Syekh Abdul Karim Amrullah (Haji Rasul)
Indonesian Muslim scholar, educator and reformist leader (1879-1945); one of the pioneers of the reform movement in the Minangkabau region of West Sumatra. In his youth he was known as Muhammad Rasul, and after his return from the pilgrimage he became famous under the name Haji Rasul . Hamka, who wrote his biography, was his son. He was born on 10 February 1879 at Sungai Batang in the Minangkabau region. His father, Shaykh Muhammad Amrullah, was a Naqshbandi shaykh. Like the children of many scholarly families, in reaction to the Dutch colonial administration he studied not in colonial schools but in institutions giving traditional religious education, learning the Qur'an, religious subjects and Arabic. At fifteen he went to Mecca to further his studies. Together with Indonesians who would later champion a reformist understanding of religion in Sumatra, such as Muhammad Jamil Jambek and Muhammad Tahir Jalaluddin of Minangkabau origin, he became a pupil of the Minangkabau scholar Shaykh Ahmad Khatib , who at that time also served as an imam of the Masjid al-Haram. He also studied with teachers of Malay and Arab origin such as Abdullah Jamiuddin, Uthman Sarawaki, Hamid Jiddawi and Sa'id Yamani. In 1901 he returned home; in 1903 he went to Mecca again and began teaching in his house in the Shamiyya quarter. Among his students were Indonesians such as Ibrahim b. Musa Parabek and Muhammad Zaim Simabur. When his students multiplied, his teacher Ahmad Khatib asked him to teach in the Masjid al-Haram; when the imams of Arab origin objected, he continued teaching in a house near the Haram. At this time he lost his wife and newborn child. After performing the pilgrimage in 1906 he returned to Sumatra, teaching first at Maninjau and then at the Surau Jembatan Besi in Padang Panjang. Through his work the Surau Jembatan Besi, a traditional institution, became a modern educational institution; renamed Sumatra Thawalib in 1918, the school extended its influence as far as South Tapanuli and the west coast of Aceh. After his father's death in 1907 he strove to reform the Naqshbandi practices that he believed had become corrupted over time. While his teacher in Mecca, Ahmad Khatib, was more decisive in shaping his religious views, he is also held to have known the views of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and M. Rashid Rida. He became the Sumatran representative of the reformist journal al-Imam , printed in Singapore; when it closed in 1909 he and his friend Haji Abdullah Ahmad began publishing, from 1 April 1911, the journal al-Munir in Padang along the same line. The journal opened an open debate in Minangkabau between the traditional scholars known as the "old generation" and the reformist "young generation"; it found readers in Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, Singapore and the Malay peninsula. Kiai Haji Ahmad Dahlan, founder of the Muhammadiyah, became its representative in Yogyakarta. For lack of resources the journal could appear only until 1915. In 1919 he played an active part in founding the Union of Islamic Religious Teachers (Persatuan Guru-Guru Agama Islam). On his second visit to Java in 1925 he met Haji Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, leader of the Sarekat Islam, and Kiai Haji Ahmad Dahlan; on his return he founded a religious organization called Sandi Aman in his home village of Sungai Batang. He later turned it into the West Sumatra branch of the Muhammadiyah, which soon became the largest and most influential religious organization of the region. In 1926, together with Abdullah Ahmad, he attended the World Islamic Congress held in Cairo to discuss the question of the caliphate; after speeches that won acclaim, a doctorate in the religious sciences was conferred on them on the proposal of a commission that included Shaykh Abd al-Aziz al-Tha'alibi. Though keeping away from active politics, he criticized the colonial government's education policies and encouraged the opening of modern private schools; he supported the Normal Islam college opened in Padang in 1931. In 1925 he prevented the passage of a law placing religious teachers under the supervision of local authorities, and in 1932 he led the opposition to the law known as the "Wild Schools Ordinance". The Dutch administration interrogated him twelve times and arrested him several times; finally, on 12 January 1941, he was arrested and exiled to Sukabumi in West Java. Freed with the Japanese occupation, he settled in Jakarta with his family and was appointed adviser to the Centre of the People's Power (Putera) and the Office of Religious Affairs set up by the Japanese administration. In this period he objected to the Japanese bow from a standing position called saikeirei , on the grounds that it resembled the ruku' of prayer, and wrote an article entitled "Hanna Allah" (to God alone) to show that it was contrary to Islam. While still serving as adviser to the Office of Islamic Affairs he died in Jakarta on 2 June 1945 and was buried there in the Pemakaman Umum Karet cemetery . His Circle of Influence — The Sumatra Thawalib school he built and the student organization founded under the same name played an important role in the religious and political developments of the region until the end of the colonial period. When his standing in the scholarly circles of West Sumatra and Indonesia rose with the doctorate, he worked with the other teachers of the young generation to develop the Muhammadiyah and spread his reformist views. Throughout the 1920s he struggled against the supporters of communism and socialism who were influential at Sumatra Thawalib, but he did not prevail against the young teachers of his own school who supported Islamic socialism. His Poetry and Sufi Line — While accepting the importance of Sufism, he opposed various practices of the Naqshbandiyya influential in Minangkabau: he held that rabita has no place in Islam, that regarding shaykhs as intermediaries between God and people is equivalent to associating partners with God, and that works such as Tanbih al-ghafilin , Durrat al-wa'izin and Nuzhat al-majalis are full of baseless reports. He rejected the understanding in the line of wahdat al-wujud , very influential in Indonesia in the early periods, and found al-Ghazali's moderate Sufism more reasonable. Opposing the adat practice in Minangkabau by which only daughters inherited, he demanded that inheritance be divided according to the rules of fara'id . He criticized sectarian bigotry and blind imitation, and said that the gate of ijtihad is open until the Day of Judgement. He considered practices such as wearing amulets, magic, the talqin at the graveside, delivering sermons only in Arabic and holding feasts in memory of the dead to be innovations. His Works — Twenty-seven books by him are recorded. His first book, Izhar asatir al-mudillin (1906), contains his criticism of polytheism and of Sufism. 'Umdat al-anam fi 'ilm al-kalam (1908) deals with the twenty attributes of God and with divine unity; Riqab al-mulhidin (1910) concerns the Naqshbandi practices in Minangkabau. Sulal al-usul (1914) is on the principles of jurisprudence and al-Ifsah (1919) on marriage; al-Burhan (1922) is a commentary on the last part of the Qur'an. In al-Qawl al-sahih he examines sound and fabricated reports; Cermin Terus (1929) contains his views on women. al-Kawakib al-durriyya (1940) criticizes a scholar who forbade delivering the Friday sermon in Indonesian. His most important work on legal theory, Pengantar Usul Fiqh (1966), was published by his son Hamka.