“Why does Muhammadiyah enthusiastically release fatwas (religious verdicts) lately?” Ask a friend of mine in a milis responding the new fatwa of the Majelis Tarjih and Tajdid (MTT – Council of Legal Affair and Reform) on bank interest. The fatwa was one of Council National Meeting (Munas Tarjih) outcomes in Malang, East Java, 1-4 April 2010. Like previous Muhammadiyah fatwa on banning cigarette, the latest fatwa also stirred up pros and conts.
This brief posting will not address to the pro and cont issues about the fatwa. It rather would like to see beyond the fatwa from theory of modernity noting the phenomena as both the paradox of Muhammadiyah and, in a broader scope, the paradox of modernity.
Many people assume local culture is the symbol of backward, barriers for development and in contrast to modern culture. To be a modern (rational, engaged in secular institutions, and disenchanted of the world) one should drop all that connected to the local. Through their purified wings, world religions in fact involved in negating –or even destroying– local cultures, blaming them as unauthentic and source of heresy.
