Page 196 - Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia dan Historiografi Indonesia Modern

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From the chronicles it can also be identified that Sunan Kudus
besides he was an Ulama, actually he was also belong to the Muslim
politician and military commander. He sometime took an impor-
tant role as the master mind behind the political disputes within the
court of Demak and he also held a command on the attack to
Majapahit and some areas of the East Java in the early of the emer-
gence of Demak. Sunan Kudus was also known as the founder of
the Kudus town, where in the present become one of the Muslim
local industrial community in the Central Java. While, Sunan Kalijaga
was more known as the advisor of the Sultan Demak and kings of
Mataram in legendary, in addition, he was also belong to an promi-
nence propagandist of Islam in Java. Many stories on the Islamiza-
tion process and the creation of the wayang puppet and the Javanese
music (gamelan) as the medium of Islamization were often related
with Sunan Kalijaga. His mystical teachings were recorded in some
traditional chronicles. In the case of the recording Islamic mystical
theological teachings (tasawuf), Sunan Bonang became one of the
leading Javanese Muslim authors in the Demak era. His work was
known in Kitab Bonang (The Book of Bonang), and it had been pub-
lished entitled Het Boek van Bonang (The Book of Bonang). It sug-
gested that like in Aceh, sufi (tasawuf) teaching had also been known
in Java in the sixteenth century.
In the context of the Islamic teaching in the sixteenth and eigh-
teenth centuries of Java, but was really also in the Malay, there
arose two typological thinkers, the orthodox and heterodox think-
ers. The first thinkers, was those who more emphasized on the
priority to Sunna, or the Shari’a (Islamic Law), it can be identified as
the “Sharia’a minded” fundamentalist. While the second was those
who more close to the pantheism thought, which more uphold to
the doctrine that world is seen to merged with God, or to become
part of God’s being, by which man and God are considered one. 20
The first groups was certainly belong to the fundamentalist schools,

20 See Riddel, Ibid., pp. 71-72.

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