SEMINAR: Negotiating the Religious and the Secular in Indonesia: The Development of Contemporary Pesantren Leadership Auliya Ridwan

A pesantren is a type of indigenous Islamic boarding school common across Indonesia. Traditionally, the main objectives of pesantren were to preserve religious teaching over generations as well as to cultivate morality within their students or disciples. Pesantren, which are commonly hierarchical, are characterized by top-down decision-making and veneration of the leaders, orthodox teachers called kiai. The continuation of pesantren depends on the kiai’s leadership. Globalization and modernization have obliged some kiai to innovate and incorporate modern education into their pesantren. While the demand for moral and religious teachings is increasing as a result of Islamization, pesantren are often criticized for not providing employment skills and social problem-solving capacities among their students. This challenges contemporary kiai to integrate modern schooling approaches into pesantren. This presentation introduces my doctoral research, which focuses on the dynamics of kiai leadership in negotiating pesantren tradition and social pressure for innovation by comparing with a traditional pesantren with two pesantren famous for their innovative and socially useful training. The traditional pesantren preserves over a hundred years of tradition and refuses any support from the government. By contrast, the first innovative pesantren focuses on leadership development, economic empowerment, and rehabilitation of criminals. The second innovative pesantren teaches concern for the environment, women’s empowerment, and interfaith tolerance. This research will addresses two key questions: how have innovative pesantren changed, and how have kiai in innovative pesantren developed their ideas? This study uses nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in the three pesantren. The analysis will work inductively within a case study framework.