Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia

Continuity and Conflict

R. Lukens-Bull

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137308573
• eBook ISBN: 9781137313416
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This project looks at the work of the faculty in Indonesia's National Islamic Institutes to address, respond, and prevent the success of radical Islamic discourse and institution of Shari'a law in the school system.

Chapter 1

The Politicization of the “Apolitical”: Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia

Not for the first time, I was being told the tale of Harvard losing its religion.¹ However, instead of a cautionary tale pointing to the dangers of reforming religious education (cf. Lukens-Bull 2000: 27), it was being held up as a laudable goal. It was November 2007 and I was an invited plenary speaker at the Annual Conference of Islamic Studies (ACIS) in Pekanbaru, Sumatra. ACIS is the major conference for scholars at Islamic colleges and universities in Indonesia. In addition to presenters, invitees included the rectors of all the government institutes and universities of Islamic higher education and the rectors of select private institutions. One morning during breakfast, I spoke briefly with the rector (president) of one institution. Starting in 2005, it had been transformed from an exclusively religion-oriented institution into a full-fledged university by adding nonreligious divisions (fakultas²), including science and technology and health sciences. He told me that his goal was that his university become like Harvard and completely leave behind its religious character.³ I had never heard this story told as pointing to a laudable goal. I was puzzled and disturbed by this; I remember thinking that more conservative elements of Indonesian society would be very upset by this idea and that it could fuel radicalization in Indonesia. Later, I would discover a substantial debate about whether the State Islamic institutes and universities had lost their way, or even fallen into apostasy. Much of the criticism came from what might be called the religious right or Islamic hard-liners. Further discussion of the variation in Islam including hard-line Islam is taken up in the second chapter.

Today, the State Islamic colleges and universities are playing a key role in the debates about the future of Islam in Indonesia. Even how to refer to it is part of the debate; to use the phrase “Indonesian Islam” implies Indonesian exceptionalism and isolation. However, the phrase “Islam in Indonesia” implies an essentialized, universal form of Islam that is not shaped by local context. Each term has proponents within Muslim discourse. The latter would be favored by the religious right, whereas others, who are more open to local wisdom, would favor the former. I will use the terms interchangeably because Islam in the Indonesian context is certainly connected to larger Muslim discourses, but it also has some distinctive elements.

State Islamic institutes and universities play an important role in current debates in part because they educate 18 percent of all public university students and in part because they attract students from diverse Islamic backgrounds (Kraince 2008: 348–349), across nearly the entire range of possible Islamic expressions which are discussed more fully in chapter 2. The central questions are what the State Islamic Higher Education, or Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri (PTAIN), system should be and who speaks for Indonesian Islam (Azra 2011: 50).

In the official nomenclature, the system is called PTAIN (Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri, State Islamic Higher Education). There are three types of institutions in this system. The smallest are the Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam (STAIN), literally Islamic High School, but these are college-level institutions with only one or two fakultas, which are academic units comprised of multiple departments. Historically, many were branch campuses of larger institutions in a nearby larger town or city. The midsize campuses are what are formally called Institut Agama Islam Negeri (IAIN). They usually have at least four fakultas among the following possibilities: Dakwah (Missions), Tarbiyah (Islamic education), Syari’ah (Islamic Law), Adab (Islamic Civilization), and Ushuluddin (Theology). The largest are the Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN, State Islamic University), which have added nonreligious fakultas. Historically, all have been IAIN or branch campuses of IAIN. For example, what is now UIN Malang was a branch campus of IAIN Surabaya offering only Tarbiyah in the 1990s. Therefore most Indonesians will refer to them as IAIN even if a particular campus is not officially designated as such under the current official nomenclature. Further, even though UIN are becoming known by that label, everybody will still understand if someone calls them IAIN.

STAIN, IAIN, and UIN are organs of the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA); however nonreligious coursework must be reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Education (Meuleman 2000: 291). During the period covered by this book, there were two ministers of religious affairs: M. Maftuh Basyuni (2004–2009) and Suryadharma Ali (2009–present). Rectors at each campus report directly to the Directorate of Islamic Higher Education which, in addition to overseeing 35 IAINs, monitors and regulates approximately 500 private institutions. The oversight provided by the Directorate of Islamic Higher Education in MORA has become more of an accreditation process rather than the sort of top-down direct government design of curriculum and teaching method found in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Each campus and each instructor still has a degree of autonomy in the teaching and learning processes. MORA also accredits private Islamic colleges and universities as well as government-regulated day schools called madrasah that have both religious and general (umum) subjects. General subjects are by definition nonreligious and can include pretty much anything: math, science, history, sociology, language arts, among the myriad of possible academic disciplines. Pesantren (traditional Islamic boarding schools) often register with MORA but are not regulated by it, per se. The exception concerns the accreditation of government curriculum madrasah in pesantren. There are madrasah that do not follow the government curriculum, but their diplomas are not recognized for admission to a PTAIN school; students who wish to enter must take an equivalency exam.

IAIN are critical to understanding the Indonesian Islamic community both for the ways in which they define orthodoxy and act as culture brokers to the wider Islamic community, as well for their cultural brokerage with Western philosophy and scholarship. This system plays a central role in the critical reexamination of Islam as well as acts as a bridge between various strains of Islam because students come from diverse Muslim backgrounds (Kraince 2008: 349). Not only are the institutions and their faculty and staff important participants in the discourse about the future, they are subjects of it as well. There is no shortage of discussion from on and off campus about what Indonesian Islamic higher education should be and how best to achieve those goals. These discussions are a significant part of ongoing debates about the future of Indonesia. The State Islamic Universities, or UIN, have taken on some secular subjects. Some faculty members, particularly from the religious departments feel that these new fields will leach away their students and erode the Islamic character of the university. Further, historical and social scientific approaches to the study of religions have been integrated into the older religious fakultas. People outside of the State Islamic Higher Education system have gone as far as accusing faculty members of apostasy.

Because PTAINs are the official government form of Islamic higher education, PTAIN faculty members can be important opinion makers in the Indonesian Islamic community. Zamahksyari Dhofier, arguably the doyen of research on Indonesian Islamic education, averred in 1985,

Graduates of these institutes (IAIN) at present tend to become the nucleus of the urban Islamic social structure. Combined with many Islamic social organizations based in cities and towns . . . they relate the Indonesian Muslim community to the wider Islamic world and define the nature of orthodoxy for it. (Zamahksyari Dhofier 1985)

Dhofier’s observation applies as much today as it did more than 25 years ago, even if he glossed over the ways in which, even then, IAIN were controversial. In a very real way, debates about higher education in Indonesia are debates about the nature of society. This book explores efforts to define the future of Indonesian Islam by examining government-sponsored Islamic education.

In Indonesia, institutions of higher education and their faculty members play a much more public role than their counterparts in American society. They are players in both popular culture and national government. Professors regularly write newspaper columns, op-ed pieces, and best-selling books. As an example from within the PTAIN System, Komaruddin Hidayat, the rector of UIN Jakarta, is a best-selling author on various subjects including psychology, death and dying, and “knowing the will of God” (2003, 2005). Many are often recruited into leadership positions within the government bureaucracy. An Indonesian graduate student at Arizona State University in History at the same time I was in Anthropology entered the agency that regulates and approves all research projects conducted in Indonesia. Those within the PTAIN system may also be religious leaders preaching Friday sermons, running pesantren (Islamic boarding schools), or hosting religious lessons (pengajian) in their homes. Further some are known on the global stage, such as the late Nurcholish Madjid as well as Azyumardi Azra, whose work has been recognized and honored internationally, including being named an Honorary Commander of the British Empire for his service to interfaith understanding (Osman 2010).

This book is, in some ways, a continuation of my earlier work on traditional Islamic schools or pesantren (Lukens-Bull 2000, 2001, 2005). In that work, I was interested in the various debates and strategies concerning the negotiation of globalization and modernization through curricular modification. The focus of that work was pesantren that had added government-recognized curriculum mostly at the junior-high and high school levels. Central to that government curriculum was the teaching of both religious and nonreligious, or general subjects. While first conducting that research in 1994–1995, I was introduced to the PTAIN system. My research sponsor was Jabar Adlan, who was the acting rector of the IAIN Sunan Ampel in Surabaya. Because of a strong connection between IAIN and pesantren, I conducted some interviews and focus groups with IAIN Sunan Ampel faculty and students. Most of the practical contact was with the Tarbiyah Fakultas branch campus in Malang, which in time became an independent institution and one of six State Islamic Universities. The research done at both the Malang and the Surabaya campuses confirmed their close relationship with the pesantren community and that, at that time, they were institutions almost exclusively focused on religious issues. Although an imperfect analogy at best, the majority of IAIN in the 1990s most closely resembled the institution in the American academic landscape known as a Bible college—a place to study sacred texts, religious life, preaching, and ministry at the undergraduate level. In time, students and faculty wanted PTAIN to be more than such narrowly defined institutions.

When I returned to Indonesia in 2008 on a Fulbright grant, I was drawn to examining the PTAIN system. Some of the debates and processes facing pesantren in the mid-1990s had fed into the issues facing the Indonesian Islamic higher education system in the late 2000s. Therefore, I conducted six-month research on this system in 2008–2009. In addition to teaching in the doctoral program at IAIN North Sumatra, I presented guest lectures at other Islamic colleges and universities. I also conducted participant observation and interviews on five IAIN/UIN campuses. I returned in 2012 to revisit some of these issues. It is fair to say that there is considerable debate taking place on and between IAIN and UIN campuses. The debates are not only about the future of the colleges and universities, but about the future of Islam in the Indonesian context as well. In this regard, the campuses are deeply embedded in the culture wars between the forces of what others have called “Wahhabi Colonialism” (Woodward 2008) and the more moderate, accommodative forms of Islam historically more common in Indonesia (cf. Lukens-Bull 2008).

Islamic Education in Indonesia

Since the pesantren tradition is intricately linked with the PTAIN system, it is useful to briefly describe the pesantren milieu. Pesantren, by that name, are local Islamic institutions nearly as old as Islam in Indonesia itself, although essentially the same type of schools are/were found in Thailand and Malaysia (Lukens-Bull 2010). Further, they are strikingly similar to madrasa found elsewhere in the Muslim world. Before the establishment of a modern education system in the twilight years of Dutch colonialism, most education in Indonesia was Islamic. The only form of Islamic education in Indonesia until 1905 was pesantren (Dhofier 2000: 49). They taught an exclusively religious curriculum to a mix of students including future religious leaders, court poets (Florida 1995), and members of the ruling class (Adas 1979; Pemberton 1994: 48–49). Both in print, and in oral tradition, pesantren are closely tied to the Walisongo (the nine saints who brought Islam to Java). No pesantren claims to have been founded by one of the Walisongo, but all kyai are seen as inheritors of the role of the Walisongo. The kyai is a central figure in the pesantren milieu, part scholar and part mystic, a traditional kyai exercises sole control over their pesantren. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, pesantren education was typified by each pesantren and kyai specializing in one area of knowledge. Hashim Ashari at Tebu Ireng was known for Hadith, whereas Pesantren Jampes of Kediri was well known for its kyai who were experts on Sufism (Dhofier 1980:11). Students would wander from pesantren to pesantren studying under each expert in the fields he wished to master. This tradition created ulama that had both a solid foundation of training as well as broad network of contacts, both horizontal (with classmates) and vertical (with teachers).

Traditional religious education in pesantren was self-directed and self-paced. It involved both individual and group study. Individual study may be used at the beginning of a student’s time for remedial training in basic skills, such as reading and writing Arabic script. Advanced students work directly with the kyai on individual areas of specialization. One form of group lesson focuses on creating the basic study tools needed for the rest of a student’s career as a religious scholar. These tools are called kitab kuning, or “yellow books” referring to the cheap paper upon which they are printed. The term refers to what van Bruinessen has called the classical texts of Islam (1990: 229). It should be made clear that “classical” refers not to the original Meccan and Medinan communities but roughly to the medieval period, specifically the twelfth to seventeenth centuries CE (Johns 1987) in which being Muslim and being Sufi were nearly synonymous. The pesantren community holds them to be of high importance in determining how to live as good Muslims in a globalizing and modernizing world. Kitab kuning are a defining component of traditional pesantren curriculum.

Kitab kuning start as printed pages of a text in what is called the bald script (huruf gundul), which is Arabic without the vowel marks. The student will fill in the vowel marks as the teacher reads the text. The teacher then gives the makna (formal meaning), which is more a translation than an explanation. The students write the verbatim meaning between the lines in their own copy of the kitab in fine Arabic script Javanese. This dictation method is only the beginning of the learning process. Students will review and repeat the lesson on their own or with a friend. Also, groups of students, particularly the advanced ones, are expected to gather and debate the meaning of the text. The addition of the government approved curricular schools during the day has put constraints on time. Those pesantren which have taken this step are attempting to teach two full, independent curricula and the schedule can be daunting, starting each morning at dawn and not ending until hours after dark. In fact, it is not possible for most pesantren to keep up the teaching of the traditional subjects at the same level as before. Therefore they shift the focus to graduating students with general knowledge (as contrasted with religious knowledge) but the morals of a religious teacher (Lukens-Bull 2005: 56–57).

An essential part of pesantren education is the inculcation of Islamic values. Pesantren teachers stress that while a day school can teach students about religion and morality, they cannot teach the students to be moral. Moral education, in terms of moral behavior, takes experience. Hence, pesantren strive to create an environment in which the morals of religion can be practiced as well as studied. The students learn about them in religious lessons and are then given the opportunity to practice them (Lukens-Bull 2001). The environment includes modest, even Spartan, communal living arrangements that are used to teach the value of simple living (kesedehanan). The meager meals are typically rice and vegetables. Further, while there is an acknowledgment of personal property, in practice, property is communal. Simple things such as sandals are borrowed freely. Other items, if not in use, should be loaned if asked for. The santri who habitually refuses to loan his property will be sanctioned by his peers and sometimes by the pesantren staff, which may include teasing or a stern reminder about Islamic brotherhood and the importance of being sincere and selfless (ikhlas, Lukens-Bull 2005: 60).

The term santri is usually translated as student, although it might be better translated a disciple (Effendi 2008: xxiii). The santri treat the kyai with much respect, never looking him in the eye, especially when spoken to. When the kyai passes, students should make way for him; some will even crouch down and bow their heads. They may greet him by kissing his hand. Traditionally, students did their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. With the increase in time for study, there is not enough time for students to do all that they did in the past. A point is made to keep some of these tasks in place as a way to teach values including self-sufficiency as well, as compassion for those who will be doing these tasks for them throughout th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Chapter 1  The Politicization of the “Apolitical”: Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia
• Chapter 2  Religious “Dialects,” Variation, and Accusations of the Worst Kind
• Chapter 3  Becoming Universities: Old Traditions, New Directions
• Chapter 4  Splitting the Kiblat: Consequences of Alternative Strategies for Educating Faculty Members
• Chapter 5  Women Pushing the Limits: Gender Debates in Islamic Higher Education
• Chapter 6  Where Is the Islam, and What Kind?
• Theoretical Epilogue: Linguistic Modeling of Variation in Islam
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index