HAMKA (1908-1981): HAPPINESS IN THE VIEW OF MODERN MYSTICISM

Islam in Indonesia has established the well-respected figures in both the national and international levels. These figures have been spreading the ideas of charities in the form of thoughts, ideas, concepts, and explanations concerning the matters of faith and general culture as the pearl materials to be continues assessment. One of the prominent figures is Dr. Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah (Hamka). With the concept of Modern Sufism, the Islamic world in Asia is so impressed with what it conveys. His thoughts about happiness life can color the world of Islamic thought that loaded with criticism and ideas to build. 
     So many opinions about happiness according to those righteous, such as Ibn Khaldun who argued that: “happiness is the submissive and obedient to follow Allah and moral provisions”, Imam Al-Ghazali stated that: “The true happiness and pleasure is when a person can remember Allah”, and a poet, a very well known in the development of Islamic religion, Zaid bin Tsabit said: “a happy man is who has gained the safe from human interference when evening and morning”. In the statement above, comes to mind, is mysticism in Islam is only a play on words that saves the soul?. This is where the science of Sufism began to arise, it could be thought that the happiness in Islamic Mysticism can be compared with Theological and Philosophical Science. On the other hand, the scope of mysticism in Islam cannot be separated from ambiguity. From the every beginning, the mystics strictly distinguished between the true Sufi, the mutasawwif who aspires at reaching a higher spiritual level, and the mustawif, the man who pretends to be a mystic, but is a useless, even dangerous, intruder. Here Ali bin ‘Utsman Al-Hujwiry stressed that the spiritual path is "difficult to pass except by those who are created for that purpose".
     Modern mysticism which emphasized Hamka in his works, trying to renew the mysticism from the reach of ambiguous comprehension both in terms of doctrine and practice, as an adjunct, by considering the orientalist writings on classical mysticism tauhid, expected to be towards the happiness that considered for a mysticism as a spiritual path. In understanding the problem of mysticism, Islam is the true path of happiness, the problem is someone simply lets the current Islam which is understood to have been divided into sects and the practice of worship that they made and believed each to practiced, so that in fact they themselves have been far from major sources Al-Qur'an and As-Sunnah. As an ‘ulama modernist mujaddid which againsts such things, it can be said, the work of Hamka mysticism is the purification. In another view, mysticism according to Hamka is a renewal or reform of traditional mysticism which tends to bring the cause of heresies, superstition, and shirk on the grounds for achieving the happiness.
     Moreover, importance of this research is the expected opening of the veil of pure truth of Islam through the so-called spiritual path which has been write down by scholars thought such Hamka with modern mysticism. Muslims are expected to feel the happiness that accompanied with the belief of the true tauhid. Importantly, the point of the happiness of the people here are the open views of the ultimate goal in life, avoid conflicts, and build human advancement through self-purification that contained in the happiness teachings of mysticism in Islam.

References: 

- Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975, 20.

- Hamka, Tasauf Moderen, PT. Pusataka Panjimas, Jakarta, Published by Pustaka Nasional Pte Ltd Singapore, 1997, 21.   

- www.scribd.com/doc/16378216/tokoh-hamka