Antara Sab’iyah dan Ghulat: Menakar Ekstremitas Sekte-sekte Shi’ah Melalui Konsep Imamah
Abstract: Extremist discourse
is found within the Shi’ite community just as it is also found within the
Sunnite group. Within the former, the existence of the sectarian groups –it may
be argued- serves as the raison d’ėtre of extremism. These groups emerged first
and foremost as a result of the diverging and somewhat conflicting views on the
notion of Imāmah; a notion that always forms part and parcel of the Shi’i
tenet. This is in addition to the fact that they emerge as a logical result of
the doctrinal disparity that members of these group hold on various issues. It
is out of these differences however, that the modulation of Shi’ism into the
moderates and the extremists -that is the right and the misled Shi’ism as it
were- comes into being. What this implies is that that kind of modulation is
not simply about the classification and social identification of Shi’ism. It is
also about the categorical stigmatization of members of the group toward each
other. Hence, the competing truth-claim among them ends up in a seemingly
endless political conflict. In this, those who are judged misled such as the
Shi’ah Sab’iyah, are often called the “ghulat”. Nonetheless, some scholars
argue that the identification of this group as “ghulat” is not due to its
misleading tenet, but because of its doctrinal extremism. The more extreme a
group becomes, the more misled it is. To me however, this later view is
problematic simply because there is no a standardized measure of who is misled
and who is not. Vis-à-vis this problem, this paper is destined to investigate
the epistemological significance of the word “misleading” that the Shi’ah
Sab’iyah is associated with, and is also interested to find out to what extent
this group may be rightly called extremist. All this will be done through the
serious study on the central tenet of Shi’ism, namely imāmah.
Keywords: Shi’ah, sect,
doctrine, imāmah, extremism, misled
Penulis: Fawaizul Umam
Kode Jurnal: jpperadabanislamdd080004
