'Islam Nusantara national historical consciousness'

Malang, NU Online
Islam Nusantara that seems to be a historical consciousness could be seen clearly from the roles played by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) as the largest organization in the country.

Member of the Advisory Board of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) KH M. Tholhah Hasan, popularly known as Kiai Tholhah, made the remarks on the sidelines of a meeting in Malang recently.

According to Kiai Tholhah, in this capacity, NU has been capable of brilliantly articulated religious teachings that are at least based on three aspects, namely the normative doctrinal, historical and cultural.
"Therefore, the NU Muslim scholars (ulema) are skilfully able to sow the seeds of Islamic teachings of Ahlussunnah wal Jamaah (Aswaja) in a peaceful and courteous means in the face of different cultures, traditions and customs inherited from the pattern of dakwa as developed by the so-called Walisongo,"he said.

In this context, he added, there should be processes of retraditionalizing and reideologizing Islam Nusantara in its very cultural form, especially when a set of values are arranged to form a complete and intact ideology.

"Islamic values having long animated the lives of Muslims in Indonesia, for example are attempted to be revived unanimously and completely. In turn, the ideological framework is a must. However, the ideology is necessarily not meant a political ideology, but a cultural one, like calls to create-as said by Abdurrahman Wahid-complete Islamic societies in which the values of Islam could fully be developed without any distortion."

According to the Former Minister of Religious Affairs, the process will result in efforts to retraditionalize the Islam Nusantara. That is, when the traditions in the past are inherently tied to each other with the intact framework of traditions, namely between tradition and ideology, although only a cultural ideology. In turn, there will expectedly be a relation to support and strengthen each other. (Masdar)