Farha Ciciek

In Indonesia, where religious conservatism and fundamentalist Islam are on the rise, Farha Ciciek is showing that the betterment of women’s role and position can be done through religious teachings. She works with Islamic boarding schools to educate women, girls, as well as boys, men, and religious leaders about gender equality and to provide women’s health services.

Farha is successfully introducing interpretations of religious texts that favor women’s rights to a massive audience within Indonesia’s Islamic boarding schools, or pesantren, and the communities that surround them. As a key part of her strategy, she identifies male and female leaders in religious schools and organizations who can help her gain entry into their communities. Some already espouse women’s rights within an Islamic perspective and others learn about these ideas for the first time in her intensive workshops. Together with these influential leaders, Farha has established an active network that brings people with progressive views together to strengthen the cause of equality and to improve women’s daily lives.
With the help of religious leaders, Farha’s organization, The Center for Education and Information on Islam and Women’s Rights (RAHIMA), has created publications and a curriculum designed to reach both students in pesantren and madrasas (religious day schools) and members of the Muslim community at large. Some of the leaders Farha has worked with are now establishing their own crisis and reproductive health centers to provide practical services based on a philosophy of respect for women’s rights. To support these efforts and answer basic needs, Farha is working with secular citizen organizations (COs) and educational institutions to train midwife activists to provide reproductive health care in pesantren. In this way, she is linking religious communities with a broader network through a carefully conceived, non-confrontational approach that provides both egalitarian education from a religious perspective and practical benefits to women’s lives.

Women’s status as second-class citizens in Indonesian society is rooted in the country’s traditional, patriarchal culture and supported by religious teachings. In this deeply devout society, the subordination of women is often espoused by religious leaders and legitimized by literal readings of religious texts. District and provincial governments, as well as community groups, increasingly use conservative textual interpretations to enforce control over women in the public and domestic spheres. It can be very difficult to counter their arguments because they are presented as the word of God or Prophet Muhammad.
Conflicts between proponents of civil and religious law have existed since before Indonesia gained independence in 1945. However, during the repressive Soeharto regime, Islamic fundamentalism existed mainly as a secret, underground movement. After Soeharto left power in 1998, the state has become increasingly weak and decentralized, allowing fundamentalist groups to come into the mainstream. Their emergence has coincided with a global trend towards religious conservatism as well as growing resentment in many Muslim countries toward what they regard as threatening alien Western cultural influences and attacks on their beliefs. Among their attractions, fundamentalist groups offer their followers salvation and a sense of solidarity. Many also provide basic welfare services to poor communities and have developed highly effective communication systems.
Women and girls experience the direct impact of religion-based discrimination when, for example, their access to education is restricted or the quality of their education is lower than that available to male students. When women’s activities in the public sphere are restricted, not only are they shut out of public decision-making processes, but they also lose their potential to enhance their family’s income and support their children. Access to health facilities and information about reproductive health care may be unavailable to women either because of very conservative beliefs or because such services are not considered a priority. Conservative interpretations of Islam that render women second-class citizens often leave women vulnerable to physical and psychological abuse and empower their husbands to force them to accept polygamy.
As fundamentalism gains momentum and even once-moderate Muslim groups grow increasingly conservative, there is a growing reluctance to question conventional religious teachings, especially those having to do with the position of women. In both fundamentalist and moderate Islamic communities, and in pesantren throughout the country, women who seek an improvement in their status encounter resistance. Secular efforts to initiate dialogue about gender equality haven’t been successful because it is difficult for non-religious organizations to make inroads into the conservative world and because the very concept of women’s equality is seen as alien and Western. Thus, progressive ideas about women’s place in society rarely spreads beyond Indonesia’s elite.

Farha chose to target pesantren because they play a central role in the education of young Muslims in Indonesia, exert a strong influence on surrounding communities, and because historically, they have helped solve local social problems. Although most of her work has focused on the islands of Java and Madura, Farha has also strategically chosen pesantren in South Sulawesi because this region, a cultural center for eastern Indonesia, is particularly conservative.
RAHIMA holds workshops for male and female leaders from pesantren throughout Indonesia on a wide variety of topics, from women and Islamic law to reproductive health to equality and justice in Islamic education. Farha has identified over fifty strategic pesantren and other religious teachers who have become partners with RAHIMA. Together, they have established women’s forums in their pesantren, created teaching materials, and found new ways to put teachings of equality into practice in their own communities. In partnership with RAHIMA, these leaders have created a lively network that holds regular alumni gatherings and actively shares ideas and developments in the field. Many contribute articles to the widely circulated print and online journal, Swara RAHIMA. Together with these influential leaders, Farha is working to transform what might otherwise have remained isolated efforts into a movement of change from within pesantren.
Farha uses popular culture to introduce ideas about gender equality and women’s rights in a non-threatening way. She and her team have adapted verses from religious texts to create shalawat, or songs in praise of the prophet Mohammed, that promote women’s rights. These have spread widely and have become very popular during rites of passage, at routine Quranic study groups, and in local cultural festivals. The verses are printed on wedding invitations to spread the idea of equality and mutual respect in marriage. She and her colleagues have translated the lyrics into regional languages to make the message accessible to more people. In Tasikmalaya, West Java, a weekly prayer meeting of over 300 women and about 200 people in Bondowoso, East Java, consisted of the women passively listening to their religious leader. Now, they sing the “Shalawat for Equality,” then discuss problems in their daily lives related to the meaning of the verses. In another region, the same song has gained popularity through a competition modeled on American Idol (and the popular Indonesian Idol). Some teachers use the shalawat as part of their students’ curriculum, while others have created special forums for their high school students to discuss the ideas in the songs. This is also done in pesantrens in Jember, East Java, and Garut, West Java.
Farha believes the message of women’s equality is much more powerful when it is combined with much needed practical services. Because so many youth reach puberty and young adulthood within pesantren communities, Farha believes reproductive health centers can provide many benefits, both in terms of health services and education. She envisions these health centers as safe spaces where community members and young people can discuss women’s rights. Farha is working with the Women’s Health Institute (a secular CO) and existing midwife academies to train midwife activists to provide both medical care and lead discussions on women’s rights. Graduates of the program, mostly the daughters of traditional midwives, will establish reproductive health centers within pesantren. This effort has the support of the pesantren leaders associated with RAHIMA. Discussions are currently underway to spread this training program to 100 midwife academies throughout Indonesia and potentially to medical schools as well. In addition, some pesantren have responded to cases of domestic and sexual abuse by creating crisis centers within their communities.
The effects of Farha’s efforts are palpable. Even in some very traditional communities, women now have a place where they can report incidents they wouldn’t have before, such as cases of trafficking, domestic violence, and incest. And perpetrators, even those who hold respected positions in their religious communities, are being held accountable for their actions. As conservatism has increased and fundamentalism has become more mainstream in Indonesia, Farha’s work has taken on a new urgency. She has brought together a diverse network of individuals and organizations that support RAHIMA’s work, including secular COs, university students, educators, and influential members of other leading Islamic organizations as well as government. She and her colleagues in Indonesia were originally inspired by the writings of Muslim feminists from Pakistan, India, and Morocco. Now Farha feels that it is time for Indonesians and Southeast Asians to share their own approaches, ideas, and successes. Farha and her colleagues plan to translate select articles from Swara RAHIMA into English and Arabic as part of their effort to share the voices of the Indonesian Islamic women’s movement.

Farha was born into a deeply religious family of Arabic descent in Ambon, eastern Indonesia, in 1963. When she reached puberty, her father began to restrict her activities. She could no longer go to movies or study martial arts, and mixing with boys was prohibited. Her father told her that she should not think about attending university. For her secondary education, Farha was sent to an all-girls school in Solo, Central Java, where she lived with relatives in an aristocratic Arab community. There, she began to be aware of discrimination. She puzzled over the contrast between her own privilege in terms of religion and ethnicity, and her second-class status in regard to gender. She recalls feeling far more impressed by people who worked for the good of the community than by her family members, who were engaged in business. At school, she found the freedom to engage in student activities, and she became the leader of a student organization.
After struggling with her father, Farha eventually attended university in Yogyakarta, and there her world opened up. She became involved in the student movement. Her participation in discussion groups led her to social activism focusing on the problems of the poor and marginalized under Soeharto’s repressive regime. She eventually established the Institute for the Study of Women and Children (LSPPA). Whenever she and her friends held discussions on issues of gender equality or women’s rights, someone in the packed room would always stand up and present religious arguments to justify the subordination of women. Farha realized that she lacked the means to counter such arguments, so she began to search for answers by reading and translating the writings of feminist Islamic scholars from India, Pakistan, and Morocco, which LSPPA had published. She was deeply influenced by the Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi, who urged women activists to “learn from the fundamentalists,” because they have been very successful in creating a populist movement, while feminists tend to be an elite group.
Beginning when she was a student, Farha has worked with interfaith organizations and embraced friends and colleagues from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. When she moved to Jakarta in the mid-1990s, she worked with Kalyanamitra, a women’s organization that has done pioneering work with victims of domestic violence. In the aftermath of riots in May 1998, Farha volunteered with groups supporting the mostly Chinese women survivors of brutal sexual abuse. The abuse she witnessed strengthened her desire to spread gender awareness and women’s rights in wider society, including through new interpretations of religious texts. She led the women’s division of P3M, a large community development organization for two years before walking out with a number of colleagues upon learning that one of the organization’s leaders, who publicly espoused gender equality, had taken a second wife. With a small group of colleagues she established first the Association of Women’s Crises Centers based in pesantren and then RAHIMA. Eventually she decided to focus her energy on directing RAHIMA, which she describes as an experiment in pluralism, because the staff come from both secular and religious backgrounds, are male and female, and include members of the two largest Islamic organizations in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah and Nahdatul Ulama.