Shaping Minds, saving Souls: Managing Islamic Education in Indonesia and Malaysia

Abstract

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 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.