Tayeb, Azmil
Description
The thesis explores the nature of the Islamic education
systems in Indonesia and Malaysia and the different approaches
taken by these states in managing these systems. Despite their
close geographic and cultural ties, the two countries have
dramatically different Islamic education, with that in Indonesia
being relatively decentralized and discursively diverse, while
that in Malaysia is centralized and discursively restricted. By
employing theoretical models...[Show more] provided by the state-in-society and
historical institutionalism approaches, I argue that the
post-colonial state in Malaysia has been more successful in
centralizing its control over Islamic education, and more
concerned with promoting a restrictive orthodoxy, compared to the
post-colonial state in Indonesia due to three factors: the
ideological makeup of the state institutions that oversee Islamic
education; patterns of societal Islamization that have propted
different responses from the states; and control of resources by
the central government that influences center-periphery
relations. First, the thesis contends that state institutions
that oversee Islamic education in Malaysia are more ideologically
aligned and focused than their counterparts in Indonesia, which
then allows the state in Malaysia to exert more coherent
influence over Islamic education. Second, the wave of Islamic
resurgence from the 1970s affected Indonesia and Malaysia
differently. Islamization forced the state in Malaysia to engage
with the political threat posed by Islamic activists, which
resulted in increasing centralization of the Islamic education
system by state, with the goal of subduing Islamic opposition and
controlling Islamic discourse. There was no similarly grave
threat to the legitimacy of the state in Indonesia, removing the
impetus to centralize control over Islamization or promote a
restrictive orthodoxy. Finally, the state in Malaysia has at its
disposal more resources to manage Islamic education, including by
absorbing private Islamic schools, compared to the state in
Indonesia. Less state subsidies and financial control, however,
also means that financially viable private Islamic schools in
Indonesia can operate somewhat more independently than their
counterparts in Malaysia. In short, this thesis shows that the
three aforementioned factors can help a state to minimize
influence from the society and exert its dominance, in this case
by centralizing control over Islamic education. Specifically,
they help us understand the markedly different landscapes of
Islamic education in Malaysia and Indonesia.
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