Indonesian Islamic Boarding Schools: The Role of the Pesantren in Preventing the Spread of Islamic Extremism
A pesantren in Jombang, East Java. Photo by Annisa Alwita, Wikimedia Commons
By Hilary Dauer
Introduction
One of the most frequently heard terms in the counterterrorism/counter-radicalism conversation in Southeast Asia is pesantren, or Islamic boarding school. More often than not, the pesantren is associated with terrorism and/or radical Islam. Yet, despite all of the negative attention, the pesantren is poorly understood outside the world of sociology, religion, or anthropology. Quite the opposite of what is often portrayed in the media, the pesantren, in many ways, acts as a stabilizing force within Indonesian society. It is in their interest to do so. Unfortunately, a discourse (especially among counterterrorism experts) on the pesantren’s role in maintaining stability and checking extremism in Indonesia is sadly lacking.[1]
The pesantren is an essential part of many Indonesian communities. It disseminates ideology, both religious and political, through the key community services it provides such as education for the community’s youth and the administration of important religious rites. Through the provision of these services, pesantrens provide the ideological underpinning for societal stability. In return, pesantrens receive benefits such as prestige, government assistance in helping to spread their particular ideology, and finding jobs for their graduates. In short, pesantrens maintain a symbiotic relationship with national and local governments.
Despite coordination of activities with government, the vast majority of pesantrens prefer to remain independent and retain the freedom to develop their own teaching methods, curricula, and course structure. A relatively small percentage of Indonesia’s 20,000 or so pesantrens follow officially mandated government curricula or receive substantial amounts of government support. It is clear that pesantrens that follow nationally mandated curricula receive more direct funding than those that do not. In some rare cases, certain pesantrens have opted to remain independent because of their extremist ideology. This, however, is much more the exception than the rule. For the most part, pesantrens that do not follow national curricula are still part of a larger system through which they enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with government.
Pesantrens have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo because they often benefit from it. In return for support from national and local governments, pesantrens disseminate an ideology that emphasizes moderation, tolerance, and religious harmony – all themes that buttress stability in a diverse country like Indonesia. Individual pesantrens and the pesantren system as a whole are not without vulnerabilities, however. With any symbiotic relationship, externalities could upset the mutually beneficial equilibrium. Well-funded extremists (foreign or otherwise) could offer inducements to any given pesantren that would alter the latter’s ideological outlook.
Definition
The term pesantren goes back to Indonesia’s Hindu-Buddhist roots. “… pesantren was per-santri-en, ‘the place where the wise men were,’ santri being a version of shastri, the Sanskrit word for a man learned in the Hindu shastras, the scriptures.”[2] Today, the pesantren is in practice an umbrella term under which a wide array of related yet diverse institutions fall. A useful construct would be, perhaps, to look at the pesantren as an institution whose primary function is education. Primarily, but not exclusively, located in rural areas, pesantrens provide a place for study where pupils can receive religious instruction from a religious teacher (kyai). In many cases, pesantrens are boarding schools. The traditional pesantren is duty-bound to accept any student who wants to study there and can pay a nominal tuition fee.[3]
In modern Indonesia, pesantrens as educational institutions are divided into two types: modern and traditional (sometimes called salaf[4] in Indonesian). It would be far too easy and incorrect to equate modern pesantrens with bastions of forward-looking, liberal Islamic thought and traditional pesantrens with reactionary places that are hotbeds of radical thinking. Rather, the distinction is largely one that deals with the type of curriculum.[5] A modern pesantren will, essentially, follow a nationally accredited school curriculum, determined by the Ministry of Education and/or the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In theory, a pesantren that follows a national curriculum receives funding from the national government. At the completion of a course of study, students receive a certificate that is equivalent to that of a state-run school. Traditional pesantrens, on the other hand, focus more exclusively on religious subjects, but may teach general subjects too. In traditional pesantrens, however, the pedagogy and content are not accredited or held to a national standard. As result, financial support from the government is more limited, though not inconsequential. A single pesantren can contain both modern and traditional teaching styles and curricula.
A majority of pesantrens in Indonesia are traditional and are therefore independent of formal government control. An example of one such pesantren is the Miftahul Huda pesantren in Tasikmalaya. This pesentren is in fact the flagship pesantren of a network of hundreds of affiliated pesantrens throughout Indonesia. As such, the Miftahul Huda organization remains independent from any formal control of the central government. The choice to remain independent, however, does not necessarily indicate any hostility toward the central government or a desire to overthrow it. in an interview, the head of the pesantren in Tasikmalaya, Maoshul Asep Affandy, explained that many pesantrens choose to remain outside the national formal education structure for a variety of reasons. Among the pesantrens affiliated to Miftahul Huda, some have adopted the nationally recognized curriculum and others have not. “The choice each pesantren in our network makes is based on what fits their local circumstances best,” explained Affandy.
“For instance, the pesantren here in Tasikmalaya remains traditional. This is because there are already government schools and madrassas with whom our pesantren has a close relationship. In fact, many of our students also attend the local government schools too,” Affandy added. “All the pesantrens in our network, regardless of whether they are modern or traditional, follow the same religious interpretation of the Quran,” Affandy said. Citing another reason, Affandy said that the ideal of self-sufficiency is key for many pesantrens and for that reason they did not want to lose the autonomy to design their own curricula.[6]
Beyond its function as a place of education, the pesantren has links to the community as an institution. Partly because of the educational services it provides, the pesantren is viewed as an institution of permanence that will always protect the children of the community. In addition to its role as an educator, however, the pesantren is also a place where ideas are produced and disseminated. Through this role, the pesantren plays an integral part in the development of Indonesia’s Islamic civil society.[7]
Pesantren students and leaders are often expected to provide religious instruction and perform religious services for their communities.[8] “In Hindu-Buddhist days in Java,” V.S. Naipul wrote, “a pesantren was a monastery, supported by the community in return for the spiritual guidance and the spiritual protection it provided.”[9] In many ways this role persists today. For example, the leader of the Ibnul Amin Pamangkin Pesantren in South Kalimantan holds a religious discussion (majlis taklim) for the local community every day at 6:00 am except Fridays and the deputy leader holds another discussion at lunchtime. Since 2007, the pesantren also broadcasts these discussions on local radio.[10] Through religious lectures for the public, pesantrens and their graduates are able to transmit their belief system and interpretation of the Quran to the public at large. Pesantrens at the local level also spawn organizations that promote their interpretation of religious doctrine and provide charitable work. Once again, an example from South Kalimantan is illustrative. Ibnul Amin Pamangkih Pesantren has the Organization of Ibnul Amin Santri (OSIP) that organizes celebrations of Islamic holidays and the Darul Hijrah Cindai Alus Pesantren has the Organization of Darul Hijraj Santri (OSDA) that performs funerals for the community.[11]
Pesantrens receive financial support from regional governments for performing religious rituals, providing religious education for the general public, and celebrating Islamic holidays.[12] In many cases, local governments ask pesantrens to perform these religious functions. It would stand to reason that local governments would not want the pesantrens they fund to spread violent extremism in the community. After all, it is the local government that would have to deal with the aftermath of the violence.
Ties with Government
In general, the pesantren system as a whole, as well as a great many pesantrens individually, maintains a close relationship with government. The relationship with government exists regardless of whether a particular pesantren receives government funding in exchange for teaching the government curriculum. An individual pesantren is part of a religious infrastructure that is in many ways designed to keep the status quo. One manifestation of this infrastructure is the relationship between pesantren leaders and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest private voluntary organization, and the government. Pesantren leaders form one of the core constituencies of NU.[13] It would not be a stretch to say that NU was born in the pesantren.[14] Today, NU can be thought of as a loosely knit association of pesantren leaders. In that sense, NU in many ways functions as an advocacy group for the association of pesantren leaders it represents. For instance, NU works closely with the government to develop job prospects for pesantren graduates.[15]
Since at least the late 1950s, NU has accepted the central government’s secular, multi-confessional state ideology, known as pancasila, in exchange for support for NU’s educational and social programs. In 1959, NU relented on its insistence for the inclusion of Sharia Law in the constitution and began a period of cooperation and accommodation with the Sukarno regime[16]; this cooperation continues to today. In many ways, the NU’s relationship with the government is based around resource allocation.[17] History has shown that the government has been willing and able to cut off NU’s support whenever it perceived that NU has gone too far in opposing the government. In 1980, for example, Suharto began to cut government patronage of pesantrens and funding for other NU social programs after NU refused to back his effort to serve as president for another five years.[18]
These examples of the pesantren relationship with Suharto and Sukarno are not to demonstrate that NU is a completely subservient agent of the government of Indonesia. Quite the contrary, it is a robust and independent actor within Indonesia’s rich civil society that often brings considerable pressure on the government. Rather, the above examples illustrate that NU’s activities are a product of learned behavior, fashioned over the decades of Indonesia’s independence, that take into account both the costs and the benefits of cooperation and confrontation with the government.
NU, one large collective of pesantrens and pesantren leaders, has an incentive to continue cooperation with the government because that cooperation is beneficial. Pesantrens receive funding and improved job prospects for its graduates while government benefits from the pro-status quo ideology preached through pesantren and their kyai. In this sense, NU, and by definition a large percentage of pesantrens in Indonesia, have in many ways become part of the system and have an interest in its continuity – not a radical overthrow of it. As long as the government can continue to help provide opportunity for NU pesantren graduates, NU will prefer stability because it benefits its members, as their graduates are not very much a part of the system itself.
Replicating Stability
There is a nation-wide network of NGOs and think tanks that manufacture ideology and then work with pesantrens to disseminate it. One such think tank is the Jakarta-based Indonesian Society for Pesantren and Community Development (P3M), which promotes the ideals of moderation and tolerance. Florian Pohl has described P3M’s work as utilizing “the extensive network of Indonesia’s pesantrens, which are agents for and targets of community development… with a particular focus on pluralism and democracy.”[19]
Evidence of the desires of the pesantren system’s leaders to maintain stability can be found in the aforementioned ideological outlook. Often in Indonesia, ideological paradigms that favor the status quo can be identified through certain code words or rhetorical totems such as pancasila (see above), tolerance, and pluralism. It is tempting to think of tolerance or pluralism as altruistic concepts but they are also useful to the national leadership of a religiously diverse country because, if accepted by society, they promote stability. If an ideology of religious harmony can be inculcated in the people, then internecine violence would be less likely. To this extent, the government funding detailed above also aids a kyai’s ability to spread his (or, in some very rare cases, her) ideological beliefs. And, if a member of NU, the ideological position of the kyai will be in line, by and large, with the type of stability the government wants.
Outliers
Of course, in small numbers, some pesantrens do produce violent extremists and even terrorists. Can anything be learned from these outliers to the pesantren system as a whole? In particular, why were these pesantrens susceptible to an ideology that encouraged its graduates to seek an overthrow of the system? One of two conclusions would seem logical: 1) the extremist ideology that somehow infiltrated these pesantrens was so mesmerizing that it overwhelmed the rational cost-benefit analysis of the students, teachers, and the institution; or 2) some external force sweetened the incentives for taking on an ideology that rejected the current status quo and caused an individual pesantren to be an enemy rather than partner of the state. In either case, the existing system was unable to counter the allure presented by radicals in these limited cases. Time will tell if these few outliers become a trend and to what degree the government will do something to prevent the isolated phenomena from metastasizing.
Conclusion
The case of Indonesia provides a factual counter argument to the fear of what an Islam-centric civil society would wreak if they were let loose in a democracy. Far from giving radicals a free reign, democracy allows Islamic civil society organizations an opportunity to be part of the system and benefit from stable government. An open society allows religious organizations to become champions of large groupings of people. These religious organizations can, as champions, assert the interests of the people they represent vis-à-vis the state. In Indonesia’s case, NU has in some ways developed into an association of pesantrens. NU is one organization that acts as a collective voice of pesantren leaders in negotiating resource allocation with the government. If leaders at Islamic institutions believe they have a stake in the system, they will be less likely to want to destroy it. Rather, they will interact with the government peacefully to gain the biggest benefit for their followers. None of this would be possible if government were to inhibit the freedom of organizations like NU to associate. Doing so would stunt the emergence of an endemic source of civil society. Rich civil societies allow for religious institutions like pesantrens to have enough power to act independently of the government and negotiate the rules of the game as equal partners.
Contrary to popular belief, pesantrens, like most civil society structures, act as indigenous barriers to radicalism. Their activities and their ability to speak for and provide benefits to the largest number of followers as possible is a measure of the overall health of civil society and therefore its ability to inhibit the rise of radical networks. The degree to which local civil society can be strengthened, radicals and their ideology, dangerous though they are, will be isolated and rendered irrelevant.
About the Author
The author is a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed in proceeding article are his own views and not necessarily those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Government.
Endnotes
A number of Indonesia observers will concede that the vast majority of pesantren are non-violent, yet there are few inquiries into the positive role of the pesantren in preventing the growth of radicalism.
V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 323.
Ronald Lukens-Bull, A Peaceful Jihad (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 65.
The term salaf, in its Indonesian usage, should not be confused with the term salafism, which has become synonymous with Islamic fundamentalist globally. Stripped of its current political connotations, the Arabic word salaf means predecessors. Thusly, a salaf pesantren in Indonesia simply means a school that follows the teachings of those who came before.
Lukens-Bull, A Peaceful Jihad, 47.
Asep A. Maoshul Affandy, interview by Hilary Dauer (April 20, 2012).
Robert W. Hefner, Civil Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 34.
Lukens-Bull, A Peaceful Jihad, 59.
Naipaul, Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, 323.
Husnul Yaqin, Sistem Pendidikan Pesantren Di Kalimantan Selatan (Banjarmasin: Antasari Press, 2009), 241.
Yaqin, Sistem Pendidikan Pesantren Di Kalimantan Selatan, 242.
Yaqin, Sistem Pendidikan Pesantren Di Kalimantan Selatan, 249-250.
Hefner, Civil Islam, 34.
Said Aqil Siradj, “Pesantren, NU, dan Politik,” in Nahdlatul Ulama: Dinamika Ideologi dan Politik Kenegaraan, ed. Khamami Zada and Ahmad Fawaid Sjadzili, (Jakarta: Kompas Penerbit Buku, 2010), 86.
Hefner, Civil Islam, 86
Robin Bush. Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia (Singapore: The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), 56.
Bush, Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia, 57.
Bush, Nahdlatul Ulama and the Struggle for Power within Islam and Politics in Indonesia, 68.
Florian Pohl, “Islamic Education and Civil Society: Reflections on the Pesantren Tradition in Contemporary Indonesia,” Comparative Eduction Review 50 (2006): 396.