Ulama Quotes

Saya mimpi tentang sebuah dunia dimana ulama, buruh, dan pemuda bangkit dan berkata, “stop semua kemunafikan ! Stop semua pembunuhan atas nama apapun.. dan para politisi di PBB, sibuk mengatur pengangkatan gandum, susu, dan beras buat anak-anak yang lapar di 3 benua, dan lupa akan diplomasi. Tak ada lagi rasa benci pada siapapun, agama apapun, ras apapun, dan bangsa apapun..dan melupakan perang dan kebencian, dan hanya sibuk dengan pembangunan dunia yang lebih baik.

Apalah yang lebih jahat dari manusia yang ingin membunuh jati diri bangsanya. Bila ia perlukan al-Qur'an dan undang-undang Islam seperti qazaf, ia akan menggunakan sekian ulama untuk menolongnya. Bila tiada perlu ia agama, ia akan mengelak-ngelak dan mendakwa agama dan siasah itu terpisah tiada kena-mengena. Ini jenis permaisuri celaka namanya.

Dengan segala kehebatannya dalam dunia keilmuan, tengoklah bagaimana sikap 'tahu diri' seorang al-Ghazali. Beliau tetap menempatkan dirinya di bawah mazhab Shafii dalam soal metodologi ushul fiqh. Beliau tidak merasa lebih hebat dari Shafii. Banyak ilmuan besar Islam tetap memelihara sikap adil dan beradab dalam mengkaji dan menyebarkan ilmu kepada masyarakat.

Tiba-tiba ia teringat kisah Syaikh Muhammad Abduh yang menangisi kondisi umat Islam dan keluarlah kalimat yang sangat terkenal dari ulama terkemuka Mesir, "Al-Islamu mahjuubun bil muslimin". Yang artinya, Islam tertutup oleh umat Islam.

Banyak orang tidak tahu bahwa seorang doktor dan profesor itu biasanya hanya menguasai satu bidang yang kecil sahaja. Mereka punya kekhususan. Ada profesor yang bidangnya sejarah tidak mengkaji syariah secara mendalam, tetapi sering bicara tentang syariah. Orang memanggilnya ulama, padahal ilmu agamanya belum mendalam. Makanya, di pesantren kita diajarkan adab, bukan hanya ilmu. Kita harus tahu diri, kalau tidak tahu harus mengatakan tidak tahu. Masalahnya, akan menjadi sangat rumit jika orang tidak tahu tetapi merasa tahu. Ini yang namanya orang yang tersesat.

Sesaat ia terhenyak oleh teks wasiat Habib Hasan Al Bahr. Menghadaplah kepada Allah dengan hati luluh. Hindarkan dirimu dari sikap ujub dan angkuh. Pergaulilah manusia yang jahat dengan baik, karena pada hakikatnya kamu sedang bermuamalah dengan Allah yang Maha Besar. Ulurkan tanganmu kepada orang-orang fakir dengan sesuatu yang dikaruniakan Allah kepadamu. Lalu bayangkanlah, bahwa Allah-lah yang pertama kali menerima pemberianmu itu, sebagaimana dituturkan dalam berbagai ayat Al-Qur'an dan hadits Nabi. Kelak hatimu akan merasa sangat senang dan bahagia dengan Allah.

Gamal Abdul Nasir pernah berjanji kepada kita untuk melemparkan Israel ke dalam lautan, namun beliau malah menyerahkan Sinai kepada Israel, menghumban para ulama ke dalam penjara dan kemudian membunuh mereka di tali gantung. Saddam Hussein pernah berjanji akan membakar separuh bumi Israel dengan senjata kimianya, namun beliau malah membakar bumi Kuwait dan menyelamatkan bangsa Israel. Ahmadi Nejad sekarang telah mengucapkan talak tiga kepada Israel dan berjanji menghapus kewujudan negara Israel dari peta dunia, namun saya khuatir beliau malah membasmi kita dan membiarkan bangsa Israel tetap selamat!!....

Respect and the observation of good manners when dealing with ulama (the Muslim clergy) are commanded by the nas (Scripture) of Islam, but this has never stopped a person presenting intelligent criticisms, nor prevented his questioning the opinions of ulama, even though he maintains the disciplines of religion.

Aku belum tahu apakah Islam itu sebenarnya. Aku baru tahu Islam menurut HAMKA, Islam menurut Natsir, Islam menurut Abduh, Islam menurut ulama-ulama kuno, Islam menurut Djohan, Islam menurut Subki, Islam menurut yang lain-lain. Dan terus terang aku tidak puas. Yang kucari belum ketemu, belum terdapat, yaitu Islam menurut Allah, pembuatnya. Bagaimana? Langsung studi dari Qur’an dan Sunnah? Akan kucoba. Tapi orang-orang lain pun akan beranggapan bahwa yang kudapat itu adalah Islam menurut aku sendiri. Tapi biar, yang penting adalah keyakinan dalam akal sehatku bahwa yang kupahami itu adalah Islam menurut Allah. Aku harus yakin itu!

The common understanding among Muslims, no doubt indoctrinated by Western notions, is that a secular state is a state that is not governed by the 'ulama', or whose legal system is not established upon the revealed law. In other words it is not a theocratic state. But this setting in contrast the secular state with the theocratic state is not really an Islamic way of understanding the matter, for since Islam does not involve itself in the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, how then can it set in contrast the theocratic state with the secular state?

Aku mencari guru yang mursyid tetapi yang kutemui ulama fasik. Mereka mengajar tentang kebenaran tetapi mereka melakukan hal yang sebaliknya. (Mazmur V)

Islam yang kita tahu adalah Islam menurut tokoh, interpretasi ulama belum Islam menurut Allah. Islam yang kita anut (nanti) merupakan Islam "versi" kita.

Janganlah kamu banyak mengomongkan ilmumu itu karena kamu akan dipisahkan oleh kaum ulama'. Maka bersikap sederhana sajalah, sebab sederhana itu akan menghalangi aibmu dan akan membukakan taufiq hidayah Allah untukmu.

Demikian potret sosok-sosok yang berdedikasi dalam menyunting khazanah keilmuan. Ilmu adalah tujuan mereka; ikatan pikirannya; dan cinta adalah darahnya. Mereka laksana bangunan kokoh yang tersusun dari berbagai raga tapi jiwa merek satu.

Fahri kembali meneliti Majmu' Washaya karya Al 'Allamah Habib Hasan bin Shaleh Al-Bahr: Ketahuilah, himmah adalah wadah taufik. Kendarailah kuda himmah, niscaya kamu akan mencapai puncak cita-citamu. Mintalah pertolongan Allah dalam setiap langkahmu, maju ataupun mundur. Niscaya tidak akan sia-sia jerih payahmu dan akan tercapai cita-citamu. Lazimkan sikap shidiq dan ikhlas, karena keduanya harus dimiliki oleh orang-orang yang memiliki keberhasilan dan keuntungan dalam perdagangan.

In 1979, while Saudi Arabia was in the midst of a process of liberalization, a group of religious fanatics seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The Masjid al-Haram houses the kaaba, considered the holiest sitefor Muslims. This incident was a national trauma and transformative for al Saud, who reacted to it with an increased religious traditionalism enforced by the government and spearheaded by the ulama. Ambassador Smith credited a clear transformation to what occurred in 1979. “Saudi Arabia started going ultraconservative after the takeover of the Holy Mosque.

Para ulama' adalah pembawa obor ilmu yang menerangi kegelapan jahiliyah, apabila seseorang itu berusaha mendampingi para ulama', bererti dia berusaha mendekati cahaya ... mukasurat 96 | bab 21

The 'ulama', by tightly controlling what went into the history books, were able to propagate an understanding of their own dazzlingly rich and complex civilization that attributed almost every single thing of value within it to the Prophet, and the Prophet alone. There was no question of acknowledging the momentous roles played in the forging of Islam by countless others - be they autocrats such as Abd Al-Malik or scholars such as themselves.

It is not true that Islam makes it impossible for Muslims to create a modern secular society, as Westerners sometimes imagine. But it is true that secularization has been very different in the Muslim world. In the West, it has usually been experienced as benign. In the early days, it was conceived by such philosophers as John Locke (1632–1704) as a new and better way of being religious, since it freed religion from coercive state control and enabled it to be more true to its spiritual ideals. But in the Muslim world, secularism has often consisted of a brutal attack upon religion and the religious. Atatürk, for example, closed down all the madrasahs, suppressed the Sufi orders and forced men and women to wear modern Western dress. Such coercion is always counterproductive. Islam in Turkey did not disappear, it simply went underground. Muhammad Ali had also despoiled the Egyptian ulama, appropriated their endowments and deprived them of influence.

Golongan ‘al-Asya’irah’ tidak pernah menolak dalil al-Quran atau pun hadis, yang hanyalah mentafsir atau menta’wilkan terutama yang bersifat mutasyabihat. Tetapi tanpa disedari golongan anda sendirilah ‘pengingkar-pegingkar terhadap sunnah’ dan menggunakan akal semata-mata. Sesuatu hadis dapat diterima oleh golongan lain sejak lama, lalu dengan jalan menggunakan akal semata-mata dinyatakan sebagai hadis maudhu’ (palsu), direka-reka, karut, dan lain-lain istilah lagi. Sebagai bukti, bahawa sesuatu hadis dapat diterima oleh golongan lainnya, atau seseorang ulama, atau disebut dalam kitab-kitab turats terkenal, atau ada seseorang ahli hadis dapat menerima tetapi ditolak oleh seseorang dalam golongan anda atau sekelompok kecil di antara sekelompok kecil dari golongan anda. Padahal penolakan itu hanyalah berdasarkan teori semata-mata. Yang demikian itu adalah ‘inkar sunnah’ namanya.

Aku ingin bertanya gembirakah kau di sana? Melihat wilayah faqihmu pegangan ulama gilakan kuasa Fuqaha kau maksudkan bukan ulama buatan sekarang Yang mengerti sedikit hadis, hukum dan ayat al-Qur'an. Sikap melampau: mereka terpenjara dalam mazhab Taasub sangat kepada Ali, mereka lupa akan Muhammad.

Umat ini terjaga daripada kesalahan berkat Kitab Suci Tuhannya dan Sunnah Rasul-Nya. Lagipula, umat ini tidak akan bersepakat dalam kesesatan. Kemaksuman atau terjaganya umat daripada kesalahan jauh lebih penting dibandingkan terjaganya imam (Syiah) daripada kesalahan. Inilah penyataan para ulama mengenai hikmah kemaksuman umat.

Ibn Taymiyyah was a worrying figure to the establishment. His return to the fundamentals of the Quran and sunnah and his denial of much of the rich spirituality and philosophy of Islam may have been reactionary, but it was also revolutionary. He outraged the conservative ulama, who clung to the textbook answers, and criticized the Mamluk government of Syria for practices which contravened Islamic law as he understood it.

Kalau kamu ingin mengalahkan musuhmu dan kamu ingin membunuhnya dengan kesedihan dan membakarnya dengan kegelisahan, bersemangatlah dalam menambah ilmu. Kerana, siapa yang bertambah ilmunya, nescaya orang yang hasad kepadanya akan semakin sedih

Tiada malapetaka yang lebih besar jika institusi pengajian tinggi -yang seharusnya menjadi taman untuk pengembangan ilmu, penghormatan kepada kewibawaan ilmu dan ilmuwan- tidak meletakkan ilmu sebagai keutamaan dan menjadikan ilmu, ulama dan institusi ilmu hanya sebagai alat kepentingan ekonomi, politik atau peribadi; dan apabila institusi ilmu hanya menjadi taman mengutip untung kebendaan sementara, atau untuk menempah kedudukan dan nama. Ini merupakan suatu krisis dan malapetaka kepada sesebuah tamadun manusia, dan tiada kezaliman yang lebih besar kepada tamadun insan daripada kezaliman ini.

Terkadang kelompok yang anti madzhab menggugat kita dengan pendapat sang pendiri madzhab atau para ulama dalam madzhab yang kita ikuti, seakan-akan mereka lebih konsisten dari kita dalam bermadzhab. Kaum Wahhabi ketika menggugat kita agar meninggalkan tahlilan dan selamatan tujuh hari selalu beralasan dengan pendapat al-Imam as-Syafi'i yang mengatakan bahawa hadiah pahala bacaan al-Qur'an tidak akan sampai kepada mayit, atau pendapat kitab I'anah al-Thalibin yang melarang acara selamatan tahlilan selama tujuh hari. Padahal selain al-Imam as-Syafi'i menyatakan sampai. Kita kadang menjadi bingung menyikapi mereka. Terkadang mereka menggugat kita karena bermadzhab, yang mereka anggap telah meninggalkan al-Qur'an dan Sunnah. Dan terkadang mereka menggugat kita dengan pendapat imam madzhab dan apra ulama madzhab. Padahal mereka sering menyuarakan anti madzhab. Pada dasarnya kelompok anti madzhab itu bermadzhab. Hanay saja madzhab mereka berbeda dengan madzhab mayoritas kaum Muslimin. Ketika mereka menyuarakan anti tawassul, maka sebenarnya mereka mengikut pendapat Ibn Taimiyah dan Ibn Abdil Wahhab al-Najdi. Sedangkan kaum Muslimin yang bertawassul, mengikuti Rasulullah SAW, para sahabat, seluruh ulama salaf dan ahli hadits. Ketika mereka menyuarakan shalat tarawih 11 raka'at, maka sebenarnya mereka mengikut pendapat Nashiruddin al-Albani, seorang tukang jam yang beralih profesi menjadi muhaddits tanpa bimbingan seorang guru, dengan belajar secara otodidak di perpustakaan. Sedangkan kaum Muslimin yang tarawih 23 raka'at, mengikuti Sayidina Umar, para sahabat dan seluruh ulama salaf yang saleh yang tidak diragukan keilmuannya. Ketika mereka menyuarakan anti madzhab, maka sebenarnya mereka mengikut Rasyid Ridha, Muhammad Abduh dan Ibn Abdil Wahhab. Sedangkan kaum Muslimin yang bermadzhab, mengikuti ulama salaf dan seluruh ahli hadits. Demikian pula ketika mereka menyuarakan anti bid'ah hasanah, makas ebenarnya mereka mengikuti madzhab Rasyid Ridha dan Ibn Abdil Wahhab al-Najid. Sedangkan kaum Muslimin yang berpendapat adanya bid'ah hasanah, mengikuti Rasulullah SAW, Khulafaur Rasyidin, para sahabat, ulama salaf dan hali hadits.

Contemporary jihads were worldly, not spiritual, said the Sheikh. The men waging them operated not from an excess of piety, but a lack of it: "It is just the Islamicization of violence," he said. "People think they can use Islam to fight for land, or honor, or respect, or money. But these are not religious people. They are just following non-Islamic examples." The jihadis tended to be far more Westernized, in a superficial sense, than the Sheikh and his fellow ulama. Contrary to popular belief, most of the jihadi extremists weren't trained in madrasas. Rather than studying the nuances of classical Islamic thought, their training tended to be secular and technical, in subjects like engineering, computer programming, or medicine.

Agak aneh bahawa perkembangan madrasah di Haramyn sampai saat ini masih diabaikan para ahli. Jika banyak studi dilakukan atas pertumbuhan madrasah di tempat-tempat lain di Timur Tengah, kelihatan agak ganjil sedikit sekali perhatian diberikan kepada sejarah unik madrasah dan lembaga-lembaga keilmuan lainnya di Haramayn. Akibatnya, studi-studi itu tidak hanya gagal memahami tradisi keilmuan di Tanah Suci, tetapi juga sifat diskursus ilmiah di sana.

After the loss of so much of the learning of the past, the destruction of manuscripts and the slaughter of scholars, it was more important to recover what had been lost than to inaugurate more change. Because the Mongol military code made no provision for civil society, the ulama continued to govern the lives of the faithful, and their influence tended to be conservative. Where Sufis such as Rumi believed that all religions were valid, by the fourteenth century the ulama had transformed the pluralism of the Quran into a hard communalism, which saw other traditions as irrelevant relics of the past. Non-Muslims were forbidden now to visit the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it became a capital offence to make insulting remarks about the Prophet Muhammad. The trauma of the invasions had, not surprisingly, made Muslims feel insecure. Foreigners were not only suspect; they could be as lethal as the Mongols.

But there were ulama who refused to accept the closing of the “gates of ijtihad.” Throughout Islamic history, at times of great political crisis—especially during a period of foreign encroachment—a reformer (mujdadid) would often renew the faith so that it could meet the new conditions. These reforms usually followed a similar pattern. They were conservative, since they attempted to go back to basics rather than create an entirely new solution. But in this desire to return to the pristine Islam of the Quran and sunnah, the reformers were often iconoclastic in sweeping away later medieval developments that had come to be considered sacred. They were also suspicious of foreign influence, and alien accretions, which had corrupted what they saw as the purity of the faith. This type of reformer would become a feature of Muslim society. Many of the people who are called “Muslim fundamentalists” in our own day correspond exactly to the old pattern set by the mujdadids.

Napoleon respected Islam, regarding the Koran as ‘not just religious; it is civil and political. The Bible only preaches morals.’52 He was also impressed by the way that the Muslims ‘tore more souls away from false gods, toppled more idols, pulled down more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Christ had in fifteen centuries’.53* He had no objection to polygamy, saying that Egyptian men were gourmands en amour, and, when permitted, ‘will prefer having wives of various colours’.54† His flattery of the ulama (clergy), his discussions of the Koran, and his holding out the possibility of his conversion to Islam – as well as his attempts to impress the sheikhs with French science – were all intended to establish a collaborationist body of Egyptians, with mixed results. As it turned out, no amount of complying with Islamic ceremonies, salutations and usages prevented Selim III from declaring jihad against the French in Egypt, meaning that any attacks upon them were thenceforth blessed.

Mir Dimad (d. 1631) and his pupil Mulla Sadra (d. 1640) founded a school of mystical philosophy at Isfahan, which Majlisi did his best to suppress. They continued the tradition of Suhrawardi, linking philosophy and spirituality, and training their disciples in mystical disciplines which enabled them to acquire a sense of the alam al-mithal and the spiritual world. Both insisted that a philosopher must be as rational and scientific as Aristotle, but that he must also cultivate the imaginative, intuitive approach to truth. Both were utterly opposed to the new intolerance of some of the ulama, which they regarded as a perversion of religion. Truth could not be imposed by force and intellectual conformism was incompatible with true faith. Mulla Sadra also saw political reform as inseparable from spirituality. In his masterpiece Al-Afsan al-Arbaah (The Fourfold Journey), he described the mystical training that a leader must undergo before he could start to transform the mundane world. He must first divest himself of ego, and receive divine illumination and mystical apprehension of God. It was a path that could bring him to the same kind of spiritual insight as the Shii imams, though not, of course, on the same level as they.

However, because the Ulama have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in Islam, meaning questions of theology, or kalam, are impossible to separate from questions of law, or fiqh.

Unshackled by the state, the Ulama were now free to ascend to a position of unquestioned religious authority in the Ummah, which they used not only to institutionalize their legal and theological opinions into distinct schools of thought but also to formulate a binding, comprehensive code of conduct called the Shariah, forever transforming Islam from a religion into an all-embracing way of life: one that the Ulama claimed sole authority to define.

Buah dari cinta pada ulama itu alhamdulillah lahir darinya para penerus perjuangan ulama seperti sekarang ini

resulting in the arrests and executions of thousands of officials, servicemen, and members of the ulama.

Beyond the nonnegotiables of rule by the ulama and the enactment of Islamic law, Khomeini had never given much thought to what an Islamic state should look like. He once famously answered a question about his economic policies by declaring that “economics is for donkeys.” Later he observed in his dour way that “we did not make a revolution to slash the price of watermelon.” Khomeini, in short, was a classic big-picture man. To him, the details of governance mattered little, if at all. Still, his lieutenants had a country to run. Many borrowed ideas from the copious works of Sunni fundamentalist thinkers in Pakistan and the Arab world to give shape to the Islamic Republic. The state that Khomeini built would be an intolerant theocracy in which Islamic law was narrowly interpreted and implemented to limit individual and minority rights and erase all Western influences on society and culture.

A familiar example cited by ulama is the law of talion, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”, which was obligatory in the religious law of Moses (upon whom be peace), subsequently forbidden by the religious law of Jesus (upon whom be peace) in which “turning the other cheek” was obligatory; and finally both were superseded by the law of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), which permits victims to take retaliation (qisas) for purely intentional physical injuries, but in which it is religiously superior not to retaliate but forgive.

In thirty years of going to study in Medina, “sitting with the ‘ulama,” “making hijrah,” distributing books from Saudi Arabia, making Dawah, pointing out bid’as, tearing down imams, taking over mosques, backbiting Muslims, putting people on and off “the minhaj,”  and calling other Muslims names, Salafis have established absolutely nothing.

Kekeliruan tentang istilah ulama ini tidak wujud pada zaman generasi awal Islam sehinggalah menjelang waktu proses sekularisasi ilmu oleh Barat. Sebabnya ialah, ilmuwan Islam pada ketika itu berupaya menguasai kedua-dua bidang ilmu secara bersepadu sama ada ilmu kealaman, juga ilmu keagamaan. Pada ketika itu, tidak timbul maksud jahil dalam suatu cabangan ilmu. Bahkan ilmu kealaman pada ketika itu pun disaring dan dikembangkan menerusi pengetahuan dari al-Quran dan al-Sunnah itu sendiri.

Sesungguhnya bertanya tidak semudah yang dianggap umum- Pertama kau harus insaf-sedar akan kejahilan mu akan sesuatu Kedua, harus kenal pasti alim yang bakal kau rujuk membantu.

Jika kita tidak memahami sesuatu perkara, jangan dusta: Sehingga menolak kefahaman lebih afdhal, lagi wibawa Sehingga memfitnah mereka yang lebih aula lagi mulia Sehingga kita terus tergelincir ke lembah gelap dan hina Terperangkap dalam lumpur hasad, ghulat dan pra-sangka.

Adanya keragaman dalam Islam sungguh pun dasar utama dari ajaran islam ialah tawhid, yang mengandung arti penyatuan, telah terlebih dahulu disadari ulama-ulama Islam sendiri. Salah satu dari ulama itu adalah Syah Waliullah dari India. Ia menyadari bahwa Islam yang dianut dan diamalkan di Arabia ada perlainannya dengan Islam yang dianut dan diamalkan di India. Ke dalam Islam India telah masuk unsur-unsur adat-iatiadat India. Islam di Arabia mempunyai corak Arab dan Islam di India mempunyai corak India. Di dalam Islam terdapat kebudayaan yang beraneka ragam.

Aku sungguh bimbang kita akan terus begini Kerana puyuh pentadbir diangkat mengawal helang ilmi Tata-cara sekolah rendah diguna-pakai di universiti tinggi Kaedah mengurus wang dipertuhankan, dianggap suci diguna membangun insan, menilai sumbangan ulama dan Nabi.

ibunya mewarisi jiwa entrepreneurship dari sang kakek, di samping rasa cinta yang sangat pada kyai ulama dan ilmu.

The descendants of Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab are known as the family of the Sheikh or the Al al-Sheikh. Their alliance with the Al Saud is deeply rooted in the teachings of a fourteenth-century scholar Mohammed ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), who is the intellectual godfather of what is today known as the Wahhabi movement. Ibn Taymiyyah saw the lay rulers (ummara) and the religious scholars (ulama) as the two branches of an ideal Islamic government. The ruler was charged with providing security and enforcing Islamic, or sharia law, while the scholars were responsible for interpreting that law.5 There was no need for a legislative branch of government, since God’s eternal laws had already been revealed in the Quran.

Abdulaziz recognized that the Hejaz was very different from the Nejd, and understood that the Hejazi notables did not wish to be incorporated into his Wahhabi domain. He agreed to administer the Hijaz and Nejd as two separate countries. He established a Consultative Council or Majlis al-Shura in several Hejaz cities in order to represent the views of leading families, local ulama, and most importantly, the merchants.46 Because the title imam was closely associated with the Wahhabi movement, Abdulaziz did not use it in the Hejaz. He remained there for more than a year but, unlike in the Nejd, never married into the local elite.

While Abdulaziz was asserting political control, the Ikhwan and Wahhabi ulama attempted to replace the Hejaz’s liberal, urban values and Shafi legal code with the socially conservative Hanbali code and tribal customs of the Nejd.

Abdulaziz understood that he was speaking to a group of people who distrusted each other much more than they disliked him. As he had no doubt anticipated, they demanded that he remain their imam.17 The Wahhabi ulama feared anarchy. These scholars understood that the Wahhabi movement and their own careers depended on stable government, much as they still do today.

A new figure had arisen among the ulama. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had become the most popular teacher in Qom.

the Maslaks which nowdays promoted by the Ulama e Suu (Preahcers of Evil who preach in the name of God). to understand what is the religion of God one should read the Holy Quran (in English, Urdu and Hindi, I suggest to read the "Translation only" of the Quran by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan) .

Bu, perpecahan itu selalu terjadi karena hamba Allah itu cenderung sama-sama menuntut hak. Sama seperti perpecahan yang terjadi dengan Islam belakangan ini. Semua ulama masing-masing menuntut haknya. Dalil yang digunakan adalah dalil yang digunakan untuk melegitimasi hak, bukan dalil-dalil yang digunakan untuk melegitimasi kewajiban.

Condemning al-Qaeda’s agenda was not difficult for the Saudi ulama. Many of the terrorist group’s tenets, such as resisting Western influence or using political violence, came not from Mohammed Abd al-Wahhab but from the twentieth-century Muslim Brotherhood. Although Abd al-Wahhab had nothing to say about confronting secular Western values, he had a great deal to say about avoiding fitna or civil unrest. Many Wahhabi texts are direct attacks on anything that disrupts the social order or political stability. These were the arguments that the ulama used against al-Qaeda, which they clearly understood posed as serious a threat to themselves as it did to the House of Saud.

The aftershocks of the Mecca siege within Saudi society were profound. Coinciding as it did with Iran’s Islamic Revolution, widespread rioting among the Saudi Shia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the seizure of the Great Mosque by Sunni religious extremists severely unsettled the House of Saud. Their response was a dramatic shift towards a more conservative Islamic society as they energetically sought to keep their bargain with the ulama and prevent another Juhayman

Religious conservatives had long boasted that when King Abdullah died, they would remove the liberal, religious-police chief that he had installed, restore the conservative ulama that he had fired, and shut down the co-educational university that he had founded. King Salman initially gave them much of what they wanted.

MBS believed that recent Saudi kings had ceded too much authority to the ulama, technocrats, and tribes. He intended to reassert centralized control. He also intended to maintain Saudi predominance in the Arabian Peninsula and increase Saudi influence in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Implicitly, this meant competing with Iran while exploring co-existence and cooperation with Israel.

but Akbar had been engaged in a power struggle with traditional Islamic leaders and certain Sufi communities since the 1570s.141 Akbar clashed with these groups on a range of issues, including tax laws, his numerous marriages (far beyond the Islamic upper limit of four), and the proper character of an Islamic empire in India. The members of this opposition tended to espouse a more conservative interpretation of Islam than Akbar. Perhaps more important, they desired to maintain direct influence in the expanding Mughal Empire. Akbar soon began to curtail the authority of such Islamic leaders by claiming an enhanced definition of the bounds of his own sovereignty and even persecuted certain individuals directly.142 By the mid-1580s, the Mughal king had formulated a decisive answer to this imperial problem: Akbar removed powers previously exercised by the ulama, notably their prerogative to define the boundaries of Islamic knowledge, and invested them in himself as emperor.143 Alluding to this ongoing power struggle, Abū al-Faz̤l declares that Akbar will no longer allow the supposedly learned of Islam undeserved authority. Instead, the king offers himself as a superior replacement.

One group left untouched was the senior ulama who were allowed to keep their own very substantial land holdings and would soon sign off on the issues of women driving, movie theaters, and gender mixing.

Abdulaziz relied on the sheikhs for tribal loyalty and the ulama for ideological legitimacy. In his early years, he also relied on prominent merchant families for financing. In many parts of his newly unified kingdom, where the established political and religious elites were swept away by the Al Saud, the traditional landowning and commercial families remained as vestiges of the old order. These urban families formed an identifiable and relatively closed set of Hijazi and Nejdi merchants with long-established wealth and social status. Abdulaziz made alliances with them, and they became part of the Al Saud’s national coalition.

Having abandoned the free princes, dismissed the liberal technocrats, frightened the ulama, alienated merchants, and cooled relations with the United States, King Saud had few friends left. In October 1962, the Al Saud family and the ulama again pressured him into accepting the return of Crown Prince Faisal as prime minister. Faisal immediately removed Saud’s sons from the cabinet and installed the team of brothers and half-brothers that would govern Saudi Arabia for the next fifty years.

At no point in the past sixty years have the senior ulama openly opposed the Al Saud on matters of political importance. They ultimately ratified the use of force against the Ikhwan, the introduction of the telegraph and radio, the deposition of King Saud, and the education of women.

The scholars back the government not just to keep their jobs and salaries but also because the Saudi government gives them independence to promote conservative Islamic social values that maintain their influence in society.48 Ultimately, the senior ulama support the Al Saud because they see themselves not as leaders of an opposition but as respected and influential members of the establishment.

Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state whose legitimacy depended on the upholding of sharia law. In theory, the law and the scholars who interpreted it placed a check on the sultan’s executive authority. The abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 marked the end of the political system that had governed the Arab world for over a thousand years. First colonial governments and then newly independent, republican Arab regimes sought to replace Islamic institutions with foreign concepts such as elected legislatures, written legal codes, and secular court systems. Nearly everywhere in the Arab world, the ulama were marginalized. They became minor officials with no real political authority. Everywhere, that is, except Saudi Arabia—where there never was a colonial government or secular Arab Nationalist regime, and where the classical Islamic constitutional order in which executive power was counterbalanced by the scholars is to this day preserved in a still-recognizable fashion.

However supportive the senior ulama may be, their pragmatism has often been challenged by more junior clerics demanding stricter enforcement of Wahhabi tenets and far less accommodation with Western values.

The question for Saudi stability remains not whether the official government scholars will desert the monarchy—that prospect remains unlikely—but whether they will be outflanked by more radical clerics who incorporate Muslim Brotherhood ideas into their preaching and contest the ulama al-hakim’s authority to lead the Wahhabi mission.

Again historical antecedents played a part. There was dissent from the beginning. Jinnah’s claim to be the ‘sole spokesman’ for Muslims had vied with Maulana Mawdudi’s authoritarian reading of a ‘holy community of Islam’. In turn, General Ayub Khan (1958-68), in collaboration with various pirs (Muslim holy men), competed with the revivalist Jamaat-i-Islami to gain a monopoly over the discourse of ‘modernist’ Islam. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Awami League’s espousal of ‘Bengali Islam’ stood (again mainly versus the Jamaat-i-Islami) in opposition to the authority of ‘Pakistani Islam’. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto (1972-77), championed ‘folk Islam’, again in collaboration with an assortment of mainly Sindhi pirs, to challenge the dominance of ‘scripturalist Islam’, advocated both by the Jamaat-i-Islami as well as by sections of the country’s modernizing elite. Later, General Zia ul Haq (1977-88), who initially worked with but then against the Jamaat, favoured a ‘legalist’ interpretation of Islam with a strong punitive bias that aimed to stem both its popular as well as its modernist expressions. In time it strengthened the hold of an ulama-inspired, ‘shariatized Islam’ which, by the 1990s, openly challenged the legitimacy of the nation-state and further aggravated Pakistan’s consensus problem.

Kesungguhan Syeikh Daud Abd Allah al-Fatani menulis kitab yang berjumlah 57 buah dalam serba kekurangan, tanpa mengharapkan apa-apa ganjaran material tentu menjadi suatu pukulan kepada ulama yang ebrada pada zaman serba medwah yang tidak dapat menghasilkan karya.