Paper short abstract:

Quality assurance procedures are critical to the Indonesian Ministry of Education's program of 'convergence' in education: they neutralise the epistemological divide between Islamic education and the 'national university project', and assure citizens that Islamic education supports national goals.

Paper long abstract:

The Ministry of Religion of the Republic of Indonesia has overseen a remarkable program of importing Islamic sciences into the national, state-funded university curriculum. This paper points to the importance of quality assurance in that program, which observers have characterised with the term 'convergence'. This label acknowledges the epistemological divide between Islamic education and the 'national university project'; in post-colonial contexts, the establishment and development of the national university project invariably unfolded in forms that gave precedence to secular knowledges. The Ministry has been restructuring tertiary education in novel forms that challenge this division. Quality assurance plays a critical role in this process. The paper at hand argues that quality assurance plays a role of asserting the value of Islamic sciences to the common good, and its harmony with the national university project, in an environment where public doubts exist over the wisdom of convergence.