Hasanain Juaini

Hasanain Juaini, a traditional Indonesian religious teacher and leader ([i]tuan guru), is reforming religious boarding schools ([i]pesantren) to provide a system of education emphasizing pluralism, tolerance, democracy, and opportunities for women. By implementing these concepts in concrete practices not only within the school but also with various groups in society through the management and networking of pesantren, Hasanain is helping to prevent potential conflicts among Indonesia's religiously-and ethnically-diverse population.

Hasanain sees the numerous and influential pesantren as a potentially powerful force for promoting the values of pluralism and democracy on a broader scale in Indonesia. To inculcate a social mission within pesantren, Hasanain is introducing innovations to how they operate, both internally and in relation to the community and society. Understanding that change must first come from within, Hasanain has developed a system and method of education for the all-female students of his pesantren which stresses the practical understanding and implementation of pluralism and diversity, tolerance, and basic democratic values as they apply to daily life. As this methodology encourages students to actively question and criticize him and their teachers, and offers them the opportunity to help create and plan their curriculum, it replaces the rote learning typical of pesantren with the promotion of critical thinking. To make pesantren more responsive to current needs and developments, Hasanain is also reforming the role and position of his pesantren in relation to the community, making it more inclusive and introducing community ownership through a membership system. To further support and spread his work, Hasanain works at the regional level, establishing and leading the first ever coalition of pesantren to fight corruption and improve governance. With pesantren in other areas, including Java, interested in following this example, aspects of Hasanain’s activities are already becoming a reference for reform.

Within its population of over 210 million people, Indonesia has a variety of different ethnic groups, languages, and cultures; although the majority of Indonesians (90 percent) are Muslims, the country has citizens of numerous religions as well. While this diversity is often highlighted as one of Indonesia's strengths, it also has the potential to lead to conflict and disintegration. This potential was exacerbated under the authoritarian and centrally controlled Suharto regime, which imposed uniformity and denied the existence of tension between different groups. Although the fall of Suharto ushered in an era of reform and increased openness, the new government has also inherited much of the latent unrest. After having been suppressed for so long, some of these underlying hostilities are beginning to be realized, especially outside of Java, where limited access to information and education and the closed nature of the society have further fueled instability.

Because of both their large numbers and widespread influence, pesantren could provide a powerful vehicle to promote the values of pluralism and tolerance that might defuse, and provide constructive solutions for, these conflicts. There are over 6,672 pesantren in Indonesia, 180 of which are on the island of Lombok alone. Because pesantren and their leaders are widely followed by the Muslim communities surrounding them, these institutions have played a very important role in the direction taken by the Muslim community and Indonesian society in general.

However, numerous factors keep pesantren from taking up this much-needed challenge. Many have become unresponsive to their communities, either because they have been co-opted by the government or political parties and have become a tool to control and satisfy immediate needs, or because they became marginalized during the Suharto regime. A small number (not more than one percent) have given rise to a narrow radicalism, creating a negative image of pesantren and Islam in general that would undermine attempts to undertake a social mission. Moreover, pesantren themselves have traditionally been undemocratic, dogmatic, and exclusive, making them unlikely candidates to teach critical thinking or pluralism. Pesantren are owned and exclusively managed by the tuan guru or kyai, leaving the system and its teaching materials and methods often authoritarian. Because pesantren give greater attention to the education of boys over girls, and are off-limits to non-Muslims, they exclude large segments of Indonesian society.

To direct the potential of pesantren towards promoting democracy and tolerance, Hasanain is working on three levels: making participation and inclusion central to a pesantren education, democratizing management of pesantren to make them more responsive to the needs of the entire community, and bringing pesantren together to improve governance.

Realizing that any change must begin within the pesantren, Hasanain has changed traditional teaching practices within his own institution. For example, pesantren usually evaluate students based on individual performance, but Hasanain’s school grades examinations upon both the results of how a student works individually as well as in a group. Hasanain also involves the families of his students in the educational programs, with some serving as teachers, and provides informal education for young mothers who accompany their children to the kindergartens.

Since it would be impossible for his students to learn about, and from, the diversity of their country and the region if his pesantren maintained the exclusivity typical of similar institutions, Hasanain promotes an inclusive atmosphere by opening the facilities of his school to the community as a whole. In Lombok, non-Muslims are usually not allowed to enter a mosque or pesantren, but Hasanain encourages them to do so. Moreover, he invites people from a variety of ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds, as well as individuals from different economic and social strata, to help develop his pesantren, including serving as speakers, teachers, and staff.

Perhaps Hasanain’s most important strategy is one he calls "opening up" that encourages critical thinking and active engagement within his pesantren. As a tuan guru, one of Hasanain’s responsibilities is to regularly lead prayer sessions both within his school and in communities he visits. Hasanain has introduced to these sessions an opportunity for all those present—be they young or old, men or women, members of the community or guests, Muslims or non-Muslims—to state their problems or complaints, even if they are criticisms of the tuan guru himself. Everyone is encouraged to speak out, and solutions are then sought collaboratively. By opening a space in which everyone can participate and have their voice heard, Hasanain transforms a prayer session into a learning process for all involved about pluralism, openess to others, tolerance, and appreciation of the differences and variety that exist within the community.

To make the management of the pesantren embody the qualities he's hoping to promote, Hasanain is replacing the typical arrangement (in which a pesantren is usually owned and managed by a single tuan guru or family) with community ownership through a membership system. Moreover, he has developed a collaboration with various local leaders, such as the university, CSOs, businesspeople, other pesantren and their students, and government officials. To effectively involve a wide variety of people with different skills, capabilities, and backgrounds, Hasanain has established regular, interactive, thematically-based dialogues (Forum Dialogues) between key stakeholders from throughout the community. These Dialogues not only allow Hasanain to mobilize resources and facilitate the process of spreading ideas and cooperation, but also allow students and young teachers that show potential the opportunity to exercise leadership, creating a new generation to guarantee the continuity and sustainability of Hasanain’s innovations.

Making the pesantren more responsive to the entire community facilitates community outreach, an important aspect of the role that Hasanain is promoting for the institution. Through the pesantren, Hasanain has helped to focus attention on serious issues facing local people; for example, when the national semi-private water company intended to take control of the clean water in a village area, he helped the villagers lobby for their rights to control their own water system. Other concrete strategies have included taking a role in efforts to control malaria in North Lombok, and leading the students’ involvement in a drive to plant 1,000 trees in a water catchment zone.

Hasanain is very conscious of the power of networking locally, nationally, and globally, and that has led him to establish a number of organizational ties to support his ideas and activities. The most valuable of these has been the Coalition of Pesantren Against Corruption in NTB province, a first of its kind collaboration he created. The group, which includes representatives of 130 pesantren, first performed a critical study of the provincial budget and wrote an accountability report on the local parliament. They presented their findings at an official hearing of the provincial government, revealing budget inconsistencies, manipulation, and practices of nepotism. Because the pesantren represent thousands of people with their students and communities, this group is considered a powerful alliance whose criticism should be heeded. The Coalition created a guidebook on how to examine budgetary reports for potential corrupt practices, and shared copies with all its member pesantren and teachers. As a result of this movement, many tuan guru have a better understanding of the tricks used by bureaucrats, and have become more critical and careful of donations from government sources. By strategically using the power of pesantren to lobby against corruption, Hasanain is simultaneously promoting positive changes in governance and providing pesantren with a concrete function—and relevance—in relationship to the broader community and society.

From the time he was young, Hasanain traveled from one remote area to another with his parents as they brought education to villagers. This experience led not only to his having a deep understanding of sociocultural and economic conditions of people from various levels in society, but also inspired him to choose education as the field to which he wanted to dedicate his life.

Hasanain developed his knowledge and skills in education, religion, and social development through his own studies, first at the well known Gontor Pesantren in East Java, and later at university in Jakarta. During his time as a student, he established seven kindergartens in Lombok and one kindergarten and an orphanage in Jakarta.

Upon graduating from university, Hasanain got a job with a relatively high salary as a teacher in Malaysia. While there, he met some migrant workers from Lombok who were imprisoned for illegal entry to the country, and their conditions and stories of why they had left their province troubled him deeply. He became determined to return to Indonesia and serve the people. Step by step, he built up his pesantren in Lombok.

Hasanain has been concerned about two issues in particular: the disharmony among the diverse peoples of Indonesia and the problems facing women. In his attention to the latter of these concerns, Hasanain is unusually forward thinking as a religious leader. To address both these issues, he chose to develop an educational system from kindergarten through high school and has consciously created a pesantren that focuses on the education of female students and their mothers. Believing that mothers and future mothers play a crucial role in the education of their children and the community, Hasanain wants them to be able to have as wide as possible a choice of paths in their lives and what they want to accomplish, so they will have a much broader role in society.

Hasanain has the ability to articulate concepts into everyday language so that they are easily understood, even by children. His personality is that of a very inclusive person who is easily accepted by others. This quality has led to his becoming the representative of the NTB branch of The Center for the Development of Pesantren and Society (P3M) at the national level. He has also been chosen as one of the officers of the Forum Communication of Pesantren in NTB, the director of the Madrasah Council of NTB, and various other positions. Because of his managerial capabilities, he has been entrusted to direct a consolidation of three pesantren and eight kindergartens.