JIL English Edition

Veiling can be a form of oppression if it is imposed by the authority, but it can be liberating if it is worn out of one’s personal choice and conscience. Compulsory veiling will only lead to a hypocrite religiosity, put the burden of social order unfairly on women’s shoulders, and divert people’s attention from the more important task of the state such as providing social justice and welfare.

There is not much use of forcing somebody to embrace a religion if it is not followed by his or her belief and conviction. Religion when forced, according to Jawdat Sa’id, is same as forced love. “With compulsion there is no religion, as much as with compulsion there is no love”. A true embracement of religion must be followed by a deep conviction for the teachings of that particular religion. Moreover, every person has the right to choose whether to believe or not to believe. The Prophet once offered one of his female slaves, Rayhanah binti Zaid, to convert to Islam.Yet Rayhanah preferred Judaism. The Prophet would not be angry with Rayhanah. And finally she herself decided to embrace Islam.This is an example. Even as a master, the Prophet would not force his slave to embrace religion which he follows himself.

With sufficient basis of Islamic knowledge, Gus Dur carried out dynamization of Islamic thought. He also sharply criticized the stagnation of Islamic thought. Gus Dur viewed that ushul fiqh, which is historically a creative process to dynamize the Islamic jurisprudence, has developed into a very normative selection tools that castrates human’s creativity. As a result, Muslims turn to be narrow-minded and very exclusive. Muslims become a burden for the resurgence of Islamic civilization. The legal decision-making (istinbath) cannot take place anymore because the Muslim clerics have been trapped in the old formulation of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). They used to reject various attempts to rearrange the Islamic jurisprudence.

Regardless of the assumption of Islam being too much denial or more accepting to homosexuals compared to Christianity, this writing is not intended to discuss religion and sexuality in such a normative way. It is not about to create a new theology, but rather to obtain a close-comprehensive understanding on the discourse of homosexuality based on Quranic and Biblical reading, particularly on verses that are closely related to the issue.

The debate between the secular and religious women groups heightened the controversy around Islamic feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has undergone a radical shift from a secular monarchy toward a Shia Islamic theocracy. Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran established the rule of a clerical caste (velayat-e faghih) whose authority over social-political-religious system is absolute, wherein they enforced a kind of fundamentalist Islamism in both ideational and behavioral level. This is the reason why an extreme polarization occurs among Iranian scholars and activists in terms of their methodology and strategy for achieving gender equality and justice in the context of Islamic Republic.

“...a distinction betweenGod and what one sees deep inside his heart and knows there is a god. Indeed, it would be difficult to know that our god is really God.”

“Ulil emphasized his optimism that Indonesia has an opportunity to be the center of Islamic thoughts in the international field. He stated his objection on the result of research conducted by two scholars from Washington about how far Islam has colored Muslim countries. They viewed this from a variety of criteria such as recognition of minority rights, tolerance, pluralism, transparency of government systems, etc. In this research, Indonesia ranked under Malaysia. According Ulil, the rank of Indonesia should be much more above Malaysia, at least if we look at various developments that we have today. In addition, Ulil stressed his belief by quoting Fazlur Rahman’s statement that the future of the Islamic world actually exists in Indonesia, not in Saudi Arabia. ”

Many women in the Middle Eastern countries endure heavy discrimination in their lives. Women do not live with the same rights like men. A Jordanian columnist Jihad Alawanah affirmed that women in the Middle Eastern countries are like refugees. They always expect political asylum from the men. First is from their fathers, and then from their husbands.

“When the word ‘renewal’ is associated with Islam, the renewal should not be Islam as a religion nor the Qur’an as a sacred book, but rather the renewal of the interpretation on both because a human interpretation of the Qur’an is not the Qur’an itself. It is just an interpretation upon it. Thus, changes of the interpretation of the Qur’an and of the religion are still possible. If the Qur’an is absolutely true, its interpretation still contains a lot of possibilities, including the possibility of mistakes. For that reason, as a product of Qur’anic interpretation, the truth of an interpretation is relative. “

Thus, for Muslims themselves, celebrating Christmas is really to celebrate the birthday of a messenger of God to be believed, Isa al-Masih, who was symbolically born in December 25th. As the implication of this faith to the Jesus, Muslims should also be allowed to celebrate the birth of Jesus and other prophets before Muhammad PBUH. Jesus is not only owned by Christian communally but also by all who believe in him. The Great figures such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad do not belong to certain groups. Those figures can be examples and inspiration for anyone.