قضايا معاصرة في فكر الشيخ محمّد حسبي الصدّيقي من خلال تفسيرَيْه "النور" و"البيان": دراسة تحليلية نقدية

Abstract

This research seeks to explain the thoughts of Muhammad Hasbi Ash-Shiddieqy which are related to Islamic contemporary issues as appeared in his books, Tafsir An-nur and Tafsir Al-Bayan. It is known as well that Muhammad Hasbi was one of the famous Indonesian Muslim scholars and experts in Islamic sciences, particularly in tafsir. The main goals of this research are; 1) to know more about the personality of Muhammad Hasbi and his life, 2) to present his method in interpreting al-Quran, 3) to analyze and critique his thoughts on the following issues; religious freedom, dealing with non-Muslims, gender equality, men’s authority over women, polygamy, hijab, application of sharia law, and principle of shura. The methods used in this research are historical method and analytical method, which help and facilitate the researcher to learn more about Muhammad Hasbi’s life and to analyze his thoughts. Finally, the research has discovered several points as substantial results. Generally, Muhammad Hasbi has the same view with the majority of Muslim scholars on the issues mentioned above, except in some cases, especially in the case of the dealing with non Muslim communities, whereby it is argued that marrying polytheistic women, like Buddhist women or Chinese women is permissible in Islam, the prohibition is only to marry female Arab polytheists who do not have a holy book. He also argued that greeting non-Muslims and replying back their greetings with the Islamic greeting of peace “salam” is not prohibited. In addition, he also disagreed with the majority of scholars on the issue of gender equality; he said that all men and women are created equal, even Adam and Eve, both of them were made from the same element. The other opinion that is contrary to most other scholars is about the legal status of polygamy; he argued that the practice of polygamy in Islam is allowed for emergency only. Actually Muhammad Hasbi was influenced by the thoughts of Muhammad Abduh and his student Rashid Ridha on these issues, which caused him to be different from the majority. Regarding his method in interpreting al-Qur’an he seriously sought to combine both the reasoning (‘aql) and evidence (naql) methods in his books of tafsir. However, the reasoning method eventually was dominant, and it shows us his real character at the same time. Although he was an expert in hadith and and very attentive to it in arguing, he was also famous for the slogan “the freedom of thought” and campaigning people to think logically and critically. Finally, it was also found that he prioritized reasoning (‘aql) over the evidence (naql) in arguing occasionally.