This thesis investigates the Islamic response to modernization and its common dilemma as seen through the eyes of Nurcholish Madjid, one of the most influential and prominent Muslim thinkers in Indonesia today. He and his followers represent the most radical development in Indonesian Islamic religio-political discourse in recent decades. This study will survey the growth of his thought from his first involvement with the Islamic renewal movement in the early 1970s, or more precisely after the inception of the New Order era, until the mid-1990s. The movement that he has founded seeks to reformulate the positive nature of modernity and its essential affinity with the purpose and spirit of Islam. The general thrust of Madjid's contribution in the discourse on Islamic modernism in Indonesia is to call Indonesian Muslims to change their attitude and way of thinking in order to play a proper and realistic role in national development and in reinterpreting universal Islamic values to fit the specific socio-economic, political, and cultural values of the nation. In so doing, Madjid proposes his concept of reactualization of Islamic teachings through ijtihad and reinterpretation of the Qur'an using what is called a contextual or substantial approach in that he is associated with the legacy of the neo-modernist approach proposed by Fazlur Rahman, Madjid's chief mentor. According to him, this concept is essential to the survival of the universalism of Islam. Therefore, the basic principle of neo-modernism consists in reinterpreting Islam according to its historical context while making its universal and substantial principles as well as its basic goal and spirit the primary consideration.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis compares and contrasts the responses of Hasan H&dotbelow;anafi (Egypt, b. 1935), Muh&dotbelow;ammad `Abid al-Jabiri (Morocco, b. 1936) and Nurcholish Madjid (Indonesia, b. 1939) to the slogan "Back to the Qur'an and the Sunna," a slogan that many modern Sunni reformers consider as the ideal solution to the decline of Islam in the modern age. The comparison is analyzed in the light of H&dotbelow;anafi's three dimensional Islamic reform project known as Heritage and Modernity ( Al-Turath wa al-Tajdid). Their responses to the factors that have led to the decline of Islam in the modern age will be compared from the perspective of the first and second dimensions of his project, which examine the implications of the classical Islamic and Western heritages, respectively, for the reform of Islam. It is, however, in the context of the third dimension of H&dotbelow;anafi's project, which deals with the theory and practice of interpretation, that we will examine their hermeneutics of the return to the Qur'an and the Sunna. In the process we will demonstrate how their respective backgrounds, political influences and concerns have led each of them to adopt a position that is, at one and the same time, radical and traditional.