The Variants of Pesantren
Ideological vs. cultural `pesantren'
Achmad Munjid , Philadelphia Jakarta Post Sat, 09/05/2009
We are happy the police finally scrapped the controversial plan to spy on Muslim preachers as a way to undermine the spread of hard-line ideological teachings.
If implemented, not only would the police have gone too far and without sufficient knowledge, it would also have been a sign that our policymakers were panicking. Even worse, as victims we would be led to reproduce and magnify chaos and terror - the ultimate target of every terrorist action.
When based on hard evidence, obviously we need to allow and support the police to do whatever is necessary to win the war on terror, including investigating some suspected Muslim clerics and their organizations. However, it is completely ridiculous to arbitrarily generalize the allegation as implied by the sermon-monitoring plan.
Instead of calling out everybody to unite against terrorism, the idea of monitoring sermons will only result in mutual suspicion within society, especially among Muslim groups and institutions.
The idea of monitoring sermons, among the others, is motivated by the wrong assumption about the linear interconnection between Islam, radicalism and terrorism. Muslim preachers, sermons and eventually also pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) as the "producers", as well as Muslim organizations, should thus be closely monitored. Remember Vice President Jusuf Kalla's idea in 2005 to monitor pesantren.
For many people involved in pesantren, and Muslims in general, these are both puzzling and embarrassing.
To clarify the issue, let everyone be aware that there are two types of pesantren: political and cultural.
An ideological pesantren is an Islamic boarding school and its networking institutions with distinct Islamist political objectives, such as the implementation of sharia by the state, the creation of an Islamic state, the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate, etc. This type of pesantren can be related to Islamic radicalism. Why?
Islamic radicalism is a broad category for complicated phenomena with various causes and manifestations. In the modern world, however, it has always been associated with anti-West sentiment and a movement to achieve an Islamist political agenda. Ideological pesantren, places where young Muslims are trained in Islamic sciences within an Islamist ideological framework, are arguably havens for Islamic radicalism.
In Indonesia, this type of pesantren is relatively new, and numbers only a handful. Al-Mukmin in Ngruki, Central Java, founded in 1970, is perhaps the oldest and most popular of them. The framework and paradigm for learning Islamic sciences in this kind of pesantren is ideological/political orientation: the establishment of Dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam). For them, an Islamic state is the sine qua non for true Islam to exist. If such an Islamic state did not exist, the main responsibility of every Muslim would be to work toward it, to establish it.
While promoting an anti-Western spirit, ideological pesantren are modern in nature: organized, urban, well-informed, technologically literate and internationally networked. Ironically, however, this type of pesantren is socially and culturally less integrated, if not isolated from the neighboring community.
This is not to point out that every ideological pesantren is synonymous with Islamic radicalism, let alone terrorism, and should be shut down accordingly. In democracy - and in fact in the Koran as well - every person or group should be judged based not on thought, but on deed and consequence.
Nevertheless, I want to argue here that ideological pesantren might lend a good environment for, if not support, Islamic radicalism. When required, it is mainly this kind of pesantren that deserves all due attention from the police, and not every pesantren.
Cultural pesantren are Islamic boarding schools with no such aforementioned political agendas. Unlike in Pakistan, where so much time and energy of Muslims, including in madrasa (Islamic schools) and other educational institutions, have been mobilized toward an Islamic state, in cultural pesantren the issues of an Islamic state and caliphate are generally seen as technically irrelevant and theologically exhausted.
Most pesantren of this type are closely associated with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), either organizationally or culturally. For NU, the most important principle in relation to politics is maslaha (public good). This means two things. First, political authority is justified when it allows Muslims to freely practice their religion. Second, it is unjustified when it goes against the principle of public good for the people.
As found in many classical Islamic traditions, for NU and cultural pesantren, the form of the political system can be anything: monarchy, theocracy, democracy, you name it - as long as it promotes justice and is based on maslaha. Moreover, when threatened, the existing legitimate political authority should be defended, even when the opposing power is under the banner of an Islamic state!
This explains why NU and cultural pesantren defended the legitimacy of the Republic of Indonesia and rejected the Darul Islam (DI) movement in the 1950s.
Unlike ideological pesantren, cultural pesantren have an interest in the daily religious practice of Muslims, and are thus fully integrated into the surrounding community. With rural bases, unfortunately, in most cases they have limited or no international connection, remain financially and technologically poor and unorganized. Many small cultural pesantren even lack a curriculum.
Under the Soeharto regime, cultural pesantren were frequently identified as a stubborn obstacle to modernization, due to both their "a-modern" traditions and central authority over the people. On the other hand, as a result of their nonpolitical orientation, unfortunately, cultural pesantren were sometimes politicized by the New Order for its legitimacy.
In the last three decades, however, with cultural pesantren and modernity engaged in mutually enriching exchanges, cultural pesantren are now widely recognized as a genuine seeding field for a tolerant and progressive Islam.
By all means, cultural pesantren have no association with Islamic radicalism, let alone terrorism.
This clarification is important at least for two main reasons. First, internally, when investigation of a pesantren is required, Muslims understand which group is being scrutinized and why. Therefore, no in-group religious sentiment may be exploited for any justification. Second, externally, it will help eliminating the misconception and prejudice about Islam in relation to violence, especially among Western media and popular opinion.
Terrorism has neither religion nor nation. Government and every segment of society, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, should work together to effectively fight against it.
The writer is president of the Nahdlatul Ulama Community in North America and an associate at Temple University's Dialogue Institute, Philadelphia, US.
