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MGG in discussion on Madrassas and foreign aid on ABC Asia Pacific TV

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Asia Pacific TV ABC AP TV

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First Broadcast - September 8, 2004 Episode 21: Fighting Fundamentalism

In this week's episode of The Editors, panellists Bambang Harymurti from Tempo Magazine, Asia-Pacific Editor of the Australian Financial Review, Rowan Callick and political commentator from Malaysia, MGG Pillai debate whether the battle for Islamic fundamentalism is now being fought in the classroom.

Grace Phan: Hello and welcome to The Editors, I'm Grace Phan in Singapore.

Tonight 'Fighting Fundamentalism', how successful will western governments be in using education to stem the tide of terrorism in Asia?

Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific Editor, Australian Financial Review: Clearly something has to happen, more investment has to go into education.

MGG Pillai, political commentator: The problem is going to be very difficult to resolve because it comes with an agenda, and I don't think that is going to be acceptable, certainly not in Malaysia.

Bambang Harymurti, Editor-in-Chief, Tempo Magazine: Most of these militants were actually brought up in a secular background.

Grace Phan: We'll come back to our panel in just a moment. Since September 11th 2001 western governments have boosted education funding to some Islamic countries as a way of fighting terrorism. It's designed to counter the influence of Islamic fundamentalist schools, which many regard as recruiting ground for terrorists.

Last week the United States announced a total of 468-million US dollars in development assistance for Indonesia, about a third of that goes to schools. In the wake of the Bali bombing the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said a lack of funds for education in Indonesia and other Asian countries attracted students to colleges teaching a radical Islamic philosophy.

The Australian government has committed the equivalent of about 16-million US dollars towards education in Indonesia this financial year, and it seems that Australian funding for education in Indonesia will continue even if the present government is voted out of office next month. Here's what Kevin Rudd, the Australian opposition spokesman on foreign affairs told The Editors recently about the value of education as a weapon against terrorism:

Kevin Rudd, Australian opposition spokesman on foreign affairs: And what we've foreshadowed is our interest in working closely in partnership with our friends in Jakarta in and other international development assistance partners in modernising and developing further the Indonesian mainstream education system. We can only do this in partnership with our friends in Indonesia and we would only do so based on their advice in terms of what sort of reforms they want in their education system, the curriculum accreditation authorities, the proper training of teachers and also the physical resourcing of classrooms across that vast country. It's a very large scale enterprise this, but if you're going to give the young people of Indonesia hope for the future this strikes us as a practical way to assist in building their future, otherwise if you have the politics of despair and alienation then frankly it just makes it easier for the terrorists to recruit.

Grace Phan: So is the so-called war on terrorism reinforced by a battle for the minds of young Muslims? Here's what the media has been saying. 'The Globalist' based in Washington ran a story headed, "The United States and Madrassas", which said, "across Asia in countries that have significant Muslim communities governments, intelligence services, law enforcement agencies and the military are taking a long hard look at Islamic religious education". The BBC ran a story last year headed, "Malaysia's doubts over Muslim schools". It said, "Malaysia's government had accused its religious schools of teaching hate, not religion and stopped their state subsidy". It quoted the then education minister, Musa Mohamad saying the "schools could stoke Islamic extremism".

The 'New York Times' quoted Surin Pitsuwan, a former Thai foreign minister as saying, "if Muslim fundamentalism, Muslim extremism and Muslim radicalism are to be contained a global awareness of the need for some kind of educational reform in the Muslim world is necessary. The 'International Herald Tribune' in a story headed, "The classroom battle for Indonesia's soul", said, "the battle for the future of Indonesia, like the battle for the soul of Islam itself will be lost or won in the classrooms". The newspaper quoted the former Indonesian Education Minister, Juwono Sudarsono saying, "it doesn't matter who the next president is, education is the key to Indonesia's future".

I'm now joined by our panel; political commentator MGG Pillai joins me from Kuala Lumpur. He is a veteran journalist who pioneered internet journalism in Malaysia. From Sydney is the Asia-Pacific Editor of the 'Australian Financial Review', Rowan Callick. And from Jakarta I'm joined by Bambang Harymurti the Editor-in-Chief of Tempo Magazine. Welcome all of you to The Editors.

MGG Pillai there is a perception that religious schools are a ripe recruiting and training ground for future terrorists. Is this in fact true?

MGG Pillai, political commentator: I don't think it is. What has happened is that foreign countries have been involved in the development of Madrassas, especially since 1973 when the oil wealth gave many countries in the Middle East a lot of money, which they could throw around, and they bought support that way. At that time the western governments kept quiet about it. When the problem came in Afghanistan the government actively encouraged these Madrassas, not in the form of turning them around but in the form of doing exactly what they're doing. But these Madrassas had a very clear aim in what they wanted to do, and later on it turned round and bit the US on the hand, as you saw in Afghanistan and as we'll see in Iraq. Now the western government is trying to resolve the problem, but the problem is going to be very difficult to resolve because it comes with an agenda. And I don't think that is going to be acceptable, certainly not in Malaysia.

Grace Phan: Bambang there are actually two different types of Madrassas in Indonesia, there are Wahabi Madrassas and the traditional Madrassas. Could you explain the difference?

Bambang Harymurti, Editor-in-Chief, Tempo Magazine: Well the big majority of the Madrassas in Indonesia is, we call it a traditional Madrassas where they rely so much on various historical books. And they are mostly very tolerant of other religions too. But I think in Indonesia it's not started in '73 but I think in the 80s then some of this so-called Wahabis or Pulitan(?) Madrassas, which used to be very small, suddenly got a lot of infusion of funds and help from the Arabic countries, and therefore can offer some sort of scholarships to study outside of Indonesia in Pakistan and everywhere, and they become more and more popular. And they become more aggressive and easier for them to recruit poor people in the villages. But now I think since the terrorist act their funding has been cut off so they have not been as popular as before, and in fact now I think the traditional Madrassas has more funding, so they have been able to give more scholarships to study somewhere else, and it has been proven to some of the most known Indonesian Muslim scholars they have been sent not only to foreign, the Al Aza(?) in Egypt, but also they've been sent to Mackville(?) in Canada, they have been sent to Chicago University in the US, and they come back and they become prominent and they have become more tolerant and modern.

Grace Phan: Rowan you spent time in a Saudi-funded pesantren. What did you observe there?

Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific Editor, Australian Financial Review: My experience I visited a Pesantren just outside Medan not long ago funded, essentially setup by Saudi money, and this was quite a liberal establishment. The founder is a person of inclusive ideas and so most of the children coming from that school went into a range of universities, including many of the girls. And we found that there was a lot of self-confidence there and there were no signs at all of what people might regard as extremism.

MGG Pillai: The problem of a Madrassas being a centre for recruitment for the terrorists is a deliberate challenge because the whole idea is a misconstrued, it is ignored and it has just become an issue by what happened in September 2001. Now everybody is rushing into it, still don't have a clear plan as to how you're going to go about doing it, but we are in it. So what we are seeing now is more a clash of ideologists in which education is just one aspect of it. Therefore I'm not very serious, I'm not very clear in my mind how this large-scale western grants as it were is going to help this turn around. In Indonesia for instance I met a chap here recently, an Australian citizen who has become a Muslim, runs 90 schools, 90 Madrassas if you like, in rural areas in Indonesia, each has 100 pupils. He teaches them how to read and write and also gives a strong grounding in religion. It's that kind of thing that's going to turn the thing around, not government help, because government help necessarily means that it's going to be limited not to the interior but into areas around the capital and that's not the area that you're trying to address yourself to. For this one reason the cost involved is so great that no government is prepared to invest that kind of money.

Bambang Harymurti: I think this idea that Madrassas are a hotbed or recruitment for future terrorists is a misnomer because it happened only to a very minority Madrassas, which is not popular among common people here. Most of them previously got funded from the countries that the majority are Wahabis. But in essence the Wahabis are not very popular in Indonesia because Pulitans(?) are not very popular in Indonesia. Most Indonesians believe in syncretism, they have a strong belief that foreign influences they can always not take it wholeheartedly but they will take part of it that they think are good and then they mix it with whatever they have that they think is good. So this cultural defence we call syncretism is anathema to the spread of Wahabism, and that's why previously a lot of money was poured exactly because people in the Wahabis-dominated countries thought that the kind of Islam in Indonesia is the wrong kind of Islam, and they want to change it into a more what they call a pure kind or pure brand of Islam. But what happened was they created a backlash because in Indonesia for instance there is a big movement, especially in traditional Pesantren or Madrassas, they want to separate between the Muslim values and the Arabic values. They don't look too highly to what they call the seventh century Middle East values.

Grace Phan: MGG Madrassas are getting quite a lot of negative press at the moment, but do they not in some ways step in where the central government has failed to provide basic education?

MGG Pillai: I think it's more than that. The Madrassas or Pondoks as well call them here, are a local village institution. It has been there for a long time, and it evolves around a particular Ulama or religious leader. The Menteri Besar of Kelantan, Datuk Nik Aziz for instance has his own Pondok, where he conducts classes before he goes to work every morning. It is linked to one religious leader. Now the orientation of that religious leader is what decides whether that is going to be, they're going to follow the Wahabi's thing, or a more syncretic style that Bambang just talked about. That kind of confrontation continues in Malaysia too between an Islam that is secular in its broad terms, and extremist Wahabist in the other. So I don't know how you're going to solve this problem of Madrassas, so long as it is under the control of whoever is running it.

Grace Phan: Rowan one criticism is that much of the money seeps into corrupt officials' pockets, where the implementation is not monitored and much of the funds are wasted or inappropriately spent?

Rowan Callick: Well clearly that's a concern for people in Indonesia we're speaking particularly about Indonesia as it is for potential donors and neighbours who want to see Indonesia prosper and do well. To some extent some donors have said the way round that is to give money via non-government organisations, but then there are controversies involved in that as well because some NGOs are also advocates of issues such as freer Aceh or Papua that may cause controversy as well. So there's no easy answer, but perhaps a greater proportion of money going through the districts in Indonesia will be the inevitable direction and when you're giving money more locally perhaps there's more chance of that money going into the projects that you have in mind. And I think that that's what's going to happen.

Grace Phan: Rowan is it an exaggeration to say that the battle for the future of Indonesia will be won in the classroom?

Rowan Callick: I don't think it's an exaggeration, I think that's true in any country, and in Indonesia in particular we find this problem of lack of investment in education risking the capacity of the country to compete effectively, as it sees China on the one side and now India on the other growing very rapidly. Sukarno, the founding father, talked about the danger of Indonesia becoming a nation of coolies, and a coolie among nations, terrible words, but clearly something has to happen, more investment has to go into education. And I think this is really behind the intentions even though in total money terms they're not huge, but the intentions of the Americans, Australians and others, the intention is to help this modernisation program and also of course it's quite clear we are concerned about extremism. We in Australia remain in a sort of shock still from what happened in Bali in 2002. So we don't want this happening again.

Bambang Harymurti: I don't agree fully with this question or with this statement that the battle will be won in the classroom because once you are in the wrong classroom the battle is probably lost. So the battle is more in what makes it attractive to go into militant or traditional Madrassas, because traditional Madrassas has been taught to be tolerant to others, and it is the militant one which is a problem. In fact one of the Bali bombers who came from one of these militant Madrassas was very unpopular among the traditional Madrassas, because in fact he bombed one of the sites considered holy by one of the local Madrassas there by the Nahdlatul Ulama. Now I think the more problem is the battle will be won or not is not in the classroom but whether we will have an effective and clean government or not, because my experience, I've been covering militant Muslims since 80s, my understanding most of these militants were actually brought up in secular background, most of them learnt in engineering or non-liberal art kind of form of education. In fact non-religion study, but later on in life they are disappointed and then they become what we call a born-again Muslim and then go to a militant kind of Ulama or scholar, and they become terrorist. Most of the people who grew up in traditional Madrassas they grew up to be very tolerant, in fact a bit docile, in fact probably too docile for their own good. And therefore but they become very bad terrorist in the future if they feel they're marginalised and they cannot compete in a modern world, and they saw that this government is very corrupt. You have to remember everyone in Muslim-dominated country the radical Muslim grew up out of frustration with corrupt government. And therefore if we want to win the battle we have to have a clean government and if we have a clean and effective government then I'm sure that the militant will have no place in most of the minds and hearts of Indonesian people or other people in the world.

Grace Phan: Gentlemen thank you all very much indeed. Our thanks to political commentator MGG Pillai from Kuala Lumpur, the Asia-Pacific Editor of the 'Australian Financial Review', Rowan Callick, and from Jakarta, Bambang Harymurti the Editor-in-Chief of Tempo Magazine.

Next week on The Editors the Indonesian elections, the final days in the battle for president between Bambang and Megawati. Until then I'm Grace Phan in Singapore. Goodnight.  
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