THE RISE OF SALAFISM IN
Many elements discussed above -- DDII, LIPIA, and
study in the
of how one scholar came to occupy a prominent
position in the salafi movement.41 Chamsaha Sofwan,
known now as Abu Nida', was born in 1954 in
Gresik,
madrasah run by the Nahdlatul Ulama organisation
near his home, then continued his education at a
Muhammadiyah teacher training academy in the same
area. Around 1976, he went to the Karangasem
Pesantren in Paciran subdistrict, Lamongan, East
Java. At the time, it was participating in a DDII
program to send some students to remote areas as
religious preachers (muballigh). 42
Abu Nida' was selected to be sent to West
in Darul Falah Pesantren in
where he and other muballighs were trained in
teaching methods, basic agricultural skills, rural
sociology, and Dayak culture.43 The aim was to spend
two years spreading the faith in animist areas of the
interior while providing rudimentary agricultural
extension services. The young missionaries were
confronted not only with a deeply-rooted indigenous
belief system, but also with Christian missionaries
competing for the same souls. Abu Nida' stayed the
two years and left behind a mosque in the village he
was working in as a measure of his accomplishment.
After working for a while as a muballigh at DDII
headquarters in
through DDII to study with salafi teachers at the
Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University in
While there, he helped Ustadz Abdul Wahid at the
DDII office, and since Abdul Wahid was the liaison
between DDII in
organisations in the
range of contacts, particularly among Islamic
funding agencies. It was through the DDII office in
Kuwaiti-based organisation, Jum'iah Ihya at-Turots
al-Islami (Revival of Islamic Heritage Society), at-
41 Much of the information in this section, particularly on the
career of Abu Nida', is based on the research of Drs.
Sabarudin, M.Si, for the State Islamic Institute in
di Yogyakarta", was published in 2000 and made available
to ICG by Dr. Greg Fealy of
42 Sabarudin, op. cit., pp. 35-36.
43 Ibid.
Turots for short, whose representative in
he eventually became.44
After completing his studies in 1985, Abu Nida' left
for the Pakistan-Afghan border to join Jamil
Rahman for three months.45 He returned to
to teach at Pondok Ngruki, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's
pesantren, outside Solo, Central Java.46 In 1986, he
married a Ngruki student and moved to Sleman,
pesantren, Ibnul Qoyim, and began to make a name
for himself as a salafi teacher. He was reportedly
concerned by the extent to which Islam in the
He felt that young people had been lured away from
religion by the negative impact of modernisation, and
existing Islamic organisations lacked any capacity to
cope with these problems.47
Abu Nida''s dakwah activities brought him into close
association with an instructor in the sciences faculty
of the premier academic institution in
then the head of DDII in
Abu Nida' to students, mostly from the science and
technical faculties of Gajah Mada, who were active in
the campus mosque and called themselves Jamaah
Salahudin.48 Students of that group, together with
some of Abu Nida''s fellow alumni from the Middle
East, eventually formed the core of the Indonesian
branch of at-Turots, which was organised in 1988 and
legally established as a foundation (yayasan) in 1994.
In the meantime, however, Abu Nida' and some
campus activists began holding one-month dauroh
sessions at the Ibnul Qoyim Pesantren to propagate
salafi teachings. Members of the dauroh then
formed smaller study circles of ten to fifteen to
44 ICG interview,
presence in
run by Abu Nida' in
Indonesian branch of the Kuwaiti group but it is legally
independent. There is also the at-Turots South
in
directly to
45 Abu Nida' clearly kept in touch with the Afghan
commander, however, because in 1992, more than six years
after he returned from
him to send more Indonesian students to study the salafi
manhaj. Sabarudin, op. cit, p. 43.
46 Concerning this pesantren, see ICG Briefing, Al-Qaeda in
47 Sabarudin, op. cit., p.41.
48 Ibid, p.43.
ICG
proselytise throughout Java and into
Kalimantan.49
Abu Nida' worked closely in all of this with teachers
from the al-Irsyad Pesantren in Tengaran, Salatiga, a
school that since its opening in 1986 had become a
major salafi centre. Its head was a leading salafi
scholar, Yusuf Baisa, and one of its prominent teachers
was Ja'far Umar Thalib, who taught there from the
time he returned from
1989 to 1993. Abu Nida' at the outset also worked
with leading figures of the tarbiyah movement, despite
the misgivings of salafi purists. He was even willing
initially to cooperate with members of Darul Islam, as
long as the aim was to spread salafi principles.
This cooperation was short-lived, and in 1990, a split
took place between Abu Nida' and some of the
Gajah Mada activists. He believed they were getting
too close to the political activism of the Muslim
Brotherhood and the tarbiyah movement, and
straying from the only true objective of purifying the
faith. The split culminated with a struggle between
the two groups for control of a mosque near the
medical faculty of
tarbiyah activists won, and Abu Nida' moved closer
to al-Irsyad.
By the mid-1990s, Abu Nida' and a few others
around him were being criticised by salafi purists for
betraying the movement by themselves becoming
too open to hizbiyyah influence.
0 komentar:
Post a Comment