Nurcholish Madjis’s Quran-Based ... Muh. Tasrif 104 JOURNAL OF ISLAM AND SCIENCE Volume 03 Number 01, June 2016 NURCHOLISH MADJID’S QURAN-BASED CONCEPT OF CRITICAL PLURALISM Muh. Tasrif STAIN Ponorogo Jl. Pramuka 156 Ponorogo East Java muhtasrif@yahoo.com Abstract: Pluralism is one theme of Islamic thought of Nurcholish widely debated by Indonesian Muslims. Nurcholish built his thought by referring to verses of the Quran. Nurcholish’s thought had sparked sharp controversy. In one hand, Nurcholish is regarded as a public figure who can provide the basics of the remedies for Indonesian nation which is religiously and culturally plural. On other hand, Nurcholish is a prominent denier and destroyer of Islamic theology. Based on the background, this article explores the socio-historical background of Nurcholish’s support on the concept of pluralism, its fundamental structures, its Quranic bases, and its distinctiveness compared to ideas of other thinkers. Pluralism according to Nurcholish is understood as a value system which looks positively at plural realities and acts also positively on the basis of the realities. Pluralism in Nurcholish’s explanation includes notion of pluralism in many fields of studies: cosmological-ontological, social, cultural, political, and religious. Pluralism of Nurcholish rests on beliefs about God and human. Two basic beliefs that become foundations of Nurcholish’s concept of pluralism have implications to uniqueness of his concept of religious pluralism. Introduction One of the themes of Islamic thought of Nurcholish Madjid (1939-2005) (called Nurcholish afterwards) widely debated by Indonesian Muslims is pluralism. As a nemomodernist Muslim thinker, Nurcholish built his thought of pluralism by referring to the verses of the Quran. With reference to Q.S. al-Hujurât (49): 13, he defines pluralism as “a system of values which looks pluralism itself positively and optimistically, accepts it as a reality and does brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by E-Jurnal UIN (Universitas Islam Negeri) Alauddin Makassar