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Political advertisement: http://electionwatch.edu.au/indonesia-2014/we-make-our-dreams-come-true-pdi-p-pitch

Margaret Coffey: ‘We make our dreams come true because we are the future of Indonesia!’

So the political advertisement goes, but the dreams haven’t come true quite yet – and there’s just as much dreaming on the other side of the political divide:

Political advertisement: http://electionwatch.edu.au/indonesia-2014/prabowo-my-hope-mr-hatta-my-spirit

Margaret Coffey: ‘Prabowo is my hope’ – and singing of his running mate – ‘Mr Hatta is my spirit’... ‘I believe I choose number one’.

Not yet! It seems likely not at all in the case of Mr Prabowo – and that’s a cause for concern. Here’s one observer of the rise of the Prabowo thrust for the Indonesian presidency.

Jemma Purdey: Yes, what is clear is that this is a very, very proud person and the family is very much you know involved and embedded in all of that. It will indeed be devastating – I think they have got to a point where they have convinced themselves that they are the right and only kind of option for Indonesia’s future. But yes, personally Prabowo is not a man who likes to demonstrate weakness at all in himself, in his own personality, and he has stated that when he has spoken to his followers. Let us hope that he does the right thing and that he contains his personal disappointment and does not let that translate into something like some kind of unrest, which is what many are very concerned about right now in Indonesia.

Prabowo Subianto speech:

Margaret Coffey: Prabowo Subianto on the hustings. Dr Jemma Purdey has studied the rise of Prabowo Subianto as a politician, and the development of the family political party. There’s an interesting religious angle to the Prabowo story – and to the religious card as it was played in the election campaign. What for example have the two candidates been saying about minorities in the world’s largest Muslim majority nation? And, in particular, about Islamic minorities such as the Ahmadiyyah and the Shia, both subjects of considerable discrimination?

Jemma Purdey: Their cause has been an issue in this election as well and that’s why as observers we have watched closely what the two candidates have been saying about religion and how moderate or not their message has been to various groups in Indonesian Islam in particular the extremist groups. And what we’ve seen is that like in any political situation these groups have been courted along with you know all the others in order to form coalitions and to gain positions of greater power as they progressed towards the presidential election. So what you found was a lot of horse trading and some of these groups, these Islamic extremist groups, managed to court the two leaders and in the end the Islamic extremist groups that I am speaking of ended up in the Prabowo-Hatta camp. So we are not sure exactly what that would mean if that particular candidate comes through in this election. Prabowo has actually intimated that if he was president he would be advocating for a more pure Islam. Some have interpreted that to mean that he would continue this kind of approach of discriminating against these minority groups. But of course it is yet to be seen what will actually happen there.

Margaret Coffey: In that context, to what extent was religious identity in general a factor in the election campaign? Did it emerge as a big factor? Was it there around all the time? Or did it appear just on occasion in particular contexts?

Jemma Purdey: Yeh well what I would say is that it hasn’t been featuring in any substantial way – that is, this has not been an election run along religious lines and with big messages. What you found instead is that the parties have been using religion more as an opportunistic kind of sound bite in the campaign, in particular in the smear campaigns. And so you may have heard about smear campaign against Jokowi – allegations, gossip that he is not Muslim, that maybe he is Christian, and questioning his Islamic identity. And on the other hand you have the same kind of thing, but quieter, also coming out, similar messages about Prabowo himself, questioning Prabowo’s Islamic credentials – and interestingly this is much more you would say well founded kinds of suspicions, not saying that they are at all valid, but his family includes Christians – his brother is I would say a fundamentalist American style evangelist Christian as well his two children. Both recently ran as candidates in the election and won seats and they are now Members of Parliament - they’re Christian and Prabowo’s mother was Christian. So he has strong plurality of religion within his own family and yet it was Jokowo who was getting the attention and his Islamic credentials were being questioned.

Margaret Coffey: OK let’s look at Prabowo: he’s perhaps on the back foot in the count – judging by the ‘quick counts’ that are held to be reliable. In a way his family story points to a kind of plurality that many Indonesians now pride the nation on - a sort of inbuilt pluralism within the family – but did he make much use of that or would that have in fact counted against him in the campaign?

Jemma Purdey: No he did not make much use of that. Prabowo actually is much more aligned with more fundamentalist Islamic groups. So no, what has happened instead is that other members of the family have been courting the minorities quietly on their own and perhaps Prabowo has been included in some of those events. But in fact we find that it has been ineffectual. Gerindra, Prabowo’s party and the family party, established Chinese and Christian groups within their party and what we found was that at the last moment, last week, these groups actually defected over to Jokowi’s side which was quite alarming I would imagine for Gerindra and for Hashem, Prabowo’s brother who was behind those groups.

Margaret Coffey: That’s interesting because I imagine the Chinese were courted on the grounds of Prabowo’s appeal as a business oriented person – but on the other hand he has a history with people of Chinese background – and also perhaps with the Christian element and the Chinese community are increasingly Christian in their religious identity aren’t they in Indonesia?

Jemma Purdey: Yes that’s right – he has had problems with the ethnic Chinese in the past. We know about the allegations against him being behind the riots that took place in May 1998 before Suharto resigned which were largely anti-Chinese in their nature. But you’re right since then he has actually actively courted the Chinese on his business to business kinds of relationships. And also important in all that, in this story of the Chinese, has been of course his support for Ahok who is the sitting governor of Jakarta while Jokowi is running for president. Ahok is a Chinese Christian, he’s a Gerindra Party person and was really supported by Prabowo and Gerindra to run as deputy governor when no other party would countenance the idea of an ethnic Chinese candidate. Gerindra therefore were able to use Ahok in their campaigning – Ahok is a very popular figure. So they have tried various strategies, but at the end of the day the real influences within the ethnic Chinese business community were not supporting Prabowo at all.

Margaret Coffey: And as you have already said, a notion of a purer Islam is not likely to comfort minorities like the Ahmadiyyah or the Shia?

Jemma Purdey: No, I don’t think they will be very comforted at all presently. I don’t think either that Jokowi’s message has been entirely comforting to them either.

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Margaret Coffey: Dr Jemma Purdey – a research fellow at Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Research Institute – and the author of a biography of the late Herb Feith – a pioneer of Australian scholarly and neighbourly interest in Indonesia. There’s information about that at Encounter’s website.

So, what about Joko Widodo, the front runner in the ‘quick polls’?

Jemma Purdey: I mean as a Javanese man he - what we know about him is yes he is a typical Indonesian Muslim is how you might say it - an Indonesian Muslim who can talk to all sides potentially of the Islamic majority.

Margaret Coffey: He did make campaign gestures towards Islam didn’t he – he made that trip to Mecca for example, visits to pesantren?

Jemma Purdey: Yeh. That’s right but it is also I’d say on the agenda of any candidate in an Indonesian presidential election. In Indonesia religion is important – it’s not like in Australia where we would rather not speak about religion. Instead it’s a requirement I think of political candidates to do so.

Margaret Coffey: What about Jokowi’s policy promises: he put some emphasis on his wish to improve Islamic education – the many thousands of Islamic schools, the pesantren, around the country?

Jemma Purdey: That’s right and I think he’s talking probably about standards – you know wanting to raise general standards for education and that includes the pesantren. Again this is a political contest and so he is courting particular constituents as he you know travels around the country and there is a particular constituency you know for whom that is a welcome message. Both candidates had very sound and positive messages about how they want to improve basic education, primary education in Indonesia and I just think that the pesantren is part of that picture.

Margaret Coffey: Jemma Purdey.

As she said, both Indonesian presidential candidates campaigned with promises to support the improvement of education in their country – improvement to both the quality of education and access to it. A small percentage of children don’t ever get to school, still, any kind of school – and roughly 20 per cent of those who do spend no more than six years there. A good number of those schools are privately run Islamic schools, or pesantren. They sit in a cluster of Islamic education institutions – madrasah, pesantren, and if a student gets that far, an Islamic university. There are many hopes pinned on the seventh Indonesian president’s commitment to improving education at all levels and of all kinds.

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Margaret Coffey: Here’s an Encounter snapshot of Islamic education in Indonesia.

Shobikhan Ahmad: About three years ago after graduating from university I was in a jungle at that time – [my] kyai actually, my master, asked me to build a pesantren there, also a school there. The building was only a little hut at that time.

Margaret Coffey: He’s from Central Java, he’s 26 – and from setting up a remote area school, he went on to rescue a failing school near his home town. He’s now a school principal and the head of a pesantren, or an Islamic boarding school.

Shobikhan Ahmad: My name is Shobikhan – you can call me Sobi or ‘an, that’s fine. Now I’m school principal, the name is SMP Islam Prestasi – it’s for 7th to 9th graders there .

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Margaret Coffey: Three years ago as soon as Sobi finished university he went on a mission to a remote part of East Java, what he calls a jungle.

Shobikhan Ahmad: It’s in Mojokerto in East Java – it’s a really remote area. From public transportation we need to go for about 20 kilometres.

Margaret Coffey: Walking?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Yes! Well I have no television, I have no ...even if I want to find a newspaper I have to walk for about two or three kilometres at that time. But it was really nice. I mean I saw that the education at that place is really low. Even the high school students cannot really do mathematics; they cannot do multiplying, or something, so that really made me eager, really find my passion to build a school. We started from a very, very big zero – we have nothing, we had no facilities. We had nothing at that time.

Margaret Coffey: How Sobi got to be in that remote area is a story in itself – it’s about a relationship that binds together a vast array of Indonesians, male and female, across generations and across geographical locations – it's relationship built between teacher and student in an Islamic boarding school – otherwise known as a pesantren. You can be sure that many of those connections were at play in the run up to Indonesia’s elections – and are again in the aftermath. There are thousands of such schools across Indonesia – and 30 per cent of Indonesia’s school students attend either a pesantren or a religious day school, a madrasah. Keep in mind that these schools don’t fit the image of a Middle Eastern madrasah – in Indonesia a madrasah must teach the government curriculum up to seventy per cent of the timetable – and many pesantren also include such schools.

Dr Jeremy Kingsley, a Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Research Institute, is especially familiar with pesantren on the island of Lombok.

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Jeremy Kingsley: Pondok pesantren are Islamic religious boarding schools. They run for kids from approximately the age of eight to eighteen. As Islamic education centres, they allow students to engage actively with religious studies. Some of them are purely there for religious education, and that’s how they traditionally started—so you would do Qur’anic studies, studies of fiqhi, which is Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh in Arabic), as well as other forms of religious education and learning.

Now, in the last two decades, a lot of these Islamic boarding schools have also started to offer general education, or what they’d call public education—so, Indonesian language, sciences, mathematics, all the sort of general education that you would normally consider.

Indonesia is a difficult place, economically. It’s not easy. For a lot of people, the frameworks and the support that pesantren give them is a really important way, a social fabric to their lives, that they need in a very pragmatic sense. They’re getting not just a religious education but a community. And a lot of my research, a lot of the things that I’m looking at is how the community manifests itself, how it works, how it supports people—and how it’s not implicitly negative, which is something I think is a real problem with a lot of the way that literature and people think about these things. These are important social fabrics and they give people supports in a really pragmatic sense, economically, socially and politically.

Margaret Coffey: That support radiates from the central figure of the religious leader or master of each pesantren, and sustains connections and networks. Importantly, it also sustains the kind of character an individual student might seek to be in post-pesantren life.

Shobikhan Ahmad: I mean most of the area is still jungle. What do we say [language] in English ...?

Fauzan Jamal: Maybe not jungle like you’re imaging maybe?

Margaret Coffey: Very remote. How did you get to be there?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Well actually it’s my master have a small area I mean in the place and he asked me at that time, let’s build a school and let’s build a pesantren. I have a community actually, I am captain of my community, a super teacher community, and I have many friends - I ask their help to come to that rural area and then we make many activities. We have summer camps for the children at that place and you know the people’s passion are really great to accept the new kind of education. So we have support from the society at that time.

Margaret Coffey: Amazingly these thousands of schools are all independent – whether they’re modest or prestigious or somewhere in between. And that means they have a fair degree of independence from government as well.

Jeremy Kingsley: Firstly, they’re all independent. They’re under the tutelage or leadership of a religious leader, or an Ulama. In Java they’re called Kyai. In Lombok, where I do most of my research, they’re called Tuan Guru. They have different names in different parts of Indonesia.

They act as a sort of a teacher or master to overall… oh, call them a community, rather than a school. These children from 8 to 18 are really under this sort of tutelage of this one religious leader. But what they are and how they function is incredibly eclectic. I mean, there’s 11,000—over 11,000—Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia. There are another 36,000 madrasah, which are religious day schools, across the archipelago. And they cater for over 8.6 million students.

Now, there’s an incredible range of theology that’s taught in them, of approaches to education. There are obviously you know Salafi-influenced schools—Salafi being more extreme or puritanical schools. Those sort of schools have taken a lot of the airspace, a lot of the academic and public discourse about these schools. But the broad majority of Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia are actually what would be termed in Indonesia, traditionalist, or more Sufi-influenced schools.

Margaret Coffey: The future of Indonesia’s Islamic schools is up for grabs. Not because they’re at risk of disappearing – but because they’re being taken seriously, including over the last decade or so via the Australian Government’s AUSAID program. Quite a lot of Australian support has gone into assisting Islamic schools in various ways to improve education standards. (You'll find links to more details at Encounter’s website.) So has money from sources that support Salafi style ideology. But most interestingly determined efforts come from within Indonesian Islamic circles.

Tim Lindsey: I’m very pleased to be able to introduce Pak Jamhari Makruf to you tonight because I’ve had the real pleasure of working closely with him over the last 8 years as he has pushed determinedly to transform the Islamic education system in Indonesia into one that can compete in a fast moving global market.

Margaret Coffey: Professor Tim Lindsey - Director of Melbourne University’s Centre for Islamic Law and Society -introducing a man who has a big dream for Islamic education in his country. He’s Professor Jamhari Makruf, the vice-rector of Jakarta’s State Islamic University. He’s also head of a task force set up under the previous government by Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, to develop a reform plan for Islamic higher education.

Tim Lindsey: Professor Jamhari Makruf is ideally qualified to speak on the struggle between conservatives and reformers in the Indonesian educational system because he knows it inside out....

Educated in a small pesantren, a traditional Islamic boarding school in Central Java, Professor Jamhari Makruf went on to compete a Bachelor's degree in Islamic theology at the University of which he is now a key leader, the UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta.

Margaret Coffey: Professor Makruf was about to explain the many-sided difficulties faced by the Islamic schools – some of them for historical reasons, many of them resource based: too few resources where most are concerned, or, for a minority, too much – in the past from Middle Eastern, especially Saudi, sources. But he began with a research finding about Indonesian state schools and the teaching of religion in them. Sixty per cent of Indonesia’s students attend public state schools.

Tim Lindsey: Can you please make him welcome. (Applause)

Jamhari Makruf: In 2009 my university conducted a survey of Islamic education in non-religious state schools in Jakarta and West Java. The results were surprising and included three linked findings. First, conservatism among students in secondary schools was on the rise. Second, the teaching of Islamic religion subject at these schools was still based on outdated learning materials that have never been revised. Third, religion teachers were widely regarded as the most uninspiring of all teachers.

Margaret Coffey: The point being that bad religious education can take place in state institutions or religious institutions. Aside from wider socio-political factors, what can matter is Government neglect and poor resourcing: whether there are up-to-date books, qualified and well trained teachers, well-designed curricula.

Jamhari Makruf: Is it true that institutions for Islamic education in Indonesia teach religious radicalism? Have Islamic education institutions become breeding ground for radical behaviour leading to religious violence in the world’s largest Islamic country?

Margaret Coffey: Yes – he argues - in Islamic schools there is potential for religious radicalism and yes Abu Bakar Bashir, the ideological patron of Jemaah Islamiyah, headed up a pesantren linked to violent jihadis. But to make a general point out of this is to come up with a vast generalisation that’s far from the reality of the situation.

Jamhari Makruf: There are pesantren given aid by Australian Aid. Two or three years around more than 300 pesantren were helped by Australian money – I think the impact was huge. If you remember I was quoted a long time ago by The Age [newspaper] Melbourne here when I said that why [are] people always talking about Abu Bakar Bashir? Because I was annoyed. So I said to them that I did a survey in 2001 asking students in State Islamic University, 'what is your opinion about Australia?' And do you know what the good news is? They said Australia is the most favourite country after Saudi Arabia! Australia comes to the Islamic schools so they change their mind - because if you don’t come, then people have dream differently.

Margaret Coffey: Professor Jamhari Makruf, vice-rector of Jakarta’s State Islamic University – and head of a task force charged with developing a plan for the next fifteen years of improvement to the quality of Islamic higher education in the country. The kinds of questions to the forefront as the work go on? They’re to do with the Indonesian context of rapid social and economic change, tensions between conservative and progressive strands among Muslims, the importance of connecting with modern institutions of democracy such as civic values, civil society, good governance....

Jamhari Makruf: There remain crucial questions regarding Islamic education institutions. How will they formulate their role amidst the rapid social economic changes taking place in Indonesia? It must be acknowledged that there is a tug of war between conservative and progressive groups but Islamic education institutions must be able to produce Muslims who comprehend modern religious teachings, grasping Indonesian characteristics, along with a global perspective. How can they convey an understanding of Islam that is conducive to the requirements of the era? What roles should they have in the formation of a new social, political and cultural system in Indonesia? One answer is that building links between the Islamic education system and modern institutions such as democracy, civic values, civil society and good governance will be of vital importance as we work to create a new Islamic education system in Indonesia.

Sound: News story re investigation into corruption claims against Minister for Religious Affairs.

Margaret Coffey: Big questions that now wait on actions by a newly elected President and his government. What kind of leadership will be introduced in the Ministry of Religious Affairs, for example?

There’s an acting minister right now drawn from one of the Islamist parties, taking the place until the new Government’s appointments of the Minister (from the same party incidentally) who was named in May as a suspect in the mishandling of hajj pilgrimage funds.

Jamhari Makruf is a leader by the way who spent seven years of his education in a pesantren before going on to study at the Islamic university where he’s now vice-rector for international cooperation. As he tells, he was born not far from Java’s largest Hindu temple complex, Prambanan.

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Jamhari Makruf: I was born in small town in Klaten. Klaten is Central Java, nearby Solo and Jogja. If somebody has gone to Jogja and seen Prambanan, that is where I was born, nearby that area.

Margaret Coffey: So your family, they were small farmers?

Jamhari Makruf: Well my family was mixed background you know – grandfather from my father was a farmer, grandfather from my mother was a local penghulu – I think it is a local religious officer in the village – my father himself is an elementary teacher. So...

Margaret Coffey: So a family which valued education and also religion?

Jamhari Makruf: I have a religious background, but my grandfather from my father was a dalang puppets, so I am a Javanese in that sense. So we believe that education is important for our life so that’s why my grandfather and also my father send me to religious education, you know, to uphold religious values and also to continue the education.

My elementary school is Muhammadiyah because my father was the founder of that school. You know the school was belong to the community and I remember that we were making bricks to raise the building for the Muhammadiyah school – it was just the beginning of the school. And then after I graduate from the Muhammadiyah school in my village I moved to a pesantren – this pesantren is neutral pesantren – it [does] not belong to NU, and also it does not belong to Muhammadiyah. The kyai at that time was a graduate of Pesantren Gontor, the biggest pesantren in Indonesia and I think the most influential pesantren in that time, which is very moderate.

Margaret Coffey: And the kyai there, has he remained influential in your life, did you maintain a connection with him after you left the pesantren?

Jamhari Makruf: Of course, I kept relationship with the kyai but he passed away a long time ago. And you know when I graduated from [the] pesantren I asked his advice where should I go because at that time I got scholarship to continue my study to Middle East and my father asked me to be a mosque keeper in my village so that I can improve the religiosity in my village. And then my kyai said to me that where ever you go it is up to you, because you know the world is open. So I went back to my village and then when I got a scholarship to Australia also [I said] you know I will go to Australia to further my study in anthropology.

Margaret Coffey: So you’re improving the religiosity of the country not just the village?

Jamhari Makruf: Well that’s life you know. That’s what I think what I learnt from my childhood – you know I lived in a very modest family and we believed that it is not yourself [that] is important but how benefit yourself for the community – I think that has become my belief that whatever I study, whatever I do, I should be giving benefits to others rather than myself.

Margaret Coffey: Jamhari Makruf – and those organisations he mentioned, Muhammadiyah and NU, are influential mass membership civil society Islamic organisations. They’re notionally neutral, but that doesn’t mean that they’re devoid of political dimension. In one way or another they were very much implicated in the recent elections.

On Radio National you’re with Encounter – and you can revisit this program online, or check the transcript, the links to more information, or leave a comment. Go to abcradionational and locate Encounter via the program index.

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Margaret Coffey: Indonesia has a huge and diverse population, and for all the usual reasons there’s enormous cultural and economic change at work, but in the Islamic education system a supportive network society can be found – a society not without the capacity to face into those changes.

Shobikhan Ahmad: You know, in a pesantren we usually say the student must obey whatever his master or their master say. When we try to compare it to relationship between student and teacher in regular school, it is different. The relationship between the santri – santri is the student – and also the kyai and the kyai is the master - we believe that if we went to get the really good life. I mean we want to have the knowledge what our master have taught us we have to really obey. And that’s why for some people maybe that become really a burden but for me I really did that with all my heart – I really eager to do that. My kyai asked me to go to the really remote area. We have to live in a really remote....well we only ate some cassava leaf every day. But that’s fine – I mean I really loved that adventure.

Margaret Coffey: That’s a great story. But again, back to the kyai...your kyai, your master, he must be a pretty outstanding individual to command that kind of respect. How did you get to go to that pesantren? Did your parents choose it for particular reasons – because of the kyai, the head of the pesantren?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Well honestly personally it is tradition in my family that everyone after graduating from secondary school they have to go to pesantren and they have to find a kyai. Well actually when I was a teenager my family choose the pesantren for me but when I go to college I find it myself. It is not really hard to find a pesantren in Java especially. Every pesantren actually have their own specification – for example like one pesantren is really good for its fiq or for Islamic law, and the other pesantren have its really good specialty for its language, Arabic and also English language, and for the other pesantren is really good for its entrepreneurship or the way it gives many skills to the students and etc, and at that time I just found my kyai is really good ...]linguistics] ... and my kyai is also well known, really famous for his you know way of teaching, he is also really tolerant and really give good contributions in the society – and I mean I really love my kyai.

Margaret Coffey: What’s his name?

Shobikhan Ahmad: His name is Mundzir, Kyai Mundzir Masruri. Well he’s not really famous in media but for some people really good because he try to facilitate the people, for the poorer family. He also have orphanage, he bring some of them to his pesantren, give them food, give them education for free – that’s very inspiring for me. That is why whatever he say I will just obey it.

Margaret Coffey: Shobikhan Ahmad – and accompanying him was Fauzan Jamal, a lecturer in da’wah at Jakarta’s State Islamic University or UIN – he teaches in the communication department at UIN, essentially the Islamic ‘art’ and ‘science’ of preaching.

Fauzan Jamal: Actually yes but the young generation the problem is not eager to become preacher – but only it’s more communication than Da‘wah, communication like public relations, broadcast and other.

Margaret Coffey: Did you go to a pesantren.

Fauzan Jamal: I go to a pesantren too – but in East Java, Darussalam Gontor. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rskMvqpfD3Q

Margaret Coffey: Gontor is a very famous pesantren.

Fauzan Jamal: Very famous. Every day we speak Arabic and we speak English. But my English is not better because when I finish my study at the pesantren I go to Egypt, Al-Azhar University - we learnt by Arabic language of course.

Margaret Coffey: So you went to Al Azhar – now how predictable was that? Was that something you always wanted to do or was it inevitable that you would go there for post-graduate studies?

Fauzan Jamal: Almost yes, from the pesantren, yes, go to the Middle East maybe.

Margaret Coffey: To Yemen, to Egypt...

Fauzan Jamal: To Saudi Arabia. Many of my friends go to Egypt. I continue my study also to Egypt like my friends. Then we are open-minded for all the Islamic groups in Al-Azhar.

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Margaret Coffey: Fauzan and Sobi – graduates of pesantren, one highly prestigious, the other quite local. So how did they get to those specific pesantrens? What factors would a parent consider in making the choice? Jeremy Kingsley explains.

Jeremy Kingsley: It would depend on the nature of the family from within which you came and which part of Indonesia you came from. A lot of parents simply send their kids to the local pondok pesantren, the one that is well known within their local area. So where I did my research, at Darul Falah on the outskirts of Mataram, which is a sort of provincial city, the parents would be choosing that school because it’s incredibly important to the local community. But then if I was wanting for a more prestigious school, a school that had a reputation across Indonesia, I would be looking at places like Gontor in Java.

So it would depend on the way… on the sort of parents that you had, on the sort of community within which you came from, and your parents’ aspirations - extremely important factor within particular religious elites, connected with very influential religious leaders. It’s not just their current leaders, it’s also their lineage.

Margaret Coffey: Lineage is a word that seems to be important in this context.

Jeremy Kingsley: It definitely is. There’s two ways we can look at it. And the first way will come quite easily and understandably to most Australians, and the second will be a little bit more complicated.

In relation to Islamic education, there is always the factor of prestige. People want to send their kids to, say, Melbourne Grammar or Scotch Grammar because they have a certain prestige to them and they can offer a certain range of educational options, but also a certain lineage. When I say ‘lineage’, not just about who’s taught there, but about who goes there.

But the second way I think you need to look at lineage in Indonesia is slightly different. There is the very important practice that goes within Sufism of a teacher and student relationship. And so the identity of the teacher is extremely important to the child’s education and the parents know that and want that for their child.

This Sufi tradition and practice of the student and teacher relationship is incredibly strong. And that’s the way that this lineage issue plays out.

Margaret Coffey: And in Jamhari Makruf’s case—translates! He found himself replicating with his Australian academic supervisor the pattern of relationship he had with his kyai.

Jamhari Makruf: In Islam you regarded your teacher or your kyai as somebody is very influential, very spiritual advisor for yourself, so the attachment and the relationship is you know everlasting – you cannot cut that relationship although you have been away for a while. But actually the same relationship has happened to me too when I studied in Australia and so I keep contact with my supervisors and I also told him whatever I did in my works as well because I believe that – it is in Islamic teaching also – that your relationship with your teacher is never-ending. You are still a student.

Margaret Coffey: So you honour your teacher – you stand in a lineage of teaching?

Jamhari Makruf: And also in Islam, lineage – foreknowledge - is also important. I studied from this and from this. And in Islam because the tradition of knowledge is transmitted orally - the lack of textbooks, something like that - teachers’ matter, who are your teachers and where teachers studied, that is also important for your religiosity background.

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Margaret Coffey: What use in the modern world is a relationship like the one Jamhari Makruf has described? In Indonesia, alongside the traditional relationships important in the religious cultural context, there’s the world of relationships conducted by social media. Indonesia is very high up in the ranks of social media measures - Jakarta is evidently the Twitter capital of the world.

So in these changing times why would a parent choose to send a child to a pesantren rather than to a secular school? What part does thinking about modernity and all the demands for new skills for a new world play in a parent’s thinking in relation to religious education?

Jeremy Kingsley: It’s an incredibly complex question because—I mentioned traditionalist before—traditionalist is a response to the idea of modernity that came with the Dutch, that came with the embryonic ideas of statehood. And so the question—and this historically—was, ‘Do I send my child to a Dutch colonial school and bring them through the sort of more secular form of education, or do I send them to a religious school?’ These debates continue.

But in many ways a lot of parents send their kids to Islamic boarding schools for two key reasons. One, that there is not necessarily an overt contradiction between getting an Islamic education and modernity. And two is that Islamic education is often reasonably priced and that there is a support for students who need and want an education that you otherwise would not have within the secular system. So even though education may be free in Indonesia, getting of books, getting of uniforms, this is not necessarily cheap, this is not necessarily easy. For a lot of Indonesians who are struggling with issues of poverty, religious education is a way out. It’s actually a window of opportunity.

There’s an assumption in western society that religious education by implication is going to be backward, not dealing… or not preparing people for the future. And I would argue that that is just an assumption. There need not be a contradiction between religious education and becoming a well-educated actor within the sort of globalising world economy. In fact, often what going to an Islamic boarding school gives you is a network, is a system from which you can develop and grow within.

So actually you find that the bonds and the way that things are dealt with in Islamic boarding schools prepares and gives a lot of people, a lot of students in Indonesia the background and support within which then to go forward and engage with you know these sort of modern ideas of education and employment.

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Margaret Coffey: You’re only 26 and you’re now principal of a second school – how did that come about – what was involved there?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Well I never want[ed] to be a teacher when I was in high school. I don’t want to be a teacher but when I go to college and I choose English education at that time I found that I have many friends who want to be a teacher and then at 2009 I went to Probolingo – it’s in East Java – and I saw that the education quality there is really low. When I went to Mojokerto the quality was lower than that – I mean comparing to my home town it's really, really terrible. Really I am just wondering at that time did the government know about this. At that time I really wanted to be a teacher and then I said to myself that one day I want to be a school principal – I want to build the best school that I can. And then when I went to Mojokerto and then I went to this school that I lead right now we try to give a different way in teaching. I mean comparing to other school in Indonesia we give them more activities ..

Margaret Coffey: When you say you give them more activities, what activities are you talking about?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Yeh – well most schools in Indonesia are only concerned about the subjects for national exams – mathematics and the science exams and also English and also Bahasa Indonesia. Well we give them more than that. It’s really waste of time when they have to spend all their years in school just only to learn their subjects for national exams – that’s really nonsense, so we try to give them what they want. In a special wall we draw you know a tree and we call it a dream tree and for the new students in my school they have to stick a card with their name and also their dreams - we try to give them what they want. Like some of them want to be a photographer and then we try to invite some really expert photographer to go to our school and teach them photography. And then some of them want to really know about farming and then we invite expert farming to go to our school. And then we brought them to a fibreglass factory – it’s an automotive parts, like that.

Margaret Coffey: So you’re teaching them about the world through giving them these experiences. Where did you get that idea from?

Shobikhan Ahmad: Many people, I mean many experts inspires me – just one of them is Ron Clark from the Ron Clark University in America. He’s one of my biggest inspiration[s] to make a school which is really different and give real life skill experience.

Margaret Coffey: If you haven’t heard of him, Ron Clark is an idiosyncratic American educator based in Atlanta - you can find a link to his website at Encounter’s home page. Put Shobi’s interest in Ron Clark’s methods alongside the idea of Salafi inspired pesantrens and you get a dramatic image of the range of challenges Islamic education presents to any government trying to manage it.

Jamhari Makruf: Since almost [all] Islamic education is provided by private institutions the state has a hugely challenging task discharging its responsibilities in this field. The Ministry of Religious Affairs is responsible for Islamic education but is not allowed to interfere with what may or may not be taught. Nor has it been possible to insist that Islamic schools bestow a standard diploma that graduates can use in seeking employment or continuing their studies.

Many Islamic education institutions argue that their primary objective of providing education is simply to make students better Muslims. This causes uncontrollable diversity in Islamic education. There is no single standard applied from one school to the next and even the leverage that might be exerted through funding is ineffective because government aid is often rejected by many schools precisely to avoid government interference.

Margaret Coffey: Professor Makruf’s taskforce is concerned with Islamic higher education. There’s been concern about its quality for some time he says but now there’s an opportunity to do something. Legislation has put it on an equal footing to secular education in terms of funding. And there are two other factors – the availability of highly qualified people who can change things and the momentum provided by the Arab Spring!

Jamhari Makruf: You know there is availability of human resources within Islamic higher education itself that can help to improve the quality of Islamic higher education. Then it become momentum within our institution to improve ourself. And it is also the momentum that we get from the Arab Spring you know. After the Arab Springs I think it also give us the reason that we have also to build another centre of Islamic learning in Muslim world that can be another alternative for Muslims to study. I think it is a time that Indonesia has to build a very excellent Islamic learning that can be used for others, and Indonesian Muslims are the largest Muslims in the world you know. We have a very different tradition on education so I think it is a time that Indonesia also should have a good quality of Islamic education that can become future direction for other Muslims in the world.

Margaret Coffey: It is interesting [that] you say that there are now the resources within Islamic education in Indonesia.

Jamhari Makruf: People [are] beginning to understand that an Islamic university is an academic institution so that we have to develop our university in accordance in academic way. That's been also helped by our alumni that’s continued their study in a very broad spectrum of knowledge you know. Some of them went to Middle Eastern universities, some of them went to western universities like America, Australia , Europe, Netherlands and so on like that and some of them also continued within Indonesia universities. So this complex and also rich alumni of our university meets together and they discuss how to improve the university.

Margaret Coffey: One of the big questions for the Islamic university is how it integrates forms of knowledge other than religious sciences. So how has the scene in Indonesia dealt with that?

Jamhari Makruf: This is true. One of the reasons why it become a full-fledged university, not only offering Islamic studies but also general sciences, is a belief that in the Islamic history there is no division at all between Islam and science. Our great, great thinkers were scientists as well as religious scholars in the same time.

And the second thing, we believe that because we only focus on Islamic studies then we didn’t involve ourselves in improving society. We ignored technology, we ignored science, so I think it is time to be involved in that technology and science. And thirdly because we focus mainly on religion we make debates in our own self –

Margaret Coffey: Becomes very inward looking...

Jamhari Makruf: ...yeh yeh, debating the same thing. I made a joke to students of our university – you never question about iphone and blackberry, is it Islamic or not, but you are using it. Who made iphone and who made blackberry? It is not Muslim countries. But you are never questioning where it come from. But when you come to social sciences you are always asking that question – how do we Islamise the sciences? – but when it become a product you never really ask that question. So I think this is a time that we have to open ourselves. And fourthly I think in a global era like this I think we have to work together and also to collaborate together, and I think science is a good start to collaborate. So I think making an open university that also studying science [is] making [it] easier also to collaborate and also to interact with global studies and global communities.

Margaret Coffey: You mention discussion about religion... one of the issues in inter-religious discussion is that a lot of the vocabulary is derived from western scholarship, the social sciences and so on. Does you university feel conscious of that and of the need to develop an Islamic vocabulary that can be brought to these discussions?

Jamhari Makruf: We believe that you know when we want to have a discussion with different people we should have the same vocabulary, the same concepts and the same theory. So we are trying to understand the western concepts of religions and also divinity. At the same time also we have to find the correct theory and the correct concept in our own tradition so that we can in the middle. I don’t buy the Islamisation of knowledge because you know it implies that there is quite a division, quite a separation between Islam and science. But we believe that there can be integration. You can buy something from the science but also you can buy something from religion. So back to your question, what are the concepts of religion that is developed in western academia - yes we use but we also to develop our own so that we can meet in the middle. So the western academy can learn something from us but we also can learn something from the western academia too.

Margaret Coffey: What are your hopes for your taskforce – how would you like to describe the education scene in Indonesia say in 15 years time as a result of your work?

Jamhari Makruf: My hope is...it is a dream and I hope that dreams come true and [that] the government will approve it and will allocate a budget for the improvement of Islamic higher education within fifteen years and also the people within the universities also have [a] strong wish and [a] strong demand to improve their quality in the future. So I hope that dreams come true.

Margaret Coffey: Professor Jamhari Makruf. In Melbourne, he gave a presentation to Melbourne University’s Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society. There’s a complete transcript of this program at RN’s Encounter website, where you can also download the audio and find links to further information. You’ll find that site via abc.net.au/radionational. Sound engineer was Richard Girvan, and I'm Margaret Coffey.

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