Fighting for gender equality

ISLAMIC education is perceived by many, often in ignorance, as narrowly traditionalist and reactionary.

What is ignored is that, over the past century, traditional Islamic schools have to respond to modernizing influences in many positive ways.

This is shown in Indonesia where such changes are of enormous consequence.

Indonesia is not only the world’s largest Muslim country, it is also one where 50,000 Islamic schools are major streams of the national educational system.

A sterling example of a modern and socially-innovative Islamic school is Nurul Haramain Putri Narmada in west Lombok, a peripheral region where a conservative society, deforestation and poverty are major challenges.

A pesantren, the oldest type of school in Indonesia, was established in Lombok in 1996 by a young progressive Muslim cleric named Hasanain Juaini, who is Indonesia’s second awardee of this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

He is a living example of the kind of education that he preaches.

Against the tradition that reserves education for boys, Hasanain decided to open a girls’ school with only 50 students and develop a learner-centered program that aims to develop each student’s full potential.

Now he is running a school of 500 students and 60 teachers, half of them women.

The school offers a government accredited five-year secondary education program.

It is the first in Lombok to achieve 100-percent computer-based learning, where students are provided with personal computers and teaching assistants, even at night.

While religion is at the core of its program, as in the traditional pesantren, the school is pluralist in orientation and stresses secular subjects like the sciences.

Students are exposed to diverse learning opportunities, encouraged to think critically and motivated to pursue higher studies.

It is not just academic excellence that makes Hasanain’s school a different one—he has deliberately integrated school learning into the life of the community.

Hasanain has also built a model of community ownership through a membership system.
Moreover, he has turned his school into an axis for community development.

His integrated approach to education gets students and teachers involved in issues such as environmental quality, livelihood enhancement and good governance.

Hasanain also initiated a social forestry project that involves the community in conserving the environment while increasing their household incomes.

Believing that schools have a role in promoting citizen participation in local governance, he organized representatives from 130 pesantren in his district into a “Coalition of Pesantren against Corruption,”
mainly to lobby for reforms and management of public funds.

His vision explains that there should be no division between teaching religion and calling public officials to account, or between running a school and getting the community to plant trees.

“Everything starts with a seed. Those who take must give. It is a big sin if you take and not give.” Hasanain said.

The Board of Trustees of 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Awards has recognized his holistic, community-based approach to pesantren education, creatively promoting values and gender equality, religious harmony, environmental preservation, individual achievement and civic engagement among young Indonesian students and their communities. –Raffy S. Ayeng, Manila Times