Islam Education And Radicalism In Indonesia

Instructing Piety 1st Edition Timothy Lindsey

download

https://ebookbell.com/product/islam-education-and-radicalism-in-
indonesia-instructing-piety-1st-edition-timothy-lindsey-47649458

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Islam Education And Reform In Southern Thailand Tradition And

Transformation Joseph Chinyong Liow

https://ebookbell.com/product/islam-education-and-reform-in-southern-
thailand-tradition-and-transformation-joseph-chinyong-liow-51766066

Islam Education And Reform In Southern Thailand Tradition Et

Transformation 1 Publ Joseph Chinyong Liow

https://ebookbell.com/product/islam-education-and-reform-in-southern-
thailand-tradition-et-transformation-1-publ-joseph-chinyong-
liow-22376254

Rethinking Islam In Europe Contemporary Approaches In Islamic

Religious Education And Theology Zekirija Sejdini

https://ebookbell.com/product/rethinking-islam-in-europe-contemporary-
approaches-in-islamic-religious-education-and-theology-zekirija-
sejdini-50754558

Islam Questions And Answers Pedagogy Education And Upbringing Muhammad

Saed Abdulrahman

https://ebookbell.com/product/islam-questions-and-answers-pedagogy-
education-and-upbringing-muhammad-saed-abdulrahman-1656290
Preparing The Mothers Of Tomorrow Education And Islam In Mandate
Palestine Ela Greenberg

https://ebookbell.com/product/preparing-the-mothers-of-tomorrow-
education-and-islam-in-mandate-palestine-ela-greenberg-51925470

The Moral Economy Of The Madrasa Islam And Education Today 1st Edition
Keiko Sakurai Fariba Adelkhah Dale F Eickelman

https://ebookbell.com/product/the-moral-economy-of-the-madrasa-islam-
and-education-today-1st-edition-keiko-sakurai-fariba-adelkhah-dale-f-
eickelman-51885116

Secularism Islam And Education In India 18301910 Robert Ivermee

https://ebookbell.com/product/secularism-islam-and-education-in-
india-18301910-robert-ivermee-24507324

Knowledge And Education In Classical Islam Religious Learning Between

Continuity And Change 2 Vols Sebastian Gnther

https://ebookbell.com/product/knowledge-and-education-in-classical-
islam-religious-learning-between-continuity-and-change-2-vols-
sebastian-gnther-23673602

Secular Institutions Islam And Education Policy France And The Us In

Comparative Perspective 1st Edition Paola Mattei

https://ebookbell.com/product/secular-institutions-islam-and-
education-policy-france-and-the-us-in-comparative-perspective-1st-
edition-paola-mattei-5612408
 Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

ISLAM, EDUCATION AND

RADICALISM IN INDONESIA
INSTRUCTING PIETY

Edited by Tim Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf,

and Helen Pausacker
Islam, Education and Radicalism
in Indonesia

This book explores the connections between traditional Islamic education,

rising religious intolerance, religious attitudes to gender, campaigns for cur-
ricula innovation and modernisation, and politics and society in Indonesia.
Drawing on extensive original research and the deep experience of the
authors, the book highlights tensions between traditional Islamic educators
and modernisers, and between different understandings of Islam, emphasis-
ing the importance of these issues for the future of Indonesia.

Tim Lindsey is Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the
Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, University of Melbourne,
Australia.

Jamhari Makruf is a Professor and Vice Rector of the Indonesian Interna-

tional Islamic University.

Helen Pausacker is Deputy Director of and a Principal Research Assistant in

the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, University of Melbourne,
Australia.
Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series

The aim of this series is to publish original, high-quality work by both new
and established scholars on all aspects of Southeast Asia.

NGOs and Civil Society in Thailand

Metagovernance and the Politics of NGO Funding
Theerapat Ungsuchaval

Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia

Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh
Kathrin Eitel

Public Expenditure and Income Distribution in Malaysia

Mukaramah Harun and Sze Ying Loo

Territorial Change and Conflict in Indonesia

Confronting the Fear of Secession
Ratri Istania

Marginalisation and Human Rights in Southeast Asia

Al Khanif & Khoo Ying Hooi

Fake News and Elections in Southeast Asia

Impact on Democracy and Human Rights
Robin Ramcharan and James Gomez

Islam, Education and Radicalism in Indonesia

Instructing Piety
Edited by Tim Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf, and Helen Pausacker

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Contemporary-Southeast-Asia-Series/book-series/RCSEA
Islam, Education and
Radicalism in Indonesia
Instructing Piety

Edited by
Tim Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf,
and Helen Pausacker
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Tim Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf,
and Helen Pausacker; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Tim Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf, and Helen Pausacker to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lindsey, Timothy, 1962- editor. | Makruf, Jamhari, editor. |
Pausacker, Helen, editor.
Title: Islam, education and radicalism in Indonesia / edited by Tim
Lindsey, Jamhari Makruf, and Helen Pausacker.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This
book explores the connections between traditional Islamic education,
rising religious intolerance, religious attitudes to gender, campaigns
for curricula innovation and modernisation, and politics and society
in Indonesia. Drawing on extensive original research and the deep
experience of the authors, the book highlights tensions between
traditional Islamic educators and modernisers, and between different
understandings of Islam, emphasising the importance of these issues
for the future of Indonesia”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022043649 (print) | LCCN 2022043650 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032216126 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032216133 (pbk) |
ISBN 9781003269229 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic education--Indonesia. | Education--
Curricula--Indonesia. | Educational change--Indonesia. |
Education and state--Indonesia. | Islamic fundamentalism--Indonesia.
Classification: LCC LC910.I5 I85 2023 (print) | LCC LC910.I5
(ebook) | DDC 371.07709598--dc23/eng/20221107
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043649
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022043650

ISBN: 9781032216126 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032216133 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003269229 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003269229

Typeset in Times New Roman

by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
In memory of Professor Dr Azyumardi Azra
(1955–2022), friend, mentor and inspiration
for so many, and untiring champion of Islamic
educational reform in Indonesia.
Contents

List of Illustrationsix
List of Tablesx
List of Contributorsxi
Acknowledgmentsxvii
Terminologyxviii
List of Acronyms and Abbreviationsxix
Glossaryxxiii

1 Between Tradition and Change, Moderation and Extremism 1

TIM LINDSEY, HELEN PAUSACKER AND JAMHARI MAKRUF

PART I
Islamic Schools and Pre-Schools: Moderation and Extremism 11

2 Religious Discipline in Preschool Education Institutions in Indonesia 13

LIES MARCOES

3 Pesantren and Madrasah in Indonesia: Then and Now 48

ROBERT KINGHAM

4 Islamic Education as Acculturation: Lombok’s Pesantren Darul Falah 71

JEREMY J. KINGSLEY

5 Women, Education and the Pious Feminine in Nahdlatul Wathan,

East Lombok 87
BIANCA J. SMITH

6 Women and Change in a Radical Pesantren 115

FARHA ABDUL KADIR (CICIEK) ASSEGAF
viii Contents
7 Indonesian Foreign Fighters, Masculinity and Islamic
Boarding Schools 145
NOOR HUDA ISMAIL

8 Living Dangerously: The Impact of COVID-19 on Pesantren 164

LAIFA A. HENDARMIN AND JAMHARI MAKRUF

PART II
Islamic Higher Education: Rethinking Tradition  179

9 Comparative Religion, Tolerance and Islamic Higher Education

in Indonesia 181
ISMATU ROPI

10 Islamic Studies in Indonesia, from IAIN to UIN: Strengthening

the Wasatiyyah Islam 196
AZYUMARDI AZRA

11 State Islamic Universities and Legal Curriculum Reform  208

SIMON BUTT

12 State Islamic Universities and Education Curriculum Reform 227

MARY GALLAGHER

13 Educating Religious Court Judges in Indonesia: Islam,

Justice and Gender 253
WINDY TRIANA

14 Private Islamic Universities in Indonesia: Keeping Piety Relevant

to Modern Education  278
ALFITRI AND MUZAYYIN AHYAR

15 Disability Rights and Inclusive Education in Islamic

Tertiary Education 306
DINA AFRIANTY

16 When ‘Back to the Qur’an and Hadith’ Is No Longer Enough:

Radicalisation of Islamic Teaching in Indonesia  321
NADIRSYAH HOSEN

Index 342
Illustrations

5.1 The Nahdlatul Wathan symbol93

5.2 Muhammad Zainuddin trains his daughter97
5.3 Maulana Syeikh with his only children, the half-sisters
Rauhun (L.) and Raehanun (R.)99
5.4 Female students at Ma’had in Pancor, 2016106
14.1 Study at NU Movement289
Tables

3.1 Madrasah in Indonesia60

13.1 List of Islamic Legal Courses Under the Indonesian
Qualification Framework Curriculum and Competence-
Based Curriculum257
13.2 List of Law Courses Under Indonesian Qualification
Framework Curriculum and Competence-Based Curriculum258
13.3 List of Elective Course Under the Indonesian Qualification
Framework Curriculum and Competence-Based Curriculum259
13.4 Phases of the Initial Judicial Training261
13.5 Initial Integrated Judicial Training I262
13.6 Sample Course I263
13.7 Sample Course II264
13.8 1st Work Experience Programme Activities264
13.9 Tasks of Candidate Judges during Work Experience Programme
as Bailiff Officers265
13.10 Initial Integrated Judicial Training II266
13.11 Tasks and Roles of Substitute Clerk during the Working
Experience Programme of Initial Integrated Judicial Training II266
13.12 Initial Integrated Judicial Training III267
13.13 Work Experience II269
13.14 Curriculum of Continuing Judicial Education – 2014270
13.15 Curriculum of Continuing Judicial Education – 2015270
13.16 Curriculum of Continuing Judicial Education – 2016271
13.17 Certification Training for Mediators 2016273
13.18 Training Programme on Women’s Access to Justice for Judges
in the Four Courts of Indonesia 2016274
14.1 New Entrants to Public and Private Higher Education
Institutions Based on Institution Levels in 2018283
14.2 Enrolled Students in Private Higher Education Institutions
Based on Institution Levels in 2018283
14.3 Muhammadiyah Higher Education Institutes286
14.4 NU Higher Education290
14.5 Al-Islam dan Kemuhammadiyahan298
14.6 Islam dan Ke-Aswaja-an300
Contributors

Dina Afrianty is a lecturer at LaTrobe University. Her Bachelor’s degree is

from the State Islamic University in Jakarta, where she taught political
science. Her PhD is from the University of Melbourne. She is the author
of Women and Sharia Law in Indonesia: Local Women’s NGOs and the
Reform of Islamic Law in Aceh (Routledge, 2015). Dina is currently
researching gender and politics in Indonesia, Muslim women’s rights
in family law, disability rights, and Islamic law in Aceh. She is also a
research fellow at the Center of Social Difference at Columbia University,
an Associate of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS)
at the University of Melbourne, and an Associate of the State Islamic
University in Jakarta.
Farha Abdul Kadir (Ciciek) Assegaf is a well-known activist, researcher and
consultant on issues concerning gender and religion. She has worked with
numerous institutions including RAHIMA (the Center for Education and
Information on Islam and Women’s Rights); the Institute for the Study
of Islam and Society (LKIS); the Institute for Women and Children’s
Development (LSPPA); Semarak Cerlang Nusa: Consultancy, Research
and Education for Social Transformation (SCN-CREST); and Learning
Assistance for Islamic Schools (LAPIS AusAid). She has a Bachelor’s
degree in Islamic Studies from the Sunan Kalijaga State Institute for
Islamic Studies in Yogyakarta and a Master’s degree in Sociology from
Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. Her books include Overcoming
Domestic Violence from Islamic Perspectives and (with Ratna Batara
Munti and Encop Sofiah) Religion and the Standardization of Women’s
Roles in Indonesia (LBH-APIK).
Azyumardi Azra was one of Southeast Asia’s most prominent liberal Muslim
intellectuals. He was Rector and Professor of History at the Syarif
Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) of Jakarta. In 1982, Professor
Azra graduated from the Faculty of Tarbiyah (Islamic Education) at the
Jakarta IAIN (now UIN). He was appointed Lecturer there in 1985 and
in the following year was selected for a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue
advanced studies at Columbia University, New York City. He graduated
xii Contributors
with an MA from the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and
Cultures in 1988. Winning a Columbia President Fellowship, he moved
to the Department of History, Columbia University, where he undertook
further studies: MA (1989), MPhil (1990) and PhD (1992). He was also
Vice Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (Censis)
of the State Islamic University in Jakarta before his appointment as Vice
Rector for Academic Affairs. Professor Azra has been: a visiting fellow
of Southeast Asian Studies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies,
Oxford University; a Visiting Professor at the University of Philippines,
Diliman and the Universiti Malaya; a Distinguished International
Visiting Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New
York University; a member of Board of Trustees of the International
Islamic University Islamabad (2004–9); editor in chief of Studia Islamika,
the Indonesian Journal for Islamic Studies (1993–2022); and member
of the editorial boards of the journals, Ushuluddin (Universiti Malaya)
and Quranic Studies (SOAS, London). He presented numerous papers at
international conferences and lectured at many universities, including
Columbia, Harvard, ANU, Kyoto, Leiden. He published eighteen books,
the best known being The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia
(2004). Professor Azra died in 2022.
Simon Butt is Professor of Indonesian Law and Associate Director
(Indonesia) of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law, the University
of Sydney, where he teaches and researches Indonesian law. He has
previously held an Australian Research Council Australian Postdoctoral
Research Fellowship and now holds an Australian Research Council
Future Fellowship. He completed a doctoral thesis on Indonesia’s
Constitutional Court, and researches and teaches in Bahasa Indonesia.
He has written widely on aspects of Indonesian law, including The
Constitutional Court and Democracy (2015), Corruption and Law in
Indonesia (Routledge, 2012), The Constitution of Indonesia: A Contextual
Analysis (2012), and Indonesian Law (2108) (both co-authored with
Tim Lindsey).
Mary Gallagher is a teacher and lecturer based at the Canberra campus
of the Australian Catholic University, where she is also completing
her doctoral research. Her areas of expertise include adult learning,
curriculum development and best practice pedagogy. With international
development experience spanning fifteen years in Asia and Central and
Eastern Europe managing and guiding cross-cultural teams, Mary is
recognised as a leading technical expert in education and training. Over
a decade of very close engagement with Islamic tertiary education in
Indonesia, she has worked extensively across the Indonesian archipelago
as a curriculum reviewer, facilitator and teacher mentor.
 Contributors xiii
Laifa A. Hendarmin is a lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Syarif
Hidayatullah State Islamic University, where she is head of the Medical
Research Unit. Laifa has also been a researcher in the Center for the
Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) at the Jakarta UIN since 2014. Her
undergraduate degree is from the University of Indonesia, and she
obtained a doctoral degree from Kyushu University in 2008.
Nadirsyah Hosen has been working as a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty
of Law, Monash University since July 2015. Prior to this, he was an
Associate Professor in the School of Law, University of Wollongong. He
has a Bachelor’s degree from the State Islamic University in Jakarta; a
Graduate Diploma in Islamic Studies and Master of Arts with Honours
from the University of New England; and a Master of Laws in Comparative
Law from Charles Darwin University. He completed his first PhD (Law)
at the University of Wollongong and a second PhD (Islamic Law) at the
National University of Singapore. He has a strong following in Indonesia
as a prominent religious scholar.
Noor Huda Ismail is the founder of the Institute for International Peace
Building in Indonesia, which works to reincorporate former convicted
terrorists back into mainstream Indonesian society, assist families of
prisoners, and empower women directly affected by violence in post-
conflict areas. He worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post
Southeast Asia Bureau from 2002 to 2005 and has published widely in
a number of different media outlets. He has published a memoir, My
Friend the Terrorist (2010), and produced a film, Jihad Selfie (2016). Huda
obtained his Masters degree in International Security from St Andrews
University, Scotland and completed a PhD at Monash University on
gender and masculinity in Indonesian foreign fighters.
Robert Kingham has worked in the Islamic education sector since 1986, when
he lived and worked in Pesantren Darul Da’wah wal Irsyad in South
Sulawesi, seeking ways to integrate English language teaching into the
pesantren curriculum. The majority of his work has been in Indonesia but
has included work in Muslim Mindanao in the Philippines and cooperation
with Southern Thailand’s Muslim-majority provinces. Additionally, he
has worked in Malaysia, Bangladesh, the Palestinian Territories and
Tanzania. In 2004, the Australian government appointed him Director
of the Learning Assistance Program for Islamic Schools in Indonesia
(LAPIS). He continued as Senior Technical Advisor in Phases 2 and 3
of LAPIS until 2011. At that time, he was appointed Islamic Education
Specialist for Australia’s Education Partnership in Indonesia, on School
Systems and Quality Activity (SSQ). His main focus was the Madrasah
Accreditation component, with oversight of matters relating to Islamic
schools, as well as Program Oversight and Monitoring. Robert has deep
understanding of Islamic schools and education policy in Indonesia.
xiv Contributors
Jeremy J. Kingsley is an Associate Professor at the Western Sydney University
Law School. He is a legal scholar and anthropologist. His academic
work is published in both public affairs and academic journals. His
book, Religious Authority and Local Governance in Eastern Indonesia,
was recently published by Melbourne University Press. He is currently
working on a research project on ‘Inter-Asian Legalities’, funded by the
Social Science Research Council (US) and the National University of
Singapore, and is a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council
Discovery Project on contract enforcement in Indonesia.
Tim Lindsey is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Malcolm Smith
Professor of Asian Law, and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law,
Islam and Society, all at the University of Melbourne. He was previously
Director of the Asian Law Centre and Associate Dean (International)
in the Melbourne Law School. He was also an ARC Federation Fellow
(from 2006 to 2011). He has received a Carrick Teaching Awards Citation
for his work with international students, the Malcolm Smith Award for
Excellence in Teaching at the University of Melbourne, and, in 2018, the
Order of Australia for his work as an academic and on relations with
Indonesia. Tim has written more than 100 publications, including: Law
Reform in Developing and Transitional States; Indonesia: Law & Society
(in its second edition); Corruption in Asia: Rethinking the Governance
Paradigm (with Howard Dick); Indonesia after Soeharto: Prospects for
Reform; Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting (edited
with Helen Pausacker, also in its second edition); The Constitution of
Indonesia: A Contextual Analysis (with Simon Butt); and a series, Islam and
Law in Southeast Asia (three volumes: Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia
and Brunei, the last two with Kerstin Steiner), as well as Drugs Law and
Legal Practice in Southeast Asia (2016, with Pip Nicholson), Religion,
Law and Intolerance in Indonesia (2016, edited with Helen Pausacker),
Strangers Next Door? Indonesia and Australia in the Asian Century (2018,
with Dave McRae), Indonesian Law (2018, with Simon Butt), and Crime
and Punishment in Indonesia (2020, edited with Helen Pausacker). Tim is a
founder and an Executive Editor of The Australian Journal of Asian Law.
Jamhari Makruf is a Professor at the Indonesian International Islamic
University, where he is also Deputy Rector of Research and International
Relations. He was previously Deputy Rector of Syarif Hidayatullah State
Islamic University in Jakarta. Professor Makruf obtained his PhD in
Anthropology from the Australian National University in 2000, after
completing a Masters by research there in 1996. His undergraduate degree
in Islamic theology was obtained from the State Islamic Institute (IAIN)
in Jakarta in 1990. He has been a leading figure in Islamic education
reform in Indonesia and his publications include Islamic Contemporary
Movements: The Rise of Islamic Radicalism, and, with Fuad Jabali, Islam
in Indonesia: Islamic Studies and Social Transformation.
 Contributors xv
Helen Pausacker is Deputy Director of, and a Principal Research Assistant
in, the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University
of Melbourne. She is also an executive editor of the Australian Journal
of Asian Law and Academic Convenor of the Hallmark Indonesia
Democracy Initiative at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD from the
University of Melbourne examined Indonesia’s 2008 Pornography Law.
Her publications include Behind the Shadows: Understanding a Wayang
Performance (1996) and, as editor (with Tim Lindsey), Chinese Indonesians:
Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting (2005), Religion, Law and Intolerance
in Indonesia (2016) and Crime and Punishment in Indonesia (2020).
Ismatu Ropi is the Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Islam
and Society (PPIM) UIN Jakarta (2018-2023) and a professor of religious
studies in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy (Ushuluddin) at the
Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, where he also
completed his Bachelor’s degree in 1993. He studied for a Master of Arts
at the Institute of Islamic Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies and
Research at McGill University, Canada in 1998, before commencing
his PhD thesis at the Australian National University in Canberra. His
thesis, completed in 2011, examined the politics of regulating religion in
Indonesia. He has written widely on interreligious relations in Indonesia,
and published in scholarly journals and articles. He is author of Religion
and Regulation in Indonesia (2017) and Fragile Relations: Muslims and
Christians in Modern Indonesia (2000). He has co-edited three books,
Citra Perempuan dalam Islam: Pandangan Ormas Keagamaan [Women’s
Image in Islam: Viewpoints of Religious Organisations] (2002, with
Jamhari Makruf), Pranata Islam di Indonesia: Pergulatan Sosial, Politik,
Hukum dan Pendidikan [Islamic Social Institutions in Indonesia: Social,
Politics, Law and Education] (2002, with Dody S, Truna); and Belajar
Islam di Timur Tengah [Islamic Studies in Middle Eastern Universities]
(2001, with Kusmana).
Bianca J. Smith has a PhD in Anthropology from Monash University,
Australia. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Islamic
Culture and Society at the University of Mataram in Lombok, Indonesia.
Her current ethnographic work concerns Sufism, the sacred feminine and
indigenous religiosities in Lombok and Central Java. Her ethnographic
articles appear in multiple academic journals including Religions, The
Australian Journal of Anthropology, Anthropological Forum, Journal of
International Women’s Studies, Contemporary Islam, Indonesia and the
Malay World and The Australian Journal of International Affairs. She is
co-editor of Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam: Leaders, Feminists,
Sufis and Pesantren Selves (Routledge 2014) and Indonesian Islam in a
New Era: How Women Negotiate their Muslim Identities (2008).
xvi Contributors
Windy Triana is a lecturer in the Faculty of Sharia and Law of State Islamic
University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta and a researcher in the Center for
the Study of Islam and Society (PPIM) of UIN Jakarta. Windy obtained
her PhD from Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne.
Among her interests are Islamic law and society; Islamic law and gender;
and education for Islamic legal professionals.
Acknowledgments

This original idea for this book grew out of a series of educational reform
workshops and curriculum reviews of faculties of Syariah and Tarbiyah con-
ducted over the course of a decade at each State Islamic University (UIN) in
Indonesia and many of the State Islamic Institutes (IAIN) as well.
The reviews were suggested originally by the Sarif Hidayutullah State
Islamic University of Jakarta, supported by Australia’s Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade and led by Professors Jamhari Makruf and Tim
Lindsey. Those involved included Professors Ismatu Ropi and Simon Butt,
as well as Dr Fuad Djabali, Mary Gallagher, Samantha Hinderling, Trish
Prentice, Terria Lamsihar and Mia Hapsari, among others.
We are grateful to all those involved in the reviews, as we are to all the friends
and colleagues who generously agreed to contribute chapters to this book.
Without their willingness to share their extraordinary experience and deep
understandings of Islam and education in Indonesia, this book could never
have become a reality. We have also benefitted greatly from collaboration with
the leadership of the International Islamic University of Indonesia (Universitas
Islam Internasional Indonesia, UIII), a new institution for higher learning set
up to achieve many of the educational reforms proposed in this book.
Thanks are also due to Peter Sowden, our Routledge editor. This is our third
book with Peter and his enthusiasm for the research on Indonesia produced
by the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society (CILIS) at the University
of Melbourne has been consistent and much appreciated, as has his patience.
In Melbourne, Tim and Helen are also grateful to Kathryn Taylor (CILIS
manager) and Dr Tim Mann (CILIS Associate Director), whose enthusiasm
and hard work have kept CILIS productive and engaged through all the
challenges created by the recent COVID-19 pandemic, including some of
the longest lockdowns experienced by any city in the world.
In Jakarta, Jamhari expresses gratitude to Dita (PPIM researcher), Narsi
(PPIM financial manager), and Elsa (Indonesian International Islamic
University staff member), all of whom supported the completion of the book
and creatively delivered programs during the pandemic.

Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker and Jamhari Makruf

Melbourne and Jakarta, June 2022
Terminology

Non-English Terms
Because individual chapters in this book will be read separately from oth-
ers, a translation of most non-English terms used is provided in parentheses
or a note the first time each term appears in a chapter. The term is also ital-
icised on first use in that chapter.
We have not italicised proper nouns, including names of institutions, or
terms commonly used in English, such as ‘fatwa’ and ‘Qur’an’.
Most non-English terms used in this book also appear in the glossary.

Indonesian Usage
Different authors in this book have sometimes used slightly different but
accurate translations of some Indonesian terms, including passages in leg-
islation and names of institutions. Because these usages reflect their stylis-
tic preferences, and their own interpretation of the original Indonesian, we
have not sought to achieve complete standardisation.
The modern Indonesian standard orthography – determined by the
Indonesian Ministry of Education since 17 August 1972 – is used for all
Indonesian words unless ejaan lama (old spelling) is used in quotation,
name or title. In the case of names, however, the spelling used by the person
named has been preferred where it is known, thus ‘Soeharto’ rather than
‘Suharto’.

Arabic Terms
There is no standard spelling of Arabic terms in Indonesia. Different
spellings are often used interchangeably, and variations can commonly be
found even within individual documents. Different authors in this book
therefore sometimes use a range of spelling and transliteration styles for
words derived from Arabic. Again, we have not sought to achieve complete
standardisation.
Acronyms and Abbreviations

Ar. = Arabic; Dut. = Dutch; Lat. = Latin

Acronym/Abbreviation (Indonesian full title) English word(s)/definition
ABA Aisyiyah Bustanul Athfal (organisation under the leadership of
‘Aisyiyah, which runs kindergartens)
ADIA (Akademi Dinas Ilmu Agama) Academy of Religious Sciences
AIK (Al-Islam dan Kemuhammadiyahan) Islam and Muhammadiyah-ism
Aswaja (Ahlussunnah wal jamaʻah) People of the Sunnah (the way of the
Prophet) and the [Muslim] community
AusAID Australian Agency for International Development
BAM (Badan Akreditasi Madrasah) Madrasah Accreditation Body
BAN S/M (Badan Akreditasi Nasional Sekolah/Madrasah) Body for the
Accreditation of National Schools/Madrasah
BCCT Beyond Centres and Circle Time (method of kindergarten learning)
BPS (Badan Pusat Statistik) National Bureau of Statistics
D3 three-year diploma
DFAT (Australian) Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
DPD (Dewan Perwakilan Daerah) Regional Representative Assembly
DPR (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat) Peoples’ Representative Assembly, the
national legislature of Indonesia
EMIS Electronic Information System (run by the Ministry of Religious
Affairs)
GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) Free Aceh Movement
HIMPAUDI (Himpunan Pendidik dan Tenaga Kependidikan Anak Usia Dini)
Association of Early Childhood Educators and Educational Personnel
xx Acronyms and Abbreviations
HMI (Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam) Muslim University Students’
Association
IAIN (Institut Agama Islam Negeri) State Islamic Institute
JAT (Jamaah Ansharut Tauhid) literally ‘helpers of the Muslim Congregation’,
a militant Islamist organisation, splinter group of Jemaah Islamiyah
JI (Jemaah Islamiyah) literally, ‘Islamic Congregation’, a militant
Islamist group
KBH (Kelompok Bimbingan Haji) Hajj and Umrah Guidance Group
Kemenristekdikti (Kementerian Riset, Teknologi, dan Pendidikan Tinggi)
Ministry for Research, Technology and Higher Education
KKNI Kerangka Kualifikasi Nasional Indonesia, Indonesian Qualification
Framework (a national curriculum model)
Kohati (Korps-HMI-Wati) the women’s wing of HMI. See also: HMI
Komnas (Komisi Nasional) Perempuan National Commission on Women
LAPIS Learning Assistance Project for Islamic Schools
LCD projector liquid-crystal display projector
LP (Lembaga Pendidikan) educational institute
Masyumi (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia) Council of Indonesian
Muslim Associations, a major Islamic political party during the Guided
Democracy period, under Soekarno. It was dissolved in 1960.
MMI (Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia) Indonesian Mujahidin Council
MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia) Indonesian Ulama Council
NU (Nahdlatul Ulama) literally, ‘Awakening of Ulama’, the largest
Indonesian Islamic non-government organisation
P&K (Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan) [Department of] Education and
Culture, 1950-
PAI (Pendidikan Agama Islam) Islamic Religious Education
Partai Hanura (Hati Nurani Rakyat) People’s Conscience Party
PAUD (Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini) Early Childhood Education
Persis (Persatuan Islam) Islamic Union, founded in 1923 in Bandung
Pertuni (Persatuan Tunanetra Indonesia) Indonesian Association for the
Blind
PERWARI (Persatuan Wanita Republik Indonesia) Indonesian Women’s
Organisation (literally, Union of Women of the Republic of Indonesia)
 Acronyms and Abbreviations xxi
PGA (Pendidikan Guru Agama) Religion Teachers School
PGMI (Pendidikan Guru Madrasah Ibtidaiyah) primary-level madrasah
teacher-training system
PGTK (Pendidikan Guru Taman Kanak-Kanak) Teacher Education
Training for Kindergarten
PKB (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa) National Awakening Party
PKL (Praktek Kerja Lapangan) internship, work experience
PKS (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) Justice and Prosperity Party
PLD (Pusat Layanan Disabilitas) Centre for Disability Services
Polri (Polisi Republik Indonesia) Indonesian police
posyandu (pos pelayanan terpadu) ‘integrated service post’, community
health centres
posyandu plus early childhood development services, run by community
health centres
Prodi (program studi) study program
PTAIN (Perguruan Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri) State Islamic Teachers’
College, literally State Islamic Higher Education Institute
PU (Pekerjaan Umum) General Works
PUI (Persatuan Umat Islam) Muslim Ummah (community) Union
Pusdatin (Pusat Data dan Informasi) Centre for Data and Information
puskesmas (pusat kesehatan masyarakat) community health centres
RA (Raudhatul Athfar) a type of kindergarten, under the Ministry of
Religious Affairs
Riskesdas (Riset Kesehatan Dasar) Basic Health Research
S1 (Sarjana 1) Bachelor’s degree
S2 (Sarjana 2) Master’s degree
SAPALA (Santri Pencinta Alam) Nature-Loving Islamic Students
satgas (satuan tugas) task force
SD (sekolah dasar) primary school
SGHA (Sekolah Guru dan Hakim Agama) School for Religious Teachers
and Islamic Judges
SGTK (Sekolah Guru TK) Kindergarten Teacher Training School
(see also TK)
xxii Acronyms and Abbreviations
SH (Sarjana Hukum) Law degree
SHI (Sarjana Hukum Islam) Islamic Law degree
SKS (Sistem Kredit Semester, also Satuan Kredit Semester) semester
credit points
SMA (sekolah menengah atas) senior high school – a more academic
programme than SMK
SMK (sekolah menengah kejuruan) high school – technical courses (also
used as a term for high schools focusing on the arts)
SMP (sekolah menengah pertama) junior high school
SPMB (Seleksi Penerimaan Mahasiswa Baru) National tertiary entrance
examinations
SPS (Satuan PAUD Sejenis) PAUD-Style Unit (see also PAUD)
STAIN (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri) State Islamic College
STI (Sekolah Tinggi Islam) Tertiary Islamic College
STIKES (Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan) Tertiary Health Sciences College
TK (taman kanak-kanak), originally taman lare in Javanese kindergarten
TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia) Angkatan Darat Indonesian Armed
Forces: army
TNI Angkatan Laut Indonesian Armed Forces: navy
TNI Angkatan Udara Indonesian Armed Forces: air force
UII (Universitas Islam Indonesia) Indonesian Islamic University
UIN (Universitas Islam Negara) State Islamic University
Glossary

Ar. = Arabic; Dut. = Dutch; Lat. = Latin

‘ibaarat al nass (Ar.) explicit meaning of an injunction
‘aimmat al-madzahib (Ar.) leaders of schools of thought
abon a side-dish made of dried meat fibres, used as a topping on rice or
noodles
adab (Ar.) Islamic civilisation, Islamic history and civilisation
faraid (Ar.) Islamic inheritance law
ahkam (Ar.) legal verses; legal issues
ahl al-Kitab (Ar.) people of the holy book (often referring to Jews and
Christians, who share holy texts with Muslims, although other groups are
sometimes included)
Ahwal al-Syakhsiyyah (Ar.) Family Law
ajengan title for an alim, a Muslim religious scholar
akhlak; akhlaq; aklak (Ar.) Islamic morals
Akhlak Tasawuf (Ar.) Islamic morals and mysticism
Akidah Islamiyah (Ar.) Islamic ritual
aksi 411 and 212 literally, ‘actions 411 and 212’, mass protests against the
then governor of Jakarta, Ahok, led by Islamist groups
Al-Ahwal Al Shakhsiyya (Ar.) Islamic family law
aliyah (Ar.) senior secondary education
al-firqah al-nājiyah (Ar.) saved sect
al-jamā’ah (Ar.) rightly guided community
al-Khulafa al-Rashidun (Ar.) the rightly guided successors of the Prophet
al-masalih al-mursala (Ar.) public welfare
xxiv Glossary
al-Qital (Ar.) combat
al-Qotl (Ar.) kill
al wala’ wal bara (Ar.) loyalty and disloyalty
amalan (Ar.) good works
amar ma’ruf nahi munkar (Ar.) enjoin good, forbid evil
aqad (Ar.) sale, purchase agreement
aqidah (Ar.) Islamic faith, creed, belief
asatidhah (Ar.) female teachers (pl.)
asbab al-nuzul (Ar.) historical context in which Qur’anic verses were revealed
Asr (Ar.) mid-afternoon prayer
asrama dormitory
aurat (Ar.) parts of the body that should be covered, according to Islamic
norms
ayat kawniyah (Ar.) the signs of God spreading all over the universe
ayat Qur’aniyyah (Ar.) Qur’anic verses
azan (Ar.) call to prayer
Bait al-Mal (Ar.) Islamic treasury office
bandongan a traditional teaching method used in many pesantrens: public
lectures, listened to by groups of students
baju koko traditional Muslim men’s top
balon balloon
bangsawan nobility
bayat oath
berugaq (Ar.) pavilion or sitting platform
biaya operasional sekolah operational school costs
bid’ah (Ar.) innovation
cadar (Ar.) Islamic women’s clothing that completely covers the body and
face – usually leaving only a slit for the eyes
cerai gugat divorce initiated by women
cerai talak divorce by husband’s repudiation
ceramah lecture
 Glossary xxv
da’if (Ar.) weak
dai (Ar.) religious teacher
dakwah, Daʻwah (Ar.) proselytisation, missionary activities
dalang puppeteer
Darul Islam ‘House of Islam’, a militant Islamist group in Indonesia
Dharma Wanita ‘Women’s Duty’, a women’s organisation founded in
1974, during the Soeharto era
dhuha (Ar.) non-obligatory prayer done after the sun rises
difabel disabled
diniyah nightly religious education classes for children and teenagers
Dirasat Islamiyyah; dirasah Islamiyah (Ar.), Islamic studies
dosen luar biasa casual lecturer
fardu kifayah (Ar.) non-absolute obligation for a Muslim
fatwa (pl. fatawa) (Ar.) Islamic legal opinion
fiqh (Ar.), also spelled fiqih Islamic jurisprudence
Fiqh al Ibadah (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on worship
Fiqh al Jinayah (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on criminal law
Fiqh al Mawaris / Fiqh Mawaris (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on inheritance
Fiqh al Mu’amalah (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on transactions / Islamic
economy
Fiqh al Munakahat (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on marriage
Fiqh al Siyasah (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on politics
Firdaus (Ar.) paradise
firqah (pl. firāq) (Ar.) religious sect (also tāifah)
fitnah (Ar.) defamation, seditious speech, also trial, temptation, affliction,
distress, conflict or heretical uprising
fitrah (Ar.) innate destiny
Fuqaha (Ar.) Muslim experts on Islamic law
gegana the bomb squad
gharanic, gharaniq (Ar.) satanic verses
ghuroba (Ar.) outsiders
xxvi Glossary
gugatan voluntair plaintiff’s application, lawsuit
hadhanah (Ar.) child maintenance
hadiqah (Ar.) farming
Hadith al Ahkam (Ar.) reported sayings or actions of the Prophet
Muhammad on legal issues
Hadits (Hadith) (Ar.) reported sayings or actions of the Prophet
Muhammad
ḥadīth al-iftirāq (Ar.) Hadith of dissention
haflah (Ar.) memorisation
Hajj (Ar.) pilgrimage to Mecca in the month of Dhu al-hijja: obligatory
for all able-bodied Muslims
halal (Ar.) permissible
Halaqah, halqoh (Ar.) circle of students studying around a teacher
harakat (Ar.) Arabic diacritics
haram (Ar.) forbidden
harta bersama joint property
hasan (Ar.) good
hijab (Ar.) barrier or partition; women’s head covering
Himpunan Mahasiswa Islam Islamic Students Association
hisab (Ar.) astronomical calculation
Hizib (Ar.) a core religious text in Nahdlatul Wathan
Hukum Ekonomi Islam Islamic commercial law
Hukum Keluarga Islamic family law
Hukum Tata Negara Administrative Law
i’jaz (Ar.) miracle or inimitability of the Qur’an
ibadah worship practices
ibtidayah; ibtidaiyah (Ar.) primary education (six years)
ihram (Ar.) men’s white clothing, worn on hajj, made of two white,
unhemmed pieces of cloth, secured with a belt and worn with sandals
ijmā’ (Ar.) consensus of Islamic scholars on a point of Islamic law
ijtihad (Ar.) independent legal reasoning
 Glossary xxvii
ijtihad bayani (Ar.) independent legal reasoning applied to cases that are
explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an or Hadith but need further explanation
ijtihad istislahi (Ar.) independent legal reasoning applied to those cases
that are not regulated by the Qur’an nor Hadith, and cannot be solved by
using analogical reasoning
ijtihad qiyasi (Ar.) independent legal reasoning cases that are not
mentioned in the Qur’an or Hadith, but which are similar to cases
mentioned in either of them
Ikatan Guru Taman Kanak-Kanak Islam Terpadu Association of
Integrated Islamic Kindergarten Teachers
ikhtilat / ikhtilath (Ar.) mixed socialising or ‘close’ interaction between
men and women
ikrar syahadat (Ar.) confession of faith
Ilm al Falak / Ilmu Falak (Ar.) Islamic astronomy
Ilm al Siyasah (Ar.) Islamic jurisprudence on politics
Ilm/Ilmu Kalam (Ar.) systematic theological discourse
Ilm Mantiq, Ilm al Mantiq (Ar.) logic
Ilmu Hukum legal sciences
ilmu kebatinan Javanese mysticism
ilmu laduni pesantren mysticism
ilmu-ilmu agama Islam Islamic religious studies
ilmu-ilmu umum secular or general studies
imam religious community leader
imam tentara chaplaincy for Muslims in the armed forces
institut institute
iqra’ (Ar.) basic lessons in reading and writing the Qur’an
irtidād (Ar.) heretics
Isha (Ar.) prayer in early evening
Islam berkemajuan progressive Islam
Islamische medelbare school (Dut.) Islamic secondary school
isnad (Ar.) chains of transmitters or authority
Isra’ Mi’raj ascension of the Prophet Muhammad
xxviii Glossary
istishab (Ar.) the presumption of continuity
istihsan (Ar.) juristic discretion
itsbat nikah (Ar.) legalisation of a marriage
jam pelajaran learning hours
jemaah tarikat (Ar.) adult religious study groups
jembar broad (-minded)
jihad struggle for a righteous cause, holy war
jilbab headscarf worn by Muslim women
Jinayah / jinayat, jinaya (Ar.) Islamic criminal law
jinn (Ar.) spirit, demon
jubah loose clothing that does not reveal the shape of the body and is
usually dour in colour
jurusan department, major (in tertiary education)
Ka’bah (Ar.) the building at the centre of Islam's most important
mosque, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the most sacred
site in Islam
kaffah (Ar.) total
kafir (Ar. kāfir) a person who does not believe in Islam
kampung residential area, a village
Kauniyah ‘verses’ or lessons from God that can encountered in the
natural surroundings, events, problems, and other dynamics of human life,
natural law
kawah Candradimuka mythological volcanic crater, also a volcano in
Central Java
kawin dini marry early or young
kebaktian service
kebaya traditional Indonesian top for women
Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Teacher Training and Education
kelompok bermain play groups
kepenghuluan marriage administration
kepesantrenan Islamic boarding school activities
kewanitaan womanhood
 Glossary xxix
khalwat (also: khalwa) (Ar.) prohibited proximity between unrelated
persons of the opposite sex, without a third party present
khazanah fiqh (Ar.) the wealth, or body, of Islamic jurisprudence
khittah (also: kittoh) (Ar.) commitment
khitabah (Ar.) speech training
khurafat (Ar.) superstitions
khutbah (Ar.) sermon
Kitab Kuning literally ‘yellow books’, classic Islamic religious instruction
books, originally printed on yellow paper
kitab wali-wali book of saints, usually those believed responsible for
introducing Islam to Indonesia
kodrat destiny, fate, innate nature
kufar; kufr (Ar.) unbeliever
Kuliah Kerja Nyata Community Service Program
kyai, kiai religious scholar who is the leader of a pesantren
madhhab, madzhab (Ar.) school of Islamic legal thought
madrasah Islamic school
magang internship, apprenticeship
Maghrib (Ar.) prayer at sunset
Ma’had aly (Ar.) higher education
Ma’had shiqor (Ar.) a pesantren for pre-schoolers, early childhood
education
mahdhah (Ar.) usual, or pure, worship
Mahkamah Agung Supreme Court, Indonesia’s highest appeal court
Mahkamah Konstitusi Constitutional Court
Mahkamah Shari’iyyah Religious (Islamic) Court in Aceh
mahram (Ar.) male companion sanctioned by religion (father, brother,
uncle, male children or nephews), who is not a possible marriage partner
and may chaperone a woman on a journey.
Masail al Fiqhiyah Issues in Islamic Jurisprudence
majelis taʻlim, majelis taklim (Ar.) religious study group
malu ashamed
xxx Glossary
manasik hajj hajj preparation training
mar’atus sholihah (Ar.) good Muslim women
Masail al Fiqhiyah (Ar.) Issues on Islamic jurisprudence
maslahah (Ar.) utility, public interest or benefit
Mata Kuliah Wajib Umum compulsory subject (education)
matan (Ar.) the text of a hadith (as opposed to the sanad, or chain of
narrators of the hadith)
maudu (Ar.) fabricated
menoang practice of a wife taking her husband’s food to the rice-fields
millah, millat (Ar.) religion, path
minutasi minutes, records (including of a court hearing)
muamalah (Ar.) social transactions
Muallimat (Ar.) girls’ pesantren (Islamic boarding school)
muezzin (Ar.) person who recites the azan (call to prayer)
mufti (Ar.) Muslim religious scholar who gives fatwas
Muhammadiyah second largest Islamic organisation in Indonesia
mujahid (Ar.) jihad fighter
Mukharrij (Ar.) author, compiler or collector of hadith, the last in the
chain of transmission of a hadith
Munakahat (Ar.) marriage
Muqaranat al Madzahib fi al Munakahat (Ar.) Comparative Islamic
Schools of Thought on Marriage
murabbibyah (Ar.) educators
mushollah (Ar.) a prayer hall or room, set aside for Islamic prayer
Muslim terpelajar educated Muslims
Muslimat women’s wing of Nahdlatul Wathan
musyawarah meeting, consultation, discussion
mut’ah consolatory gift from an ex-husband on divorce
nafkah iddah (Ar.) maintenance during the three months waiting period
within which the divorced wife is forbidden to remarry
Nahdlatul Wathan literally, ‘National Awakening’, Islamic socio-religious
organisation in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara province
 Glossary xxxi
nājiyah (Ar.) person who is saved, the redeemed
nass (Ar.) injunction or text
nasyid (Ar.) Arabic songs; religious songs performed by a religious band
negeri state
nihlah (Ar.) a smaller religious group in Islam
nikah massal mass marriages
nisa (Ar.) woman
niyat intention
Nusantara Indonesian archipelago
nuzulul (Ar.) descent
Orientasi Nilai Dasar Islam Islamic Basic Values Orientation
ormas Islam Islamic socio-religious organisation
otonomi daerah regional autonomy
Panca Bhakti Five Devotions, oath of allegiance at Darul Falah school,
Lombok
Panca Dharma Wanita Five Duties of Women
Pancasila Five principles, the Indonesian national ideology: 1. belief
in an Almighty God, 2. just humanitarianism, 3. unity of Indonesia, 4.
democracy guided by consultation and 5. social justice.
Partai Bulan Bintang Moon and Star Party (an Islamic party)
Partai Demokrat Democratic Party
pelangi rainbow
pembangunan nasional national development
pencak silat - pencak kampong, pencak dusun martial arts, village-style
martial arts
pendidikan agama religious education
pendidikan umum general (secular) education
pengabdian masyarakat community service
pengadilan agama religious court (Indonesia’s Islamic courts)
pengajian (religious) study groups
penyandung cacat, orang cacat handicapped, old term for ‘disabled
person’
xxxii Glossary
penyandung disabilitas disabled person
penyidikan investigation
Peraturan Presiden Presidential Regulation
Perbandingan Madzhab; Perbandingan Madzhab dan Hukum Comparative
Islamic Legal Schools of Thought
Perguruan Tinggi Umum General Higher Education
perintah instructions
Persatuan Isteri Wives’ Association
pesantren Islamic (boarding) school, also referred to as pondok pesantren
pondok a pesantren, cottages in a pesantren, a cottage
Qada (Ar.) Islamic judiciary, a decree
qadi (Ar.) Shari’a judge, who also performs functions such as mediation,
guardianship of orphans and minors.
Qanun (Ar.) positive law, law promulgated by Muslim rulers, regional
Islamic legislation (in Aceh)
Qauliyah (Ar.) Verses or lessons in the form of the words of God found in
the holy book of Al-Qur'an
Qawaid al Fiahiyyah (Ar.) Legal Maxims of Islamic Jurisprudence
qiblat, qibla (Ar.) direction one faces when praying
qiyamul lail (Ar.) night prayer
qiyās (Ar.) analogy applied to the interpretation of points of Islamic law
not clearly covered in the Qur’an or sunnah
qona’ah (Ar.) modest
qurban (Ar.) sacrifice
rahmatan lil ‘alamin (Ar.) God’s mercy to all creation
raka’ah (Ar.) unit (of prayer)
Raudhatul Athfa (Ar.) Islamic pre-school, under the Ministry of Religion
rawi (Ar.) a person who narrates or tells a hadith
Reformasi Reformation, the period following the resignation of President
Soeharto in May 1998
rohis (Ar.) Islamic spirituality
Ru’ya (Ar.) Lunar sighting
 Glossary xxxiii
Rukun Iman Pillars of the Islamic faith
rumpun ilmu branch of knowledge
sabb (Ar.) blasphemy
sadaqah (Ar.) the voluntary giving of alms and charity
sadd al-dhara’i (Ar.) cutting off means to the forbidden
safar nisa (Ar.) travel rules for women
sahih (Ar.) sound
sakit sick
sakit jiwa mentally ill
Salaf al-Shalihin (Ar.) the early (usually the first three) generations of
Muslims
Salafi (Ar.) an interpretation of Islam that seeks to recreate the first
300 years of Muslim practice and assert interpretations of the Qur’an and
Hadith seen as derived from that time
salafus sholeh, salafusshalihin (Ar.) Muslims of the first generation,
during the life of the Prophet
salat (Ar.) prayers
salat sunnah (Ar.) non-obligatory, optional prayers
sanad (Ar.) the chain of people involved in transmitting a hadith
santri residential students at a pesantren, a practicing Muslim
sarong tube or length of cloth, usually worn wrapped around the waist
sekolah Islam Islamic school
Sekolah Islam Terpadu Integrated Islamic Schools
selamatan, slametan Indonesian celebration, involving a ritual rice meal
Sentra Belajar Learning Centres
shahadah (Ar.) The Muslim profession of faith: acceptance of the oneness
of God and Muhammad as God’s messenger
Shakhshiyyah Islamiyyah (Ar.) Islamic personality
sharh (Ar.) explanation
shatama (Ar.) vilification of the holy people
Sheikh al-Islam (Ar.) honorific title for outstanding scholars, or
influential jurists, of Islam
xxxiv Glossary
shirk (Ar.) idolatory, polytheism
Sholat Syuruk (Ar.) voluntary morning prayer
Sholat/ Salat Tahjjud (Ar.) night prayers
sholehah (Ar.) good, pious
silat, pencak silat martial arts
silsilah tariqah (Ar.) chains of transmission of a Sufi brotherhood
Siyasah Syari’ayyah (Ar.) Islamic State Administrative Law
skripsi undergraduate thesis
songkok Muslim hat worn in the Malay-Indonesian world
sorogan Traditional teaching method using in many pesantrens: a form of
individualised tutorial where the teacher guides the student’s reading of a text
subhat (Ar.) goods that have a questionable halal status
Sunnah, sunna (Ar.) The way of the Prophet, derived from the sayings and
practices of the Prophet Muhammad as reported in hadith
Surat Keputusan Letter of Decision (by a Minister etc)
sya’i (Ar.) running or walking seven times between the hills of Safa and
Marwah, located near the Ka’bah
Syam (Ar.) An ancient geographic term similar in meaning to the Levant,
often used to refer to Syria, Palestine and Jordan, etc
syariah, syari’ah, Sharia, shari’a, Shari’a, Shari’a, sharia, syar’i (Ar.)
Islamic law
Shuhada (Ar.) religious martyr
Tahajjud (Ar.) prayers said at night
Tahassus (Ar.) one year of preparatory school to enter Muallimin and
Muallimat
tapa-brata asceticism, meditation
ta’wil (Ar.) hermeneutics, interpretation, allegorical interpretation
tadzkiroh (Ar.) reminder
tafsir (Ar.) Qur’anic interpretation, exegesis
tāifah (Ar.) religious sect (see also firqah)
tajwid (Ar.) pronunciation (of Arabic)
takfiri (Ar.) a movement that condemns Muslims holding differing views
as apostates
 Glossary xxxv
thalaq (Ar.) divorce by husband’s repudiation; also known as cerai talak
taʻlim (Ar.) religious study group. see also: majelis taʻlim
Taman Bacaan Al-Qur’an, Taman Pendidikan Al-Qur’an Qur’anic preschools
tanah wakaf land gifted for religious (Islamic) purposes
taqlid (Ar.) blindly following the opinions of Muslim scholars
Tarbiyah (Ar.) Islamic Education
Tarbiyah wat Ta’lim (Ar.) Islamic Teacher Training and Education
tarikh (Ar.) history, date, chronology, era
tarikh tasyri’ (Ar.) history of Islamic law
tariqah (Ar.) path, Sufi group or path of spiritual learning
tasāmuḥ (Ar.) tolerance
tasauf, tasawuf (Ar.) Islamic mysticism
Tata Negara Islam Islamic State Administrative Law
tauhid hakimiyah (Ar.) the oneness of God’s judgment and legislation
tausiyah (Ar.) advice sessions, reciting sorogan
tawaf (Ar.) circling the Ka’bah
tawassuṭ (Ar.) moderation
tawāzun (Ar.) balance
tawhid, tauhid (Ar.) belief in one God, monotheism
tazwidud du’at (Ar.) preparation for missionaries
tempat pengasuhan anak childcare centre
tempat penitipan anak child-minding centre
tepuk tangan clap
Thaghut, taghut (Ar.) a focus of worship other than God, idolatry,
sometimes used to refer to secular government or persons or groups
considered anti-Islamic
thariqah (Ar.) path, Sufi group or path of spiritual learning
tidak no
Tijarah, tijaroh (Ar.) exchanging goods for money, in a way that is
stipulated and permitted by sharia
tsanawiyah (Ar.) junior secondary education (three years)
xxxvi Glossary
tuan guru term used in Lombok for a male Islamic scholar, teacher and
leader, usually the head of a pesantren
tugas wiyata bakti work experience
ukhuwah Islamic solidarity, sisterhood in Islam
Ulama, ‘ulama, ulema (Ar. alim - the Arabic plural is ulama, but the term
ulama is often used in the singular in Indonesia) (Ar.) Muslim religious
scholars
ular naga dragon
ulil albab people of intellect
ummah (Ar.) Muslim community
umrah (Ar.) the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca, performed at a time other
than during the hajj
universitas university
Ushuluddin (Ar.) Islamic thought, Islamic theology
ustadz, also ustadh (Ar.) (male) teacher
ustadhah (Ar.) a female teacher
Usul al Fiqh (Ar.) Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence
Usuluddin Revealed Knowledge
volkschoolen (Dut.) people’s school
wahabi (Ar.) followers of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahab (1703–92), who
follow a strict lifestyle based on literal understandings of the Qur’an and
the Hadith
wali adhol (Ar.) guardian of a bride
wali songo, wali sanga nine saints/teachers of Islam credited with
introducing Islam to Java
waqf, wakaf (Ar.) endowment, donation of land or a building for the use
of the Islamic community – such as building a mosque, a graveyard or a
library
wasatiyyah Islam (Ar.) moderate Islam
Wawasan Nusantara Archipelagic Concept
wayang shadow puppets
wetonan recitation method of studying
wilayah kaplingan land over which a tuan guru holds power
 Glossary xxxvii
zaahir (Ar.) literal or manifest
zakat (Ar.) Islamic religious charity, alms
zakat fitrah (Ar.) charity given to the poor a few days before the end
of fasting in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan
zanni (Ar.) speculative
zindīq (Ar.) clandestine unbelief
Zuhr (Ar.) midday prayer
1 Between Tradition and Change,
Moderation and Extremism
Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker
and Jamhari Makruf

Concerns about the politics of Muslim communities in Southeast Asia

have often led to attempts by regional states to control the administration
of Islamic institutions. Indonesia is no exception. It has the world’s largest
Muslim population, comprising at least 80 per cent of its 270 million or more
citizens. However, while it may therefore be a Muslim-majority society, it is
not an Islamic state. As a result, debate over Islamisation – in particular,
whether shari’a (Islamic law) should be enforced by the state – has been a
constant and prominent feature of political discourse since long before the
formation of the Republic in 1945. This, and a growing pietistic trend evi-
dent since the late 1970s, particularly among the burgeoning Muslim middle
classes in Indonesia’s large cities, was seen by President Soeharto as a polit-
ical threat. His regime therefore pursued a policy of repression of Islamic
identity for much of the 32 years of his army-backed authoritarian rule.
However, many of the restrictions Soeharto’s ‘New Order’ imposed on the
public expression of Islamic identity were lifted soon after his resignation
in 1998 and the collapse of his regime. The rapid democratisation that fol-
lowed the end of the New Order opened public space in Indonesia to voices
that had been silenced for decades, allowing the public expression of Islamic
identity in ways unimaginable just a few years earlier.
Since then, much attention has been paid to the so-called ‘Islamic revival’
that ensued. Rising religious intolerance and popular calls for greater recog-
nition of Islamic law have been identified as characteristics of this phenome-
non (Lindsey and Pausacker 2016). They have created significant challenges
for the democratically elected governments that have come to power since
Soeharto’s fall.
In fact, the post-Soeharto era has been marked by a rise in religious
conflicts. These ranged from regional religious ‘civil wars’, particularly
between Christians and Muslims in eastern Indonesia, that lasted for some
years after Soeharto’s fall (Harsono 2019), to increased terrorist attacks
by extremist jihadi groups, like Jemaah Islamiyah, that seek to overthrow
the state, and violent attacks by conservative Muslim vigilantes on social
and religious minorities, including Christians, unorthodox Muslims and
so-called ‘deviant sects’. This is what van Bruinessen (2013: 1) labels ‘the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003269229-1
2 Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker and Jamhari Makruf
conservative turn’ in Indonesian Islam and others have called ‘the end of
innocence (Feillard and Madinier 2011).
The problem was crystallised for many Indonesians by the controversial
imprisonment on dubious blasphemy charges in 2017 of Basuki Tjahaja
Purnama (Ahok), the reformist Christian and ethnic Chinese governor of
Jakarta (Peterson 2021). This occurred after Islamist groups, supported by
powerful elite politicians who saw the political advantage to be won, led
huge rallies in the capital, one drawing over 700,000 marchers (Fealy 2016).
The government of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), apparently intimi-
dated by the attacks on Ahok, once Jokowi’s close colleague, struggled to
respond effectively, and the governor became the first Indonesian politician
to be imprisoned for a religious offence (Peterson 2021).
Many Indonesians saw Ahok’s fall as emblematic of a general increase
in religious and social intolerance in post-Soeharto Indonesia. This, they
believed, threatened a pluralist bargain at the heart of the Indonesian polity,
created in 1945. Certainly, the simplistic image persistent in foreign percep-
tions of Indonesian Islam as ‘a tolerant and moderate Islam’ or Islam ‘with
a smiling face’ now seems ill-founded (Azra 2006: 60). The years since then
have seen Jokowi’s government increasing pressure on Islamist groups, with
groups including Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and the notorious Front Pembela
Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) banned, and high-profile Islamist leaders
arrested and imprisoned (Burhani 2017; Fealy and White 2021).
These tensions also play out in the Islamic education sector. This is to
be expected: the madrasah is second only to the mosque as a core focus of
Muslim life. Religious education has always played a central part in Muslim
cultures through the institution of the Islamic school and the social leader-
ship exercised by teachers of religious knowledge.
In fact, some claim that the education provided by Islamic schools and
universities – which constitute at least a third of Indonesia’s wider edu-
cation sector – are one of the causes of rising intolerance. The Jemaah
Islamiyah Bali bombers, for example, attended the notorious ‘hardline’
(garis keras) pesantren (private Islamic boarding school) described by
Assegaf in Chapter 6 and Ismail in Chapter 7 of this book. Likewise, an
alumni of Jakarta’s Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (an institu-
tion that figures prominently in many chapters) was responsible for a spate
of book-bombings in 2011 that targeted champions of Islamic moderation
(Afrianty 2012). Even kindergartens are not immune from these influences,
as Marcoes shows in Chapter 2, while Ismail explores the particular attrac-
tion of extremist Islamist ideas for young Muslim men in schools and uni-
versities in Chapter 7.
However, most Islamic institutions in Indonesia, like those who teach and
work in them, are not supporters of extreme Islamist ideas or even conserv-
ative religious intolerance. In fact, many make very significant efforts to
counter these ideas and promote religious pluralism, including the study
of other faiths, as Ropi, himself a lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State
 Between Tradition and Change, Moderation and Extremism 3
University, shows in Chapter 9. Likewise, Hosen, a respected Indonesian
religious scholar and a graduate of Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic
University, where he was also a lecturer, argues strongly for more tolerant
understandings of Islam in Chapter 16.
Religious extremism and intolerance is, of course, challenging, but it is
not the only challenge faced by Islamic educators in Indonesia today. Most
also struggle to meet the changing educational expectations of modern soci-
ety, particularly pressure to produce graduates who can build careers in an
increasingly competitive employment market that generally has a low opin-
ion of religious qualifications, as Butt and Gallagher argue in Chapters 11
and 12. However, it has not proved easy to change the ancient traditions that
still underpin contemporary methods of Islamic education in Indonesia.
As Kingham and Kingsley explain in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, tra-
ditional pesantren education generally does not follow a set curriculum.
Instead, it is based on students forming a strong bond with their teacher,
or kyai, who instructs them as to which fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) texts
to study and guides their reading of these texts. Many of these texts are
of medieval origin and compiled into the so-called kitab kuning or ‘yellow
books’ still widely used in Indonesian pesantrens. In Chapter 9, Ropi shows
that this approach to learning Islamic law and jurisprudence is centuries-old
and common across the Muslim world, but emphasises tradition rather than
innovation. One consequence of this, as Hendarmin and Makruf demon-
strate in Chapter 8, is that pesantrens have struggled to adapt to the dis-
tance learning forced upon them by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In any case it is now clear to most observers that while traditional Islamic
learning certainly equips pupils with religious knowledge that is deeply
rooted in ancient Muslim traditions, it often does not provide them with the
skills necessary for work in a modern globalising marketplace. In Chapter 13,
Triana shows that this is certainly true of the judges of the Religious Courts
(Indonesia’s Islamic courts). These problems are most obvious in pesant-
rens, which are private institutions. By contrast, in Indonesia’s madrasahs
(which are Islamic day schools accredited by the state), three-quarters of the
curriculum is taken up the standard state curriculum, with only the balance
available for religious instruction. Yet even here, the potent influence of
traditional philosophies of Islamic education continues to weaken learning
outcomes and thus reduce options available for graduates for higher educa-
tion or, ultimately, employment.
The intense pressure on Islamic schools to provide primary and second-
ary education of the same standard as the state education system, and with
the same access to higher education and the graduate employment market,
is now driving innovation and change in some Islamic schools, but, in most
cases, pesantren traditions hold firm. One reason for this is that pesant-
rens are deeply embedded in local cultures, economically, politically, and in
terms of governance, as Smith and Kingsley’s chapters exploring Lombok’s
influential Tuan Guru and their pesantren demonstrate. Change within
4 Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker and Jamhari Makruf
pesantrens therefore has wider implications beyond the walls of these
schools; it must be negotiated carefully and gradually with the communities
that symbiotically host, nurture, and follow them.
The persistence of old models for primary and secondary Islamic learning
has also contributed significantly to stagnation of curricula in the Islamic
tertiary system. Islamic colleges, institutes and universities mainly enrol
graduates from pesantrens and madrasahs. They also produce most of the
teachers in pesantren and madrasah and most state officials responsible for
setting policy regarding pesantren and madrasah education. In other words,
there is a cycle by which those who teach, and set policy on teaching, in
Islamic education at all levels are themselves products of that system and
have limited experience of alternative approaches. This has created formi-
dable barriers to innovation.
Despite this, a wave of conversions by state Islamic institutes to univer-
sity status that began at the turn of the century has triggered a revolution
in tertiary Islamic education, as Azra, one if its most prominent leaders,
explains in Chapter 10. This has forced what were almost exclusively places
of higher religious learning to also teach non-religious subjects such as med-
icine, engineering or (non-Islamic) law, and to somehow ‘integrate’ Islamic
norms with secular sciences. Most are struggling to find the expertise to do
this effectively, as Butt, Gallagher and Triana show, and many also face an
internal backlash from conservatives who resist these changes.
These difficulties are exacerbated by a long-standing lack of adequate gov-
ernment funding for the state tertiary Islamic education sector. Resolving
this problem is complicated by the fact that although Islamic education is
overseen by both the ministry for education and the ministry of religion, it is
the latter that is responsible for most of the sector’s funding, and it has only
made limited resources available:

In 2002, the budget for all fifty-two Islamic higher education institu-
tions provided by the Ministry of Religious Affairs was equal to the
funding provided to just one major secular university by the Ministry
of the [then] Ministry for Research, Technology and Higher Education.1

This has led not just to difficulties attracting suitable staff but also poor
facilities and service. In Chapter 14, Alfitri and Ahyar show that funding
problems also confront Indonesian private Islamic universities, although
many of these can look for support to Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and
Muhammadiyah, the huge Muslim mass organisations with which most
are affiliated. In Chapter 15, Afrianty offers a compelling case study of the
consequences of lack of adequate facilities and services in Islamic educa-
tion. She shows that, with a few notable exceptions, both public and pri-
vate Islamic education institutions have been slow to offer access to the
disabled.
 Between Tradition and Change, Moderation and Extremism 5
Given the many challenges they now face, it is not surprising that there are
widespread calls in Indonesia’s Islamic schools, institutes and universities
for major reform. This is sought to improve the quality of education availa-
ble to the tens of millions of poor and rural children who are the vast major-
ity of pupils in pesantren, madrasah, and Islamic colleges, institutes and
universities. Moreover, because these institutions typically attract a usually
slightly higher percentage of girls than boys, they principally serve one of
the most vulnerable groups in the Indonesian society – poor rural women
(Asadullah 2020). Accordingly, the social benefit that might be delivered if
the education they offer is improved is potentially immense.
However, reform of Islamic schools, institutes and universities is also
sought by some for more political reasons: to strengthen what are said to
be moderate and tolerant forms of ‘indigenous’ Indonesian Islam against
rising conservative and intolerant forms, seen by these reformers as a
foreign Islamist imposition from the Arab world. On this view, overtly
Islamist schools known as ‘Salafi’ or ‘Wahhabi’ in Indonesia are a threat
to Indonesian Islam and, indeed, to the ideal the champions of ‘Indonesian
Islam’ embrace of Indonesia as a diverse society, a notion embodied in the
state motto ‘Bhinneka Tunggal Ika’ (the many are one).2
This debate has become highly politicised, with the administration of
President Jokowi seeing notions of ‘Indonesian Islam’ as a line of defence
against his political opponents, in particular, those associated with the
protests against Ahok and, ultimately, Jokowi’s administration itself. As
a doctrine valorising religious pluralism as a national virtue, ‘Indonesian
Islam’ is now used by government to counter Islamist groups critical of it,
including by funding Islamic educational institutions it sees as supporters of
government. There are, however, still many who reject these ideas, defend-
ing conservative approaches to religious education and encouraging Middle
Eastern influence. Even among supporters of ‘Indonesian Islam’, there is
limited agreement as to what shape the reform of Islamic education should
take and how it should be carried out.
This edited volume seeks to explore all these themes, offering a range of
case studies based on recent research by leading scholars of Indonesia – both
Indonesian and foreign – and drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in
that country. In the next section of this chapter, we offer a brief overview of
their individual contributions.

Islamic Pre-Schools, Primary and Tertiary Education

This book is divided into two parts: Islamic schools and pre-schools, and
Islamic higher education. Chapter 2, by Lies Marcoes, opens Part I with
a detailed account of how pre-schools are increasingly introducing con-
servative religious material into classroom teaching. This is evident in
songs, learning material and activities. Marcoes argues that because the
6 Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker and Jamhari Makruf
state’s policy is now for early childhood education to be at the initiative
of the community, these changes reflect a change in parental expecta-
tions of religious instruction in preschools. However, Marcoes also shows
that much of the material has conservative/Salafist tendencies and some-
times even normalises religious violence and intolerance. She raises con-
cerns about the implications this may have for inter-religious tolerance in
Indonesia.
In Chapter 3, Robert Kingham offers a broad overview of the history of
pesantrens and madrasahs. He argues that although these forms of edu-
cation are ancient in their origins, well predating independence in 1945,
they continue to form an integral part of the Indonesian national educa-
tion system today. He shows they have adapted to change and continue to
evolve to ensure their relevance. However, Kingham also identifies the key
questions about Islamic schools that are at the heart of current debates.
Is the autonomy of pesantrens and madrasahs being lost under the weight
of increased regulation? Should they remain under the Religious Affairs
Ministry, or would they be better served under the sole authority of the
National Ministry of Education? Is formal Islamic education relevant in
the twenty-first century, or should it be left to mosques and community
groups?
Chapters 2 and 3 discuss Islamic education in Lombok, an island in the
east of Indonesia often referred to as the ‘island of a thousand mosques’.
Jeremy Kingsley’s chapter (Chapter 4) provides a detailed account of the
everyday life in a pesantren and the ways in which religious practice involves
acculturating students into a wider religious lifestyle that is entwined with
local governance. Bianca Smith (Chapter 5) then examines women’s educa-
tion and gender practices in Lombok’s largest and most influential Islamic
organisation, Nahdlatul Wathan, which operates Islamic schools across the
island. In particular, she argues that there has been conflict about wom-
en’s roles and female leadership since its former leader, Maulana Syeikh’s
daughter, Ummi Raehanun, became head of the organisation in 1998. She
also shows how debates about ‘modernisation’ and the value of traditional
Sufi practices were part of decisions made about the choice of leader and the
direction the organisation would take.
Farha Abdul Kadir (Ciciek) Assegaf (Chapter 6) also provides a closely
detailed description of a pesantren. However, while Kingsley’s chap-
ter was set in Lombok, Assegaf’s deals with Java, and where Kingsley
focused mainly on male education, Assegaf, like Smith, focuses on that
of women. Exploring everyday life in a notorious Islamic boarding school
widely regarded as extremist, she shows how women found ways to exercise
agency despite strict gender segregation within the pesantren, although she
acknowledges their leadership opportunities have decreased in recent times.
Noor Huda Ismail’s chapter (Chapter 7) is a counterpart to Assegaf’s. In it,
Ismail examines notions of masculinity in pesantrens and the role of Islamic
 Between Tradition and Change, Moderation and Extremism 7
school education for boys in in the development of Indonesian foreign jihad
fighters, drawing on his own experiences as a schoolboy and extensive field-
work he conducted among extremist groups.
The final chapter in this Part, by Laifa A. Hendarmin and Jamhari Makruf
(Chapter 8), brings this book’s account of change in Indonesia’s Islamic
schools up to date, with an account of the severe impact of COVID-19 on
pesantrens across Indonesia. It shows how many of them struggled to deal
with both financial constraints created by health responses to the pandemic
that kept students at home, and, as mentioned, the enormous challenges
online learning poses for traditional Islamic teaching.

Islamic tertiary education

Part II of the book begins with a chapter by Ismatu Ropi (Chapter 9) who
argues that religious studies in higher Islamic education were originally
closely associated with dakwah (missionary work), and non-Islamic beliefs
were only taught in this narrow context. However, he says there has been a
shift in Islamic higher education in Indonesia in recent decades, towards the
more tolerant approach of teaching of comparative religion for its own sake
as a legitimate way of enriching Islamic knowledge. He links this change to
the wider reform of Islamic higher education in Indonesia led by scholars
who had studied overseas.
Azyumardi Azra (Chapter 10) develops some of the themes raised by
Ropi, exploring the recent transformation and opening-up of Islamic higher
education in Indonesia. Azra focuses on the formal transformation of state
institutes into fully fledged universities, which, by law, are required to teach
non-religious disciplines alongside Islamic studies. He argues that this will
result in a more socio-historical analysis, comparing Islam in different
countries and incorporating local cultures, and suggests this may lead to a
distinct Indonesian approach to Islamic studies.
In the next two chapters (Chapters 11 and 12), Simon Butt and Mary
Gallagher examine the implications of the transformation of state institutes
into universities in more detail, focusing on the development of new cur-
ricula that seek to blend Islamic traditions with the non-religious subjects.
However, both question whether this integration is working in practice.
They focus on the implications of the new curricula for staff and students
in these emerging institutions, and whether graduates will be accepted in
Indonesia’s a highly competitive employment marketplace. Butt’s chapter
looks at the teaching of syariah (Islamic law), while Gallagher’s deals with
tarbiyah (Islamic education).
Windy Triana (Chapter 13) also investigates the curricula of Islamic
legal studies in state Islamic universities, analysing their impact on the
education of Islamic judges in Indonesia. Like Butt, she concludes that
more reforms will be needed before these universities can properly prepare
8 Tim Lindsey, Helen Pausacker and Jamhari Makruf
Syariah graduates for employment. However, she also shows that the pre-
and post-appointment training for judges of the Religious Courts provided
by the Supreme Court is insufficient to remedy the shortcomings of their
undergraduate studies.
While the previous chapters deal with state Islamic universities, the next
two are more concerned with private universities. In Chapter 14, Alfitri and
Muzayyin Ahyar offer an exploration of the development of the curricula
of private Islamic universities in Indonesia, placing this in the context of
the historical trajectory of these institutions. They also closely examine the
long-standing links between private Islamic universities and the Muslim
mass organisations that sponsor many of them, NU and Muhammadiyah.
They offer a detailed explanation of how these links have affected the for-
mation of their curricula, for example, through the inclusion of ‘Indonesian
Islam’ (or, in common NU parlance, Islam Nusantara)3 in the curriculum of
NU universities.
In Chapter 15, Dina Afrianty critically examines the access for people
with disabilities to Islamic tertiary educational institutions. She argues that
some private institutions lag well behind many public educational institu-
tions, with many simply refusing to admit disabled students. This, she says,
is compounded by frequent lack of provision for wheelchair users or signing
for deaf Muslims in religious services, arguing that much more needs to be
done to create an inclusive society among Indonesian Muslims.
The final chapter, by Nadirsyah Hosen (Chapter 16), argues that simply
calling for a return to the Qur’an and Hadith (sayings of the prophet) is not
an adequate approach to modern Islamic education in Indonesia. He calls
for students to be taught about the wider context of religion and the rich
variety of interpretations that exist within Islam to counter the threat of
radicalisation, which often relies on literal translations of the scriptures that
can significantly distort their meaning.

Conclusion
Against the background of the wider struggles between inclusive and
extremist ideas about Islam in Indonesia, and between Islamists and sup-
porters of the idea of Indonesian forms of Islam, this book seeks to better
understand the historical trajectory of pesantrens, madrasahs and other
Islamic schools, and tertiary Islamic education, both state and private, and
the changes that are now taking place across the entire Islamic education
system.
By doing so it hopes to offer insights into contemporary contests over the
future direction of teaching and learning in Indonesia’s Islamic schools and
tertiary institutions, in particular, the tensions between the supporters of
traditional modes of Islamic learning and reformers seeking modernisation,
and the nature of the complex relationships between Islamic education and
Islamist extremism in Indonesia.
 Between Tradition and Change, Moderation and Extremism 9
Notes
1. Makruf (2014), cited by Gallagher in Chapter 12 of this book.
2. The motto is drawn from a fourteenth-century Javanese narrative poem, Mpu
Tantular’s Kakawin Sutasoma (Santoso 1975: 578)
3. Nusantara is an old Javanese term now commonly used to refer to the Indone-
sian archipelago.

References
Afrianty, Dina. 2012. ‘Islamic Education and Youth Extremism in Indonesia’,
Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 7(2): 134–46.
Asadullah, M. Niaz. 2020. ‘Poor Indonesian Families Are More Likely to Send
Their Daughters to Cheap Islamic Schools’, The Conversation, 6 March https://
theconversation.com/poor-indonesian-families-are-more-likely-to-send-their-
daughters-to-cheap-islamic-schools-131310
Azra, Azyumardi (ed.). 2006. ‘The Megawati Presidency: The Challenge of Political
Islam’, Indonesia, Islam, and Democracy: Dynamics in a Global Context. Jakarta:
Solstice Publishing, pp. 55–70.
Bruinessen, Martin van (ed.) 2013. Contemporary Developments in Indonesian
Islam: Explaining the ‘Conservative Turn’. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies.
Burhani, Ahmad Najib. 2017. ‘The Banning of Hizbut Tahrir and the Consolidation
of Democracy in Indonesia’, ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute Perspective, 19 September
https://www.iseas.edu.sg/images/pdf/ISEAS_Perspective_2017_71.pdf
Fealy, Greg. 2016. ‘Bigger Than Ahok: Explaining the 2 December Mass Rally’,
Indonesia at Melbourne, 7 December https://indonesiaatmelbourne.unimelb.edu.
au/bigger-than-ahok-explaining-jakartas-2-december-mass-rally/
Fealy, Greg and White, Sally. 2021. ‘The Politics of Banning FPI’, New Mandala,
18 June https://www.newmandala.org/the-politics-of-banning-fpi/
Feillard, Andrée and Madinier, Rémy. 2011. The End of Innocence? Indonesian Islam
and the Temptations of Radicalism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Harsono, Andreas. 2019. Race, Islam and Power: Ethnic and Religious Violence in
Post-Suharto Indonesia. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.
Lindsey, Tim, and Pausacker, Helen (eds.). 2016. Religion, Law and, Intolerance in
Indonesia, London: Routledge.
Makruf, Jamhari. 2014. ‘Incubators for Extremists? Radicalism and Moderation
in Indonesia’s Islamic Education’. Policy Paper. Melbourne: University of
Melbourne, Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society.
Peterson, Daniel. 2021. ‘Blasphemy Prosecutions in Indonesia and the Ahok Case:
Majoritarianism Versus Liberalism’, in Tim Lindsey and Helen Pausacker (eds.),
Crime and Punishment in Indonesia, London: Routledge, pp. 53–94.
Santoso, S. (ed.). 1975. Sutasoma: A Study in Old Javanese Wajrayana. New Delhi:
International Academy of Indian Culture.
PART I

ISLAMIC SCHOOLS
AND PRE-SCHOOLS:
MODERATION AND
EXTREMISM
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
One day, Gwydion took him to the castle of Arianrod—not her castle
in the sky, but her abode on earth, the still-remembered site of
which is marked by a patch of rocks in the Menai Straits, accessible
without a boat only during the lowest spring and autumn tides.
Arianrod had disowned her son, and did not recognize him when she
saw him with Gwydion. She asked who he was, and was much
displeased when told. She demanded to know his name, and, when
Gwydion replied that he had as yet received none, she “laid a
destiny upon” him, after the fashion of the Celts, that he should be
without a name until she chose to bestow one on him herself.
To be without a name was a very serious thing to the ancient
Britons, who seem to have held the primitive theory that the name
and the soul are the same. So Gwydion cast about to think by what
craft he might extort from Arianrod some remark from which he
could name their son. The next day, he went down to the sea-shore
with the boy, both of them disguised as cordwainers. He made a
boat out of sea-weed by magic, and some beautifully-coloured
leather out of some dry sticks and sedges. Then they sailed the boat
to the port of Arianrod’s castle, and, anchoring it where it could be
seen, began ostentatiously to stitch away at the leather. Naturally,
they were soon noticed, and Arianrod sent someone out to see who
they were and what they were doing. When she found that they
were shoemakers, she remembered that she wanted some shoes.
Gwydion, though he had her measure, purposely made them, first
too large, and then too small. This brought Arianrod herself down to
the boat to be fitted.
While Gwydion was measuring Arianrod’s foot for the shoes, a wren
came and stood upon the deck. The boy took his bow and arrow,
and hit the wren in the leg—a favourite shot of Celtic “crack”
archers, at any rate in romance. The goddess was pleased to be
amiable and complimentary. “Truly,” said she, “the lion aimed at it
with a steady hand.” It is from such incidents that primitive people
take their names, all the world over. The boy had got his. “It is no
thanks to you,” said Gwydion to Arianrod, “but now he has a name.
And a good name it is. He shall be called Llew Llaw Gyffes[306].”
This name of the sun-god is a good example of how obsolete the
ancient pagan tradition had become before it was put into writing.
The old word Lleu, meaning “light”, had passed out of use, and the
scribe substituted for a name that was unintelligible to him one like
it which he knew, namely Llew, meaning “lion”. The word Gyffes
seems also to have suffered change, and to have meant originally
not “steady”, but “long”[307].
At any rate, Arianrod was defeated in her design to keep her son
nameless. Neither did she even get her shoes; for, as soon as he had
gained his object, Gwydion allowed the boat to change back into
sea-weed, and the leather to return to sedge and sticks. So, in her
anger, she put a fresh destiny on the boy, that he should not take
arms till she herself gave them him.
Gwydion, however, took Lleu to Dinas Dinllev, his castle, which still
stands at the edge of the Menai Straits, and brought him up as a
warrior. As soon as he thought him old enough to have arms, he
took him with him again to Caer Arianrod. This time, they were
disguised as bards. Arianrod received them gladly, heard Gwydion’s
songs and tales, feasted them, and prepared a room for them to
sleep in.
The next morning, Gwydion got up very early, and prepared his most
powerful incantations. By his druidical arts he made it seem as if the
whole country rang with the shouts and trumpets of an army, and he
put a glamour over everyone, so that they saw the bay filled with
ships. Arianrod came to him in terror, asking what could be done to
protect the castle. “Give us arms,” he replied, “and we will do the
best we can.” So Arianrod’s maidens armed Gwydion, while Arianrod
herself put arms on Lleu. By the time she had finished, all the noises
had ceased, and the ships had vanished. “Let us take our arms off
again,” said Gwydion; “we shall not need them now.” “But the army
is all round the castle!” cried Arianrod. “There was no army,”
answered Gwydion; “it was only an illusion of mine to cause you to
break your prophecy and give our son arms. And now he has got
them, without thanks to you.” “Then I will lay a worse destiny on
him,” cried the infuriated goddess. “He shall never have a wife of the
people of this earth.” “He shall have a wife in spite of you,” said
Gwydion.
So Gwydion went to Mâth, his uncle and tutor in magic, and
between them they made a woman out of flowers by charms and
illusion. “They took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of
the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced
from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever
saw.” They called her Blodeuwedd (Flower-face), and gave her to
Lleu as his wife. And they gave Lleu a palace called Mur y Castell,
near Bala Lake.
All went well until, one day, Gronw Pebyr, one of the gods of
darkness, came by, hunting, and killed the stag at nightfall near
Lleu’s castle. The sun-god was away upon a visit to Mâth, but
Blodeuwedd asked the stranger to take shelter with her. That night
they fell in love with one another, and conspired together how Lleu
might be put away. When Lleu came back from Mâth’s court,
Blodeuwedd, like a Celtic Dalilah, wormed out of him the secret of
how his life was preserved. He told her that he could only die in one
way; he could not be killed either inside or outside a house, either
on horseback or on foot, but that if a spear that had been a year in
the making, and which was never worked upon except during the
sacrifice on Sunday, were to be cast at him as he stood beneath a
roof of thatch, after having just bathed, with one foot upon the edge
of the bath and the other upon a buck goat’s back, it would cause
his death. Blodeuwedd piously thanked Heaven that he was so well
protected, and sent a messenger to her paramour, telling him what
she had learned. Gronw set to work on the spear; and in a year it
was ready. When she knew this, Blodeuwedd asked Lleu to show her
exactly how it was he could be killed.
Lleu agreed; and Blodeuwedd prepared the bath under the thatched
roof, and tethered the goat by it. Lleu bathed, and then stood with
one foot upon the edge of the bath, and the other upon the goat’s
back. At this moment, Gronw, from an ambush, flung the spear, and
hit Lleu, who, with a terrible cry, changed into an eagle, and flew
away. He never came back; and Gronw took possession of both his
wife and his palace.
But Gwydion set out to search everywhere for his son. At last, one
day, he came to a house in North Wales where the man was in great
anxiety about his sow; for as soon as the sty was opened, every
morning, she rushed out, and did not return again till late in the
evening. Gwydion offered to follow her, and, at dawn, the man took
him to the sty, and opened the door. The sow leaped forth, and ran,
and Gwydion ran after her. He tracked her to a brook between
Snowdon and the sea, still called Nant y Llew, and saw her feeding
underneath an oak. Upon the top of the tree there was an eagle,
and, every time it shook itself, there fell off it lumps of putrid meat,
which the sow ate greedily. Gwydion suspected that the eagle must
be Lleu. So he sang this verse:
“Oak that grows between the two banks;
Darkened is the sky and hill!
Shall I not tell him by his wounds,
That this is Lleu?”

The eagle, on hearing this, came half-way down the tree. So

Gwydion sang:
“Oak that grows in upland ground,
Is it not wetted by the rain? Has it not been drenched
By nine score tempests?
It bears in its branches Lleu Llaw Gyffes.”

The eagle came slowly down until it was on the lowest branch.
Gwydion sang:
“Oak that grows beneath the steep;
Stately and majestic is its aspect!
Shall I not speak it?
That Lleu will come to my lap?”
Then the eagle came down, and sat on Gwydion’s knee. Gwydion
struck it with his magic wand, and it became Lleu again, wasted to
skin and bone by the poison on the spear.
Gwydion took him to Mâth to be healed, and left him there, while he
went to Mur y Castell, where Blodeuwedd was. When she heard that
he was coming, she fled. But Gwydion overtook her, and changed
her into an owl, the bird that hates the day. A still older form of this
probably extremely ancient myth of the sun-god—the savage and
repulsive details of which speak of a hoary antiquity—makes the
chase of Blodeuwedd by Gwydion to have taken place in the sky, the
stars scattered over the Milky Way being the traces of it.[308] As for
her accomplice, Lleu would accept no satisfaction short of Gronw’s
submitting to stand exactly where Lleu had stood, to be shot at in
his turn. To this he was obliged to agree; and Lleu killed him.[309]
There are two other sons of Beli and Dôn of whom so little is
recorded that it would hardly be worth while mentioning them, were
it not for the wild poetry of the legend connected with them. The
tale, put into writing at a time when all the gods were being
transfigured into simple mortals, tells us that they were two kings of
Britain, brothers. One starlight night they were walking together.
“See,” said Nynniaw to Peibaw, “what a fine, wide-spreading field I
have.” “Where is it?” asked Peibaw. “There,” replied Nynniaw; “the
whole stretch of the sky, as far as the eye reaches.” “Look then,”
returned Peibaw, “what a number of cattle I have grazing on your
field.” “Where are they?” asked Nynniaw. “All the stars that you can
see,” replied Peibaw, “every one of them of fiery-coloured gold, with
the moon for a shepherd over them.” “They shall not feed on my
field,” cried Nynniaw. “They shall,” exclaimed Peibaw. “They shall
not,” cried Nynniaw, “They shall,” said Peibaw. “They shall not,”
Nynniaw answered; and so they went on, from contradiction to
quarrel, and from private quarrel to civil war, until the armies of both
of them were destroyed, and the two authors of the evil were turned
by God into oxen for their sins.[310]
Last of the children of Dôn, we find a goddess called Penardun, of
whom little is known except that she was married to the sea-god
Llyr. This incident is curious, as forming a parallel to the Gaelic story
which tells of intermarriage between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the
Fomors.[311] Brigit, the Dagda’s daughter, was married to Bress, son
of Elathan, while Cian, the son of Diancecht, wedded Ethniu, the
daughter of Balor. So, in this kindred mythology, a slender tie of
relationship binds the gods of the sky to the gods of the sea.
The name Llyr is supposed, like its Irish equivalent Lêr, to have
meant “the Sea”.[312] The British sea-god is undoubtedly the same as
the Gaelic; indeed, the two facts that he is described in Welsh
literature as Llyr Llediath, that is, “Llyr of the Foreign Dialect”, and is
given a wife called Iweridd (Ireland)[313], suggest that he may have
been borrowed by the Britons from the Gaels later than any
mythology common to both. As a British god, he was the far-off
original of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”. The chief city of his worship is
still called after him, Leicester, that is, Llyr-cestre, in still earlier days,
Caer Llyr.
Llyr, we have noticed, married two wives, Penardun and Iweridd. By
the daughter of Dôn he had a son called Manawyddan, who is
identical with the Gaelic Manannán mac Lir.[314] We know less of his
character and attributes than we do of the Irish god; but we find
him equally a ruler in that Hades or Elysium which the Celtic mind
ever connected with the sea. Like all the inhabitants of that other
world, he is at once a master of magic and of the useful arts, which
he taught willingly to his friends. To his enemies, however, he could
show a different side of his character. A triad tells us that—
“The achievement of Manawyddan the Wise,
After lamentation and fiery wrath,
Was the constructing of the bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth”,[315]

which is described as a prison made, in the shape of a bee-hive,

entirely of human bones mortared together, and divided into
innumerable cells, forming a kind of labyrinth. In this ghastly place
he immured those whom he found trespassing in Hades; and among
his captives was no less a person than the famous Arthur.[316]
“Ireland” bore two children to Llyr: a daughter called Branwen and a
son called Brân. The little we know of Branwen of the “Fair Bosom”
shows her as a goddess of love—child, like the Greek Aphrodité, of
the sea. Brân, on the other hand, is, even more clearly than
Manawyddan, a dark deity of Hades. He is represented as of colossal
size, so huge, in fact, that no house or ship was big enough to hold
him.[317] He delighted in battle and carnage, like the hoodie-crow or
raven from which he probably took his name,[318] but he was also the
especial patron of bards, minstrels, and musicians, and we find him
in one of the poems ascribed to Taliesin claiming to be himself a
bard, a harper, a player on the crowth, and seven-score other
musicians all at once.[319] His son was called Caradawc the Strong-
armed, who, as the British mythology crumbled, became confounded
with the historical Caratacus, known popularly as “Caractacus”.
Both Brân and Manawyddan were especially connected with the
Swansea peninsula. The bone-fortress of Oeth and Anoeth was
placed by tradition in Gower.[320] That Brân was equally at home
there may be proved from the Morte Darthur, in which storehouse of
forgotten and misunderstood mythology Brân of Gower survives as
“King Brandegore”.[321]
Such identification of a mere mortal country with the other world
seems strange enough to us, but to our Celtic ancestors it was a
quite natural thought. All islands—and peninsulas, which, viewed
from an opposite coast, probably seemed to them islands—were
deemed to be pre-eminently homes of the dark Powers of Hades.
Difficult of access, protected by the turbulent and dangerous sea,
sometimes rendered quite invisible by fogs and mists and, at other
times, looming up ghostlily on the horizon, often held by the
remnant of a hostile lower race, they gained a mystery and a
sanctity from the law of the human mind which has always held the
unknown to be the terrible. The Cornish Britons, gazing from the
shore, saw Gower and Lundy, and deemed them outposts of the
over-sea Other World. To the Britons of Wales, Ireland was no
human realm, a view reciprocated by the Gaels, who saw Hades in
Britain, while the Isle of Man was a little Hades common to them
both. Nor even was the sea always necessary to sunder the world of
ghosts from that of “shadow-casting men”. Glastonbury Tor,
surrounded by almost impassable swamps, was one of the especial
haunts of Gwyn ap Nudd. The Britons of the north held that beyond
the Roman wall and the vast Caledonian wood lived ghosts and not
men. Even the Roman province of Demetia—called by the Welsh
Dyfed, and corresponding, roughly, to the modern County of
Pembrokeshire—was, as a last stronghold of the aborigines,
identified with the mythic underworld.
As such, Dyfed was ruled by a local tribe of gods, whose greatest
figures were Pwyll, “Head of Annwn” (the Welsh name for Hades),
with his wife Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi. These beings are
described as hostile to the children of Dôn, but friendly to the race
of Llyr. After Pwyll’s death or disappearance, his widow Rhiannon
becomes the wife of Manawyddan.[322] In a poem of Taliesin’s we
find Manawyddan and Pryderi joint-rulers of Hades, and warders of
that magic cauldron of inspiration[323] which the gods of light
attempted to steal or capture, and which became famous afterwards
as the “Holy Grail”. Another of their treasures were the “Three Birds
of Rhiannon”, which, we are told in an ancient book, could sing the
dead to life and the living into the sleep of death. Fortunately they
sang seldom. “There are three things,” says a Welsh triad, “which
are not often heard: the song of the birds of Rhiannon, a song of
wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon, and an invitation to a feast from
a miser.”
Nor is the list of British gods complete without mention of Arthur,
though most readers will be surprised to find him in such company.
The genius of Tennyson, who drew his materials mostly from the
Norman-French romances, has stereotyped the popular conception
of Arthur as a king of early Britain who fought for his fatherland and
the Christian faith against invading Saxons. Possibly there may,
indeed, have been a powerful British chieftain bearing that typically
Celtic name, which is found in Irish legend as Artur, one of the sons
of Nemed who fought against the Fomors, and on the Continent as
Artaius, a Gaulish deity whom the Romans identified with Mercury,
and who seems to have been a patron of agriculture.[324] But the
original Arthur stands upon the same ground as Cuchulainn and
Finn. His deeds are mythical, because superhuman. His companions
can be shown to have been divine. Some we know were worshipped
in Gaul. Others are children of Dôn, of Llyr, and of Pwyll, dynasties of
older gods to whose head Arthur seems to have risen, as his cult
waxed and theirs waned. Stripped of their godhead, and strangely
transformed, they fill the pages of romance as Knights of the Table
Round.
These deities were the native gods of Britain. Many others are,
however, mentioned upon inscriptions found in our island, but these
were almost all exotic and imported. Imperial Rome brought men of
diverse races among her legions, and these men brought their gods.
Scattered over Britain, but especially in the north, near the Wall, we
find evidence that deities of many nations—from Germany to Africa,
and from Gaul to Persia—were sporadically worshipped.[325] Most of
these foreign gods were Roman, but a temple at Eboracum (now
York) was dedicated to Serapis, and Mithras, the Persian sun-god,
was also adored there; while at Corbridge, in Northumberland (the
ancient Corspitium), there have been found altars to the Tyrian
Hercules and to Astarte. The war-god was also invoked under many
strange names—as “Cocidius” by a colony of Dacians in Cumberland;
as Toutates, Camulus, Coritiacus, Belatucador, Alator, Loucetius,
Condates, and Rigisamos by men of different countries. A goddess of
war was worshipped at Bath under the name of Nemetona. The hot
springs of the same town were under the patronage of a divinity
called Sul, identified by the Romans with Minerva, and she was
helped by a god of medicine described on a dedicatory tablet as “Sol
Apollo Anicetus”. Few of these “strange gods”, however, seem to
have taken hold of the imagination of the native Britons. Their
worshippers did not proselytize, and their general influence was
probably about equal to that of an Evangelical Church in a Turkish
town. The sole exceptions to this rule are where the foreign gods are
Gaulish; but in several instances it can be proved that they were not
so much of Roman, as of original Celtic importation. The warlike
heaven-god Camulus appears in Gaelic heroic myth as Cumhal, the
father of Finn, and in British mythical history as Coel, a duke of Caer
Coelvin (known earlier as Camulodunum, and now as Colchester),
who seized the crown of Britain, and spent his short reign in a series
of battles.[326] The name of the sun-god Maponos is found alike upon
altars in Gaul and Britain, and in Welsh literature as Mabon, a
follower of Arthur; while another Gaulish sun-god, Belinus, who had
a splendid temple at Bajocassos (the modern Bayeux), though not
mentioned in the earliest British mythology, as its scattered records
have come down to us, must have been connected with Brân, for we
find in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History “King Belinus” as brother of
“King Brennius”,[327] and in the Morte Darthur “Balin” as brother of
“Balan”.[328] A second-century Greek writer gives an account of a god
of eloquence worshipped in Gaul under the name of Ogmios, and
represented as equipped like Heracles, a description which exactly
corresponds to the conception of the Gaelic Ogma, at once patron of
literature and writing and professional strong man of the Tuatha Dé
Danann. Nemetona, the war-goddess worshipped at Bath, was
probably the same as Nemon, one of Nuada’s Valkyr-wives, while a
broken inscription to athubodva, which probably stood, when intact,
for Cathubodva, may well have been addressed to the Gaulish
equivalent of Badb Catha, the “War-fury”. Lugh, or Lleu, was also
widely known on the Continent as Lugus. Three important towns—
Laon, Leyden, and Lyons—were all anciently called after him Lugu-
dunum (Lugus’ town), and at the last and greatest of these a festival
was still held in Roman times upon the sun-god’s day—the first of
August—which corresponded to the Lugnassad (Lugh’s
commemoration) held in ancient Ireland. Brigit, the Gaelic Minerva,
is also found in Britain as Brigantia, tutelary goddess of the
Brigantes, a Northern tribe, and in Eastern France as Brigindo, to
whom Iccavos, son of Oppianos, made a dedicatory offering of
which there is still record.[329]
Other, less striking agreements between the mythical divine names
of the Insular and Continental Celts might be cited. These recorded
should, however, prove sufficiently that Gaul, Gael, and Briton
shared in a common heritage of mythological names and ideas,
which they separately developed into three superficially different,
but essentially similar cults.
 CHAPTER XVII

THE ADVENTURES OF THE GODS OF HADES

It is with the family of Pwyll, deities connected with the south-west

corner of Wales, called by the Romans Demetia, and by the Britons
Dyfed, and, roughly speaking, identical with the modern county of
Pembrokeshire, that the earliest consecutive accounts of the British
gods begin. The first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi tell us
how “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”, gained the right to be called Pen
Annwn, the “Head of Hades”. Indeed, it almost seems as if it had
been deliberately written to explain how the same person could be
at once a mere mortal prince, however legendary, and a ruler in the
mystic Other World, and so to reconcile two conflicting traditions.[330]
But to an earlier age than that in which the legend was put into a
literary shape, such forced reconciliation would not have been
needed; for the two legends would not have been considered to
conflict. When Pwyll, head of Annwn, was a mythic person whose
tradition was still alive, the unexplored, rugged, and savage country
of Dyfed, populated by the aboriginal Iberians whom the Celt had
driven into such remote districts, appeared to those who dwelt upon
the eastern side of its dividing river, the Tawë, at least a dependency
of Annwn, if not that weird realm itself. But, as men grew bolder, the
frontier was crossed, and Dyfed entered and traversed, and found to
be not so unlike other countries. Its inhabitants, if not of Celtic race,
were yet of flesh and blood. So that, though the province still
continued to bear to a late date the names of the “Land of Illusion”
and the “Realm of Glamour”,[331] it was no longer deemed to be
Hades itself. That fitful and shadowy country had folded its tents,
and departed over or under seas.
The story of “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”,[332] tells us how there was war
in Annwn between its two kings—or between two, perhaps, of its
many chieftains. Arawn (“Silver-Tongue”) and Havgan (“Summer-
White”) each coveted the dominions of the other. In the continual
contests between them, Arawn was worsted, and in despair he
visited the upper earth to seek for a mortal ally.
At this time Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, held his court at Narberth. He
had, however, left his capital upon a hunting expedition to Glyn
Cûch, known to-day as a valley upon the borders of the two counties
of Pembroke and Carmarthen. Like so many kings of European and
Oriental romance, when an adventure is at hand, he became
separated from his party, and was, in modern parlance, “thrown
out”. He could, however, still hear the music of his hounds, and was
listening to them, when he also distinguished the cry of another
pack coming towards him. As he watched and listened, a stag came
into view; and the strange hounds pulled it down almost at his feet.
At first Pwyll hardly looked at the stag, he was so taken up with
gazing at the hounds, for “of all the hounds that he had seen in the
world, he had never seen any that were like unto these. For their
hair was of a brilliant shining white, and their ears were red; and as
the whiteness of their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears
glisten.” They were, indeed, though Pwyll does not seem to have
known it, of the true Hades breed—the snow-white, red-eared
hounds we meet in Gaelic legends, and which are still said to be
sometimes heard and seen scouring the hills of Wales by night.
Seeing no rider with the hounds, Pwyll drove them away from the
dead stag, and called up his own pack to it.
While he was doing this, a man “upon a large, light-gray steed, with
a hunting-horn round his neck, and clad in garments of gray woollen
in the fashion of a hunting garb” appeared, and rated Pwyll for his
unsportsmanlike conduct. “Greater discourtesy,” said he, “I never
saw than your driving away my dogs after they had killed the stag,
and calling your own to it. And though I may not be revenged upon
you for this, I swear that I will do you more damage than the value
of a hundred stags.”
Pwyll expressed his contrition, and, asking the new-comer’s name
and rank, offered to atone for his fault. The stranger told his name—
Arawn, a king of Annwn—and said that Pwyll could gain his
forgiveness only in one way, by going to Annwn instead of him, and
fighting for him with Havgan. Pwyll agreed to do this, and the King
of Hades put his own semblance upon the mortal prince, so that not
a person in Annwn—not even Arawn’s own wife—would know that
he was not that king. He led him by a secret path into Annwn, and
left him before his castle, charging him to return to the place where
they had first met, at the end of a year from that day. On the other
hand, Arawn took on Pwyll’s shape, and went to Narberth.
No one in Annwn suspected Pwyll of being anyone else than their
king. He spent the year in ruling the realm, in hunting, minstrelsy,
and feasting. Both by day and night, he had the company of Arawn’s
wife, the most beautiful woman he had ever yet seen, but he
refrained from taking advantage of the trust placed in him. At last
the day came when he was to meet Havgan in single combat. One
blow settled it; for Pwyll, Havgan’s destined conqueror, thrust his
antagonist an arm’s and a spear’s length over the crupper of his
horse, breaking his shield and armour, and mortally wounding him.
Havgan was carried away to die, and Pwyll, in the guise of Arawn,
received the submission of the dead king’s subjects, and annexed his
realm. Then he went back to Glyn Cûch, to keep his tryst with
Arawn.
They retook their own shapes, and each returned to his own
kingdom. Pwyll learned that Dyfed had never been ruled so well, or
been so prosperous, as during the year just passed. As for the King
of Hades, he found his enemy gone, and his domains extended. And
when he caressed his wife, she asked him why he did so now, after
the lapse of a whole year. So he told her the truth, and they both
agreed that they had indeed got a true friend in Pwyll.
After this, the kings of Annwn and Dyfed made their friendship
strong between them. From that time forward, says the story, Pwyll
was no longer called Prince of Dyfed, but Pen Annwn, “the Head of
Hades”.
The second mythological incident in the Mabinogi of Pwyll, Prince of
Dyfed, tells how the Head of Hades won his wife, Rhiannon, thought
by Professor Rhys to have been a goddess either of the dawn or of
the moon.[333] There was a mound outside Pwyll’s palace at Narberth
which had a magical quality. To anyone who sat upon it there
happened one of two things: either he received wounds and blows,
or else he saw a wonder. One day, it occurred to Pwyll that he would
like to try the experience of the mound. So he went and sat upon it.
No unseen blows assailed Pwyll, but he had not been sitting long
upon the mound before he saw, coming towards him, “a lady on a
pure-white horse of large size, with a garment of shining gold
around her”, riding very quietly. He sent a man on foot to ask her
who she was, but, though she seemed to be moving so slowly, the
man could not come up to her. He failed utterly to overtake her, and
she passed on out of sight.
The next day, Pwyll went again to the mound. The lady appeared,
and, this time, Pwyll sent a horseman. At first, the horseman only
ambled along at about the same pace at which the lady seemed to
be going; then, failing to get near her, he urged his horse into a
gallop. But, whether he rode slow or fast, he could come no closer
to the lady than before, although she seemed to the eyes of those
who watched to have been going only at a foot’s pace.
The day after that, Pwyll determined to accost the lady himself. She
came at the same gentle walk, and Pwyll at first rode easily, and
then at his horse’s topmost speed, but with the same result, or lack
of it. At last, in despair, he called to the mysterious damsel to stop.
“I will stop gladly,” said she, “and it would have been better for your
horse if you had asked me before.” She told him that her name was
Rhiannon, daughter of Heveydd the Ancient. The nobles of her realm
had determined to give her in marriage against her will, so she had
come to seek out Pwyll, who was the man of her choice. Pwyll was
delighted to hear this, for he thought that she was the most
beautiful lady he had ever seen. Before they parted, they had
plighted troth, and Pwyll had promised to appear on that day
twelvemonth at the palace of her father, Heveydd. Then she
vanished, and Pwyll returned to Narberth.
At the appointed time, Pwyll went to visit Heveydd the Ancient, with
a hundred followers. He was received with much welcome, and the
disposition of the feast put under his command, as the Celts seem to
have done to especially honoured guests. As they sat at meat, with
Pwyll between Rhiannon and her father, a tall auburn-haired youth
came into the hall, greeted Pwyll, and asked a boon of him.
“Whatever boon you may ask of me,” said Pwyll thoughtlessly, “if it
is in my power, you shall have it.” Then the suitor threw off all
disguise, called the guests to witness Pwyll’s promise, and claimed
Rhiannon as his bride. Pwyll was dumb. “Be silent as long as you
will,” said the masterful Rhiannon; “never did a man make worse use
of his wits than you have done.” “Lady,” replied the amazed Pwyll, “I
knew not who he was.” “He is the man to whom they would have
given me against my will,” she answered, “Gwawl, the son of Clûd.
You must bestow me upon him now, lest shame befall you.” “Never
will I do that,” said Pwyll. “Bestow me upon him,” she insisted, “and
I will cause that I shall never be his.” So Pwyll promised Gwawl that
he would make a feast that day year, at which he would resign
Rhiannon to him.
The next year, the feast was made, and Rhiannon sat by the side of
her unwelcome bridegroom. But Pwyll was waiting outside the
palace, with a hundred men in ambush. When the banquet was at
its height, he came into the hall, dressed in coarse, ragged
garments, shod with clumsy old shoes, and carrying a leather bag.
But the bag was a magic one, which Rhiannon had given to her
lover, with directions as to its use. Its quality was that, however
much was put into it, it could never be filled. “I crave a boon,” he
said to Gwawl. “What is it?” Gwawl replied. “I am a poor man, and
all I ask is to have this bag filled with meat.” Gwawl granted what he
said was “a request within reason”, and ordered his followers to fill
the bag. But the more they put into it, the more room in it there
seemed to be. Gwawl was astonished, and asked why this was. Pwyll
replied that it was a bag that could never be filled until someone
possessed of lands and riches should tread the food down with both
his feet. “Do this for the man,” said Rhiannon to Gwawl. “Gladly I
will,” replied he, and put both his feet into the bag. But no sooner
had he done so than Pwyll slipped the bag over Gwawl’s head, and
tied it up at the mouth. He blew his horn, and all his followers came
in. “What have you got in the bag?” asked each one in turn. “A
badger,” replied Pwyll. Then each, as he received Pwyll’s answer,
kicked the bag, or hit it with a stick. “Then,” says the story, “was the
game of ‘Badger in the Bag’ first played.”
Gwawl, however, fared better than we suspect that the badger
usually did; for Heveydd the Ancient interceded for him. Pwyll
willingly released him, on condition that he promised to give up all
claim to Rhiannon, and renounced all projects of revenge. Gwawl
consented, and gave sureties, and went away to his own country to
have his bruises healed.
This country of Gwawl’s was, no doubt, the sky; for he was evidently
a sun-god. His name bewrays him; for the meaning of “Gwawl” is
“light”.[334] It was one of the hours of victory for the dark powers,
such as were celebrated in the Celtic calendar by the Feast of
Samhain, or Summer End.
There was no hindrance now to the marriage of Pwyll and Rhiannon.
She became his bride, and returned with him to Dyfed.
For three years, they were without an heir, and the nobles of Dyfed
became discontented. They petitioned Pwyll to take another wife
instead of Rhiannon. He asked for a year’s delay. This was granted,
and, before the end of the year, a son was born. But, on the night of
his birth, the six women set to keep watch over Rhiannon all fell
asleep at once; and when they woke up, the boy had vanished.
Fearful lest their lives should be forfeited for their neglect, they
agreed to swear that Rhiannon had eaten her child. They killed a
litter of puppies, and smeared some of the blood on Rhiannon’s face
and hands, and put some of the bones by her side. Then they awoke
her with a great outcry, and accused her. She swore that she knew
nothing of the death of her son, but the women persisted that they
had seen her devour him, and had been unable to prevent it. The
druids of that day were not sufficiently practical anatomists to be
able to tell the bones of a child from those of a dog, so they
condemned Rhiannon upon the evidence of the women. But, even
now, Pwyll would not put her away; so she was assigned a penance.
For seven years, she was to sit by a horse-block outside the gate,
and offer to carry visitors into the palace upon her back. “But it
rarely happened,” says the Mabinogi, “that any would permit her to
do so.”
Exactly what had become of Rhiannon’s child seems to have been a
mystery even to the writer of the Mabinogi. It was, at any rate, in
some way connected with the equally mysterious disappearance on
every night of the first of May—Beltaine, the Celtic sun-festival—of
the colts foaled by a beautiful mare belonging to Teirnyon Twryv
Vliant, one of Pwyll’s vassals. Every May-day night, the mare foaled,
but no one knew what became of the colt. Teirnyon decided to find
out. He caused the mare to be taken into a house, and there he
watched it, fully armed. Early in the night, the colt was born. Then
there was a great noise, and an arm with claws came through the
window, and gripped the colt’s mane. Teirnyon hacked at the arm
with his sword, and cut it off. Then he heard wailing, and opened
the door, and found a baby in swaddling clothes, wrapped in a satin
mantle. He took it up and brought it to his wife, and they decided to
adopt it. They called the boy Gwri Wallt Euryn, that is “Gwri of the
Golden Hair”.
The older the boy grew, the more it seemed to Teirnyon that he
became like Pwyll. Then he remembered that he had found him
upon the very night that Rhiannon lost her child. So he consulted
with his wife, and they both agreed that the baby they had so
mysteriously found must be the same that Rhiannon had so
mysteriously lost. And they decided that it would not be right for
them to keep the son of another, while so good a lady as Rhiannon
was being punished wrongfully.
So, the very next day, Teirnyon set out for Narberth, taking the boy
with him. They found Rhiannon sitting, as usual, by the gate, but
they would not allow her to carry them into the palace on her back.
Pwyll welcomed them; and that evening, as they sat at supper,
Teirnyon told his hosts the story from beginning to end. And he
presented her son to Rhiannon.
As soon as everyone in the palace saw the boy, they admitted that
he must be Pwyll’s son. So they adopted him with delight; and
Pendaran Dyfed, the head druid of the kingdom, gave him a new
name. He called him “Pryderi[335]”, meaning “trouble”, from the first
word that his mother had uttered when he was restored to her. For
she had said: “Trouble is, indeed, at an end for me, if this be true”.
 CHAPTER XVIII

THE WOOING OF BRANWEN AND THE

[336]
BEHEADING OF BRÂN

In the second of the “Four Branches”, Pryderi, come to man’s estate,

and married to a wife called Kicva, appears as a guest or vassal at
the court of a greater god of Hades than himself—Brân, the son of
the sea-god Llyr. The children of Llyr—Brân, with his sister Branwen
of the “Fair Bosom” and his half-brother Manawyddan, as well as two
sons of Manawyddan’s mother, Penardun, by an earlier marriage,
were holding court at Twr Branwen, “Branwen’s Tower”, now called
Harlech. As they sat on a cliff, looking over the sea, they saw
thirteen ships coming from Ireland. The fleet sailed close under the
land, and Brân sent messengers to ask who they were, and why
they had come. It was replied that they were the vessels of
Matholwch, King of Ireland, and that he had come to ask Brân for
his sister Branwen in marriage. Brân consented, and they fixed upon
Aberffraw, in Anglesey, as the place at which to hold the wedding
feast. Matholwch and his fleet went there by sea, and Brân and his
host by land. When they arrived, and met, they set up pavilions; for
“no house could ever hold the blessed Brân”. And there Branwen
became the King of Ireland’s bride.[337]
These relations were not long, however, allowed to be friendly. Of
the two other sons of Llyr’s wife, Penardun, the mother of
Manawyddan, one was called Nissyen, and the other, Evnissyen.
Nissyen was a lover of peace, and would always “cause his family to
be friends when their wrath was at the highest”, but Evnissyen
“would cause strife between his two brothers when they were most
at peace”. Now Evnissyen was enraged because his consent had not
been asked to Branwen’s marriage. Out of spite at this, he cut off
the lips, ears, eyebrows, and tails of all Matholwch’s horses.
When the King of Ireland found this out, he was very indignant at
the insult. But Brân sent an embassy to him twice, explaining that it
had not been done by his consent or with his knowledge. He
appeased Matholwch by giving him a sound horse in place of every
one that Evnissyen had mutilated, as well as a staff of silver as large
and tall as Matholwch himself, and a plate of gold as broad as
Matholwch’s face. To these gifts he also added a magic cauldron
brought from Ireland. Its property was that any slain man who was
put into it was brought to life again, except that he lost the use of
speech. The King of Ireland accepted this recompense for the insult
done him, renewed his friendship with the children of Llyr, and sailed
away with Branwen to Ireland.
Before a year was over, Branwen bore a son. They called him Gwern,
and put him out to be foster-nursed among the best men of Ireland.
But, during the second year, news came to Ireland of the insult that
Matholwch had received in Britain. The King of Ireland’s foster-
brothers and near relations insisted that he should revenge himself
upon Branwen. So the queen was compelled to serve in the kitchen,
and, every day, the butcher gave her a box upon the ear. That this
should not become known to Brân, all traffic was forbidden between
Ireland and Britain. This went on for three years.
But, in the meantime, Branwen had reared a tame starling, and she
taught it to speak, and tied a letter of complaint to the root of its
wing, and sent it off to Britain. At last it found Brân, whom its
mistress had described to it, and settled upon his shoulder, ruffling
its wings. This exposed the letter, and Brân read it. He sent
messengers to one hundred and forty-four countries, to raise an
army to go to Ireland. Leaving his son Caradawc, with seven others,
in charge of Britain, he started—himself wading through the sea,
while his men went by ship.
No one in Ireland knew that they were coming until the royal
swineherds, tending their pigs near the sea-shore, beheld a marvel.
They saw a forest on the surface of the sea—a place where certainly
no forest had been before—and, near it, a mountain with a lofty
ridge on its top, and a lake on each side of the ridge. Both the forest
and the mountain were swiftly moving towards Ireland. They
informed Matholwch, who could not understand it, and sent
messengers to ask Branwen what she thought it might be. “It is the
men of the Island of the Mighty[338],” said she, “who are coming here
because they have heard of my ill-treatment. The forest that is seen
on the sea is made of the masts of ships. The mountain is my
brother Brân, wading into shoal water; the lofty ridge is his nose,
and the two lakes, one on each side of it, are his eyes.”
The men of Ireland were terrified. They fled beyond the Shannon,
and broke down the bridge over it. But Brân lay down across the
river, and his army walked over him to the opposite side.
Matholwch now sent messengers suing for peace. He offered to
resign the throne of Ireland to Gwern, Branwen’s son and Brân’s
nephew. “Shall I not have the kingdom myself?” said Brân, and
would not hear of anything else. So the counsellors of Matholwch
advised him to conciliate Brân by building him a house so large that
it would be the first house that had ever held him, and, in it, to hand
over the kingdom to his will. Brân consented to accept this, and the
vast house was built.
It concealed treachery. Upon each side of the hundred pillars of the
house was hung a bag, and in the bag was an armed man, who was
to cut himself out at a given signal. But Evnissyen came into the
house, and seeing the bags there, suspected the plot. “What is in
this bag?” he said to one of the Irish, as he came up to the first one.
“Meal,” replied the Irishman. Then Evnissyen kneaded the bag in his
hands, as though it really contained meal, until he had killed the
man inside; and he treated all of them in turn in the same way.
A little later, the two hosts met in the house. The men of Ireland
came in on one side, and the men of Britain on the other, and met at
the hearth in the middle, and sat down. The Irish court did homage
to Brân, and they crowned Gwern, Branwen’s son, King of Ireland in
place of Matholwch. When the ceremonies were over, the boy went
from one to another of his uncles, to make acquaintance with them.
Brân fondled and caressed him, and so did Manawyddan, and
Nissyen. But when he came to Evnissyen, the wicked son of
Penardun seized the child by the feet, and dropped him head first
into the great fire.
When Branwen saw her son killed, she tried to leap into the flames
after him, but Brân held her back. Then every man armed himself,
and such a tumult was never heard in one house before. Day after
day they fought; but the Irish had the advantage, for they had only
to plunge their dead men into the magic cauldron to bring them
back to life. When Evnissyen knew this, he saw a way of atoning for
the misfortunes his evil nature had brought upon Britain. He
disguised himself as an Irishman, and lay upon the floor as if dead,
until they put him into the cauldron. Then he stretched himself, and,
with one desperate effort, burst both the cauldron and his own
heart.
Thus things were made equal again, and in the next battle the men
of Britain killed all the Irish. But of themselves there were only seven
left unhurt—Pryderi; Manawyddan; Gluneu, the son of Taran[339];
Taliesin the Bard; Ynawc; Grudyen, the son of Muryel; and Heilyn,
the son of Gwynn the Ancient.
Brân himself was wounded in the foot with a poisoned dart, and was
in agony. So he ordered his seven surviving followers to cut off his
head, and to take it to the White Mount in London[340], and bury it
there, with the face towards France. He prophesied how they would
perform the journey. At Harlech they would be feasting seven years,
the birds of Rhiannon singing to them all the time, and Brân’s own
head conversing with them as agreeably as when it was on his body.
Then they would be fourscore years at Gwales[341]. All this while,
Brân’s head would remain uncorrupted, and would talk so pleasantly
that they would forget the flight of time. But, at the destined hour,
someone would open a door which looked towards Cornwall, and,
after that, they could stay no longer, but must hurry to London to
bury the head.
So the seven beheaded Brân, and set off, taking Branwen also with
them. They landed at the mouth of the River Alaw, in Anglesey.
Branwen first looked back towards Ireland, and then forward
towards Britain. “Alas,” she cried, “that I was ever born! two islands
have been destroyed because of me.” Her heart broke with sorrow,
and she died. An old Welsh poem says, with a touch of real pathos:
“Softened were the voices in the brakes
Of the wondering birds
On seeing the fair body.
Will there not be relating again
Of that which befel the paragon
At the stream of Amlwch?”[342]

“They made her a four-sided grave,” says the Mabinogi, “and buried
her upon the banks of the Alaw.” The traditionary spot has always
borne the name of Ynys Branwen, and, curiously enough, an urn
was found there, in 1813, full of ashes and half-burnt bones, which
certain enthusiastic local antiquaries saw “every reason to suppose”
were those of the fair British Aphrodité herself.[343]
The seven went on towards Harlech, and, as they journeyed, they
met men and women who gave them the latest news. Caswallawn, a
son of Beli, the husband of Dôn, had destroyed the ministers left
behind by Brân to take care of Britain. He had made himself invisible
by the help of a magic veil, and thus had killed all of them except
Pendaran Dyfed, foster-father of Pryderi, who had escaped into the
woods, and Caradawc son of Brân, whose heart had broken from
grief. Thus he had made himself king of the whole island in place of
Manawyddan, its rightful heir now that Brân was dead.
However, the destiny was upon the seven that they should go on
with their leader’s head. They went to Harlech and feasted for seven
years, the three birds of Rhiannon singing them songs compared
with which all other songs seemed unmelodious. Then they spent
fourscore years in the Isle of Gwales, eating and drinking, and
listening to the pleasant conversation of Brân’s head. The
“Entertaining of the Noble Head” this eighty years’ feast was called.
Brân’s head, indeed, is almost more notable in British mythology
than Brân before he was decapitated. Taliesin and the other bards
invoke it repeatedly as Urddawl Ben (the “Venerable Head”) and
Uther Ben (the “Wonderful Head”).
But all pleasure came to an end when Heilyn, the son of Gwynn,
opened the forbidden door, like Bluebeard’s wife, “to know if that
was true which was said concerning it”. As soon as they looked
towards Cornwall, the glamour that had kept them merry for eighty-
seven years failed, and left them as grieved about the death of their
lord as though it had happened that very day. They could not rest
for sorrow, but went at once to London, and laid the now dumb and
corrupting head in its grave on Tower Hill, with its face turned
towards France, to watch that no foe came from foreign lands to
Britain. There it reposed until, ages afterwards, Arthur, in his pride of
heart, dug it up, “as he thought it beneath his dignity to hold the
island otherwise than by valour”. Disaster, in the shape of
“the godless hosts
Of heathen swarming o’er the Northern sea”,[344]

came of this disinterment; and therefore it is called, in a triad, one of

the “Three Wicked Uncoverings of Britain”.
 CHAPTER XIX
[345]
THE WAR OF ENCHANTMENTS

Manawyddan was now the sole survivor of the family of Llyr. He was
homeless and landless. But Pryderi offered to give him a realm in
Dyfed, and his mother, Rhiannon, for a wife. The lady, her son
explained, was still not uncomely, and her conversation was
pleasing. Manawyddan seems to have found her attractive, while
Rhiannon was not less taken with the son of Llyr. They were
wedded, and so great became the friendship of Pryderi and Kicva,
Manawyddan and Rhiannon, that the four were seldom apart.
One day, after holding a feast at Narberth, they went up to the same
magic mound where Rhiannon had first met Pwyll. As they sat there,
thunder pealed, and immediately a thick mist sprang up, so that not
one of them could see the other. When it cleared, they found
themselves alone in an uninhabited country. Except for their own
castle, the land was desert and untilled, without sign of dwelling,
man, or beast. One touch of some unknown magic had utterly
changed the face of Dyfed from a rich realm to a wilderness.
Manawyddan and Pryderi, Rhiannon and Kicva traversed the country
on all sides, but found nothing except desolation and wild beasts.
For two years they lived in the open upon game and honey.
During the third year, they grew weary of this wild life, and decided
to go into Lloegyr[346], and support themselves by some handicraft.
Manawyddan could make saddles, and he made them so well that
soon no one in Hereford, where they had settled, would buy from
any saddler but himself. This aroused the enmity of all the other
saddlers, and they conspired to kill the strangers. So the four went
to another city.
Here they made shields, and soon no one would purchase a shield
unless it had been made by Manawyddan and Pryderi. The shield-
makers became jealous, and again a move had to be made.
But they fared no better at the next town, where they practised the
craft of cordwainers, Manawyddan shaping the shoes and Pryderi
stitching them. So they went back to Dyfed again, and occupied
themselves in hunting.
One day, the hounds of Manawyddan and Pryderi roused a white
wild boar. They chased it till they came to a castle at a place where
both the huntsmen were certain that no castle had been before. Into
this castle went the boar, and the hounds after it. For some time,
Manawyddan and Pryderi waited in vain for their return. Pryderi then
proposed that he should go into the castle, and see what had
become of them. Manawyddan tried to dissuade him, declaring that
whoever their enemy was who had laid Dyfed waste had also caused
the appearance of this castle. But Pryderi insisted upon entering.
In the castle, he found neither the boar nor his hounds, nor any
trace of man or beast. There was nothing but a fountain in the
centre of the castle floor, and, on the brink of the fountain, a
beautiful golden bowl fastened to a marble slab by chains.
Pryderi was so pleased with the beauty of the bowl that he put out
his hands and took hold of it. Whereupon his hands stuck to the
bowl, so that he could not move from where he stood.
Manawyddan waited for him till the evening, and then returned to
the palace, and told Rhiannon. She, more daring than her husband,
rebuked him for cowardice, and went straight to the magic castle. In
the court she found Pryderi, his hands still glued to the bowl and his
feet to the slab. She tried to free him, but became fixed, herself,
and, with a clap of thunder and a fall of mist, the castle vanished
with its two prisoners.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com