Madrasa-phobia is Misapprehension




Madrasa-phobia is Misapprehension

Abdul Kadir Riyadi*

As the nomination of Barrack Obama as the first black candidate for the presidency of the United State get off the ground, allegation that he was educated during his childhood in Indonesia in a radical Muslim madrasa started to come forth. This allegation was first surfaced on the website of the conservative Insight magazine the day after Obama announced his jumping into the 2008 presidential race.

With this allegation, comes the general and predominant assumption among the conservative Americans that Indonesia is a home to several radical madrasas; madrasas that produce the radicals and the fundamentalists. The basic question remains, are there really madrasas that hatch radicalism in Indonesia?

Indonesia has been a soft ground for centuries for the traditional educational system called madrasa. The madrasa in its turn has contributed a great deal in the process of educating the best sons of this country. But following some gruesome events on the global stage, the madrasas came under close and intense scrutiny from a great number of countries, individuals and organizations. The general and predominant assumption about the madrasa at the moment is that, it is the breeding grounds for terrorism. A chorus of government officials, journalists, pundits, and scholars among the conservatives in America hold this view. Some of them are indeed sympathetic to madrasa. But their gestures still fall short of providing a realistic picture of what happens inside madrasas or humanizing their inhabitants.




Those who hold the negative view of madrasa, have done so without any evidence and without an understanding of the complexity of the networks of madrasa which are associated with multiple schools of thought and ideologies.

In fact, madrasa is many-faced. While a small number of them are radical, a great number of them are not. Even those who are radicals do not necessarily represent the true face of madrasa.

Let us look at the predominant group of what I call the madrasa community, namely those who have ever been associated with the madrasa in the past or at the present. There are at least two groups. The first one is what I call the pergerakan group. This group is concerned with “conveying” the message of God through a real –namely political- action. They do this first of all by reminding their co-religionists of their religious duties. While this group is organizationally speaking unprofessional, it has nonetheless a great influence on a big number of people around the country. Those that belong to this group are ideologically and politically loyal to their organization so much so that they are prepared to devote themselves to the fate of the group. The group had normally a simple but highly effective evangelical message that reflects Islam’s five cardinal pillars such as engagement in the frequent remembrance of God and participation in the missionary work (da’wa) by spreading awareness of Islam. Aggressive this group might seem at first sight, a closer look at their liturgical tendency reveals that all that they want to achieve is perfecting their religiosity through pietistic acts on the one hand, and embracing tradition through madrasa and da’wa on the other.

Another group is rather more embracing and intellectual. This group wants to secure the future of Islam by embracing modernity. We can see this group as reflected in the intellectual movement of Muhammadiyah and the more liberal wing of the Nadhdatul Ulama. Some elements of this intellectual community even find that European bureaucratic modernity is attractive, hence see Europe as partner and not enemy.

For this group, the madrasa in this country represents a genuine bastion of tradition and modernity. This group –it is apparent- rejects radicalism and sees it as the true malaise of society preventing an effective communication between tradition and modernity. Liberal thinkers always look at the radicals as feckless, robbed of intellectual vigor, and uninterested in progress and harmony.

It might have become clear that there is no such a thing as radicalism in the madrasa. The existing groups that affiliate to madrasa –intellectually, structurally and even ideologically- stood against radicalism. Radicalism in other words, never belongs to madrasa, and madrasa never –at no time in its long history- teaches radicalism.

On the contrary, madrasa drives home the sacred nature of knowledge; knowledge that opens up the worlds to us, and teaches us harmony and tolerance. One is taught in the madrasa the utmost respect for others, Muslims and non-Muslims. The texts that are taught in the madrasa are not only symbols of learning, but also markers of harmony and understanding. The mainstay of the madrasa curriculum, Fiqh is actually moral discourse that proposes ethical guidelines for society in its pursue of peace and co-existence. The thrust of the madrasa is therefore, about the supreme pedagogical value that would cultivate moral virtue on the one hand, and enhances one’s panoramic view of his/her religion on the other.

All this is to say, that it is the madrasa that for such long time in this country, provides the big picture of Islamic ideas and affects transformation in Indonesia. Madrasa has been the repositories of Indonesian Islam and seed of intellectual sophistication that challenges the shallow discourses of fundamentalism.

These are the benevolent nature of madrasa. However, if the conservatives among the American keep on drawing a closer line of battle with the madrasa community, I fear that they –the community- will turn against them -the conservatives- and by extension against the West as a whole. If the conservatives insist on casting madrasas as redoubts of terror and proposing invasive surveillance techniques, I fear that the madrasa community will retreat into unpredictable modes of resistance. Madrasa community may be forced to defend themselves by more militant means as the political situation become more turbulent at the global stage.

*Lecturer of Islamic and Western Philosophy, IAIN Surabaya.