Makalah (pengantar buku)

Intelektualisme dan Politik Ulama Aceh dalam Ensiklopedi [The Intellectualism and Politics of Acehnese Ulama in the Encyclopaedia]

By T. H. Ibrahim Alfian

Ar-Raniry Press, Banda Aceh · Alfian, T. H. Ibrahim. "Intelektualisme dan Politik Ulama Aceh dalam Ensiklopedi." Pengantar dalam Tim Penulis IAIN Ar-Raniry. Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh. Banda Aceh: Ar-Raniry Press, 2004. Hlm. xlv–li. · 2004

Identifier

KBA-BKU-2004-0003-P2

Type

Makalah (pengantar buku)

Publisher

Ar-Raniry Press, Banda Aceh

Date Issued

2004

Bibliographic Citation

Alfian, T. H. Ibrahim. "Intelektualisme dan Politik Ulama Aceh dalam Ensiklopedi." Pengantar dalam Tim Penulis IAIN Ar-Raniry. Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh. Banda Aceh: Ar-Raniry Press, 2004. Hlm. xlv–li.

Creator

T. H. Ibrahim Alfian

Subject

Ulama Aceh Intelektual Politik ulama Hikayat Prang Sabi Hamzah Fansuri Abdullah Ujong Rimba Djakfar Hanafiah IAIN Ar-Raniry Sosiologi pengetahuan

LC Classification

BP63.I52 A33 2004 — Islam: Indonesia, Aceh; ulama dan politik (perkiraan nomor kelas; belum diverifikasi)

LCSH Subject

Ulama--Indonesia--Aceh--Political activity; Intellectuals--Indonesia--Aceh; Islam and politics--Indonesia--Aceh; Acehnese literature--History and criticism

BISAC Category

REL037000 RELIGION / Islam / General; POL035010 POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom; HIS003000 HISTORY / Asia / General

Language

Indonesia

Description

This foreword was written by T. H. Ibrahim Alfian in Yogyakarta on 31 August 2004 as the second foreword to Ensiklopedi Pemikiran Ulama Aceh, a work of the IAIN Ar-Raniry Writing Team published by Ar-Raniry Press. At the time Alfian was professor of history at Universitas Gadjah Mada and one of the most influential Aceh-born historians in Indonesia. His books on the Aceh War, above all Perang di Jalan Allah (War in the Way of God), and his collection Wajah Aceh dalam Lintasan Sejarah (The Face of Aceh through History) are standard references for anyone studying the relationship between religion, resistance and culture in Aceh. This foreword, entitled "The Intellectualism and Politics of Acehnese Ulama in the Encyclopaedia", therefore works not only as a word of welcome but as a short essay by a senior historian on how to read Acehnese ulama as intellectuals and political actors. Alfian opens with the claim that the spread and development of Islamic education in Aceh since the sixteenth century cannot be separated from the ulama as its central figures, and that Acehnese ulama acted not only as religious leaders or moral intellectuals but also as political and intellectual figures. He traces two great influences that shaped the history of knowledge in Aceh, the Islamic world and the Malay world, and names Hamzah al-Fansury, Syamsuddin as-Sumatrany, Nuruddin ar-Raniry and Abdurrauf as-Singkily as pioneers who raised the substantive dimensions of Islam and reconstructed them within the Malay world. He gives particular attention to Hamzah Fansuri, who in his view turned spiritual experience into a communicable awareness that the public could receive, and whose greatest contribution lay in developing Malay as a structure of written knowledge. He calls the Syair Perahu (Poem of the Boat) a meta-phrase for the whole wandering of Sufi ideas. The next section explains the encyclopaedia's place as an intellectual biography of Acehnese ulama after the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Alfian notes a paradox: the names of these scholars are attached to many institutions as a mark of respect, yet very few Acehnese intellectuals know their thought as a whole. The ideas of twentieth-century ulama should be easier to reach thanks to print, but in his view the problem is the absence of continuing discussion. He then links the encyclopaedia to a pressing challenge of the moment, filling with content the concept of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, which the law had made the foundation for implementing Islamic law, a challenge he saw as falling above all on the scholars of IAIN Ar-Raniry and as requiring deeper excavation of the thought of earlier ulama. The richest part of the foreword is Alfian's recollection of the dynamics of Islamic thought in Aceh in the 1970s and 1980s. He cites the fatwa of Teungku H. Abdullah Ujong Rimba, as Chair of the Indonesian Ulama Council of the Special Region of Aceh, allowing W.S. Rendra's Bengkel Teater to perform the Barzanji in front of the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque during the national Qur'an recitation competition of 1981, a breakthrough he calls quite radical, since Rendra had not yet embraced Islam and many of the performers were not Muslim. He also mentions the debate over Golkar and Islam before the 1987 general election, softened by the creative thinking of Teungku H. Djakfar Hanafiah and Prof. H. Ali Hasjmy. Djakfar Hanafiah, whom Alfian acknowledges is not included in the encyclopaedia, is portrayed as a mediator between state and society whose sermons changed the views of most Acehnese on the national family-planning programme and on contraception. This dialogical climate, in Alfian's account, produced systematic scholarly thinking at IAIN Ar-Raniry, which was once praised as one of the three best Islamic higher-education institutions in the country. He also notes the role of two Acehnese, T. M. Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy and Peunoh Daly, in building the reputation of the IAIN in Java and in developing ideas of multiculturalism. Alfian then turns to the content of the encyclopaedia. He notes that it contains narratives on 26 Acehnese ulama, judges the selection reasonably representative in terms of influence and regional origin, and reads these figures as continuing the at-turats al-islamy, the Islamic cultural heritage, pioneered by great scholars two or three centuries earlier. He highlights three nineteenth-century ulama, Teungku Chik Pante Kulu, Teungku Chik di Tiro and Teungku Chik Kuta Karang, as developers of the Sufi order tradition who are also remembered as poets and war leaders. They used hikayat and syair as the basis for spreading religious knowledge, because knowledge at the time was indeed formulated in the form of pantun and syair. From this comes Alfian's reading of the Hikayat Prang Sabi as the ulama's finest discursive practice for shielding society from foreign power, as cognitive resistance to a colonialism that wounded culture, and, through its artistic and aesthetic force, as the most important literary work in Acehnese history. In this section Alfian also offers an interesting theoretical frame. He argues that calling these figures ulama should not be understood only in a Hegelian sense, as a social unit performing persuasion and communication, but is better read through Antonio Gramsci's and Edward W. Said's ideas of the true intellectual, a person who takes on whatever role is needed to relieve the unrest of his society. He also rejects readings that treat the Hikayat Prang Sabi merely as an instrument of class struggle in the interests of landlords and uleebalang, insisting that it also became a means of communication and a new system of knowledge that helped society know its own history, culture and religion. The foreword closes with a reflection on the politics of discourse in writing an encyclopaedia. Alfian accepts that every selection of figures reflects the interests, preferences, admiration and ideological outlook of the editors, but he treats that process of taxonomy and classification as a positive energy for discussion, drawing on Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge. He measures a book's success by its ability to open a debate that gives birth to new books, asks readers to approach the work of these young authors with humility, and ends by saying that time will faithfully record their mark. The foreword includes a reference list covering Abdul Hadi W.M. on Hamzah Fansuri's Sufism, Antonio Gramsci, Denys Lombard on the Acehnese kingdom, Henry Chambert-Loir and Hasan Muarif Ambary, and two works by Alfian himself. The file in this archive is a PDF facsimile of pages xlv to li of the printed book, including the reference list, made from photographs of the copy in the private collection of KBA13 Academy. Each page has been straightened, cleaned of shadows and background marks, and set on a uniform page size without changing the original text. An OCR text layer is included so that the content can be searched, while original spellings such as al-Fansury and as-Singkily can still be checked on the page images. The facsimile is linked to the record of the parent volume, to the foreword by Azyumardi Azra and to the chapter on Teungku Chik Pante Kulu in the same book, so that readers can compare two forewords with two complementary emphases: Azra stresses the global scholarly network, while Alfian stresses the intellectual and political functions of the ulama within Acehnese society.

Rights

Koleksi pribadi KBA13 Academy

Is Part Of

Extent

hlm. xlv–li

Collection

Documents