Introduction

Lajnah Bahth al-Masāil Nahdlatul Ulama’ (hereafter will be referred to as LBM-NU) is a special council and legal opinion (fatwā) agency within NU responsible for providing legal responses and answers for NU members on new issues that have not been legally determined. In general, NU is widely acknowledged as a traditional Islamic organization. This term is commonly used to denote the fact that NU consistently maintains elements of tradition and culture within its religious practice. In a more technical sense, it is identified with NU's strict adherence to a specific school of religious thought popularly referred to as Ahl al-Sunna wa al-Jamā’a (aswaja). By far, these central motives of the movement has been associated with backwardness, antiquity, and close-mindedness and constantly used to distinguish NU from its modernist counterparts such as Jami’at al-Khair (1901), Muhammadiyah (1912), al-Irsyad (1914) and Persatuan Islam (1923). NU has also been commonly evaluated as a movement with a traditionalistic religious outlook or orientation. The use of this term is identified with the sociological meaning of traditionalism which essentially refers to a mode of religious orientation or thought which refers to distinct traits beyond mere adherence to and assimilation of local cultural beliefs and practices in religious thought and a particular school of religious thought and specific religious traditions per se. More accurately, it is characterized by several traits. Firstly, an overriding tendency to cling dogmatically to the opinions of pious savants of the past as absolute, final and immutable. Secondly, a reluctance or ambivalence to evaluate religious traditions and values taking into consideration changing socio-historical conditions.