It was interesting to read F Budi Hardiman’s opinion piece “Piety and Violence” (Kompas, 6/1/2017). This article will explain the Islamic perspective of the themes discussed in the earlier article considering the domineering narrative of violence results from a wrongheaded interpretation by Muslim extremists of their religion and their way of connecting Islam to violence, be it in Indonesia or abroad.
Despite its strong basis – the strongest in Islamic teachings, in fact – ethics have never received significant attention from Muslim philosophers. One of the very few thinkers on Islamic ethics was Ibn Miskawaih, a philosopher from Persia in the 10th century nicknamed The Father of Islamic Ethics due to his monumental work Tahdzibul Akhlak wa Tathir al-Araq.
Since the beginning, Ibn Miskawaih posited ethics in a separate faculty of thought called an-nafs an-nathiqah (thinking skills). Therefore, there must be education. Praying is included in the curriculum of ethics education in Islam. The gift of thought is unrelated to religion. Its basis is the universal value of justice.
Kompas/Agus Susanto
Workers prepare archives at the Istiqlal Mosque for an exhibition ahead of the mosque\'s 39th anniversary in Jakarta on Tuesday (21/2/2017).
Depends on virtue
Long before Prophet Muhammad received the word of God for the first time at the age of 40, he had emerged with two foundations: blessedness and virtue. He was a prophet who would serve as a blessing (Nabi ar-Rahmah) for the universe (rahmatan lil alamin), rather than exclusively for Muslims (lil muslimin), as is stated in the Quran in surah Al-Anbiya: 107. As is stated in the Quran in surah Al-Qalam: 4, “Muhammad was sent to perfect mankind’s virtue.” Not to deliver virtue to mankind but merely to perfect it. This is because ethics, or virtue, were already an inherent part of every human being.
Furthermore, in Islam, fiqh (Islamic law) is measured using the parameter of virtue. Prayers, for instance, distance a human from wrongdoings and inhumanity (Al-‘Ankabut: 45). The hell Wayl awaits those who pray just to show off and refuse to help those who seek it (Al-Ma’un:4-7) and alms mean nothing if they are followed by mean-spirited words (Al-Baqarah: 264), and so on.
One hadith (a record of Prophet Muhammad’s words and deeds) even states that bad manners render good deeds meaningless, like vinegar that ruins honey or fire that eats up firewood (HR Ibn Majah). As a result, the Prophet said that: “religion means teachings of virtue, for instance, don’t be angry”. Another hadith states that the strength of your belief depends on your virtue.
Therefore, piety in Islam is fundamentally about ethics. This is where the extreme misunderstanding of many Muslims is rooted: piety is seen merely as an element of fiqh.
This is the source of the spread of violence among many Muslims: the separation of ethics from (Islamic) law. Piety becomes merely a vertical affair (pertaining to God-man relations: hablumin-Allah) and terribly lacking in horizontal relations between people (habluminannas). Therefore, even though a religiously pious person should conceptually also be a socially pious one, in reality this is not always the case. What often happens is to the contrary: the more pious a person is in religion, the fiercer that person becomes socially.
Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid often promoted and campaigned for the adoption of a sharia worldview based and focused on the considerations of maqashid al-syari’ah (the goal of sharia). This is where the elements of Islamic ethics in sharia will be found. There, the benefit of all mankind becomes the main purpose: a ritual orientation or hifzh al-din (protecting religion) and a social orientation or hifzh al-nafs (protecting life), hifzh al-‘aql (protecting common sense), hifzh al-mal (protecting property), hifzh al-nasl (protecting children) and hifzh al-bi’ah (protecting the environment).
Social piety
Extremities are present in sharia. Sayyidah Aisyah (the Prophet’s wife) said that the Prophet was very warm toward her during their time together, but he seemed to forget all about her when it was time to pray. He prayed until his feet were swollen. At other times, the Prophet stopped himself from consuming a certain type of honey that was in fact halal according to sharia just because his wife disliked its aroma.
Therefore, a Muslim should be very extreme with sharia in his private space but be very moderate with his ethics in a public space. They should not be trapped by this dichotomous dualism. A distinctive feature of Islamic philosophy that differs from Greek philosophy is that, in Islam, divine words and reason go hand-in-hand. It is settled and there is no more discussion. Therefore, there should be no contradiction between religion and the rational public space, much like how religion “fueled” the “jihad of independence” in the past.
In Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf), law (sharia) and ethics (akhlaq) are integral to each other. No wonder then that the Prophet returned to Earth and lived among his followers and interacted with them through social piety even after his audience with God during his mi’raj journey.
Ironically, among Muslim extremists, tasawwuf is deemed bid’ah (heresy). This way, Islam loses its most fundamental aspect: spirituality. As a result, being a Muslim becomes nothing more than just ritualism without any ethical-spiritual appreciation. This way, a person who is ritually pious will try to monopolize the truth and accuse other people, even other Muslims, of being heretics or infidels just because they have a different understanding. This is paradoxical to a Sufi who, despite having actually “had an audience” with God, is wiser in facing reality.
All of this is really rooted in misunderstanding, or even deviant, teachings. This happens everywhere, including among Sufis, where the group Sufi malamati thinks that essence can be found without sharia. This clearly contradicts the word of God, which states that whoever loves God must follow the Prophet’s ways and therefore see sharia as something that must be upheld (Ali-Imran: 31).
Shallow understanding and appreciation of Islam can be easily used to fuel religious conflicts. Heaven is chased with an sich sharia, despite the Prophet’s clear words that heaven can only be accessed through God’s blessing and not through deeds.
In the end, the problem of violence is a complex one. Therefore, a comprehensive analytical knife is needed, comprising politics, economy and other matters. Religion has always been “charming” enough to be used to legitimate the egotistical appetite for violence, oppression and other deviant behaviors: something that clearly contradicts the very foundations of religious values.
