A Local Qur’anic Scholar and His Critique on Religious Practices of the Javanese Muslims

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201113.001How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Misbah Mustofa, neo-traditionalism school, Javanese Tafsīr of the Qur’an, religious tradition

Abstract

This article delves into the Islamic thoughts of Misbah Mustofa, a Qur’anic Muslim scholar living in coastal area of Java, Indonesia. Generally speaking, Mustofa belongs to a circle of traditionalist ulama (Muslim scholars), yet his thoughts have a purifying nature in character. Considering the widespread dichotomy between traditionalism and puritanism, the putative contradictory in his thought is worthy of a further study. In doing so, I focus on his two works of tafsīr of the Qur’an (Qur’anic exegesis), and further analyze them using Gadamerian hermeneutics. I focus on his interpretation of Q. 2:134 in which he criticizes a ritual tradition known as tahlilan. His critique to this ritual reflects a puritanist stance, but at the same time, he did not reject it all together. This paradox belongs to the neo-traditionalism school, according to Jasser Auda’s classification of Islamic thought. Some factors make this possible. First, the ideology typical to santri of Javanese coastal area, taking sharia as the core of Islamic religiosity and life. This ideology based its arguments on the statements of scholars of mażāhib al-fiqh (schools of Islamic law). This traps them into a sort of romanticism. It thus tends to be very critical to the putative syncretic tradition of the Javanese society. Second, his interpretations are mostly based on general meaning of the verses. His ‘textualist’ method pays more attention to the internal dimension of the text than to the socio-religious context of the society in which this text has its life. Mustofa’s stance reflects the importance of critical thinking in taking religious stances and, on the other hand, of being inclusive and conservative in a proportional way.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Aunillah Reza Pratama
AU  - Masruchin
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/11/13
TI  - A Local Qur’anic Scholar and His Critique on Religious Practices of the Javanese Muslims
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st Raden Intan International Conference on Muslim Societies and Social Sciences (RIICMuSSS 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201113.001
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201113.001
ID  - Pratama2020
ER  -