus voting, but only in states that held voting within a shortened two-week window. And he also condensed the nominating schedule to four and a half months from six months, and, for the first time required candidates to participate in a shortened debate schedule, determined by the party, not by the whims of the networks. (The panel that recommended those changes included names closely identified with the establishment — the former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, the Mississippi committeeman Haley Barbour and, notably, Jeb Bush’s closest adviser, Sally Bradshaw.)

Grass-roots activists have complained that the condensed schedule robs nonestablishment candidates — “movement candidates” like Carson — of the extra time they need to build momentum, money and organizations. But Priebus, who says the nomination could be close to settled by April, said it helped all the party’s constituencies when the nominee was decided quickly. “We don’t need a six-month slice-and-dice festival,” Priebus said when we spoke in mid-March. “While I can’t always control everyone’s mouth, I can control how long we can kill each other.”

All the rules changes were built to sidestep the problems of 2012. But the 2016 field is shaping up to be vastly different and far larger. A new Republican hints that he or she is considering a run seemingly every week. There are moderates like Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. George Pataki of New York; no-compromise conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; business-wingers like the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina; one-of-a-kinds like Donald Trump — some 20 in all, a dozen or so who seem fairly serious about it. That opens the possibility of multiple candidates vying for all the major Republican constituencies, some of them possibly goaded along by super-PAC-funding billionaires, all of them trading wins and collecting delegates well into spring.

Giles says his candidate can capitalize on all that chaos. Rivals may laugh, but Giles argues that if Carson can make a respectable showing in Iowa, then win in South Carolina — or at least come in second should a home-state senator, Lindsey Graham, run — and come in second behind Bush or Senator Marco Rubio in their home state of Florida, he could be positioned to make a real run. But that would depend on avoiding pitfalls like Carson’s ill-considered comments on homosexuality. Rather than capitalizing on the chaos, Carson may only contribute to it.

Ben Carson is, in many ways, the ideal Republican presidential candidate. With a not-too-selective reading of his life story, conservative voters can — and do — see in him an inspiring, up-from-nowhere African-American who shares their beliefs, a right-wing answer to Barack Obama. Before he was born, his parents moved to Detroit from rural Tennessee as part of the second great migration. His father, Robert Solomon Carson, worked at a Cadillac factory. His mother, Sonya — who herself had grown up as one of 24 children and left school at third grade — cleaned houses. When Carson was 8, Sonya discovered that Robert was keeping a second family. She moved, with her two sons, into a rundown group house. It was in a part of town that Carson described to me as crawling with “big rats and roaches and all kinds of horrible things.” Sonya worked several jobs at a time and made up the shortfall with food stamps. (Carson has called for paring back the social safety net but not doing away with it.)

Carson recounts this story in his best-selling 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands,” which also became the basis for a 2009 movie on TNT, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carson. Raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, Carson realized that he wanted to become a physician during a church sermon about a missionary doctor who, while serving overseas, was almost attacked by thieves but found safety by putting his faith in God. When Carson, then 8, told his mother his new dream, “She said, ‘Absolutely, you could do it, you could do anything,’ ” he told me. Forced by his mother to read two extra books a week, he made it to Yale, then to medical school at the University of Michigan, where he decided to specialize in neurosurgery. He was selected for residency at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at 33, becoming the youngest person, and the first black person, to hold the title. He drew national attention by conducting a succession of operations that had never been performed successfully, most famously planning and managing the first separation of conjoined twins connected through major blood vessels in the brain.

Carson, a two-time Jimmy Carter voter, traces his conservative political awakening to a patient he met during the Reagan years. During a routine obstetrics rotation, he found himself treating an unwed pregnant teenager who had run away from her well-to-do parents. When Carson asked her how she was getting by, she informed him she was on public assistance; this led him to ponder the fact that the government was paying for the result of what he did not view as a “wise decision.” The incident, he says, fed his growing sense that the welfare system too often saps motivation and rewards irresponsible behavior. (When we spoke, he suggested that the government should cut off assistance to would-be unwed mothers, but only after warning them that it would do so within a certain amount of time, say five years. “I bet you’d see a dramatic decrease in unwed motherhood.”)

Carson’s friends at Hopkins say they do not remember him being particularly outspoken about his conservatism. He devoted most of his public engagement to urging poor kids in bad neighborhoods to use “these fancy brains God gave us,” through weekly school visits, student hospital tours and, ultimately, a multimillion-dollar scholarship program. “His issues were always medical care for the poor, education for the poor, equal opportunity — helping the less fortunate and really inspiring them as an example,” a mentor who named him to the chief pediatrics-neurosurgery post at Hopkins, Dr. Donlin Long, told me.

Even when Carson got the chance, in 1997, to speak in front of President Bill Clinton, at the national prayer breakfast, he mostly discussed the lack of role models for black children who were not sports stars or rappers. (There was possibly an oblique reference to Clinton’s sex scandals, when he told the audience that, if they are always honest, they won’t have to worry later about “skeletons in the closet.”)

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In 2011, Carson’s politics took a strident turn, mirroring that of many in his party during the Obama years. “America the Beautiful,” his sixth book, which he wrote with Candy Carson, his wife of 39 years, included a get-tough-on-illegal-immigration message and offered anti-establishment praise for the Tea Party. It suggested that blacks who voted for Obama only because he was black were themselves practicing a form of racism. (Earlier this year he admitted to Buzzfeed that portions of the book were lifted directly from several sources without proper attribution.) His prayer-breakfast performance in 2013, and the extremity of his remarks in the months afterward (Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery; the United States is “very much like Nazi Germany”; allowing same-sex marriage could lead to allowing bestiality), left some of his old friends bewildered. Students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine protested his planned convocation address there in 2013, and he eventually backed out. When I asked Carson about the view at Hopkins that he had changed, he said his themes are still the same: “hard work, self-reliance, helping other people.” If he had become more overtly political, he said, it was only because the Obama years had led him to believe that “we’re really moving in a direction that is very, very destructive.”

None of this went unnoticed by campaign professionals. In August 2013, John Philip Sousa IV and Vernon Robinson, each of whom professes to be a virtual stranger to Carson, and who had previously been active in the anti-illegal-immigration movement, started the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Sousa was just coming off a campaign to defend the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, from a recall effort, and he told me that he found Carson’s lack of political experience refreshing. “We have 500 guys and gals with probably a collective 5,000 years experience, and look at the mess we’re in,” he said.

Many others in the party feel the same way. Carson’s PAC finished 2014 with more than $13 million in donations, more than Ready for Hillary. Much of its money has gone toward further fund-raising, but Sousa — the great-grandson of the famous composer — points out that their effort has already built far more than just a war chest, organizing leaders in all 99 of Iowa’s counties. Regardless, Carson credits the fund-raising success of Sousa and Robinson with persuading him to enter the race.

Very early the morning after the job interview, Carson was in a black S.U.V., heading from Washington to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., where he was to give the opening candidate speech of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The event, which functions as an early tryout for Republican presidential contenders, tends to skew rightward in its audience, drawing many of the same sorts of people who shouted at Boehner in Tampa. As such, it tends to favor anti-establishment candidates, but the news leading up to this year’s event was that Jeb Bush hoped to make inroads there.

It was still dark when we set out, and I joked with Carson about the hour, telling him he’d better get used to it. He retorted that his career in pediatric brain surgery made him no stranger to early mornings. This is a big theme of Carson’s presidential pitch: that neither the rigors of the campaign nor those of the White House can faze a man who held children’s lives in his hands. His life in brain surgery has prepared him for the presidency, he maintains, better than lives in politics have for his rivals. At the very least, he says, it conditioned him against getting too worked up about any problem that isn’t life threatening. “I mean, it’s grueling, but interestingly enough, I don’t feel the pressure,” he said.

At the convention hall, we were quickly surrounded by admirers. Two women were already waiting to meet him — white, middle-aged volunteers for Carson’s super PAC, who had traveled from South Carolina. One of them, Chris Horne, was holding a dog-eared and taped Bible. A founding member of the Charleston Tea Party who went on to work for Gingrich’s successful South Carolina primary campaign in 2012, Horne lamented over the attacks that Carson was sure to face. “You served us, you served the Lord, just don’t let them steal that from you,” she said. Her friend told him, “You’ve got God behind you!” Such religious evocations trailed Carson constantly while I walked the CPAC floor with him. Evangelicals are impressed not only with his devotion to their politics but also with his career path; as one of them told me, what’s more pro-life than saving babies?

During our ride to the conference, Carson told me his speech was not looking to “feed the beast.” When his appointed time came, he kept his remarks as tame as promised. “Real compassion” meant “using our intellect” to help people “climb out of dependency and realize the American dream,” he said. The national debt is going to “destroy us,” Obamacare was about “redistribution and control,” but Republicans better come forward with their own alternative before they repeal it, he said.

Because his speech was first, and it started several minutes early, the auditorium was slow to fill. Still, the first day saw a crush of people seeking autographs and pictures as he roamed the hall. The Draft Carson committee’s 150 volunteers swarmed the auditorium, collecting emails and handing out “Run Ben Run” stickers. After a quick interview with Sean Hannity, the conservative-radio and Fox News host — his second in two days — Carson was off to Tampa.

In the hours that followed his talk, the hall offered a view in miniature of what the next 12 to 14 months might hold for the party. Chris Christie, sitting across from the tough-minded talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, boasted about his multiple vetoes of Planned Parenthood funding, his refusal to raise income taxes and his belief that “sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up.” Cruz, an audience favorite, warning his fellow Republicans against falling for a “squishy moderate,” declared, “Take all 125,000 I.R.S. agents and put ’em on our Southern border!” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, surging in polls, boasted that if he could face down the 100,000 union supporters who protested his legislation limiting collective bargaining for public employees, he could certainly handle ISIS. The next day, the traditional CPAC favorite Rand Paul spoke, packing the hall with his supporters who chanted “President Paul.” He warned, counter to the overall hawkish tenor of the event, that “we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.” But he also vowed to end foreign aid to countries whose citizens are seen burning American flags. “Not one penny more to these haters of America.”

Perhaps the defining moment came near the end of the conference, when Jeb Bush spoke. In a neat trick of political gamesmanship — and a show of establishment muscle — his team had bused in an ample cheering section for the dozens of cameras on hand for his appearance. But a small contingent of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters staged a walk out. When Bush began a question-and-answer session, they turned and left the auditorium to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” in the hallway, led by a man in colonial garb waving a huge “Don’t Tread on Me” banner. Plenty of other detractors stayed in the hall and peppered Bush’s remarks with booing as he stood by positions unpopular with the conservative grass roots: support for the Common Core standards and an immigration overhaul that provides a “path to legal status” for undocumented immigrants. Bush took it all in good humor, but finally seemed to give up.

“For those who made an ‘oo’ sound — is that what it was? — I’m marking you down as neutral,” he said. “And I want to be your second choice.”

Bush strategists told me they would not repeat Romney’s mistakes. Of course they would love to glide to an early nomination, they said, but they are prepared for a long contest and won’t be wasting any energy bending under pressure from a Paul or a Cruz or a Carson.

No one doubts that the pressure will increase, though. Despite the best wishes of the party’s leaders, GOP primary voters have given little indication that they will narrow the field quickly.

Before I left, I spotted Newt Gingrich, himself a fleeting presidential front-runner during those strange primary days of 2012. I asked him whether he thought all the party maneuvering — all the attempts to change the rules and fast-track the process — would preclude someone from presenting the sort of outside primary challenge he had carried out in the last election.

“No,” he told me, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Look at where Ben Carson is right now.”

Pronovost, who played for the Red Wings, was not a prolific scorer, but he was a consummate team player with bruising checks and fearless bursts up the ice that could puncture a defense.