Muhammadiyah launches book

YOGYAKARTA: In a bid to help accelerate democratization in Indonesia, the country's second largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, launched on Thursday a civics textbook.

The book, titled Civic Education, will be mandatory for students at Muhammadiyah universities across the nation. It was launched by Muhammadiyah chairman Ahmad Syafii Maarif here.

The head of Muhammadiyah's education and research body, Zamroni, said the book would fill the gap in civic education for university students that was created when the government scrapped in 1999 the Pancasila state ideology course, which had been compulsory for new students.

One of the book's writers, Said Tuhuleley, said the textbook presented students with a dynamic learning process that would encourage them to uphold democratic values.

It took the writers three years to complete the textbook, during which time they held a series of workshops and conducted comparative studies to get input from experts in Indonesia and overseas. -- JP