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This study discusses the pessimistic criticism on church priests in Sayyid Qutub’s travelogue entitled Amrika Allati Raytu or its English translation, The America I Have Seen: In the Scale of Human Values. Sayyid Qutb was a modern Arab traveler and a great Islamic thinker. His ideology of thoughts has always been used as reference to help resurrect the spirit of the 20th century Muslim communities that have been colonized by Western powers. Sayyid Qutb spent his life by constantly producing writings for the use of Muslims. Each of his writings contains implicit meanings that need to be further explored, especially his travelogue which receives less attention than his other writings. Uniquely, this travelogue tells a lot about the negative side of American society from a religious point of view focusing on the personality and role of the priest in church. Therefore, this study will analyze the pessimistic criticism by using the theory of othering. This study is qualitative in nature using content analysis and documentation methods. It is hoped that this study can provide a new perspective in Arabic literature and Islamic travel literature especially from the aspect of religious criticism. The findings prove that Sayyid Qutb’s pessimistic criticism of 20th century church priests in the United States have implicit meanings as effort to defend Egyptian society from continuing to drift in blind admiration for Western ideology that was widespread at the time. With his status as an Islamic fighter in Egypt, the effort is seen as a fuel for the Islamic spirit for his countrymen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of contemporary Salafi school in the mainstream Muslims is intended to make the Ahl al-Salaf as the primary models of faith and to return the related problems of faith according to the path taken by the companions and tabi'in, which had been quoted only from the al-Quran and al-Sunnah. These stances left great influences on their method of interpretations upon the Quranic verses including the Ayat al-Sifat (verses on Divine Attributes) and condemning others out of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah. Therefore this research is intended to identify responses of Muslim figures and scholars against the Contemporary Salafi School's stances and their method of interpretations on Ayat al-Sifat. In addition, this research is also intended to explain the views of the majority of scholars on the conceptual and methods of interpretation of Ayat al-Sifat adopted by the Ahl al- Sunnah wa al-Jama'ah. The paper is produced with the synthesization of content analysis that focuses on published works by selected Contemporary Salafi school figures and other muslim scholars and also relevant contemporary researchers in relation to these issues of Ayat al-Sifat and its methods of interpretations. The results of this research found that most scholars do not accept the method of literal interpretations on Ayat al-Sifat proclaimed by Contemporary Salafi School due to the existence of two catogeries of the Quranic verses, which are known as Wadih Jalli and Khafi Mutashabih or Mutashabih al-Sifat. In certain cases, the method of 'ta'wil' is highly needed to clarify the meaning of Ayat al-Sifat so easily understood by human intellect and at the same time to purify Allah the almighty from signs of weaknesses and resemblance. The extreme acts from Contemporary Salafi School in defending their methods of interpretations make them an 'exclusive' school which separated themselves from other muslims, and limit the diversity of the methods of interpretations enabled by the majority of mufassirin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religionswissenschaft or The Science of Comparative Religion is a field of knowledge and initiated by Islamic scholars and Muslims community. This fact is not strange because Qur'an and Sunnah promoting such idea. Tradition and legacy of the Qur'an and the Sunnah in exposing the incoherence of the other religions than Islam has been propagated by the Islamic scholars and Muslim intellectuals. Among the notable works and the most influential on Religionswissenschaft, especially in Muslim-Christian debate and dialogue is Izhar al-Haqq, authored by Sheikh Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi (d. 1308H). This article will focus on the following issues that is the critical approach of Syeikh Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi in Izhar al-Haqq; his criticisms on the Bible, and the discussion on the doctrine of Trinity. The methodology has been applied in this study is the content analysis and comparison of beliefs. Finally, this article concludes that Syeikh Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi's critical approach in exposing the contradictions and confusion existed in Christianity, particularly in the Bible, is unique in Religionswissenschaft's discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]