terimakasih atas tanggapan pak Danardono dan mbak
Listy. Mencoba menjawab pertanyaan pak Danardono,
mengenai 'profil', peran atau 'misi' yang kiranya
akan dibawakan oleh tokoh seperti Dr. Murad Hofmann
(MH) ini:
* saya pertama (dan terakhir) mendengarkan ceramah
beliau di aula KBRI Bonn - atas undangan mahasiswa
muslim indonesia - di tahun 1998. Sayang, waktu
itu mungkin karena belum begitu 'mengenal' beliau,
dan belum begitu paham bhs. jerman, saya enggak
banyak nangkep isinya :)
* saya juga baru pernah membaca 1 buku beliau dari
sekian banyak buku beliau lainnya sehingga belum
merasa bisa "nangkep" profil pemikirnnya.
* tapi setelah membaca resensi buku MH yang terbaru(?):
"Islam-2000" yang ditulis oleh salah seorang pembacanya
saya coba-2 me"raba" profil pemikiran beliau.
( a) Sebagian 'daftar-peran' yg. ditulis pak Danardono
saya kira (tentu saja) benar, yaitu harapan bahwa
MH akan bisa menjadi semacam "jembatan" antara
Islam dan Barat. Mungkin ya semacam * Tariq Ramadan *
tapi ber-etnik eropa "pribumi".
Di dalam buku tersebut MH nampaknya secara eksplisit
menyebutkan (salah satu misinya): mengajak Ummat Islam
"melakukan perbaikan ke dalam" agar bisa membuktikan
bahwa thesis Samuel Huntington: mengenai clash between
civilizations ( barat >< islam ) itu salah.
Tetapi menjadi "penengah" seperti ini ya tentu saja
ada peluang positif tapi juga ada resiko ("negatif")
nya.
=> peluang positifnya, ybs mungkin bisa "mempertemukan"
atau setidak-2 nya mengurangi jurang/kesalahpahaman
yang memisahkan kedua belah pihak yang dicoba di"tengahi"
=> resiko negatifnya, ybs. bisa jadi malah "dimusuhi"
oleh kedua belah pihak - setidak-2 nya oleh elemen-2
"keras" yang biasanya ada di kedua belah pihak yang
"bermusuhan":
-> Oleh pihak barat yang "fanatik" dengan pandangan
hidupnya, orang seperti Murad Hofman dan Tarik
Ramadan bisa dicap sebagai "fundamentalist" yang
punya "agenda" hendak "meng islamkan" eropa :)
dan memang tuduhan semacam ini sudah dialami
oleh kedua beliau di atas ... :)
-> oleh pihak muslim "garis keras", orang seperti
Murad Hofmann dan Tarik Ramadan dipandang "masih
terlalu akomodatif" dengan nilai-2 barat, kurang
"tegas" mengungkapkan "the true identity" of
Islam.
Komentar semacam itu yang mengritik Tarik Ramadan
pernah saya dengar sendiri dari seorang imigran
Muslim di Eropa. Untuk pak Murad, entah ya, apakah
juga akan ada kritik serupa (?).
(b) Yang penting saya garis bawahi adalah bahwa orang-2
seperti Tarik Ramadan akan bersikap kritis ke kedua
belah pihak: kritik terhadap 'peradaban barat/eropa'
saat ini, tetapi juga kritik terhadap berbagai
kelemahan yang ada pada ummat islam.
(c) Baru kali ini saya memperhatikan: Salah satu "agenda"
Murad Hofmann, nampaknya adalah mempromosikan sistem
ekonomi yang islami yang dia yakin akan bisa memperbaiki
kekurangan yang ada pada sistem ekonomi kapitalis barat.
komentar saya:
--------------
kalau Hofmann bermaksud mengritik sistem
ekonomi kapitalis, saya rasa kritik tsb. lebih layak
di alamatkan ke Amerika dan bukan ke Eropa yang umumnya
( secara ke "dalam" ) masih berusaha menerapkan
sistem "sosialis"
( meskipun makin lama terasa semakin "berat" - a.l. akibat
berubahnya struktur demografi masyarakat eropa - gimana
mo menerapkan sistem "welfare state" kalo penduduknya
di dominasi manusia usia "jompo" - karena penduduk
"pribumi"nya ogah punya anak? :) ).
(d) Ada satu hal kecil yang bagi saya terasa mengganjal:
Menurut resensi buku tsb. Salah satu kelemahan ummat
islam yang di identifikasi oleh Murad Hofmann adalah
"takut dengan teknologi": Weleh, dari mana pak Murad
bisa punya penilaian semacam itu?
Saya melihat satu-2 nya "jenis teknologi" yang
dianggap "kontroversial" atau "beresiko" akan
"compromising" thd. nilai-2 ke islaman adalah
teknologi komunikasi dan informasi ( misalnya
tayangan "porno" lewat satellite-TV atau internet ).
Tapi toh faktanya 10 tahun terakhir ini jumlah
stasiun TV dan situs-2 internet di dunia muslim
juga terus bertambah.
(e) Last but not least, nambahin info mengenai "CV"
pak Murad Hofmann: ternyata beliau mendapat gelar
Doktor dari Universitas Munich (1957), lalu setelah
itu masih menyempatkan sekolah lagi di Harvard USA,
dan mendapat gelar Master di bidang American Law di
tahun 1960.
<http://www.amana-publications.com/1997_books.shtml>
Isi resensi buku "Islam 2000" saya cantumkan di bawah
ini.
--------( IM )------------------------------
<http://www.islamicvoice.com/2001-07/book.htm>
-----------------------------
Islam for the New Millennium
-----------------------------
Former German Diplomat Murad Hofmann suggests
amendments in Muslim attitudes to avert the
Huntingtonian prophesies
-----------------------------------------------
"Islam 2000"
Murad Hofmann
Amana Publications
Beltsville, Maryland, USA
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Price not stated, Pages 72
Reviewed by Maqbool Ahmed Siraj
Former German diplomat Murad Hoffman's "Islam 2000"
must be read by all those who had felt incensed after
reading Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilization.
Having served as Germany's ambassador in Algeria
and Morocco, the author has come up with this book
in response to dual challenges of averting conflict
between the West and Islam on one hand, and presenting
Islam to a West that has grown sterile of any ideology,
on the other.
The Western civilization has lost its ideological
moorings. Current concept of Jesus Christ being
`son of God' prevents the regeneration of Europe
as the Christian world has grown convinced during
the last 200 years that divinity of Jesus is
untenable. This largely explains the agnosticism
and atheism.
Sense of victory in the West in the wake of the
collapse of Communism and the Soviet Union proved
short-lived. Wars and ethnic cleansing in the heart
of Europe, exploitation of environment by trans-
nationals and excessive consumerism made the objective
of the West-propelled Liberalization obvious. Faith
in God has been replaced by faith in `progress'.
So an average Westerner expects all the people to
wear jeans, drink colas, smoke Marlboros, eat
hamburgers, watch CNN and be proforma members of
some Christian church. But Muslim worldview is
that people should live as believers, not merely
citizens, technology to be devoid of its dehumanizing
aspects, and subservience to one God not to beauty,
power, sex, technology and NASDAQ.
The West is not bothered as long as the individuals
in the West adopt faiths of folkloristic value such
as Buddhism or Shintoism, anything other than Islam.
In fact, Islam is the only religion that cannot count
on benign neglect or sincere toleration. Some of the
reasons why Islam has been associated with intolerance,
are the creation of the Muslims alone.
Events in Libya or Iran or invasion of Kuwait are a
few among them. Moreover, Islam is nowhere seen fully
in practice and the Islamic economy model is nowhere
in operation. And thirdly because the West largely
remains unaware of the contributions of Islam to
science and arts in as much as, "To be ignorant about
Islam and its culture, in Europe or the United States,
is not yet considered a lack of education.
In order to defuse the explosive situation between two
sides of the Mediterranean, Hoffman urges Muslims to
initiate reforms aimed at removing illiteracy and fear
of technology.
In order to defuse the explosive situation between two
sides of the Mediterranean, Hoffman urges Muslims to
initiate reforms aimed at removing illiteracy and fear
of technology, (technopobia to be precise) from among
Muslims. Some of the observations are significant.
Memorizing the holy Quran during the early years of
Islam was beneficial because this was the only means
for Islam to survive intact in the age of brutal
suppression. But this has its drawbacks. Invariably
everywhere, Muslim pupils try to learn their lessons
by-heart. This smothers capacity to analyse. It was
Muslim Spain that gave to the world its first windmills.
But today if the water toilets do not function, one
has to understand that he is in a Muslim country.
The author dismisses the so-called efforts of Islamization
of Knowledge as misguided. He instead urges effort to create
scientists who are true Muslims.
Western perception of women in Islam being suppressed
is often reinforced by how Muslim interpreters chose
to interpret the Quranic verse Ar-Raijalu Qawwamuna
Alan Nisa (generally translated as `Men are placed
above women' in the Muslim world, while German diplomat
Leopold Muhammad Asad renders it as `Men shall take
full care of women').
The Quran and the Sunnah do not prescribe once and
for all, any specific form of state or method of election.
A Muslim parliamentary democracy will neither be theocratic
nor secular, but rather an ideological, state, with the
Quran as its supreme law. Pleading for riba to be treated
as `usury' and not `interest', he says, the verses regarding
the abolition of riba are flaunted as magic wand for
Islamizing the economy.
The abolition of riba can happen only in an economy that
is already Islamized. At any rate, all non-Muslim states
also honour some supreme statute which at least in part,
is not subject to possible revision. So on the question of
state and government, the Muslims should not hide or fumble,
but when challenged on the question of democracy, republicanism
or separation of power, they should assure their challengers
that none of these concepts is, by nature, foreign or inimical
to Islam.
He also advises that Muslims should squarely admit that the
Islamic economy will not be, cannot be and does not want
to be as profitable, or as competitive as the Western economy,
because Islam does not treat man as an economic animal and
is not merely for maximization of profits, optimization of
production and minimization of costs, the capitalist mantras.
The Muslim world suffers from monumental public relations
deficit. Undeniably, quite a lot of Islamic literature is
shipped to the Western countries from Muslim sources. Alas,
most of this material is ineffective because of low quality
of paper, faulty English and incredible amounts of printing
mistakes. This kind of dawah effort suffers even more by its
approach: Usually it preaches to the converted.
But in order to carry out all these prescriptions, the
Muslim world is called upon to avoid confusing religion
and the civilization of Islam, fundamental and marginal
aspects, tradition and taqlid, sound and fabricated hadiths,
shariah and fiqh and the Quran and the sunnah.
Steeped in the Western rationalism, Murad Hoffman's
prescriptions need to be read with utmost attention
by all in the Muslim world and appreciated for its
candour, depth of insight and sympathy that this
neo-Muslim has developed for Islam.
--------------------------------------------------------------
