Fighting radicalism with religion

Jakarta, NU Online
As a student at a state senior high school in East Jakarta, Adam is obliged to attend Islamic studies classes, even though he does so reluctantly.

“People tend to raise their eyebrows if you skip the class,” the 11th-grader said. “One of my friends did it once, and some of the other students were very surprised. We later found out that the school punished him by calling in his parents to tell them that he had skipped Islamic studies.”

The lack of desire to go to these classes was universally felt, Adam said, with students believing that rote memorization of verses from the Koran — with no attempt by teachers to explain their meanings — was boring.

“I wish we could have classes that focused on more than just memorizing certain verses,” he was quoted by the Jakarta Globe as saying.

He added that another factor that made Islamic studies an unpopular subject was the fact that it was one of the things that students were tested on in their end-of-term exams.

“I don’t believe that we should be graded by teachers when it comes to memorizing verses,” he said. “I don’t want to feel forced to practice my religion.”

It is that feeling, that the state has taken something as private as faith and forced it onto students in public schools, that has long irked parents and advocates of freedom of worship.

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, a researcher with the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, said that forcing students to practice religion as part of school exams in a way that made them uncomfortable straddled the gray area between religious and democratic freedoms.

“If a teacher forces a student to practice a religion that the student may not believe in, that amounts to a violation of human rights and of the rights of the child,” he said.

Rather than scrapping Islamic studies from the national curriculum, though, he contended that the subject could be put to beneficial use if it was taught in the proper way.

“Teachers should be able to engage students in dialogue when it comes to tackling rising Islamic radicalization, because if schools continue to teach it like any other subject, then the students will not be able to learn the essence of antiradicalism,” Bonar said.

He also suggested religious studies be complemented by programs designed to foster respect and tolerance among students of different faiths.

“We should have programs such as Muslim students living for a few days with a Christian family, so that both sides can share their experiences and strive for harmony,” he said.

Edy Suandi Hamid, rector of the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) and head of the Indonesian Private Universities Association (APTSI), said the current focus on memorizing verses in Arabic without understanding them needed to be changed.

“Religious studies should teach life values rather than just be about preaching and forcing students to memorize verses, because that’s not the core of studying religion,” he said.

“Our teachers tend to scare students by telling them about the punishments they face for doing things prohibited under Islam. Instead, they should teach more than just that. They should be teaching how Islam, like all other religions, promotes peaceful coexistence among people of different faiths.”

Edy said the failure to teach those fundamental values at schools had given rise to a growing radicalization, as highlighted recently in allegations that the Al Zaytun Islamic boarding school in Indramayu, West Java, was a recruiting ground for the banned Indonesian Islamic State (NII) movement.

“Radicalism flourishes because of a lack of two-way communication, so religious classes should not focus on preaching,” he said. “Rather than force students to listen to the teachers sermonizing, we need to have religious classes that encourage a lot of discussion.”

He added that the process of engaging in dialogue and debate would help sharpen the students’ analytical thinking abilities and make them more open-minded young adults.

National Education Minister Muhammad Nuh has previously urged all teachers to engage their students in discussion in a bid to combat creeping radicalism in schools and university campuses. He added that his ministry was in the middle of reviewing the national school curriculum to find ways to minimize Islamic radicalization.

Diah Haryanti, head of the ministry’s school textbook department, said representatives from her office had met three times with those from the Religious Affairs Ministry to recommend changes to the Islamic studies curriculum.

“We’ve already drawn up a paper on counter-radicalization measures following our meetings with the Religious Affairs Ministry, because [amending] the Islamic studies curriculum is necessary to curb radicalism in schools and campuses,” she said.

“We’re also going to meet with officials from the BSNP [National Education Standardization Agency] to review the curriculum. The process is ongoing.”

Diah added that counter-radicalization would soon be introduced as a chapter on its own in the prescribed textbooks for religious studies.

“I think it’ll be implemented after the 2012-2013 school year,” she said. (dar)