Fatwa KH. Ahmad Rifai Kalisalak tentang Opium dan Rokok di Jawa (Fatwa of KH. Ahmad Rifai Kalisalak on Opium and Smoking in the 19th Century Java)

The article explores the admonition and advice (read: legal opinion) of Ahmad Rifai on opium and smoking in a manuscript entitled Bahs al-‘Iftâ’ (Discussion of Fatwa). The discussion will be limited to this fatwa for several reasons. First, the fatwa is the most interesting issue compared to the other themes and topics found in the manuscript. Most of themes and topics pertain merely to the ritual issues and to advice about the ways things should be done, for example, how to conduct a pilgrimage, prayer, and fasting, on the one hand, and to the tasawuf issues, such as taubat, tawakkal, mujâhadah, and riyâ’, on the other hand. Second, the fatwa is more comprehensive, even though short, thus enabling a deeper investigation of the selected fatwa. The article will use the philology, history, and legal methods. First, it will provide the transliteration from Pegon (Javanese in Arabic character) into Latin character and translation from Javanese into Indonesian as a philological work. Then, the author will analyze the writing using a historical approach to place the text in its contexts, and to provide a historical background for the fatwa. Eventually, the author will discuss the fatwa from a legal perspective. The paper seeks to answer the questions: What is the legal opinion of Ahmad Rifai on opium and smoking? What circumstances drove him to issue such legal opinion? What are the distinctions of his fatwa that differ from other ulama? Which and what methods did Rifai use in issuing the above mentioned fatwa? The main contribution of this article is first to provide the original text of KH. Ahmad Rifai Kalisalak on smoking and opium. Second, the article reveals that he was the only ulama concerned with the issue of smoking and opium in the 19th Century Java.