Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia

MANAGING POLITICS AND ISLAM IN INDONESIA 51MANAGING ISLAMIC EDUCATIONThe de-politicisation of campus life—which corresponded with national trendsfor the removal of party influence from the political system—and reorientationof Islamic education went hand in hand. That is, the regime tried to develop acadre of administrators and technocrats, both in the government bureaucracy andeducational institutions, who would have no attachment to the political partiesand would contribute to the state’s development goals. The analysis will considerhow New Order modernisers viewed both ‘political’ Islam and ‘traditional’ Islamas obstructions to their vision for a standardised, national system based onwestern models of education. In turn, education was an integral part of preparingcitizens to become the next generation of ‘construction-oriented’ technocrats,intellectuals and administrators, who would share the anti-party bias of NewOrder leaders. Thus, by stages, the regime brought academic and, to a lesserextent, student life within the state’s exclusionary corporatist arrangements,disengaged it from independent political and organisational activity, and soughtto re-orient it to the New Order ideology of Pancasila and development.The Problem of Islamic EducationBefore proceeding with the main analysis, a very brief historical context of Islamiceducation under Suharto is in order. One of the most perplexing problems forIndonesian administrations was how to integrate Indonesia’s ‘dual’ system ofeducation, that had the Department of Religion overseeing religious educationand the Department of Education and Culture administering general education.The historical process of establishing a common standard of education, in thecause of creating a distinctive national identity, national unity and patriotism,was a complex one. It entailed successive attempts to narrow the gap between thetwo systems, which included the accommodation of an increasing proportion ofsecular (science and general) subjects into the Islamic schools and tertiaryinstitutes. 46By the 1970s, the Department of Religion’s largest policy area of concern wasthat of modernising the Islamic education system to bring it more into line withwestern interdisciplinary curricula from primary and secondary through totertiary levels. In March 1975, the Ministers of Education, Religion and InternalAffairs signed a joint decision on the universalisation and standardisation ofeducation, with Islamic education thenceforth being based on the generalcurriculum. In seeking to standardise the education system, education ministersmet with considerable resistance from Muslim political and community interests.For example, Daud Jusuf (the Minister of Education and Culture between 1978and 1982) explained that, in the face of Muslim opposition, the regime shelvedmost of the minister’s initiatives (discussed below) to standardise and seculariseeducation. In June 1988, the next Minister of Education, Fuad Hasan, submittedto parliament a controversial draft bill on education, 47 which omitted any