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

Abstract

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.