Abstrack:
Wahid understood that the Muslims had difficulties dealing with the issue of modern system of knowledge as the product of the Western civilization, however, he did not agree with Samuel P. Huntington?s thesis on the clash of civilization between Islam and the West. This was due to Wahid believing in the cosmopolitan nature of Islamic civilization which has the ability to absorb any sciences of other civilizations and to suit them with Islamic cosmology, namely spirituality. Moreover, both Islamic and Western civilizations share the same root of Hellenic civilization. Accordingly, Wahid tried to incorporate the development of modern sciences and philosophy into the Fiqh paradigm as he tried to find a balance between the normative aspect of the religion and the freedom of thinking in matters of secular affairs. This implies that he recognized the double truth (haqiqa almuzdawaja) that manifest into religious knowledge (based on the heart) and secular sciences (based on the ratio). He argued that secular science is to implement the truth of religious knowledge with the realistic actions in the worldly life. In line with this, he did not agree with the ideological character of any knowledge systems and tried to harmonize the tendencies of Marx?s materialistic life and of Sufis? individualistic spiritual life.
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