Harmonizing Syarī‘ah and Ḥaqīqah: Taimiyyan Epistemological Resonances in Hamka’s Reconstruction of Tasawuf Modern
Abstract
Studies of Hamka’s Sufism routinely list Ibn Taimiyyah among his influences, yet the relationship has been asserted rather than demonstrated. This article examines how, and on what evidentiary basis, Taimiyyan concerns shape Hamka’s reconstruction of tasawuf. It reads Hamka’s Tasauf Moderen (1939), Perkembangan Tasauf dari Abad ke Abad (1952), later republished with his 1958 inaugural lecture as Tasauf: Perkembangan dan Pemurniannya, and Teguran Suci dan Jujur (1958) alongside Ibn Taimiyyah’s al-‘Ubūdiyyah, al-Furqān, Qā‘idah Jalīlah and Majmū‘ al-Fatāwā, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah’s Madārij al-Sālikīn, Zād al-Ma‘ād and al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib. Using thematic coding and a four-level evidentiary scale adapted from Quentin Skinner’s criteria for influence, the study finds that Hamka refers explicitly to Ibn Taimiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim, names Madārij al-Sālikīn, al-Wābil al-Ṣayyib and Ighāthat al-Lahfān, and uses Zād al-Ma‘ād against spiritual quietism. Convergence appears in four domains: the critique of wujūdiyyah, the volitional reading of fanā’, the critique of mediated spiritual authority, and the conceptions of zuhd and tawakkul. Explicit reference supports the criterion of sainthood and the anti-quietist argument; the other convergences are mediated receptions, structural affinities, or parallel developments shaped by the Minangkabau Kaum Muda, al-Manār reformism, and al-Ghazālī’s ethics, which remains the architecture of Tasauf Moderen. The article argues that Hamka rearticulated a Taimiyyan epistemology of spiritual validation, in which syarī‘ah is the criterion of ḥaqīqah, largely through Ibn al-Qayyim. It offers a graded model for studying Ibn Taimiyyah’s reception in Southeast Asia and complicates the binary between Salafi reformism and Sufism.
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