Islamic Universities in Indonesia

A window into the intellectual evolution of Islamic higher education in Indonesia: an interview with the rector of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Prof. Amin Abdullah by Prof. Farish Noor of The Other Malaysia.

…what is happening in places like UIN SUKA: You have pious Muslim students who are practicing Muslims who nonetheless can actually read the Quran and Hadith using the methodology of discourse analysis; who can write papers about inter-textual interpretations of the Quran; who can write deconstructive accounts of Islamic history, politics and ethics. How is this possible? From a Western point of view one might even call UINSUKA a secular modern university, but would you accept such a typology?

AA: ‘No, we dont and we will not. We are not a secular or modern university in the Western sense of the word. UINSUKA is, after all a UIN, an Islamic university.
…
The misunderstanding arises, in my opinion, in the somewhat narrow definition of ’secularism’ and ‘modernity’ in the West. It is true that secularism and modernity arose from a specific historical context in the West, but the evolution of Indonesia’s world of ideas is likewise specific to Indonesia: it cannot even be compared or transposed to Malaysia next door.

Read the whole thing.

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Published:: 05.11.07 / 10am

Category:: Islam, On the Web

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