EDUCATION AND RELIGION

Written by: Ramdan Nugraha

Once Syafi’i Maarif as one of Indonesian muslim intellectual stated that people in Indonesia should be able to engage the logic and faith. It has a deep meaning that people who believe in religion should wisely implement the religion’s values into the real life. Most of Indonesian are very strong at practising the ritual faith such as prayer, reciting Al-Qur’an, do fasting, and so on, but in contrast, they have quite low logical point of view when facing the issues which is contradictory with what they believe (faith or religion). For example, the issues recently happen are the conflict of Sunni-Shia, president election, “Chinese attact”, and so so. It could be seen that the Indonesian believers (of religion) contrastively used religion aspect to legitimize the violence to against the sides or groups who have different lines as the minor ones.

Based on several big issues mentioned above, it is found people who have their position pro with religion and classified into two major levels:

1.    The very strong pro of religion education, this pradigm is mostly found in traditional education such as boarding schools (Indonesian: pesantren) that teach only religion (Islam) to their students at the beginning, but few of the recent boarding schools have developed their system into the modern ones by putting the secular subjects such as science and technology, and also other fields of education. Those traditional who still hold on the believe of religion think radically that only religion values that will save the world, hence, they extremely promote the fundamental values of religion at education institution such as Madratsah (the same level as elementary school), Tsanawiyah (the same level as Junior High), Aliyah (the same level as Senior High), and until the higher education such as universities. They try to refuse all of the secular paradigm but share the syariah (Islamic law) instead. Sometimes, technology and globalization are not really popular to the students since those aspects are limited to be taught. If the writer could create new words for representing this movement, it would be called as “religionalize the education”.

2.    The medium pro of religion education, this group agree that religion education sould be taught as compulsory subject at schools but they do not force all people to do. They just persuade the surroundings that religion education is very important. It would be bothering them if only there are cases that discriminating their religion in general and they would also react even if it should take their sons out of the school (let say claimed as ‘going wrong’ by common people around). This second group paradigm is almost the same as the first group but they have more permission of the things happened if only there is no provoking from others.

In contrast, there is another group who do not agree that religion becomes compulsory subject at schools in order to build up the students’ good character to live this life. This group claim that religion is a personal choice of human and people have nothing to do with what they will choose as their religion. In further, teaching religion at schools is not necessary to do since it will force them to be hypocrite while human have their free-will to decide. This group promote the freedom to people to live with the universal truth which popularly represented in the golden-rule that more or less state “do what you want people do to you, and do not do what you do not want people do to you”. When we go further understanding this concept, it seems that religion is not significantly needed when people could behave well in their life by implementing the golden-role. One thing for sure that all religion teach and share the same fundamental values of life – goodness.

In brief, there are two big major that react to the religion education; the group who massively promote the religion into the education system and those who do not put religion education as the priority or even deny it. I am as one of the part of the country have personal view dealing with this phenomenon. I have myself in the middle position between the two (pros-cons of religion education). I still remember few months ago Musdah Mulya stated “Mungkin sekolah Islam harus dikurangi. Ini sangat penting agar generasi Indonesia ke depannya semakin baik, jadi tidak berkembang lagi terorisme di negeri ini. Musdah Mulia mengharapkan agar sekolah Kristen dan Islam akan berdiri sama rata. Tidak hanya itu saja, pembelajaran agama Islam sebaliknya ditiadakan saja.” (suaranasional.com. 11/11/2015). This statement controversially got the various responses from many people in different background. When we try to open-mindedly read Musdah Mulia’s statement, we can have the main line that could possibly be accepted by people which is, putting the harmony of all religion values in Indonesia and connect it to the golden-rule to achieve the better civilization of the man-kind. What happen now in society is disharmony of religion-relation one another that separate the universal values of all religion called as goodness. I agree that religion education should be shared at schools as the students’ paradigm development in order to meaningfully understand why they should believe in religion.

           The last point to sharpening my conclusion is we have to principally let the students to measure themselves the religion they believe based on the nature or character of that religion which can be seen through the holy book such Al-Qur’an or Bible taught at schools and universities and also see other religions that their friends probably believe to make a harmony in society. Religion is a faith and practising its ritual is principle, while education is logic that function to implement the religion values on the right track and respecting the diversity wisely in order to develop a better civilization of the man-kind.