Page 98 - Demo
P. 98


                                    Islam, Democracy and Human Rights in Contemporary Indonesia81be a tough and genuine figure of political, social and religiousmovements. His age did not prevent him from being active inresolving the problems of Muslim societies. Only death stoppedhis activities. We leave, for a while, our discussion on the activismof Natsir and move on to the topic of his intellectual contributionsto religious, social and political life.Natsir%u2019s IntellectualismThroughout his life, Natsir actively made speeches andprolifically wrote articles and essays on various social, political,religious, philosophical and scientific issues. However, this doesnot mean that he can be categorized as a %u201cpure intellectual%u201d,who is usually at a distance from direct involvement in social,religious and political movements. On the contrary, Natsir wasa prominent activist who directly participated in real events.Therefore, his works also cannot be classified as %u201cpurelyintellectual%u201d, resulting from the contemplation of an out-of-reachthin ker. Instead, these are the writings of an activist who usedintellectual activities to resolve empirical problems. For thisreason, Natsir%u2019s published writings are rather characteristicallycompilative and fragmentary. He did not write a unifiedintellectual work focused on a certain theme, such as thosewritten by other prominent Muslim intellectuals.Even though his writings are fragmentary, there is, however,an unbroken intellectual framework in his thought. Thisframework is his metaphysical thought about human beings,the universe and God. He investigates this thought from thedoctrine of tawhid (monotheism), which forms the basis of thewhole of Islamic teachings. Allah is the central core of all
                                
   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102