Aspiration, Piety, and Traditionalism Among Indonesian Islamic Boarding School Girls

Abstract

Islamic boarding schools or madrasa, as they are known in much of the Muslim world, exist in the public imaginary as places of rote memorization, draconian rules, and limited human flourishing—particularly for young women. Until recently, many scholars of contemporary Muslim societies overlooked these institutions, assumed to be bastions of conservativism, unyielding to pressures to accommodate contemporary cultural and social climates. However, recent anthropological investigations of students’’ lived realities at Islamic boarding schools reveal that these negative stereotypes overlook the diversity of roles that religion plays in society and more specifically, the critical social and historical role Islamic schools play in molding modern, educated, and pious youth.