DIVERGENT PATHS FROM GONTOR: MUSLIM EDUCATIONAL REFORM AND THE TRAVAILS OF PLURALISM IN INDONESIA by Martin van Bruinessen

Untuk Pak Karel, santri Gontor dan gurubesar IAIN1 Pak Karel, Pesantren, and Pluralism I first met Karel Steenbrink in February 1982. He was living, with his family, on the campus of the State Institute of Islamic Studies (IAIN) Syarif Hidayatullah in Ciputat, South Jakarta, where he had been teaching several years. I was new to Indonesian studies, having been recently appointed to an enviable postdoctoral research position, in which my only obligation was to become an expert on some aspect of Indonesian Islam. My earlier research had been in a very different region, and some Indonesianists made me feel that I was trespassing and that my position should have been given to a more deserving person with the appropriate background in Indonesian studies. Not so Karel Steenbrink. Even before I made my first trip to the country, he had written a friendly letter of welcome to the field and invited me to be his guest when I would visit Jakarta. On that first trip, and on numerous later occasions, I enjoyed the Steenbrinks generous hospitality and profited enormously from Karels extensive knowledge of things Indonesian and his wide network of acquaintances. I also observed time and again how popular Pak Karel (as everyone called him affectionately) was among his Indonesian students and colleagues, and how much stimulation his presence brought them. I had heard about Karel of course; people had told me of this strange Dutchman who felt so much at ease among Indonesian Muslims, who had lived and studied in a pesantren (a traditional Islamic boarding school) and who now was teaching Islamic subjects to Indonesian Muslims in an Islamic university. A passionate teacher and paternal guru to his students, he appeared to have found an original way of integrating research and teaching. Education was both his profession and his object of study; and Islam clearly was more to him than just the religion of an alien people. He loved and respected these people, and he was in return respected and loved by many of them. Karel was a pioneer in the study of Islamic education in post-independence Indonesia. His dissertation, based on a combination of fieldwork and historical research and submitted in 1974, was the first serious study on the various school types offering Islamic education in modern Indonesia.2 Karels fieldwork had included a spell of participant observation living as a student, a santri, in a well-known Islamic boarding school, the pondok modern of Gontor. He had shared the santris daily life in all respects, studying the Arabic texts they studied and joining them in prayer; after some time even leading some of the junior santri from overseas (Southern Thailand and distant corners of the Archipelago) in prayer. Although much has been published on Islamic education in Indonesia and especially on the pesantren since Karels dissertation, no other scholar has, to my knowledge, carried out sustained fieldwork in a pesantren, and his work remains unique in this sense. Karels approach was not that of anthropology but the phenomenology of religion; he did not provide a detailed description of everyday life in a pesantren, but he presented a solid and reliable overview of Muslim educational reform, explaining the experiments and discussions on the subject very much from the perspective of the participants themselves. Karels travels among Indonesian Muslims, I gathered, had also been a voyage of personal spiritual growth and discovery. More clearly than in the dissertation itself, this was reflected in the theses (stellingen) accompanying the work, in which a doctoral candidate is expected to summarize major findings and make some thought-provoking comments on issues that are more tangentially related to the actual research. Islam and Christianity, he suggested, were not in1 2

For Mr. Karel, student of the pesantren of Gontor and IAIN professor. Karel A. Steenbrink, Pesantren, Madrasah, Sekolah: Recente ontwikkelingen in Indonesisch islamonderricht, Dissertation, Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen, Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid 1974.

192 herently competing and mutually incompatible religions but shared so many values that their theological differences could be overcome. He praised Indonesian Muslim and Christians for focusing their dialogue not on these theological differences but on their joint contribution to the development of their country, calling this an act of creative faith.3 Suggesting that one could be simultaneously a Muslim and a Christian, he called for the possibility of dual membership of these two religions, by analogy with ideas concerning the dual membership of Protestant denominations in the Netherlands.4 This was not very different from the conceptions of religious pluralism that were advocated a quarter century later by some IAIN graduates in Jakarta and that were fiercely condemned by the leading body of Islamic scholars, the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI).5 Gontor, Ciputat, and the Wider World The pesantren of Gontor, where Karel had received his initiation as a santri, and the IAIN of Jakarta in Ciputat, where he was teaching in the early 1980s, were major centres of educational innovation, and alumni of both institutions were among the most important contributors to Muslim discourse during the New Order period and after. Gontors modernity consisted not so much in the curriculum, in which the kitab kuning (classical Arabic textbooks) predominated, but in the concept of education, which was radically new when the school was established. For inspiration, the founders of Gontor looked not only at centres of reformist thought in Egypt (the Dar al-`Ulum, where Abduh and Rashid Rida were active) but also at more modernist experiments in India, the Anglo-Muslim college of Aligarh and even Rabindranath Tagores philosophy of education and his Santiniketan experiment. Foreign languages Arabic and English were considered essential for widening ones mental horizon, and the school obliged the santri to communicate in one of these languages instead of Indonesian or Javanese.6 One of Gontors famous graduates was Nurcholish Madjid, arguably the most influential Muslim intellectual of the New Order period and the leading exponent of liberal and neomodernist Islamic thought.7 Nurcholishs ideas were controversial in the early New Order period, when his plea for the de-sacralization of ossified institutions and habits of thought was considered by many as a betrayal of the political struggle of his elders and a selling out to the Suharto regime. Against those who called for an Islamic state, Nurcholish argued that Islam did not offer a distinct concept of the state and that there was no reason to reject Western concepts such as liberal democracy if one could recognize Islamic values in them. He and a handful of his peers became firm defenders of religious pluralism, accepting the
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Dat zowel vele christenen als moslems in Indonesi zich in het kader van de interreligieuze dialoog niet willen richten op reeds sedert lang geformuleerde theologische verschillen, maar liever een gezamenlijke bijdrage willen leveren aan de ontwikkeling van hun land, moet niet gezien worden als een (voorlopige) vlucht voor deze theologische kwesties. Vanuit het standpunt van beide religies dient dit gezien te worden als een daad van creatief geloof. (Stelling VII). In retrospect, this is too idealized a view of government-imposed interreligious harmony, but it remains true that many Muslims as well as Christians in Indonesia hold a positive appreciation of each others religion. 4 Wellicht mede naar analogie van ideen die leven onder hervormden en gereformeerden in Nederland, zou de mogelijkheid voor een dubbel lidmaatschap van christendom en islam onderzocht moeten worden. (Stelling X). 5 The ulama are the scholars of Islam; the Majelis Ulama Indonesia is the (originally state-appointed) Council of Indonesian Muslim Scholars. 6 The locus classicus on the pesantren of Gontor is: Lance Castles, Notes on the Islamic School at Gontor, Indonesia 1 (1966), 30-45. Castles interviewed the leading teacher of Gontor, Kiai Zarkasji, but did not actually spend much time in the pesantren. 7 Gregory James Barton, The emergence of neo-modernism: a progressive, liberal movement of Islamic thought in Indonesia. A textual study examining the writings of Nurcholish Madjid, Djohan Effendi, Ahmad Wahib and Abdurrahman Wahid, 1968-1980, Ph.D. thesis, Clayton: Monash University 1995; Ann Kull, Piety and politics: Nurcholish Madjid and his interpretation of Islam in modern Indonesia, Lund: Department of Anthropology and History of Religions 2005. Karel Steenbrink was in fact one of the first scholars to mention and analyse Nurcholishs ideas on secularization, see his Pesantren, Madrasah, Sekolah, 279-280.

193 people of the book (among whom he subsumed not only Christians and Jews but also Hindus and Buddhists) as brothers-in-faith with equal rights; they were committed defenders of the Pancasila state and the religious pluralism on which it was based.8 Nurcholish found much support for his ideas at the IAIN in Ciputat, where he studied and later occasionally taught. Its rector, Harun Nasution, who was himself a great admirer of the Egyptian reformer Abduh and his rationalism, provided younger people like Nurcholish with protection and stimulated independent thought on his campus. The IAIN gradually turned into the most important stronghold of the movement for the reform of religious thought (pembaharuan pemikiran agama), of which Nurcholish Madjid was the most visible spokesperson but which included many others, with different intellectual concerns. Ciputat was (and is) one of the most intellectually vibrating academic centres of the Muslim world. Many of its young lecturers have lived abroad for several years, hold doctoral or masters degrees from universities in the West or the Middle East, and contribute actively to public life through high-profile publishing. Several of them are also active in the foundation Paramadina, which was established by friends of Nurcholish in 1986 as a vehicle for the dissemination of sophisticated liberal Muslim thought among the increasingly affluent Muslim middle class. In spite of diverging intellectual interests, there is a strong sense of common identity among Ciputat graduates, and they sometimes even refer to themselves as the mazhab (school of thought) of Ciputat.9 Unsurprisingly, conservative and fundamentalist thinkers have for the past thirtyfive years seen Harun Nasution, Nurcholish Madjid and all those others at Ciputat as dangerous threats to their own view of Islam, and there has been a long series of polemical tracts against them.10 In a study of the religious debates of the early 1970s, Kamal Hassan notes the dismay Nurcholishs published views caused in some reformist circles, and he observes that some critics attributed his offending remarks to the modern education at Gontor, where credal matters were allegedly not given as much importance as linguistic competence.11 However, Gontor did not produce liberal Muslim thinkers only. Another graduate, whose fame has recently even overshadowed that of Nurcholish, is Abu Bakar Baasyir, the alleged leader of the radical Islamist movement Jamaah Islamiyah, who was long suspected of indirect involvement in a number of terrorist actions. Baasyir, who is of Nurcholishs generation, was one of the founders of a pesantren modelled on Gontor that was a centre of ideological resistance to the secular Pancasila state. He has consistently advocated the struggle for an Islamic state, a puritan life devoted to the execution of Gods will only, and strict avoidance of non-Muslims as well as Muslims of less strict persuasions.12 Indonesian mainstream Islam, represented by the large associations Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Council of Islamic Scholars (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI), has recently been undergoing a dramatic shift from relaKarel A. Steenbrink, Towards a Pancasila society: The Indonesian debate on secularization, liberation and development 1969-1989, Exchange 18 (1989), 1-28. 9 This is even the title of a book in which some of the leading members of the school present themselves: Edy A. Effendy (ed.), Dekonstruksi Islam: mazhab Ciputat (Deconstructing Islam: the mazhab of Ciputat) Bandung: Zaman Wacana Mulia 1999. The list of contributors is like a roll call of the most successful Ciputat graduates: Nurcholish Madjid, Azyumardi Azra (the current rector of the IAIN), Komaruddin Hidayat, Fachry Ali, Kautsar Azhari-Noer, Budhy Munawar-Rachman, Saiful Muzani, Hendro Prasetyo, Ihsan Ali-Fauzi, and Ahmad Sahal. 10 The series began with Professor M. Rasjidis tracts in which he corrected the ideas he attributed to Nurcholish and Harun; the most recent addition to the genre, that in its title already indicates the hardening of the tone of the debate is: Hartono Ahmad Jaiz, Ada pemurtadan di IAIN (The IAIN encourages apostasy), Jakarta: Pustaka Al-Kautsar 2005. 11 Mohammed Kamal Hassan, Contemporary Muslim religio-political thought in Indonesia: The response to New Order Modernization, Ph.D. thesis, New York: Columbia University 1975, 199ff. 12 The international press has consistently (mis)represented Baasyir as a terrorist mastermind, and the first reports of the International Crisis Group on the Jamaah Islamiyah network did little to dispel that notion. The scholar of Javanese literature, Tim Behrend, has made a more serious effort to understand the mans mindset in an analysis of his public ideas (as opposed to secret ideas attributed to him): Tim Behrend, Reading past the Myth: The Public Teachings of Abu Bakar Baasyir, Mediator: Jurnal Komunikasi 4/2 (2004). This enlightening article can be downloaded from Behrends website: http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/staff/index.cfm?P=6673.
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194 tively liberal to conservative views and attitudes. The shift was exemplified in a series of fatwas issued by the MUI at its 2005 congress, one of which declared pluralism, secularism and religious liberalism incompatible with Islam. Other fatwas banned the practice of inter-religious prayer meetings (which had emerged in the days of political strife and inter-religious conflict, when representatives of different faiths joined each other in praying for well-being and peace), declared inter-religious marriage haram, even in the case of a Muslim man marrying a non-Muslim woman, and declared the Ahmadiyah sect outside the boundaries of Islam.13 These fatwas condemned religious views and attitudes that had until recently been embraced by broad segments of mainstream Islam and frequently represented by such prominent leaders as NUs Abdurrahman Wahid and Muhammadiyahs Syafii Maarif. The latters successors, however Hasyim Muzadi in NU and Din Syamsuddin in Muhammadiyah presided over a shift towards religious conservatism and an anti-Western, anti-cosmopolitan, defensively nationalist attitude. Both men are also Gontor graduates, and so is the Minister of Religious Affairs, Maftuh Basyuni, who has meanwhile added the weight of his authority to the MUIs fatwas and intends to have them implemented as government policy. Gontor graduates, in other words, dominate the current landscape of Indonesian Islam. And just as Gontors individual alumni can be found almost across the entire spectrum from fundamentalists to liberal Muslims, the secondary pesantren established by Gontor graduates and inspired by the Gontor model also vary considerably from each other. Some of these acquired fame in their own right, such as that of Pabelan, which was pioneered community development experiments and the use of appropriate technology, and that of Ngruki, renowned as a centre of Islamic radicalism. Pesantren Involvement in Community Development and New Discourses Karel Steenbrink described in his dissertation the process by which many pesantren came to adopt general subjects into their curriculum. In Indonesia, the term madrasah refers to religious schools with graded classes and a standardised curriculum including mostly general subjects. Government-supervised madrasah with 30 percent religious subjects and 70 percent general subjects offer diplomas that give an opening to employment as a religious teacher as well as access to state institutes of higher religious studies (IAIN) and thereby an avenue to a modern career. Many pesantren have adopted the madrasah system and have thus to some extent become part of the national education system (although not under the Ministry of Education but that of Religious Affairs). Some pesantren deliberately refused to adopt the standard madrasah curriculum, for a number of different reasons. Some preferred to offer a solid religious curriculum, reading more and more difficult texts than was possible in the standard curriculum or different religious texts altogether (non-mazhab or Salafi texts). Others did not wish their graduates to become civil servants and intended to teach them more practical knowledge. In the 1970s and 1980s, several pesantren experimented with teaching agricultural or technical skills besides religious subjects. The pesantren Darul Fallah in Bogor, led by a religious scholar and an agricultural engineer, was geared to teaching agricultural skills besides religion and intended to produce alumni who would return to their villages as agents of change.14 The pesantren of Pabelan near Yogyakarta, which belonged to the Gontor family, became famous for training its students in various practical skills that could be useful when they returned to their village,
The Indonesian text of these fatwas, which were adopted by the MUIs fatwa commission at the Seventh Congress of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia (July 2005), can be found at the MUIs website, at: http://www.mui.or.id/mui_in/fatwa.php#. Pluralism and religious liberalism were defined in a restrictive sense as proclaiming the equal validity of all religions and the purely rational interpretation of religious texts and the acceptance of only those religious doctrines that are compatible with reason. The Ahmadiyah had been the target of physical attacks by vigilante squads only weeks before the MUI Congress; significantly, the MUI made no statement condemning the violence against Ahmadiyah members, but it called upon the government to enact an effective ban on the movement. 14 M. Saleh Widodo, Pesantren Darul Fallah: eksperimen pesantren pertanian (The Pesantren Darul Fallah: Experiment of an Agricultural Pesantren), in: M. Dawam Rahardjo (ed.), Pesantren dan pembaharuan (The Pesantren and Innovation), Jakarta: LP3ES 1974, 121-133.
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195 and refused to give them diplomas in order to prevent them from becoming just civil servants (although this is what some of its best known alumni actually became).15 The well-known writer V.S. Naipaul, who visited Pabelan on his Islamic journey in 1980, caustically asked what use it was to teach village boys how to become village boys,16 but other visitors, such as Ivan Illich, were much more upbeat about this alternative type of education. Many Indonesian social activists believed that it was precisely this type of education that was needed to bring genuine development to the country and not just economic growth that failed to empower the poor. In the late 1970s and 1980s, co-operation developed between development-oriented NGO activists and a number of pesantren, including Pabelan, whose leading teachers evinced a definite social commitment and the belief in development from below. The inspiration for this co-operation came again from Indian self-reliance movements, from the experiments of Paulo Freire with teaching the Brazilian poor through conscientization, and from the radical critique of established education by thinkers like Ivan Illich. It was, obviously, highly educated activists with international connections who first picked up these ideas, but their choice of the pesantren as the focus of their activities made good sense. In Suhartos New Order Indonesia, the government pursued a policy of depoliticization of the rural population (as well as the poor urban population) and made it illegal for political parties and all sorts of associations to set up branches and have public activities in the countryside. District towns constituted the lowest local level where activities were permitted; reaching out to the rural population was therefore practically impossible for them. Pesantren were virtually the only nonstate institutions actually functioning at the grassroots level, which made them appealing to activists who believed in bottom-up development besides or instead of the governments topdown policies. A development-oriented NGO, with members of secular and modernist Muslim backgrounds, was the first to conceive of the pesantren as a node for rural development and empowerment of the poor. Engaged students of the Bandung Institute of Technology, prevented from direct political involvement due to new legislation following a wave of student protest in 1978, joined the effort, with various initiatives to bring appropriate technology to the rural poor through the pesantren. Western aid agencies first the German Liberal Partys Friedrich Naumann Foundation, later various other agencies supported these efforts financially and with expertise.17 People of pesantren background were recruited as mediators, and gradually a group of experienced activists emerged within the conservative NU that acted as an increasingly effective lobby for a reorientation of this organization. In 1984, an important NU congress decided that social activities, meaning relief and development work, would be one of the organizations top priorities, and it established several affiliated NGOs that were to engage in these activities.18 The following two decades saw a dramatic increase in NGO activity in and around the pesantren, which at least provided a considerable number of pesantren graduates with employment and training in various practical skills. Many pesantren that had been isolated and self-contained were opened up to the outside world through these activities, broadening the worldviews of teachers and students. It is harder to assess the impact of these activities on the welfare of the poor rural population, however, and opinions on the economic success of the programs are divided.19
15 M. Habib Chirzin, Impak dan pengaruh kegiatan pondok Pabelan sebagai lembaga pendidikan dan pengembangan masyarakat desa (The impact and influence of the activities of the pesantren of Pabelan as an institution of education and village-level social development), in: Pesantren: Profil kyai, pesantren dan madrasah (Warta-PDIA 2), Jakarta: Balai Penelitian dan Pengembangan Departemen Agama R.I. 1981, 69-78. 16 V.S. Naipaul, Among the Believers, an Islamic Journey, New York: Knopf 1981. 17 M. Dawam Rahardjo (ed.), Pergulatan dunia pesantren: membangun dari bawah (The Struggle of the Pesantren World: Construction from Below), Jakarta: P3M 1985; Manfred Ziemek, Pesantren dalam perubahan social (The Pesantren in Social Change), Jakarta: P3M, 1986. 18 Martin van Bruinessen, NU: tradisi, relasi-relasi kuasa, pencarian wacana baru (NU: Tradition, Power Relations, and the Search for a New Discourse), Yogyakarta: LkiS 1994. 19 For a more elaborate evaluation of the NGO activities in and around the pesantren, and the shift from development-oriented activities to advocacy and awareness-raising, see: Martin van Bruinessen and Farid Wajidi, Syu'un ijtima'iyah and the kiai rakyat: Traditionalist Islam, Civil Society and Social Concerns, in: Henk Schulte Nordholt (ed.), Indonesian Transitions, Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar 2006, 205-248.

196 The integration of the pesantren into the national education system had another interesting consequence: the emergence of a dynamic and rapidly growing circle of young Muslim intellectuals of pesantren background, who while studying at IAINs were exposed to a range of other intellectual influences, that included social science, philosophy, theology of liberation and Marxism. Partly overlapping with the environment of NGO activists, this diffuse group of young people, sometimes dubbed the progressive traditionalists, were one of the most surprising and interesting phenomena of the late 1980s and 1990s.20 Islam against the New Order The developments sketched so far took place in the most visible part of the religious spectrum, among groups and prominent individuals who were acceptable to, and who themselves accepted in principle, even if critically, the policies of the New Order government. There were other circles that had a more antagonistic relationship with the regime and resented its policies of social and religious engineering. Two broad groups stand out. One consisted of the most outspoken leaders of the former Masyumi party: reformist Muslims in religious orientation, liberal democrats in political style. The party had clashed with Sukarno over the presidents authoritarian style and its leaders had taken part in an American-supported regional rebellion in the late 1950s, after which the party was dissolved. Suharto never allowed the party to resurface and mistrusted its most prominent leaders, the best known of whom was Mohammad Natsir. Natsir and friends established an association for da`wa, the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia (DDII), intending to change society and the state through changing its individuals, turning them into better Muslims. The other group, much less visible yet, consisted of an underground network of Islamic activists who strove to turn Indonesia into an Islamic state. The network consisted of the remnants of the Darul Islam movement, which had from 1949 until 1962 been in control of parts of West Java, South Sulawesi and Acheh and as the Islamic State and Army of Indonesia (NII/TII) had challenged the Republican government. At the grassroots level, there had always been close relationships between the Masyumi following and that of Darul Islam, but the leadership of both had always been antagonistic to one another. Masyumi considered the Republic as legitimate and Natsir once served as a prime minister; the Darul Islam resented Masyumis political support for the military operations aiming to destroy it. The Darul Islam was a home-grown movement and never had international contacts worth mentioning. Masyumi had been more internationally oriented, and the DDII developed especially close contacts with the Arabian Peninsula. It became the preferred Indonesian partner of the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League (Rabitat al-`Alam al-Islamiyya), of which Mohammad Natsir was a founding member and long-time vice-president. The DDII was the intermediary through which the ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (many of whose activists had taken refuge in Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states) first reached Indonesia. It published several seminal texts in translation and was instrumental in introducing Brotherhood-style mobilization and moral training on university campuses.21 Later, from the late 1980s onward, the Dewan came increasingly under Salafi (Wahhabi) influence.22

Djohan Effendi, Progressive Traditionalists: The Emergence of a New Discourse in Indonesias Nahdlatul Ulama during the Abdurrahman Wahid Era, Ph.D. thesis, Melbourne: Deakin University, Department of Religious Studies 2000; Laode Ida, Kaum progresif dan sekularisme baru NU (The Progressives and the New Secularism in the NU), Jakarta: Erlangga 2004. 21 Asna Husin, Philosophical and Sociological Aspects of Da`wah. A Study of the Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, Ph.D. thesis, New York: Columbia University 1998; Lukman Hakiem and Tamsil Linrung, Menunaikan panggilan risalah: dokumentasi perjalanan 30 tahun Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia, Jakarta: Dewan Dakwah Islamiyah Indonesia 1997; Martin van Bruinessen, Genealogies of Islamic radicalism in Indonesia, South East Asia Research 10/2 (2002), 117-154). 22 The Indonesian Salafi movement that emerged as a distinct current in the 1990s owed little to the DDII, however. Its founders had direct links with Salafi circles in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The best study of the Indonesian Salafi movement is to be found in Noorhaidi, Laskar Jihad: Islam, Militancy and the Quest for Identity in Post-New Order Indonesia (Ph.D. dissertation, Utrecht: Utrecht University 2005).

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197 The school at Gontor was one of relatively few pesantren that were ideologically close to the DDII. Like the Dewan itself, it developed increasingly close relations with the World Muslim League, which may have contributed to the development over time of a more puritan attitude here than in most other pesantren. In the early 1970s, however, as remarked before, the Dewan appears to have been disappointed by the liberal attitudes embraced by some Gontor graduates, notably Nurcholish Madjid. It took the initiative of establishing a few pesantren that were more closely in line with what it deemed appropriate Islamic education. One of these, the pesantren Ulil Albab in Bogor, primarily served students at that citys agricultural university; another targeted a less sophisticated public in the Central Javanese city of Solo. The latter pesantren, Al-Mukmin, became better known by the name of the village on the edge of Solo to which it moved after some time, Ngruki. The Pesantren of Ngruki and Its Network The pesantren Al-Mukmin (al-Mumin) was established in 1972 by the chairman of the Central Java branch of the DDII, Abdullah Sungkar.23 Among the co-founders was a Gontor graduate named Abu Bakar Baasyir, who was to remain Sungkars closest collaborator for the next quarter century and his successor upon his death in 1999. Al-Mukmin aimed to combine the best aspects of two models, Gontor for the teaching of Arabic, and the pesantren of Persis in Bangil for the teaching of shari`a. Classical fiqh, the core of the traditional pesantren curriculum and also a major part of that at Gontor, was replaced by Quran and hadith studies in Ngruki as it had been in Bangil.24 Sungkar, Baasyir and their colleagues were fiercely opposed to the Suharto regime, which they perceived as anti-Islamic, and they were strongly influenced by Muslim Brotherhood thought. This influence was to some extent reflected in the teaching of Islamic history and doctrine in the pesantren; the curriculum included some Salafi and Brotherhood-related materials.25 The Brotherhood influence expressed itself mostly in ideological training and clandestine activism that they undertook in a network of contacts outside the pesantren. Sungkar was an active member of a network of mosque-affiliated youth groups, the Badan Komunikasi Remaja Masjid (Communication Body of the Adolescents of the Mosques BKRM), in which some of the most radical preachers of those days were involved, many of them with Darul Islam contacts. In 1976, Sungkar and Baasyir joined the underground Darul Islam and became increasingly active in mobilizing radicals outside the pesantren. Using the organizational model of the Egyptian Brotherhood, they set up an underground structure of cells (usrah), members of which were recruited among the most committed of radical mosque

The history of this pesantren is sketched in: Farha Abdul Kadir Assegaff, Peran perempuan Islam (Penelitian di Pondok Pesantren Al Mukmin, Sukoharjo, Jawa Tengah) (The Role of Muslim Women: Research in the Pesantren Al Mukmin, Sukoharjo, Central Java), Tesis S-2, Yogyakarta: Universitas Gadjah Mada, Program Studi Sosiologi, Jurusan Ilmu-Ilmu Sosial 1995; Zuly Qodir, Ada apa dengan pesantren Ngruki? (What is the Matter with the Pesantren of Ngruki?), Bantul: Pondok Edukasi 2003; E.S. Soepriyadi, Ngruki & jaringan terorisme: melacak jejak Abu Bakar Ba'asyir dan jaringannya dari Ngruki sampai bom Bali (Ngruki and the Terrorist Network: Following the Trail of Abu Bakar Baasyir and his Network from Ngruki to the Bali Bombing), Jakarta: P.T. Al-Mawardi Prima 2003. 24 Persis is Indonesias most puritan reformist Muslim movement, which strictly rejects the traditional schools of Islamic law and derives the rules of the shari`a directly from the Quran and hadith only. The curriculum at Ngruki included the tafsr of the Egyptian reformist Maraghi and the works on hadith by Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalani and by M. b. `Ali al-Shawkani (Qodir, 52-3). Though not part of the traditional pesantren curriculum, these works are taught in numerous other reformist-inspired pesantren. 25 A list of books taught in Ngruki in the mid-1990s (in Qodir, 52) mentions as one of the textbooks for doctrine Jundullah (Army of God), a book that argues it is an obligation for Muslims to establish a state based on the divine law by the Syrian Brotherhood leader Sa`id Hawwa. Another important text was the Salafi scholar M. Sa`id al-Qahtanis Al-wal wal-bar fl-islm (Loyalty and Avoidance in Islam), which warns the student not to befriend non-Muslims or even less strict Muslims. A former student recalls the moral imperatives of al-wal walbar as constituting the core of the disciplining in Ngruki (Soepriyadi, 24-25). Texts such as these one would not find in more traditional pesantren, nor in most of the reformist ones.

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198 activists but also among ordinary neighbourhood toughs and petty criminals.26 This underground organization was also loosely referred to as Jama`ah Islamiyah, a name that was later to gain a certain notoriety. The relationship with the pesantren was a loose one; some of the more serious students at Ngruki were also recruited into the usrah movement,27 and some alumni played a part in extending the usrah network into other regions. Sungkar and Baasyir openly opposed the state ideology of Pancasila and called for a boycott of the 1977 elections because the only good Muslim candidates the former Masyumi politicians Natsir and Roem were not allowed to participate. They were arrested for subversion and spent four years in prison. Sungkar spent the next few years mostly in Jakarta, where he organized NII usrah groups. When in 1985 the police closed in on this network, he and Baasyir fled to Malaysia to escape arrest. It was around this time that Sungkar first sent a handful of followers to Pakistan in order to take part in the Afghan jihad and gain guerrilla experience. In the course of the following years, a few hundred followers were to receive guerrilla training in Afghanistan and later, when the Afghan jihad was over, in the southern Philippines.28 In the early 1990s, Sungkar and Baasyir broke with the Darul Islam leadership, partly because of personal rivalries, partly for religious reasons: their Salafi orientation and the mystical-magical practices in which the latter indulged were incompatible. The organization that Sungkar consolidated under his own command became known as Jamaah Islamiyah (JI) and, like the Darul Islam movement (DI), strove for the establishment of an Islamic state in Southeast Asia. For most of the 15 years he spent in Malaysia, Baasyir lived a frugal life as an itinerant teacher and petty trader of medicinal herbs; in the 1990s established a modest pesantren, Luqmanul Hakiem, in Johor. By most accounts, Sungkar always was the activist, Baasyir the scholar and preacher (though one of radical convictions). Both returned to Indonesia after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Sungkar died in early 1999, and Baasyir succeeded him as the imam of the JI network, though perhaps not in all respects as the leader. He returned to Ngruki and began teaching in the pesantren again. In August 2000, when various factions of the previous underground DI established a public association, the Majelis Mujahidin, Baasyir was selected as the amir, the political and religious leader of this organization. Other DI factions declined joining the Majelis Mujahidin, preferring to remain underground. Baasyirs friends and associates have insisted that the terrorists who carried out the various violent actions attributed to the Jamaah Islamiyah belonged to breakaway factions not under his command.29 Sungkar and Baasyir were both a source of pride and an embarrassment to the pesantren at Ngruki. Their radical reputation was not good for the schools relation with local authorities and it inhibited the acquisition of students from outside the milieu that understood and supported the politics of these two teachers. Several of the teachers who stayed behind, however, shared their ideas, and the pesantren maintained contact with them over the years through visits of students and graduates. The ICG reports emphasize the centrality of Ngruki in the Jama`ah Islamiyah network, but many of the JI activists involved in violent acts, and in
The best published study of this Usrah network is: Abdul Syukur, Gerakan Usroh di Indonesia: peristiwa Lampung 1989 (The Usroh Movement in Indonesia: the Lampung Incident of 1989), Yogyakarta: Ombak 2003. A good early overview, based on court documents of trials against arrested Usrah members, is: Tapol, Indonesia: Muslims on Trial, London: Tapol/Indonesian Human Rights Campaign 1987. There is much useful information in a thesis by a Ngruki graduate: Muh. Nursalim, Faksi Abdullah Sungkar dalam gerakan NII era Orde Baru (studi terhadap pemikiran dan harakah politik Abdullah Sungkar), MA thesis, Solo: Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, Program Pascasarjana 2001. See also Bruinessen, Genealogies and International Crisis Group, Al Qaeda. 27 Usrah means family of like-minded people who guide, help and control one another. 28 Nursalim, Faksi Abdullah Sungkar. A detailed overview of Sungkar followers who went to Pakistan during the 1980s is given in: International Crisis Group, Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged But Still Dangerous, Jakarta: International Crisis Group 2003. 29 One of Baasyirs spokespersons, Fauzan Al-Anshari, claimed that whereas Sungkars followers had been bound to him by a vow of obedience (bay`at), no one had made such a vow to Baasyir (interview with the author, Jakarta, March 16, 2004). There is little doubt that Baasyir approved of jihad in the Moluccas in defence of the local Muslims there, but his associates claim that a part of the Jamaah Islamiyah, led by Hanbali, went its own way after a meeting in which Baasyir rejected violence against non-combatants (various interviews with Majelis Mujahidin activists).
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199 fact several of Sungkar and Baasyirs oldest and most loyal associates, are not Ngruki alumni. There are indications that some JI activists were first recruited while studying in Ngruki, but it is not entirely clear what this recruitment meant.30 Compared to many other pesantren, Al-Mukmin is poor and its teachers lead a precarious life, earning a little money on the side as preachers. Most of the students are from families that cannot afford high fees; the pesantren appears to have few prosperous supporters. Because of its radical reputation, few would like to be seen financially supporting it. The pesantren carefully maintains its network of alumni, because it is through this network that new students are recruited. A few alumni have established, or joined, modest pesantren themselves. There is a modest network of minor pesantren that have a connection with Ngruki and appear to share its values and militant interpretation of Islam. One of these pesantren, PP AlIslam in Lamongan, East Java, acquired a sudden notoriety because three of the Bali bombers were the brothers of the founder of this pesantren. One of the three, Mukhlas or Ali Gufron, was moreover a Ngruki graduate (unlike the brother who led the PP Al-Islam, in fact). However, it was probably more relevant that Mukhlas was also an Afghanistan veteran and had spent several years in Malaysia and taught in Baasyirs pesantren Luqmanul Hakiem alongside other Afghanistan veterans. The other two brothers had joined him in Malaysia as immigrant workers. In an operation against a Jamaah Islamiyah cell in Central Java, the police captured an interesting document that shows that this organization was making efforts to establish contacts with pesantren throughout the region for propaganda and recruitment but was not particularly successful. It is a long list of pesantren and individual teachers of religion, with indications of their religious orientation and affiliation, number of followers, and whether or not JI had access there in 1999 (i.e. before JI became associated with the subsequent wave of terrorist acts).31 The contacts were mostly with individual teachers who did not have their own pesantren or schools. Pesantren affiliated with the NU or Muhammadiyah were mostly inaccessible. Pesantren Al-Zaytun A survey of pesantren with Islamist links is not complete without mentioning the pesantren Al-Zaytun in the district of Indramayu (West Java), which has been the object of many controversies during the past few years, because of the seemingly unlimited resources to which it has had access, because of allegations of heterodox beliefs and practices, and because of its alleged links with an underground DI network as well as the state intelligence organization. The PP Al Zaytun has drawn much attention because of its grand, modern and fashionable architecture and the megalomaniac ambitions of its founder, another Gontor graduate and IAIN alumnus named AS (Abdussalam) Panji Gumilang. Construction was begun towards the end of the Suharto era, and the pesantren was officially opened by Suhartos successor Habibie in 1999. It has received numerous dignitaries since, who usually praised it as a symbol of the progress of Indonesian Islam. It looks much more affluent and modern than most university campuses, with five-floor dormitories housing 1500 students each (four of them built, six more projected), and a mosque under construction that will have six floors and a capacity for 150,000 worshippers. The pesantren owns a considerable amount of land, raises

30

One of my informants is a former student in Al-Mukmin, who was recruited into the NII by an older peer not by a teacher! in 1993, when Sungkar and Baasyir were living in Malaysia. Another frequent visitor of the pesantren told me that promising students would be singled out for special treatment. They would be woken up in the middle of the night and told to perform the nightly prayers, after which they would be given special instruction, presumably of a religious nature but secret. 31 Daftar Kyai / Ulama / Tokoh Masyarakat di Wilayah Wakalah Jawa Wustho (Jawwus) Bulan Robiul Akhir 1420 H / Juli 1999 (List of Kyai, Ulama and Prominent Personalities in the Region of the Central Java Command, Juli 1999). A copy of this document was acquired by International Crisis Group; part of a set of trial documents of which copies have been deposited in the libraries of Australian National University (Canberra) and the KITLV (Leyden, The Netherlands).

200 cattle and fowl and organizes various other economic activities, providing its students with on-the-job training.32 The extravagant style of this pesantren has led to much speculation as to the origins of its affluence, and two seemingly incompatible sources have frequently been suggested: the Soeharto family and the Darul Islam movement. Strange though it may seem, the pesantren has enjoyed the warm sympathy and patronage of numerous members of the political elite, under Soeharto as well as his successors, and it appears also to be very closely associated with one particular wing of the Darul Islam, the Regional Command IX (KW9). KW9 was a network in the larger Jakarta and Banten districts separate from the original DI, established by DI leaders who had surrendered to the army in 1962 and had later co-operated with state intelligence officers in various covert operations. KW9 could operate relatively freely, recruit new members, and raise money in various ways including allegedly robbery and extortion. In the 1990s a certain Abu Toto, who appears to be none other than Panji Gumilang, emerged as the commander of KW9 and put its organization on more solid footing in terms of both membership and financing. Soon after the official opening of the pesantren, there appeared a flood of publications, mostly by Islamist authors, denouncing Panji Gumilang for his dubious fund-raising activities, for deviation from the original DI ideals and collusion with shady elements in the state apparatus, and for promoting heterodox views and practices among his followers.33 Members of KW9, it is claimed, were taught quaint interpretations of the Quran and were not required to pray regularly and to give up alcoholic drinks. At the same time, however, people outside their own community were declared to be unbelievers, taking whose property was legitimate. The community compared itself to the Prophets followers in Mecca, before the establishment of the first Islamic state in Medina. In this phase, it was reasoned, the first Muslims faced a dominant heathen majority and their first objective was survival as a community. The canonical obligations and interdictions of the shari`a were not yet implemented in Mecca, and KW9 similarly postponed imposing them until the Islamic state would be established. Members had, however, to make sacrifices for the movement, and everyone was required to contribute a regular sum to the movements treasury.34 In spite of negative publicity, the pesantren Al Zaytun attracted many students; its founder and sheikh, Panji Gumilang, enjoyed such strong protection that he appeared immune to all criticism. The Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) made investigations and found some truth to the allegations made by the pesantrens critics. The MUI report found that large proportions of the teachers and of the students probably have a
32

See the self-representation at: www.tokohindonesia.com/ensiklopedi/a/abdussalam/index.shtml, where the modernity of the pesantren and its excellent relations with members of the Jakarta political elite are emphasized, mentioning especially New Order politicians who survived into the post-Suharto era. Two major halls in the pesantren are named for Presidents Soeharto and Sukarno (the latter was dedicated during Megawatis presidency); there are also buildings named after the Golkar politicians Akbar Tanjung and Agung Laksono, suggesting relations of patronage and protection with these powerful political operators. 33 Al Chaidar, himself a former activist in the KW9 structure and later closer to another wing of DI, wrote the first denunciation: Al Chaidar, Sepak terjang KW. IX Abu Toto Syech A.S. Panji Gumilang menyelewengkan NKA-NII pasca S.M. Kartosoewirjo (How the KW9 of Abu Toto Sheikh A.S. Panji Gumilang Corrupted the Post-Kartosoewirjo Darul Islam Movement), Jakarta: Madani Press 2000. The Islamist activist Umar Abduh published no less than three books against Panji Gumilang and his pesantren: Umar Abduh, Membongkar gerakan sesat NII di balik pesantren mewah Al Zaytun (Uncovering the Deviant NII Movement behind the Posh Pesantren Al Zaytun), Jakarta: LPPI, 2001; idem, Pesantren Al-Zaytun sesat? Investigasi mega proyek dalam Gerakan NII (Is the Pesantren Al Zaytun Misguided? Investigation of a Mega-Project within the Darul Islam Movement), Jakarta: Darul Falah 2001; idem, Al Zaytun Gate. Investigasi mengungkap misteri. Dajjal Indonesia membangun negara impian Iblis (Al Zaytun-gate, Investigation of a Mystery: Indonesias Dajjal Builds a Diabolical Dream State), Jakarta: LPDI 2002. Video footage of a visit to the pesantren by the head of Indonesias state intelligence organization BIN, Hendropriyono, was widely circulated on VCD. The intelligence chiefs unusually cordial speech, in which he threatened people who dared to slander Al-Zaytun, was seen by many as confirmation of the intimate links between Panji Gumilang and the intelligence apparatus. 34 Al Chaidar, Sepak terjang KW9 Abu Toto, pp. 104-8; Majelis Ulama Indonesia Team Peneliti Ma'had Al-Zaytun, Laporan lengkap hasil penelitian Ma'had al-Zaytun Haurgeulis Indramayu (Full report on the research concerning the school Al-Zaytun in Haurgeulis, Indramayu), Jakarta: Majelis Ulama Indonesia 2002.

201 DI background. Students are actively recruited by officers of KW9s regional structure, and large, not entirely voluntary contributions by DI families constitute a major source of the pesantrens affluence, in addition to considerable grants from members of the political elite. However, the report found no trace of the teaching of heterodox doctrines and practices in the PP Al Zaytun. The curriculum is very similar to that of other Gontor-inspired pesantren, the report concluded.35 Instead of the pesantren being a hotbed of radical Islamist politics, then, it would appear that this pesantren effectively mobilizes an existing Islamist network to collect funds and recruit students, who are given a mainstream religious and vocational training in a setting that radiates accommodation with the state and openness towards the outside world. Unlike the Ngruki network, and unlike the Hidayatullah network of pesantren, that is not discussed here,36 Al-Zaytun does not show any interest in international jihadist causes; its focus is on Indonesia, and its public discourse is a developmentalist one reminiscent of Suhartos New Order. Conclusion The pesantren of Gontor and the IAIN of Ciputat, which correspond with two important stages in Karel Steenbrinks academic career, have been of central importance to the reform of Islamic education and Islamic thought in Indonesia. Some of the chief contributors to contemporary Muslim discourse in Indonesia have passed through both institutions. The IAIN of Ciputat may represent the most successful example of the New Orders efforts to bring about a, modern, inclusive and tolerant Muslim discourse and create a class of moderate and rational Muslim religious leaders. Many of the most prestigious and authoritative voices of Indonesian Islam have been associated with Ciputat; and quite a few of these voices received their secondary education at the pesantren of Gontor or one of its daughters. By its insistence on intellectual discipline and active command of Arabic and English, Gontor opened up windows to the world outside Indonesia although from the 1970s on this became increasingly the Arabic-speaking rather than the English-speaking world. Liberal Muslim intellectuals as well as anti-liberals are indebted to Gontor for academic rigour and a perspective transcending narrow local concerns. More than at any time before, public discourse on Islam in Indonesia is dominated by alumni of Gontor. And more than at any time before, debates in Indonesia are informed by conflicts on a global scale. The current confrontation, throughout the world, between those who speak for the West and those who speak on behalf of Islam places the Muslim proponents of liberal democracy, human rights, religious pluralism and individual freedom in a quandary. The Gontor triumvirate that currently dominates mainstream Islam (Hasyim Din Maftuh) finds in the global struggle the justification for their rejection of those liberal Western values and for their own socially and religiously conservative agenda.

Majelis Ulama Indonesia, Laporan lengkap hasil penelitian Mahad al-Zaytun Haurgeulis Indramayu; interviews with KH. Maruf Amin, head of the MUIs investigating committee and with Ahmad Syafii Mufid, who carried out a similar investigation for the Ministry of Religious Affairs, March 2004. 36 The pesantren Hidayatullah in Balikpapan (East Kalimantan) was established in 1973 by a former Darul Islam activist from South Sulawesi and attracted much friendly attention for its involvement in the social welfare and economic activities of the people living around the school. It established a vast network of branches in other parts of the country and publishes a widely read journal that devotes much attention to international Islamist causes (www.hidayatullah.com/). The only study of this pesantren so far is: Arief Subhan, Pesantren Hidayatullah: madrasah-pesantren independen bercorak Salafi (The pesantren Hidayatullah, an independent Salafi madrasah and pesantren), in: Jajat Burhanudin and Dina Afrianty (eds.), Mencetak Muslim modern: peta pendidikan Islam Indonesia, Jakarta: RajaGrafindo Persada 2006, 203-240.

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