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This book is about the concepts of Jih d, Shar ah and Sufism as they have been understood by Muslims in the course of history and by the Malay people in particular. The focus is on the works of the two great Muslim scholars in the Malay world in the 17-18th centuries, Sheikh Yusuf al Maqassary and Sheikh Dawud al-Fatani. The background of the book is based on concern about the misunderstanding of the concepts of Jih d, Shar ah and Sufism by some Western scholars, some non-Muslims and even Muslims themselves. Since most of the existing studies of these three concept focus on the Middle East as the origin of Islam. This book instead will focus on the Malays-Indonesian Archipelago. Another reason is that many Muslim scholars in Indonesia turn to non-Indonesian Muslim scholars to guide their teaching and learning discourse. The phenomenon also gives the impression that Muslim Malay scholars in the past have made no contributions to the present Islamic discourse. The book argues that among Malay Muslim scholars, the exemplars of Muslim scholars who understood the concept of Islamic teachings as a whole can be found in the figures of Yusuf al Maqassary and Dawud al-Fatani.

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Lukmanul Hakim Darusman now is a free lance consultant for the research of Social and Religious Development, Department of religious affairs, the Republic of Indonesia. He completed his PhD from the Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University, ACT 2601, Canberra, Australia, 2008.

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