WanSaiful.com

4 Responses

1. bangku says:

   August 5, 2007 at 7:26 pm

   just a word to MZuhdi: I think a big idea most fundamentalists overlook when attacking liberal economy is the fact that Muslim societies and empires of the past were essentially agrarian which is so totally different from modern economy. It’s very hard to find quotes from past muslim schlars that would be relevant since it’s a different paradigm. Same with political theory too. As for his frequent mention of Calvinism and Lutheranism, I think fundamentalists are the real Calvinists and Luteranists who have tainted the tradition of Islam like what protestantism did.

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2. MAAK says:

   August 6, 2007 at 3:50 pm

   I am a malay but I dont know who is that Mawi guy and why he is so fame back home..has he done something better for the Malays? I heard the number of ‘penghidu gam’ in Malaysia is increasing – obviously majority are the Malays..

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3. Hazri says:

   August 6, 2007 at 4:30 pm

   Well as I see it the “Islamic” economic and political theories in the Maududi-Qutb sense that MZuhdi mentioned are largely reactionary political Islam that is the very construct of Modernity that they were wrestling against. No doubt many of their criticisms of liberal political economy are quite legitimate and some of their commentaries on the basic principles of Islamic social order are worthy of serious and thoughtful reflection.

   Yet the problem with most ideologies that dress themselves up as “Islamic” system is the profound lack of insight into the inner workings of modern economy. To selectively pick up verses from the Quran and Hadith (and on top of that from the viewpoint of a jurist and not economist), giving them a literal interpretation and prefixing them with the usual “Islamic” label is tantamount to a gross oversimplification of Islamic ideals. This attitude is not very different from those scientists purporting to find compatibility between Islam and modern science (no doubt with the sincerest of intention) by finding similarities between certain Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet (s.a.w.) with the latest discoveries of modern science. There is an article in the July 2007 edition of Discover magazine on “Science and Islam” that mirrors exactly this inclination on the part of some Muslim scientists. More farsighted scholars such as Osman Bakar, however, understand that for religion to be the true guidance for man, verses have to be understood as symbols representing higher ontological truth, which manifest itself in the realm of becoming and contingencies more or less like the translation from one language to another. Sufis are particularly adept at providing these allegorical and deeper meaning of the message of religion and only by collaborating with them that any genuine pursuit of Islamic system (understood here not as the “correct” system but a genuine commitment to Islamic principles would culminate in that system) can be found – something which fundamentalists usually have a problem with.

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4. zaki says:

   August 17, 2007 at 2:38 pm

   honestly, I think mawi is still quite a good influence to malaysian or malay..

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