- Artikel panjang ini(10+ helaian) ditulis pada bulan Disember 2010,merupakan percubaan pertama saya untuk mencoretkan ide-ide dan pandangan dalam bentuk kertas kerja akademik.Banyak kelemahan dan kelonggaran dari segi penyusunan dan penyampaian,namun beberapa perkara di dalamnya masih boleh di ambil pengajaran.-The President.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Ketuanan Melayu:Krisis dan hakikat yang tersembunyi
Friday, December 9, 2011
The very foundation of all question
Kierkegaard was a young student of philosophy and theology at the time he wrote these words in his diary.Since then he delved into an intellectual voyage dealing with philosophical wonders,aiming solely to find the Truth,but not simple empirical truth,factual knowledge,but for the truth which there wasn't yet known to him,a sort of inner truth,a spiritual ideal for which he could live and die for.
His attempt,weather we noticed it or not,is an universal attempt by mere thinking creatures as ours,named human.This ultimate question lies deep within the spiritual dimension of any human being,as God had embedded this as a remarks of His existence and Might.Some might try to avoid asking this question,refusing to pay attention to their inner cry for such meaning of living a life and think that by denying those fact would grant him FREEDOM but those attitude only lead him to a greater inner suffering and depression.This question will haunt them till they are ready to embrace it.
Who am I?What is life?What happen after I died?Who created me?Any ignorance, however great, could be forgiven except for man to be ignorant about the secret of his existence, his aim in life and what will be his outcome after death.
"Human by definition are in need,we need foods,drinks,shelter,and answers to this very basic question of our life"-Tariq Ramadan.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
The Age of Confusion/Zaman Kekeliruan.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Islam and Liberal Democracy: The Challenge Of Secularization
Abdou Filali-Ansary, "Islam and Liberal Democracy: The Challenge Of Secularization," Journal of Democracy 7.2 (1996) 76-80
Robin Wright and Bernard Lewis both seem to address the question of whether there is an "Islamic Reformation" going on now, and if there is, what content, direction, and influence it is likely to have. The raising of this question betokens an important shift in the way that Western observers view the Islamic world. Wright and Lewis implicitly acknowledge that behind the confrontations and violence that we witness today in many Muslim societies, there lies a situation marked by some kind of pluralism and opposition of ideas. In other words, there is not merely a fight, but a debate. To recognize this is already to take a giant step away from the familiar Western academic and journalistic stereotypes of Muslim societies as places overwhelmed by religious fanaticism, rejection of "the other," and crises of identity.
The dramatic importance of the question under discussion should need no emphasis: Islam, one of the major world religions, may be living through a turning point in its history, one that will bring it face-to-face with the challenges of the human condition at the end of the twentieth century.
Bernard Lewis proceeds according to his well-known "macrohistorical" approach. He casts his gaze across large spans of history, constitutive elements of Islamic faith, and some features of Middle Eastern languages in order to construct a grand schema that explains what is happening now and illuminates its links with the mainstream of Islamic (and also Middle Eastern) history. He draws on a larger arsenal of disciplines (history, theology, linguistics) than does Wright, and discusses a greater variety of subjects (religious beliefs, historical facts, [End Page 76] linguistic usages and concepts) in order to create a highly seductive synthesis of his own.
While Lewis acknowledges that the term "Islam" can be confusing, he himself is not always sufficiently careful in his use of it. He goes back and forth from Islam as a religion to Islam as a historical civilization, from detailed observations to general remarks. He seems to be guided by the "inner logics" that he sees lurking behind the observed data, molding attitudes, behaviors, and ways of understanding. His conclusions about the present situation point to a clash of such logics, one that pits Muslim communities against their Western counterparts. These inner logics are what he considers to be the true core of observed reality; facts, which appear on the surface, manifest the core imperfectly, much as the shadows that flicker on the wall of Plato's cave provide only a crude representation of the realities that give them shape.
Robin Wright, in contrast, adopts an approach at loggerheads with the one prevailing in specialized academic circles. She prefers to try to understand the debate by "listening" to two of its key participants: Iranian philosopher Abdul Karim Soroush and Tunisian political leader Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi. Wright assumes that ideas, not conscious or unconscious determinisms, rule human societies, which simply cannot be understood through external observation or historical reconstruction alone. This, it would seem, is why she has chosen, among living Muslim thinkers, to discuss two prominent and highly controversial figures, each of whom is thought to exert a large (and in all likelihood growing) influence on thoughtful people in the Muslim world.


