Page 277 - INDONESIAN ISLAMIC CULTURE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

classical legal issues, especially Islamic the universal values in Islam such as Islamic Reform and Challenges superstitions. Although they were
law, but the radical deconstruction of the justice and welfare. Raziq’s ideas do Reform is a renewed attitude towards severely challenged by the society,
entire corpus of Islamic epistemology. not only affect Ataturk’ssecularization religion, where religious texts are no the influence of Wahhabi puritanism
Thus, ijtihad is the building block of of Turkey, but also of that of Soekarno longer just being read as they are penetrated deep into Minangkabau
modern Islamic reform. in Indonesia. Raziq’s major contribution without thinking, but rather reflected society. In Java, reformism began with
Among the themes of reform and is that he showed modern Muslims upon within the structure of reality and the founding of the Sarekat Islam,
change in the modern Islamic the way to find a theological basis for local culture. If orthodoxy is concerned followed by the establishment of the
discourse, political change occupies secularism. with the enactment of Islamic law Muhammadiyah, al-Irsyad, and Persis.
an important position. This is because Raziq did not recognize the concept of in behavior and social order, reform As in West Sumatra, reformism in Java
the issue is directly related to the lives secularism but in his argumentation he requires the establishment of Islamic was undertaken by compelling Muslims
of the Muslims and touches upon the referred to the Qur’an and the Sunnah ethics and theology as the ideological to submit to the ban on imitations,
main doctrine of the unification of and thought they explicitly agreed with and moral foundations of the modern heresies and superstitions. Therefore,
religion and the state, and the religious the separation of religion and the state. world (Abdullah, 1986: 16). When the main challenges of reform were
supremacy over the state. Many Many intellectuals after Raziq discussed reform began, orthodoxy split into two what the Muhammadiyah called TBC,
Muslims believe that the separation the concept of secularism and then orientations in which those who wanted i.e. imitation (taqlid), heresy (bid’ah)
of state and religion is alien to Islam. approved it. To cite just some examples ijtihad were ready to face the modern and superstition (churafat). Muslims
Since Kemal Ataturk abolished the world, where as the orthodoxcontinued to who were familiar with imitation were
Caliphate and transformed Turkey we may mention Mohammed Arkoun hold on tothe old traditions. The latter is encouraged to break away from that
into a secular state, secularizationhas (Algeria), Asghar Ali Engineer (India), often dubbed traditionalist. bad habit and to start with a new one,
become a controversial issue. If Rashid Abdul Karim Soroush (Iran) who saw namely free thinking and understanding
Rida assumed that the Caliphate was secularism and equality as the basis The changes that occurred in Indonesia religion independently without attaching
necessary, Ali Abd al-Raziq (1888- for the implementation of democracy. resemble the developments that took themselves to any particular school.
1966) considered that it was just one These Islamic reformers’ positive place in the other parts of the Islamic In West Sumatra, modernist Islamic
out of a number of alternative systems attitude towards secularism and other world. The main characteristic of reform schools emerged similar to those in
of government. According to him, modern concepts such as democracy, in Indonesia was that it was a religious Java, in addition to public schools
Muhammad was not sent by God as pluralism, civil rights, and freedom purification movement which started in with Islamic identities. Because of the
a political leader but as an apostle signifies the height of their acceptance the 18 century when three young men Muhammadiyah’s similar method of
th
and that politics is not the objective of of changes. It is important to note here from West Sumatra returned from the implementing modernism,West Sumatra
the prophetic mission. What concerns that the Muslim reformists’ acceptance hajj. They brought with them the puritan has been one of the Muhammadiyah’s
Islam is not the format of the state, of secularism was not followed up by ideology of the Wahhabi along with its strongest strongholds outside Java.
whether it is a republic, kingdom, a negative attitude toward religion or, motto for a return to the Qur’an and After the Sarekat Islam had rapidly
or caliphate, but whether and how for instance, that “religion becomes the Sunnah. They began by cleansing grown into a mass movement at the
a government is able to implement irrelevant”. Islamic practices from heresies and national level, communism began

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