Australian taxpayers pay for mosques & madrassas in Indonesia

10 thoughts on “Australian taxpayers pay for mosques & madrassas in Indonesia”

1. Absolutely deplorable! Why is it that most of the useful idiots and apologists and just plain ignorant hold government positions?

2. It does not help our cause to get hysterical and throw out wild accusations and confuse JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS with MADRASSAS . Junior High Schools are just that Junior High Schools. MADRASSAS on the other hand are RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS which teach virtually nothing but Islam and only the barest other subjects to allow the teaching of ISLAM to take place.

   So please please Sheik no more hysterics JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS are exactly what they say they are and are NOT Madrassas in disguise. How do I know so much well my adopted son goes to one.

   1. Realist:

      Knowing you I guess I have to take your word for it:

      ” JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOLS are exactly what they say they are and are NOT Madrassas in disguise. “

      I really hope you are right on this one. But the moment I see or hear “Islamic’ I get the creeps, and I reject and oppose any Australian taxpayers money to be thrown at this nonsense.

3. Realist, what term would you use to describe the “Tsanawiyah Balaraja Islamic School in Sukamulya”, given that madrassa is a generic term for a place of education (school / university), and often for islamic education?

   Surely islamic schools would qualify for the term “madrassa”? You seem to be limiting “madrassa” in a way that limits them to religious / islam, when the term is more generic.

   Indonesians don’t seem to have a problem referring to madrassa:

   http://www.republika.co.id/berita/dunia-islam/islam-nusantara/10/07/15/124835-menlu-australia-resmikan-madrasah-tsanawiyah-balaraja

   Menlu Australia Resmikan Madrasah Tsanawiyah Balaraja

   [REPUBLIKA.CO.ID,Tangerang–Menteri Luar Negeri dan Perdagangan Australia, Stephen Smith, meresmikan Madrasah Tsanawiyah Satu Atap (MTs-SA) Kampung Iwul Desa Tobat, Balaraja Tangerang, Banten. Mts-SA merupakan sekolah ke-2000 yang telah dibangun pemerintah Australia bekerja sama dengan pemerintah Indonesia di bawah Australia-Indonesia Basic Education Program (AIBEP). ]

4. The google translation of the above:

   [REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, Tangerang – Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia, Stephen Smith, inaugurated the Islamic Junior One Roof (MTS-SA), Kampung Desa Iwul Penance, Balaraja Tangerang, Banten. Mts-SA merupakan sekolah ke-2000 yang telah dibangun pemerintah Australia bekerja sama dengan pemerintah Indonesia di bawah Australia-Indonesia Basic Education Program (AIBEP). MTS-SA-2000 is the school to which the Australian government has established cooperation with the government of Indonesia under the Australia-Indonesia Basic Education Program (AIBEP).]

5. When pigs:

   Because apologists etc. (i.e. socialists) is the new establishment. They are now what conservatives were in the 50’s. They own everything and they control the media.

6. Sheik Indonesian schools do tend to give Religion and one Religion above all others a very big part in their day to day life . But that does not make them Madrassas it just makes them normal Indonesian State schools . Madrassas on the other hand are essentially RELIGIOUS Schools or Colleges in which virtually ONLY Islam is taught and other subjects only where they facilitate and impact on the teaching of Islam .

7. Realist,
   It depends largely on the region within Indonesia, and the people running the schools. You know very well that the central government in Jakarta has minimal influence of many aspects of policy in the outlying parts of the Indonesian archipelago – however if the kids get a chance for a proper education it will be a significant blow against the islamists, and the kids will be able to help their country grow. So I am for it – but I would like to see a lot less money being paid out to assylum seekers, social benefits for muslims, etc in Australia,

8. In Malaysia , all schools teach ”agama” or religion..When there was recent trouble re churches , a senior Malay came out and said the trouble is that we have been teaching ”hate” in our school religious programmes..In other words , they were reaping what they had sowed. The honesty at least was refreshing.
   There is no reason for Australians to be paying for ANY schools in Indonesia..it is splitting hairs to be trying to differentiate between types of schools. Every islamic school encourages anti western feelings and fosters an inabilty to fit in into the modern world.
   My basic philosophy..”you have the sex , you look after the children.” Why should people who have as many children as they can afford to raise , fork out for people who have endless children without any thought for how they are going to be feed or educated; or for what kind of lives they are going to have?

9. Hardline Islam a bigger threat than terrorists

   Tim Lindsey From: The Australian July 07, 2011

   IT is a rare day indeed when former, present and shadow foreign ministers from different Australian political parties see eye to eye.

   But it is not difficult to understand why Alexander Downer, Kevin Rudd and Julie Bishop were united in rejecting Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s recent call to cut Australian aid to Indonesian schools. If anything, Australia should be planning to expand its support for reform in Indonesia and, in particular, for Islamic education.

   Indonesia’s success in dealing with Islamist terrorists is impressive, but there are other Islamist organisations that are of much more immediate concern. These are public organisations that share a commitment to enforce very conservative interpretations of orthodox Sunni.

   Unlike the terrorists, the hardliners are adept at working within the official system and have a real capacity to influence policy. Like the terrorists, their ultimate aim is to replace the state or at least remake it, but they seek to do so from within the system. They exploit the post-Suharto democratic state’s more open political framework to gradually legislate much of what terrorists seek to achieve with bombs.

   Related Coverage
   Paving a new path for children of terror The Australian, 24 Jun 2011
   Jailed Playboy editor walks free Courier Mail, 24 Jun 2011
   Bashir jailed for 15 years The Australian, 16 Jun 2011
   SBY urged to back UN on religious violence The Australian, 19 May 2011
   Bashir escapes possible death penalty The Australian, 9 May 2011

   The hardliners represent a constituency repressed under Suharto’s New Order that has determinedly reasserted itself since his fall in 1998. They include MUI , the increasingly conservative semi-official council of religious scholars, that the state sees as a privileged adviser on Islamic policy; the Justice Welfare Party , an Islamist political party that has previously said it wishes to create an Islamic state; and quasi-criminal religious vigilante groups such as the notorious Islamic Defenders Front. Tactics vary between these groups but they share the common goal of enforcing conservative Islamisation. They see liberal Muslims and non-practising Muslims as obstacles to these ambitions, along with Indonesia’s many and varied religious minorities.

   Pressure from hardliners at the national level has resulted in fresh restrictions on the building of some new churches; legislation imposing an obligation to teach Islam to Muslims in non-Muslim schools; and a law imposing new (largely redundant) bans on pornography. At the local level, hardliners have supported restrictions on gambling, sale of alcohol, sexual activity and women’s dress, public behaviour and freedom of movement. The hardliners also delivered a huge increase in “blasphemy” prosecutions of religious minorities, against a background of increasing violence. A clear pattern has emerged of condemnation by MUI of minority religious groups, followed by violent vigilante action and then state intervention to prosecute the targeted minority for religious crimes. Such a process involves breaches of the human rights provisions introduced by post-Suharto governments to distinguish themselves from his regime. Most Islamist vigilantes usually escape punishment.

   This interweaving and blurring of state and non-state actors and of legal and extra-legal methods present a more significant challenge to the democratic state than terrorism.

   Under Suharto, his authoritarian government intervened as it saw fit. The new multi-party system makes minority governments reliant on other parties in the legislature, including Islamic ones, and they look to the hardliners for religious ballast.

   There is much debate in Indonesia about whether continuing inaction against religious violence by Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his (minority) government is a result of this, or whether they actually sympathise with the hardliners.

   The rising influence of conservative Islamist groups in democratic Indonesia at the expense of minority religious groups and wider human rights and law reform efforts is now the subject of debate in Indonesia. Unfortunately, this struggle within Indonesian Islam has been overshadowed in popular Australian perceptions by issues that resonate more directly with Australian interests, such as against Jemaah Islamiah, Australian drugs offenders, asylum-seeker arrivals, natural disaster relief and animal cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs.

   Muslim moderates in Indonesia advocating reform in areas such as education, human rights, law, policing and so on seek substantial support. They often look to foreign donors. AusAID’s support for Indonesia’s Islamic education system illustrates how this can work in practice.

   Indonesia’s school system began to disintegrate after the Asian economic crisis began in 1997. The government is working to reverse sinking teaching standards but struggles to meet its targets. Islamic schools (madrasah and pesantren) comprise almost one-third of the education sector. Typically poorer, they were among the most heavily hit by overall sectoral decline. This has contributed to the rise of Islamist hardliner influence.

   In Indonesia, madrasah usually refers to a mainstream (and usually moderate) Islamic school that teaches the government’s secular national curriculum across about 70 per cent of its offerings and receives a trickle of government funding in return. In the best madrasah, children learn English and Arabic as well as Indonesian, sit the national exams and graduate with IT skills, ready to work in a modern economy. AusAID has been active in such schools, supporting programs to strengthen teaching skills and improve learning outcomes.

   Unregulated Islamic schools that sit outside the national exam system are usually called pesantren. Some are good, but many offer a low-cost, traditional religious education to poor children, often accompanied by a dose of hardliner radicalism.

   AusAID’s Basic Education Program led to the building and fit-out of more than 2000 state schools, mostly in poor and remote parts of Indonesia. These offer alternatives to the conservative ideas taught in many pesantren and give children a chance to sit national exams.

   Madrasah and pesantren feed the national Islamic tertiary system, where an ideological struggle exists that reflects the wider national one. This is a battle between the moderate liberal reformers who lead the state Islamic universities and institutes and those hardliner conservatives working within them. Reformers seek to create a new, modern curriculum that meets global standards. The hardliners resist, wishing instead to produce the next generation of conservative activists and even some militants, as was recently shown by the presence of university students among terrorists arrested in relation to a Jakarta bomb plot.

   Militant Islamism ultimately seeks to overthrow the Indonesian state. Terrorists may not be strong enough to achieve that goal, but hardliners working within the system threaten a still fragile, decade-old democracy and the much older traditions of Indonesia’s religious diversity. If Indonesia’s education system continues to decay, further hardliner success may wreak great damage to our northern neighbour and to our own interests.

   Indonesian studies are already in rapid decline in Australia, weakening our capacity to engage with this vitally important neighbour. In 1972, when the White Australia policy was still in place, there were 1190 Year 12 students studying Indonesian in Australia. By last year there were just 1100, despite our population growing from 13 million to 22 million and our much vaunted “engagement with Asia”. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations says Indonesian is on track to vanish from our schools within eight years.

   The federal government seems unconcerned by this and recently decided, inexplicably, not to renew funding for Asia literacy in Australian schools. Let us hope that Abbott’s ill-conceived comments don’t lead to disengagement with Indonesia’s education system, too. That would only compound the mess we are making of the great competitive advantage geography gave us for the Asian century.

   Tim Lindsey is director of the Asian Law Centre and the Centre for Islamic Law and Society at the University of Melbourne. This edited extract from the latest Asialink Essay can be read in full at http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au.

Comments are closed.