Crafting a New Democracy: Civic education in Indonesian Islamic universities

Abstract

Indonesia's post-1998 transition to democracy has presented Muslim educators with the opportunity to take part in shaping the future of Indonesian democracy in ways that are consistent with Muslim social, political, and educational aspirations. One of the key vehicles for doing so is civic education. For Muslim educators in the Islamic higher education sector, the challenge has been to develop a civic education curriculum which can educate the young generation about democratic citizenship while incorporating the values and perspectives of Islam on civil society, democracy, and human rights. This paper examines civic education initiatives in two Islamic university systems, suggesting that the development of the new curriculum reveals clear differences in perceptions about civil society and the state within the institutions which make up these two systems. This is reflected by the extent to which Islamic concepts of the state and citizenship are integrated with Western thought and practice on civil society and democratic pluralism in the civic education curriculum and in teaching practice. The success of the Indonesian experience, the paper concludes, provides an example of how Western and Islamic concepts and values can be successfully combined in the teaching of civic education.

Notes

1. The Coordinating Body for Islamic Institutions of Higher Education (Kopertais) is the regional body under which private Islamic colleges and universities are organised throughout Indonesia. There are 12 Kopertais in total and these are part of the Department of Religious Affairs, which is responsible for all religious schools and universities throughout Indonesia.

2. Muhammadiyah was founded in 1912 as a social and educational organisation inspired by the Islamic reformist movement. Disagreements over Muhammadiyah's modernising agenda led to the formation of Nahdlatul Ulama in 1926 as a social and educational organisation oriented to defending the Indonesian tradition of Islamic schooling (Sidel, 2001, p. 117).

3. This vision emphasised harmony and consensus in decision making. The state was seen as a family, headed by a paternal figure. Society was represented as an integrated or ‘organic’ whole in which each group—youth, women, agricultural workers, and so on—had a specific role to play. The role of the state in this model was to articulate and embody the common interests of society (Bourchier, 1996, pp. 2, 6; Robison, 1993, p. 43).

4. Information in this section was obtained from reports prepared by the Indonesian Centre for Civic Education and the Centre for Educational Research and Development to which the authors had access in their capacity as employees of The Asia Foundation.

5. See Halstead (2004, pp. 525–526) on Islamic perspectives on the role of the teacher as authority figure.