Last month the country's largest Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama organized an international seminar on anti-terrorism. One of its agendas is to develop an anti-terrorism curriculum in religious education. Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) is not the only institution is developing an anti-terrorism curriculum and its application.
Several related parties such as the National Education Ministry, the Religious Affairs Ministry, the Defense Ministry and civil society organizations also have similar concerns. But they have been able to formulate a suitable curriculum, especially regarding its content, method and teaching and learning process application.
Before developing a curriculum, it is important to consider terrorist ideology characteristics. In general, there are at least four characteristics.
First is rigidity, the manifestation of Islamic practices with a strict understanding. Most terrorists reject facts that show the flexibility of Islamic practices applied to Islam in different specified contexts.
Second is literalism. Most terrorists understand the Koran and the hadith in the literal sense.
Third is generalization. Most terrorists see the world in a simplified manner, mainly dividing human into two Muslims and infidel, without considering the world's circumstances.
Fourth is the pathway to absolutism and rejection, where most terrorists see their own opinion as the ultimate truth, in the name of God, and therefore tend to reject the opinions of others.
Considering the above four characteristics of terrorist ideology, I want to make some notes for developing an anti-terrorism curriculum in religious education. I will apply Brenda Watson's explanations about orientation, method and content of education curriculum as shown in her book, Education (1987). The notes are based on big mistakes within orientations, methods and contents of our current religious education, while at the same time provide alternatives to solve those problems.
First, it often is that religious education faces disorientation. Instead of the education process, it changes the orientation to the process of indoctrination. In religious education that changes its orientation from education to indoctrination, students are not encouraged to practice maturity, tolerance, creativity and rational and critical thought. There is no opportunity for students to question their teachers. Students more likely enforced to understand teachings in a dogmatic sense and believe information is absolute. This kind of teaching process creates fertile soil for the embryo of radicalism and terrorism.
Second, the religious education syllabus is more concentrated on the normative aspects of religious teaching than other aspects such as spiritual growth, moral education, character development and social attitude. Using Watson's concept, religious education should value these aspects by applying at least the three central education methods: experience, imagination and thinking.
Experience is a basic element to build self-awareness and tolerance among students. Religious education should help students to understand the meaning and implications of experiencing certain religious rituals. It is hoped students understand there should be a balance between ritual and social piety.
Imagination is needed to help students have a wider and broader sense of their environment. In term of religious subjects, imagination can be a medium to exercise empathy, putting oneself in another person's mould.
Critical thinking is a way for students to learn to be rational and critical. Applied to religious education, it may help students to think rationally and critically, not dogmatically and literally. They will learn to challenge their religious teaching if they learn information that contradicts the context they live in.
Third, often religious education scholars only know about their religion. They do not want to enrich their knowledge about other religions for themselves and students. Consequently, teachers mostly teach religious education with a narrow perspective. It is rare that teachers teach comparative religions and explain more about other religions and their common platform.
Also, it is rare that religious education teachers, for example, take students to other places of worship such as churches, temples and synagogues to promote interfaith dialogue or volunteering involving cooperation between students from different religions. In my opinion, this is an effective way to build student's perspective of religious plurality and enhance inclusiveness and tolerance.
Fourth, that is also no less important in religious education. To measure the success of a religious education-based anti-terrorism curriculum, it cannot only assess the level of students' memorization of and attitude to the words of God in the holy text.
The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy & Religion, Paramadina University, Jakarta, and is currently a PhD student at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
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Suratno (Dosen Falsafah & Peradaban Universitas Paramadina)
Tulisan ini dimuat di Harian The Jakarta Post, 10 Desember 2009.
