The Construction of Religiosity and Prophetic Values in the Novel Suluh Rindu

Abstract

This study examines the construction of religiosity and prophetic values in Habiburrahman El Shirazy’s Suluh Rindu. The study addresses the limited attention given to how prophetic values are narratively constructed through character interactions, internal reflection, and social relationships in contemporary Islamic literature. A qualitative textual-hermeneutic approach was employed, with Suluh Rindu serving as the primary textual corpus. Data were collected through close and repeated reading of narrative units, including words, phrases, sentences, and dialogue fragments, and were analyzed through a deductive-inductive coding process. Kuntowijoyo’s prophetic literary framework of transcendence, humanization, and liberation was used as the initial analytical lens, while specific themes were developed inductively from the textual data. The findings identify six emerging themes: reflective dialogue, humanistic persuasion, adab khidmah, tabayyun, al-ukhuwwah, and tawadhu’. These themes demonstrate that religiosity in Suluh Rindu is represented not merely as doctrinal instruction but as an integrative process connecting spiritual awareness, ethical formation, and social relationships. Based on these findings, the study proposes an Integrative-Prophetic Framework as an interpretive perspective for examining the construction of religiosity in contemporary Islamic literature. The framework highlights the interconnected roles of transcendence, humanization, and liberation in shaping religious meaning within literary narratives. As the framework is derived from the analysis of a single novel, its applicability to other Islamic literary works requires further comparative investigation.