Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia: Continuity and Conflict [Paperback]

This project looks at the work of the faculty in Indonesia's National Islamic Institutes to address, respond, and prevent the success of radical Islamic discourse and institution of Shari'a law in the school system.1. The Politicization of the 'Apolitical": Islamic Higher Education in Indonesia 2. Religious 'Dialects,' Variation, and Accusations of the Worst Kind. 3. Becoming Universities: Old Traditions, New Directions 4. Splitting the Kiblat: Consequences of Alternative Strategies for Educating Faculty 5. Women Pushing the Limits: Gender Debates in Islamic Higher Education 6. Where is the Islam, and What Kind? 7. Linguistic Modeling of Variation in Islam

Across the Muslim world, Islamic higher education is today a site for both the guardianship and the refiguring of religious knowledge and identity. In this timely book, Ronald Lukens-Bull provides us with an overview of Islamic higher education in Indonesia, a vast country that has one of the world's most reform-minded Islamic educational systems. Islamic higher education is also the site of fierce culture-war contestation over what Islam in Indonesia is to become. Engagingly written, Lukens-Bull's book raises questions of pivotal importance for the future of education, intellectual life, and politics in Indonesia and the Muslim world as a whole. - Robert W. Hefner, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University, USA

Muslim societies are trailing behind many developed societies in terms of investment in research and higher education. Ronald A. Lukens-Bull's study of higher education in Indonesia is important at two levels. Firstly Indonesia has made major strides in raising literacy rates and creating a higher education system, but Lukens-Bull offers a clear insight into the remaining and unsolved tensions between preserving a religious tradition and preparing students for a rapidly changing society. Secondly he offers a solution to the puzzle ol#Ù