'Pesantren' told to change values on women
Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Most Islamic boarding schools or pesantren are more than just educational institutions -- they are also community drop-in centers and citizen's advice bureaus, which can offer a range of services from marriage counseling to drug rehabilitation.
But some people say many pesantren, with their strong emphasis on tradition, are yet to properly serve and protect women.
Gender equality at pesantren is often seen as a "Western ideology", which many clerics believe is against Islamic teachings.
However, some women are out to change this. On Tuesday, the Puan Amal Hayati Muslim women's organization along with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) held a one-day seminar to discuss how pesantren could play a greater role in promoting gender equality.
Experts and activists told the forum that Islamic schools should be able to empower people and protect and support women who fall victims to violence and discrimination.
Anisah Mahfudz, representing the Malang branch of Puan Amal Hayati, said that pesantren should reconsider their communications and social functions. Women's emancipation, an increasing reality in modern day life, was also not against Islamic teachings, she said.
"Pesantren holds on to the doctrine that women's place is in the domestic arena. That has to change."
Instead of holding to views strictly based on Islamic jurisprudence, which were literal and textual, Anisah said pesantren should take a more contextual approach.
"They have to be more open to dialog from the wider public. Their functions as public-service institutions must be improved. Pesantren should not be places to learn about a religion without concern for its environment," she said.
Established by former first lady Shinta Nuriyah Abdurrahman Wahid, Puan Amal Hayati has been active in promoting religious interpretations that are more women-friendly and encourage equal rights.
The organization has even reinterpreted a bastion of traditional patriarchal scripture, better known as the Kitab Kuning (yellow book), which is widely used by pesantren in Indonesia.
Shinta said the most resistance to the group's ideas came from the younger clerics, many of whom supported the idea of polygamy over monogamy.
"They only understand the issue of polygamy partially, and very textually. They don't want to see the real conditions; the context. Most older clerics are more open to our arguments," she said.
The Sidogiri group of schools in Pasuruan, East Java, were typical of this kind of thinking, Shinta said.
Another obstacle, she said, came from the girls at the Islamic schools, who often were highly submissive and adamant patriarchal teachings were the true ones.
Shinta said the number of young women continuing their education to higher levels had begun decreasing in Indonesia, with more women getting married not long after they hit puberty.
"Very few women have been enlightened. However, even these women who graduate from university surrender to the original culture once they get back to their families or communities."
Abdullah Moqsith Ghozali, an activist with the Liberal Islam Network (JIL) and a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence at the Wahid Institute, noted the Kitab Kuning had taken 13 centuries of editing, reinterpretation and rewriting to get to its current form.
"So, the renewal of its contents cannot be done instantly. It takes time," he said.
Biased gender interpretations did not exist only in scripture but also in people's minds, ritual and tradition -- all things which took a collective effort to reform, he said.
He believed many of the younger clerics' fundamentalist views came from the Middle East countries where they had studied at university.
"A pesantren is like a small kingdom. It's the individual realm of the cleric, and we need to understand this to penetrate these institutions," Moqsith said.