Focusing on Islamic Leadership Crisis

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Ismatillah A. Nu’ad*

Bassam Tibi, a liberal Moslem from Lebanon who lives in German said that Islamic civilization was undergoing a disconnection with the modern world in his first published book, The Crisis of Modern Islam (1989). When modernism surrounded the world from all direction, the Moslems were unable to face it, most were not responsive with the modernism, trying to avoid it which eventually lead to resistance. That is why Tibi wrote that Islam was having a crisis for alienating modernism instead of competing to give birth to modernism through Islamic Culture for the progressing era.

When Tibi wrote his book, Islam was having identity crisis toward modernism and still growing until today. A number of ‘Islamic Leaders’s who appear in international media, such as Saddam Hussein (deseased), Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Palestinian Hamas, Jemaat Islam and Taliban leaders, are said to be “supporting terrorism” especially to the western countries.

They are opposing the West, trying to separate the western for having too many cultural differences with Islam. Those leaders are also sceptical with the modernism from the western which they thought to be degradations to humanism and for that they are challenging the domination of the western civilization and sympathized by the Islamic world.

They have their own place in the Moslems heart, becoming the role model for their principal in seeing the western culture. Thus this is the source of the crisis for they only given the stereotype from their leader which mislead them into believing that the western culture cannot be an equal partner in positive dialogue, which Tariq Ramadhan, the grandchild of Hassan al-Banna, wrote in his book Future of Muslim (2006) as “coexistancial theology”, instead of accepting the western culture as a fact so they can create a harmonic relationship for the benefit of both cultures.

Today Moslem was in the absent of leader such as Muhammad Khatami who once suggested the idea of dialogue between cultures which promoted to a mature relationship with the western. Khatami values U.S as a great culture which can accommodate various ethnicity, with multicultural civilization, and able to put differences to be solve together and became an advance country. This view is critical for Moslem to see the real western civilization.

The West with its advancement and spirit can be studied, researched, and the most important to be practiced in Islamic world, just like in Islam golden age when the West embraced the Islam civilization and put in practice to create what they are not.

This is the spirit which has to be embraced but instead a dangerous symptom has appeared, Moslem now are very consumerist which made them ready to accept the result of modernism but not ready to put it in practice for Islam advancement. Thus the new generation of Islam is trapped in modernism.

In the other hand, the older generation tends to be lost in apology. They are very resistant to the modern world which made them to actualize their resistance in making and defending their apologies. They believe that after their life in the world come objective and that life itself is not the objective. To live in this world is just for a moment or a bridge to the next world in for eternity. They are sceptical to the world and often they avoid the responsibility to develop Islam.

Moslem has to be the ambassador for oneself or for other people, to prove that the negative stereotype about Islam comes not from the source of Islam teaching but more to personal mistakes which must not be accepted as reference. They have to safe the Islam world from this leadership crisis; it is time for Moslem to be the leader for oneself which hopefully can be the next leader to be the next role model. Isn’t it leadership an important in Islam? For with leadership we can be directed either positively or negatively.

Ismatillah A. Nu’ad, author of Progressive Fundamentalism: Toward Islamic World New Order (Indonesian Edition), lives in Jakarta, Indonesia.