Arif Maftuhin

Being accustomed to witness Chinese-Indigenous conflicts in modern Indonesia, one might find himself surprised reading this book. The title is runtuhnya kerajaan Hindu-Jawa dan timbulnya negara-negara Islam di nusantara , or "the end of Javanese-Hindus kingdoms and the rise of Islamic kingdoms in nusantara". It is a reprinted book of 1968 version and written by Prof. Slamet Muljana. In 1968 the book was banned by the government of Soeharto. Indonesia had just been faced with the communist coup in 1965; and the communist China allegededly supported the coup. Soeharto banned everything Chinese, including Chinese traditions and names. But why this book? The main thesis of the book is that some of the senior and prominent Javanese Islamic saints, known as walisongo (the nine saints) were Chinese. The father of saints, Sunan Ampel, was in fact Bong Swi Hoo, who arrived in Java in 1445. He married Ni Gede Manila, a daughter of Gan Eng Cu (A Chinese captain in Manila), and this wife...

Oh, it's like the years passed are coming again vividly in my mind. This article is written by one of guests visiting my school in 1999 (I graduated in 1993). Being active in the student board, I was active in welcoming and guiding our guests, like this one. During the years I was there, my school provided 3 days (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday) within weekdays for visitors (we only have one weekend day, Sunday). Every week, never had we passed these 3 days without any guest. My school was the place where other high schools in the country or students in schools of education visiting to learn our success story (please read the article below to know what the story is about). To the visitors, we show them our laboratories, our facilities, and our activities. As a student, I gave a "walking" presentation about what we were doing. Some of my guests became kinda close "friend", in the sense that we kept in touch following the visit. Pak Muhtarom from a high school in...

The Victory of Liberal Democracy: The End of History? The long post war rivalry between the American-led Capitalist West and the Soviet-led Communist East, or the Cold War, surprisingly ended in the dusk of 1980s. The giant empire of Soviet Union dissolved in a matter of months. The Berlin Wall, serving 28 years demarcating the two Western competing ideologies of post war, was soon destroyed and the two Germany reunited. In the summer of 1989, amid this ongoing collapse of Communism in the East Europe, Francis Fukuyama wrote the most discussed article “the End of History”. He argued that liberal democracy had conquered rival ideologies like hereditary, monarchy, fascism and communism. Accordingly, liberal democracy will constitute “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and it therefore marked “the end of history”. [9] In Fukuyama’s thesis, there are no boundaries between the West and the East because liberal democracy will eventually be the only ideology prevails. Liberal d...

In preparing the World Conference on Human Rights in Geneva, June 1993, representatives of Asian countries from Iran to Mongolia met in Bangkok. Despite recognizing that human rights are universal in nature, the Bangkok Declaration boldly insisted that “they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of international norm-setting, bearing in mind the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds.”[1] The Bangkok Declaration was one of many messages Asian leaders sent to mainly the West (a term conveniently means Europe and North America), arguing that there is a unique set of “Asian values” different from presumably “Western values”. Since then, the “political thesis” of Asian values has triggered a rich academic literature both in the West and the East. One of the most important issues in the discourse of “Asian values” is the very question whether there are really any “Asian values”. The propo...

A friend of mine in Florida ( Pulung ) is under pressure... You can tell if you read his blog. I am better than him that I just need to work on one dateline. But, still, it is not easy because after all I have to work from scratch. Now, I have been passing my own due date. I have to catch up this week what I should finish last quarter. I can imagine that if this was not something required to finish my school I bet I will not finish it. The earlier proposal was not working because I have to contact and interviews Indonesians. While I am here, the only way to interview them is to make calls. It is still workable but it seems too much energy that I have to devote. So, I decide to cancel it. Now, I have the new one. It is more historical and I don't need to talk to people. I just need to read and interpret literature in Indonesian politics during Suharto. The good part is, I am amazed by the dynamics we as a nation have been through; we are really a great nation and any Indonesian shou...

It's another break; and it's another change. I am actually overwhelmed with my personal dateline to finish my final paper just before the spring quarter begin. I have been doing research and making some significant shifts to it. It is almost 90% shift since I move from a comparative approach to a historical approach. It is better than getting stuck though. While doing this, I find it desirable to make another change in my blog. The need is to shorten its vertical float so that it is more apt to the increasingly use of wide-screen monitor. Now, I got this hacked three columns and some other hacks. Hopefully it can adapt to the new needs. It's not revolution; but rather "revolution"... Learning from what has been going on in the blogging world, I am gonna add some blogging-tips in my "friends hub" from what I found on websites elsewhere. If you are a blogspot user, and love learning hacks, just check with it. Okay guys, have a great spring break!

Surat pembaca di Jakarta Post ini menarik "Among a number of simple and powerful changes available today, the one I wish to recommend is that prayers be conducted in the Indonesian language throughout the country." Gagasannya adalah dengan mengganti bahasa Arab dengan bahasa Indonesia maka orang akan lebih menjalankan perintah Tuhan karena dia tidak melupakan apa yang dia ucapkan di dalam sholat. Dengan kata lain, sholat sebagai pengingat orang untuk berbuat baik. Saya tak ingin membantah dari segi doktrin; hal itu bukan hal yang mustahil karena selama orang tidak bisa berbahasa Arab orang bisa menggunakan bahasa lokalnya--Fiqh sudah membahas ini sejak zaman Abu Hanifah di abad pertama hijriyyah. Argumen mengganti bahasa Arab dengan bahasa lokal demi menjalankan fungsi sholat tidak valid justru karena fakta sederhana saja: di dunia Arab, yang orangnya berbahasa Arab, orang tidak menjadi lebih baik karena dia mengerti apa yang dia ucapkan dalam sholat. Kalau kita ditanya siapa...

Wah, sudah spring lagi, dan sudah bersakura lagi. Ini mungkin adalah sakura terakhir sebelum saya, akhirnya, meninggalkan kampus cantik ini. Saatnya pula saya share hasil jepretan yang saya kumpulkan dari beberapa hari nongrong di the Quad, tempat ngumpulnya sakura-sakura indah itu. Di bawah ini foto mereka yang tengah berbahagia hari itu, sementara untuk koleksi foto 40 foto sakura silakan klik di sini . Hi, can you smile? Like this? Is it Japanese way? crossing hand like this... Absolutely not!!! That is just for ladies... I can do this way Oh, we don't care!! either way is fine, look ours!!! or look at them! cheez... Hey, ours is hot! we love talking, not picturing and we love walking around

Saya baru saja membaca naskah ini dan menyelesaikan beberapa "teka-teki" yang ditimbulkan akibat tidak standar-nya transliterasi Arab Jawi. Naskah ini berasal dari sekitar akhir abad kesembilanbelas, judulnya qawanin al-syari'ah , karya Sayyid Uthman (1822-1913), seorang Arab-Indonesia modernis yang tinggal di Batavia. Saya tentu saja tidak membaca teks itu untuk keperluan kuliah... Bapak saya, yang selalu menjadi rujukan handal setiap saya berhadapan dengan teks-teks agama, termasuk teks ini, sempat bertanya, " Opo awakmu ki belajar ngene iki barang tho neng kono ?" (Apakah kamu juga mempelajari hal-hal begini di sana?) Tentu saja tidak.  Teks klasik dari Batavia ini sedang dipelajari teman saya, seorang professor Amerika ahli hukum Islam Indonesia di Southwestern University (California), dan dia meminta bantuan saya untuk ikut membaca teks ini, menanyakan beberapa kata yang tak bisa ia baca. Saya salut, entoh seorang Amerika, dia berhasil membaca dengan baik...

Beberapa waktu yang lalu, Harian Republika memuat beberapa artikel tentang pembaharuan Islam. Yang menjadi catatan saya dari membaca artikel-artikel itu adalah tidak dibahasnya dengan baik kategori “Barat” dan “Islam.” Menurut saya, “Barat” sebenarnya tidak tunggal. Hamid Fahmi Zarkasyi (Republika, 28/12) pun memetakan Barat dalam dua mazhab besar: modernisme dan posmodernisme. Sayangnya, Hamid justru menyederhanakan rumitnya pertarungan modernisme dan postmodernisme dengan kalimat simplifikatif “Meski begitu, postmodernisme masih dianggap kelanjutan modernisme”. Barat pun lalu diidentifikasikan dengan “saintifik, sekularisme, rasionalisme, empirisisme, cara befikir dikotomis, pragamatisme, penafian kebenaran metafisis (baca: Agama)”. Benarkah demikian? Musim Panas lalu saya mengambil kelas statistik. Jika “Barat” memang empiris dan saintifik, saya pasti menemukan Barat di kelas ini. Tetapi bukan itu yang terjadi. Robert Pagano (1996), penulis buku statistik pegangan kami, justru mengi...

Conclusion: Transculturation and the Making of the Global The Asian values debate occurred more than a decade ago. It was a story of the raising liberal democracy (with its capitalistic economy) after conquering its long rival Communism. Its rise as a candidate of single ideology poses a challenge to the rest of the world as it expanded beyond its geographical border. For the East, the once victim of Western colonialism and not fully recovering from its past, the West once again presents as a looming threat. Haunted by its past, the East’s respond to this challenge were various, from rejecting the liberal-democratic-capitalistic West to accepting it. We also noticed that the debate over Asian values occurred within Asia itself. While it is true that the arguments for the Asian values were mainly addressed to the West as an answer to its looming ideological domination; it was debated among communitarian-conservative Asians and liberal-progressive Asians who demanded change and found the...

Visit this blog "SI_Blog" to find some interesting statements from the St. Petersburg Declaration. The declaration was made in a summit among "believers and non-believers" to start what they call "the next Islamic enlightenment". I don't know why I feel inconvenient about this blog. I don't know many of them. Some are Muslims some are not. As far as I know, they are not well known Muslim intellectuals or activists. I know Irshad Manji only because I once read her interesting and critical article in the International Herald Tribune. I like the article anyway. The problem with this ambitious project, "the next Islamic enlightenment starts now" is who their audience is, whom their speak to. To begin with, most of them are very critical to the establishment, this is fine to me but not to many Muslim. Some of them, unfortunately, are non-Muslims. If their audience are Muslims, I can tell, they failed from the very beginning. A moderate and ver...

Beberapa hari yang lalu, seperti biasa, saat bekerja di perpustakaan saya menemukan buku yang menggoda saya untuk melihat-lihat sejenak. Judulnya adalah "sketsa tokoh Surabaya". Bukan buku baru ya , tetapi bahwa buku ini sampai ke tangan saya di sini kan sudah lumayan. Surabaya sudah lama tak saya dengar kabarnya. Malah, saya lebih sering mendengar kota kecil tetangganya, Sidoarjo, yang sedang terkena musibah. Saya sendiri terakhir kali ke Surabaya kira-kira tahun 1996an, saat menjemput bapak saya yang pulang haji ( wah , baru sadar kalau itu sudah 10 tahun!!!). Antara 1990-1993, saya sering ke Surabaya, ya sekedar jalan-jalan ke rumah paman saya, atau karena sekedar mampir dari Jember. Tetapi "kontak" saya dengan Surabaya sangat intens justru sebelum tahun 1990. Saat saya masih di Tsanawiyah, saya sering mendengarkan radio-radio yang dipancarkan dari Surabaya untuk mendapatkan episode terbaru sandiwara radio. Maklum, kalau mendengarkan radio lokal bisa selisih 1-2...