As I mentioned above...

As I mentioned above, culture is very important because it can be used as means of internalizing modern Islamic ideas into societies, as well as of reflecting religious awareness upon them. Up to now Muhammadiyah ’s followers’ attitudes toward tradition is still far from monolithic because they have not able to formulate their anti-TBC movement objectively and empirically in various socio-cultural contexts (Kuntowijoyo, 1991: 269).

In the view of Kuntowijoyo (1995: 86-87), the Muhammadiyah’s classical view of anti-TBC is based on rational thinking (deductive reasoning) and should be supplemented with inductive reasoning based on empiric and historic facts. I agree with his idea to reform the classical view of anti-TBC. Accordingly Fazlur Rahman, the conceptualist of neo-modern Islam, believes that it is not taboo for reinterpreting theology as it is a result of thinking efforts.

Moreover the formulation of theology often took shape with political interests in a matter of worldly life, besides its limitation by given a time and space. After observing the dialectical approach within Muhammadiyah I would like to make note of Sufi st matters amongst its followers. As I mention above that Muhammadiyah considered Sufi beliefs to be malpractices related to theology, so it is necessary to shed light on it here.

Recently they try to study and accept Sufi sm as an opposite attitude into Muhammadiyah mainstream. It is of course coincidental with their inclusive approach to further propel their modern Islamic ideas. However it may be that there are some important events which draw Muhammadiyah into this path of Sufi sm Then I like to analyze the dialectical approach to Sufi sm in order to better understand religious phenomenon within a different time and space.

By doing so I will address some related questions as to why they just recently adopted Sufi sm Is it because of different situation s and condition s between the lapsing time? Does recent Sufi sm differ from the old Sufi sm ? What are the similarities the old Sufi sm and recent Sufi sm ? Here I would like to analyze Muhammadiyah’s scholars’ work on Sufism at these different times in order to understand their growing knowledge about Sufism. At first Muhammadiyah was opposed to Sufi malpractices.

More precisely, it did not develop Sufism, but recently it accepts Sufi.