Page 199 - Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia dan Historiografi Indonesia Modern

Djoko Suryo

conventional religious education, or a pious Muslim) in the rural
areas, emerged largely in many areas in Indonesia, especially in
Java, during the nineteenth century as responses to the political
and social-economic changing of the Indonesian society as a result
of the coming of the West. Under the zealot Muslim scholars, such
as Ulama or Kyahi, who mostly had an national and international
intellectual networks with the Mekka or the West Asia, Pesantren
growth to be one of the important center for the reformation of
the Islamic learning which more concern on AI Qur’an and Sunnah,
in which the Shari ‘a ( the Islamic Law) to be one of the important
subject, as affected by the puritanism Wahhabiyah movement in
Arabia. Therefore the Pesantren in this century not only had a
24
central position as the traditional Islamic education headquarters
and home base for the Sunna wal Jamaah community or the early
“fundamentalist Muslim groups, in continuing the growing of the
center of the Islamic civilization in Indonesian sixteenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, but also become the prominent stronghold of
the rural Indonesian people against the Western power. By the
spirit of the puritanical Wahhabiyah reformers they declare to lead
the Muslim people in Indonesia to practice the purely Islamic way
of life by returning to the AI Qur’an and the Sunnah, and to take
stand against the bid’a ( heresy) and the kafir (infidels). It is not
surprising, therefore, why in the Aceh war, the Java War, and
other uprisings in the nineteenth century had always been sup-
ported by the ideology of Jihad fi sabillillah (War under the way of
God), anti kafir and anti Western, because it was propagated by
those fundamentalist reformist religious leaders. 25
Two prominent Muslim scholars in the nineteenth century

24 The description about Pesantren and their Kyahi can be found in
Zamaksyari Dhofir. Tradisi Pesantren: Studi tentang Pandangan Hidup Kyahi
(Jakarta: LP3ES, 1982).
25 About the concept of Jihad fi sabilillah in the war can be read in
Teuku Ibrahim Alfian , Perang di Jalan Allah: Perang Aceh, 1873 – 1912
(Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1987).

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