Apakah Sufiism sebagai jawaban untuk memperbaiki nama buruk agama Islam yang
rusak karena gara2 Isfun yang ingin menerapkan kaidah2 Alkur'an secara harafiah
di lapangan? dengan cara2 ekstrim?
Cara pen-demokrasian negara2 Islam di TimTeng dan semenanjung Arab dan lain
tempat sepertinya tidak akan membuahkan hasil. Caranya yalah orang Islam
membenahi dirinya sendiri, melawan para Isfun dengan menunjukan jalan yang
benar. Sufiism?
Apakah Ahmadyah itu suatu sempalan dari agama Islam yang mempraktek-kan
Sufi-ism? Beberapa kali dakwah Ahmadiah itu mengalami rintangan. Apakah cara
ini, menghambat orang beribadah tidak bertentangan dengan Pancasila? Apa
salahnya Ahmadiah ini?
Harry Adinegara
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Only traditional Islam can do it
By Phillip Blond and Adrian Pabst
Published: July 6, 2007
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LONDON:
The attempted bombings in London and the attack on Glasgow Airport last week
underscore the continued and long-term Islamic terror threat that Britain and
the world is facing. To date, all of those detained are highly educated
foreign-born medical staff.
Far from being affronted by this incursion, young British Muslims are
increasingly likely to support domestic jihad. The radicalization of British
Muslim youth proceeds apace. According to a recent poll by Populus, growing
numbers of Muslims aged 16-30 subscribe to extreme versions of Islam, and
almost 40 percent want to live under Shariah law. Britain faces the prospect of
a whole new generation of young people embracing extremism and religious
fanaticism.
So far, the government has refrained from introducing more Draconian
legislation. Instead, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his ministerial
colleagues have promised to reinforce the government's campaign "to win the
hearts and minds of the Muslim community."
However, like Tony Blair's sterile appeal to moderate, mainstream Islam, this
strategy is bound to fail because of two fatal assumptions. First, that every
culture and every religion wants to become like the secular West. Second,
resistance to Western secularization is fueled by false grievances and as such
can be legitimately ignored.
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In practice, this sort of approach marginalizes traditional Islam in favor of
an ersatz "progressive" version that robs it of all its distinctive character
and vision. The litmus test for integration is whether Muslims are willing to
be like "us." Unsurprisingly, many young Muslims are increasingly alienated by
an aggressively secular culture that enforces liberal transgression of moral
norms and taboos.
Crucially, current policies are not working because they fail to address the
real cause of radicalization and fanaticism. Contemporary Islamic violence is
religious in nature. Its origin lies in Islamic scripture and the destruction
of the traditional medieval schools that dictated its interpretation.
The Koran contains clear and lethal injunctions against apostates, idolaters
and those who challenge Muslim territorial ascendancy. While the sacred texts
do sanctify violence - they also codify it, limiting its range and application.
Thus, there is no legitimation in classical Islam for suicide bombing or the
wanton slaughter of innocents. That said, warfare and a consequent defense and
extension of Islam was both a religious duty and a scriptural requirement,
albeit one framed by chivalry and relative restraint.
Moreover, unlike the claims of contemporary fundamentalists, there never
really was a unified political/religious authority in Islam. On the contrary,
the role of religious scholars (the ulama) was to limit the power of the
caliphs.
And since there were four traditional schools of religious interpretation,
which themselves varied according to time and location, what constituted a
proper Islamic practice varied according to local norms and customs. As such
traditional Islam prohibits the very totalitarian state Al Qaeda seeks to
impose.
For example, if Islam recovers the traditional practice of ijtihad, a process
of textual reinterpretation that replaces the scriptural literalism of the
fundamentalists with a more medieval allegorical reading of the Koran, this
would enable the Muslim faithful to distinguish between immutable God-given
laws and mutable human interpretations.
It is worth stating all of this because the only force that can challenge
Islamic terrorism is not liberal progressivism but Islam itself. Those who have
abandoned terrorism did so not as a result of secular injunctions or indeed
horror at what they were doing. Rather, it was the realization that the variant
of Islam they were killing for was itself Western, modern and secular.
The great innovators of Islamic fundamentalism - Sayyid Qutb and Maulana
Maududi - were deeply influenced by pagan Nazi literature and its supremacist
critiques of modern life and culture. Demonstration of the essentially
blasphemous nature of contemporary fundamentalism is crucial for the
deprogramming of its adherents.
However, the mere rebirth of classical Islam is not enough. Islam in both its
Sunni and Shiite derivations suffers from an absolutist unmediated relation to
God. Since faith is separated from reason and nature it becomes a
self-authenticating phenomenon that invalidates all other perspectives.
What is really required is the revival of Sufism - a practice previously
common to all forms of the faith and one that stresses the mystical unknowable
nature of God and His transcendence of all forms of human knowledge.
Such a recognition deprives Islamic fundamentalism of its primary motivating
principle - that it knows the will of God and is therefore justified in
enforcing it upon the earth.
A renewal of Sufism could help Islam to broaden its understanding of
authority beyond rulers and the ulama to include civil society. This would also
restore the consensus of the community (ijma). And thereby empower Muslim
society to challenge the fundamentalist assertions of its heretical preachers
with reasoned belief.
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