Reform in Stencil and Sermon: K.H. Mohammad Miskun Asy-Syatibi and Islamic Thought in Garut, West Java, 1979–1991

Abstract

This article examines the Islamic thought of K.H. Mohammad Miskun Asy-Syatibi (1931–2006), a Muhammadiyah preacher, jurist-organizer, and founding director of the Darul Arqam pesantren in Garut, West Java, through the writings he produced between 1979 and 1991. Regional ulama of the New Order era are usually studied as institution builders or charismatic orators; their texts, circulated as stencilled booklets and sermon scripts, have seldom been treated as intellectual sources. Drawing on twenty-five works located in family, pesantren, and alumni holdings, recordings of his lectures, and interviews with two of his sons and a former student, the article applies the historical method—heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation informed by Arthur O. Lovejoy’s history of ideas, and chronological–thematic narration—to reconstruct his formation and to trace the continuity and change of his ideas. It argues that Miskun’s writings form a coherent project of practical tawhid, in which purification of belief and heart, disciplined ethical conduct, and organizational commitment are presented as mutually dependent, and that from the mid-1980s this project widened into a morally critical yet non-oppositional engagement with state-led development. The study contributes the first documented inventory of Miskun’s writings and a reading of regional ulama literature as an archive of modernist-reformist thought in vernacular registers.