Japanese higher education interested in Sufism studies

SPs, UIN News Online – The world of Japanese higher education began to look more intensively at Sufism by establishing the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. The Center’s aims are to develop the University’s research on the Middle East and Islam to a global level and to encourage an accurate understanding of Islam in Japan and global communities.

This was conveyed by Professor Tonaga Yasushi when delivering his presentation at the International Graduate Seminar on Sufism in Southeast Asia at the UIN Jakarta Graduate School Auditorium, Monday (02/17/2020).

According to him, the establishment of the center of Sufism studies complemented the attention of the Japanese higher education world towards Islam after Kyoto University has established the Center for Islamic Area Studies in the same department.

The center of Islamic study under the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies itself was opened since 2006. "Then in 2016, we established the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies as the first study center on Sufism in Japan," said Tonaga who also serve as the Director of the Kenan Rifai Center for Sufi Studies.

The establishment of this study center, he continued, is inseparable from the support of universities and Sufism development institutions such as the Institute for Sufi Studies at Üsküdar University and the Kerim Foundation Istanbul. Generally, this study center aims to develop university research on Islam, the Middle East, and the Islamic world itself.

“This is also to encourage an accurate understanding of Islam in Japan by promoting research into Sufism,” he said.

On the same occasion, Tonaga also expressed his hope that he could build a collaborative research on Sufism and various other Islamic disciplines with UIN Jakarta. As a higher education institution of higher in a Muslim-majority country, UIN Jakarta is considered by Tonaga as an important partner in strengthening Sufism studies in the environment of Japanese higher education.

In response, Rector of UIN Jakarta Amany Lubis positively appreciates the Japanese higher education institution attention towards the mystical dimension of Islam. According to Amany, this will further strengthened the intellectual work between the world of Japanese higher education and Indonesia where previously a Japanese scholar, Professor Sachiko Murata, had begun a serious study of this mystical dimension of Islam.

Various academic works from Sachiko Murata's research, she continued, became one of the very popular readings among students of Indonesian Islamic higher institutions. Some of them are The Tao of Islam which is the main reference on gender relations in Islamic thought, The Vision of Islam, and various other works.

“Hopefully this attention can become an important foundation in building a common understanding of the Japanese-Indonesian higher education world in developing Islamic research,” said Rector. (usa/zm/ccp)