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.

Combining recent research with 20 years' experience in Indonesia, Lukens-Bull looks closely at debates about institutions of Islamic higher education as they transform from being exclusively religious in nature into full universities. Islamic institutions of higher education are critical to understanding the Indonesian Islamic community both for the ways in which they define orthodoxy and act as culture brokers to the wider Islamic community, as well for their cultural brokerage with Western philosophy and scholarship. Not only are the institutions and their faculty and staff important participants in the discourse about the future, they are subjects of it as well. The changes these institutions are undergoing and the questions such changes generate provide a window into the future of Indonesia as it is being created.

Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book examines how the Islamic community in Java, Indonesia, is actively negotiating both modernity and tradition in the contexts of nation-building, globalisation, and a supposed clash of civilizations. The pesantren community, so-called because it is centered around an educational institution called the pesantren, uses education as a central arena for dealing with globalization and the construction and maintenance of an Indonesian Islamic identity. However, the community's efforts to wrestle with these issues extend beyond education into the public sphere in general and specifically in the area of leadership and politics. The case material is used to understand Muslim strategies and responses to civilizational contact and conflict. Scholars, educated readers, and advanced undergraduates interested in Islam, religious education, the construction of religious identity in the context of national politics and globalization will find this work useful.

Based on extensive ethnographic research, this book examines how the Islamic community in Java, Indonesia, is actively negotiating both modernity and tradition in the contexts of nation-building, globalisation, and a supposed clash of civilizations. The pesantren community, so-called because it is centered around an educational institution called the pesantren, uses education as a central arena for dealing with globalization and the construction and maintenance of an Indonesian Islamic identity. However, the community's efforts to wrestle with these issues extend beyond education into the public sphere in general and specifically in the area of leadership and politics. The case material is used to understand Muslim strategies and responses to civilizational contact and conflict. Scholars, educated readers, and advanced undergraduates interested in Islam, religious education, the construction of religious identity in the context of national politics and globalization will find this work useful.