Is Islam Compatible with Modernity? An Analysis of Modernity as Modern Civilization

The relation between Islam and modernity as modern civilization is frequently faced contradiction. The disclaimer of a secular state for instance, leads to the debate by which the articulation of some Muslims who reject it is much more than those who accept it. Another example is humanism such as religious freedom and capitalism, although the disclaimers of these two issues are softer than those who denied the nation-state. However, the conceptual analysis points out that Islam is compatible with modernity as modern civilization. The main reason is that Islam was first emerged as a critic against the previous religion that was not engage the social transformation for the Arab society before Islam. Islam is also encouraged contemporary thought and social reform with the concept of ishlah (reform) and tajdid (renewal). If this case is measured based on the dimension of modernity, it obvious that Islam Islam as a teaching/conceptual frame/mindset in this article does not have conflict with it. Islam is in line with the nation state, secular country or secularism itself, democracy as political system, rationalism and empirical science, and capitalism. This paper is expected to strengthen the Integration of Islam as society with the modernity as modern civilization in the East and West countries.

Religious Diversity and The Challenge of Multiculturalism: Contrasting Indonesia and The European Union

As the profile of religions in the world is changing rapidly, religious diversity is becoming a more common phenomenon nowadays in almost every society. Indonesia and European Union (EU) are not an exception to be more diverse and plural societies. Although religious diversity gives such richness of culture in society, religions are known as vulnerable entities. Many social problems caused by religions brought about various conflicts and violent actions on a big scale and also numerous hostilities, discriminations, and hatred on a small scale. Many regulations have been issued to address such social tensions both in Indonesia and the EU. However, many conflicts, hostilities or discriminations are recurring in both Indonesia and EU states. Interestingly, in many cases, hostilities and discrimination even done by the apparatus of the state. The current paper is dedicated to explore how these countries deal with religious diversity and whether there are social tensions and discriminations occurred. Religion as a common phenomenon in the world should be seen more as a challenge for every country rather than a contentious threat.

Bridging Conservative and Modern Approaches: Muhammad’s ‘Abduh’s Interpretation of al-Fatihah

Muḥammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) is a modern Moslem scholar of Egypt. He was known as a reformist and an architect of Islamic modernism. Through his modernism, he introduced a synthesis of Islamic teachings and modern thought in order to bridge between conservative and modern approaches. This present paper is analysis of his tafsīr on al-Fātiḥah to understand his mix approches. The author found that ‘Abduh’s tafsir applied conservative language to reflect his radical ideas. However, ‘Abduh also introduced modern approaches in his tafsīr. Finally, it is found that al-Fātiḥah in ‘Abduh tafsir contains the substantial messages of the Qur’an.

Classical Islamic Historiography in Early Moslem and Orientalist Historiographical Works

The present paper elaborates some problems of classical Islamic historiography found in early and modern Islamic historiographical works. I found three problems concerning the historiography, i.e., epistemology, contents and methodology. This is an attempt to reconstruct the said problems by presenting some responses from various perspectives. The result of this study shows that the problems of classical Islamic historiography could be classified into three categories: Political history of classical Islamic historiography was mainly caused by historian biases through their interpretation to the historiography. Methodology of transmission of the prophet tradition employed by the early Moslem historians has not explained the problems yet. Last but not least, the problems must be comprehensively approached by applying a holistic perspective.

The Contribution of Al-Ghazali in Promoting Islamic Moderate Thought in Indonesia

The current paper is dedicated to investigate a moderate religious doctrine through the presence of Islamic mysticism (sufism) resulted from Imam al-Ghazali. We argue that al-Ghazali's teaching imparted balance between the world and the hereafter like body and spirit. Al-Ghazali’s thought influenced many Indonesian mystics across fifteenth to nineteenth century. We believed that Indonesian Moslems scholars who were influenced by Al-Ghazali’s teaching developed religious propagation through wisdom and moralilty. We found that by applying mysticism moderate Islamic propagation were accepted by most of Indonesian Moslems. As a result, they were succesful in undertaking social transformation without any negative impact

Sound Correspondences of Modern Standard Arabic Moroccan Arabic and Najdi Arabic

This paper studies the process of sound correspondences that occur in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Moroccan Arabic (MAR), and Najdi Arabic (NAR). It attempts to find answers for the following questions: a) What are the identical word pairs, words couples that have a phonemic correspondence, a phonetic similarity, and a pair of words that contains difference of one phoneme, b) What are the process of morphophonemic in the form of assimilation, metathesis, and epenthesis. It is addressed to portray the process of morphophonemic assimilation, metathesis and epenthesis in three Arabic languages using Crowley’s theory. This study used 207 of Morris Swadesh's basic vocabulary as the key standard procedure for collecting data. The criteria adopted to analyze the data were orthographic, sound-change, phonological, and morpheme contrast. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The source of the data was basic-word vocabulary. The data were gathered from three dictionaries as sources to get information. The data were analyzed by using structural linguistics, especially phonology, morphology, and semantics. This investigation informed several aspects of findings such as identifying prefixes, suffixes, assimilation, metathesis, and epenthesis. Using the Swadesh vocabulary list, the results of this study found 207 vocabularies for each language. By analyzing parts of speech, it was found that these vocabularies can be classified into five-word classes, namely, nouns, pronouns, verb, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners.

Humanity in Public Service Advertisement “Sayyidi al Raīs” by Zain Group: Critical Discourse Analysis

In reality of life, humanitarian crises occur everywhere, including in the Middle East. The superpowers that have a special role in the world order seem to have closed their eyes to this case. Prolonged war, national, everywhere, and authoritarian rulers make peace even farther from the word. Advertisement is a medium to introduce and disseminate something. Recently, public service announcements have appeared that aim to reach or resolve issues that occur in society. This is what encourages the author to connect the micro text in advertisement itself with the macro text or reality in society, so the purpose of this research is to reveal attitudes and views in an advertisement in a humanitarian situation. The research data is in the form of fragments of song lyrics and pictures shown in Sayyidi al Rai>s advertisements. The data analysis was conducted descriptively-critical with analysis of the Fairclough critical discourse approach to explain the meaning of linguistic components such as vocabulary, modality, and grammar, so as to be able to reconstruct the discourse in the advertisement. Based on the results of the author's analysis, that a text is not static but a text has a relationship between one text and another or in society’s life. The result of this study concluded that Zain Group advertised or stated, in humanity, nationality and isolation were still rife in the world. It has a dialectical relationship with events that occur in society such as differences in the ideology of the superpowers with other countries, especially in Middle Eastern countries.

Labor Informalization and Social Problems in Indonesia in Gender Equality Study (Case Study of Layoffs as the Effect of Digitalization in Cirebon City in 2019)

As of March 31, 2019, the Cirebon City Giant Hyper market has been declared closed and does not carry out trading activities. Employees who are dominated by women are threatened with being dismissed and this creates widespread social problems in the community. As a result of these layoffs, it has led to the growth of labor informalization with the proliferation of street workers (PKL) or independent workers which will cause chaos in the arrangement of big cities, which will have an impact on social problems. This study tries to analyze the gender equality study of the Marx model with an ethnographic approach, trying to trace the causes and effects of the informalization that afflicts female workers in the city of Cirebon.

Pursuing Peace through Moral Messages of Jihad: A Way Forward against Misconceptions of Virtual Jihad

The term ‘jihad’ seems to sound horrible to a number of people. The misunderstood terms and practices apparently continue to rise. Nowadays, the so-called ‘virtual jihad’--as clearly stated in The Sunday Guardian Live, Scientific American, Science Direct, etc.--is addressed as referring to a single connotative meaning of violence in Islam. It seems that they conflate the terms ‘jihad’ and ‘terrorism’. This misunderstood concepts of jihad leads to some acts contradicting the true meaning of ‘jihad’ itself. This article attempts to (1) scrutinize misconceptions of ‘virtual jihad’, (2) delve deeper into the moral principle of jihad due to ideal Islamic teachings, as well as (3) ways forward to put into practice of a “peaceful jihad” in a virtual age. Theoretical Approach used in this study mainly employs Teu Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) models of interrelated texts, social cognition, and social contexts. The findings reveal that (1) misconceptions of ‘virtual jihad’ result from a misunderstood concept of ‘jihad’ itself and underlying ideological factors in the view of Van Dijk’s CDA’s texts, social cognition, and social contexts, (2) fundamentally, the moral concept of jihad is to make meritorious struggle in the cause Allah to do good works and repel evil, as well as to reform a civilized society, and (3) the best practices of jihad in this virtual age is supposed to manifest in the enormous efforts of creating “Knowledge Societies” all the way through the advance of digital technologies. As a final point, it is worth highlighting the importance of being critical, as CDA implies, through the lens of objectivity of any deception, propaganda and biased judgment in this disinformation age as well as generating better solutions for peaceful digital societies.

Strengthening the Indigenousization of Islam by Gus Dur in the Middle of the Formalization of Religion

The focus of this article is to examine the process of Gus Dur's indigenousization of Islam as a response to the increasing phenomenon of religious formalization. This topic is considered important because it is an effort to keep local culture and traditions down to earth. Apart from that, the indigenousization of Islam is also a contra-naration against the conservative understanding of Islam which states that indigenous Islamic rituals are regarded as bid’ah, shirk or khurafat that must be rejected. This was raised because according to muslim fundamentalists, the religious practices of indigenous Muslims are opposite of the practices of salaf as-salih which conform Islam totality or kaffah and authentic Islam. In addition, the indigenousization of Islam emerged as a response to the phenomenon of the formalization of religion which leads to the commodification of religion by making religion as a sale value. This writing employes socio-descriptive method which has come to conclusions as follows. First, the indigenousization of Islam which was initiated by Gus Dur was the result of Gus Dur's long struggle with praxis in nature. Second, Arabization with its’ formalization of religion has injured the diversity of the nation of the archipelago and opened up opportunities for the rise of ideological and political interests. Third, the common thread or root of the problem between conservative Islamic groups with their attitudes of formalizing religion and the indigenousization of Islam lies in the differences in understanding the values of Islamic normativity and culture.