Page 203 - Transformasi Masyarakat Indonesia dan Historiografi Indonesia Modern

Djoko Suryo

Such groups wish to return to what they see as a model Medinan
community established by Muhammad, but are suspicious of
associations with and influences of the modem West. They long
for an idealised, past “Golden Age”, and for them, the Qur’an
and Sunnah or Hadisth represent the central points of reference
in all aspects of their worldview. It is to this group that term
“fundamentalist” is best applied, this is because the scripturalism
represents the foundation of their approach. The Modernist
group, are those who wish to maintain the unity of religion
and politics but belief in the need to draw on elements of mo-
dem Western culture and lifestyle which could facilitate this
overall goal. The influence of a westernized modern life is clear
with this group. The Secularist groups, principally are those who
argue for the separation of religion and politics and in doing so
are influenced by the modern West. 30
The three great instigator of Islamic reformist movement
of a modernising type should be mentioned here were Sayyid
Jamal al Din al-Afghani (1838 1897), Muhammad Abduh (1849
1905), and Rashid Rida (1865 1935). The ultimate objective of
his movement was to unite the Muslim states, both Shi’ite and
Sunni, into a single Caliphate which would be strong enough to
expel the Europeans and to destroy what he saw as the deca-
dence that the Europeans had brought with them. Abduh who
was greatly influenced by al Afghani, also saw that Muslim
world faced with the dominance of the non Muslim world via
colonialism and concluded that the subjugation of Islam by the
West because of the weakness of Islam itself. He reviews fun-
damental Islamic theological principles from a reformist per-
spective in his influential work Theology of Unity, in which he
sought to reconcile Islam with reason and science. He also be-
come the first thinker who provided the modern commentar-
ies to number each Qur’anic verse. While, Rashid Rida served

30 Ibid., pp. 83.

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