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Paper short abstract:

Our case study of Indonesia's Dakwah (predication) faculties enables a critical perspective toward dominant analytical tropes concerning Islamic education infrastructure: functionalization and systematization.

Paper long abstract:

Islamic education has presented special challenges to post-colonial governments in majority-Muslim countries. The priority for governments in countries such as Indonesia and Egypt has been to make progress in education in the secular sciences. Populations identify these fields as offering career opportunities. As a result, discourse around the place of Islamic education in state education in the post-colonial period has revealed a sometimes unproductive 'traditional versus contemporary' dichotomy. Interestingly, academic analysis of Islamic education in post-colonial states has entrenched this dichotomy. It has done this through the widespread uptake of two analytical characterisations: functionalisation and objectification (aka: systematisation). Through their de-authenticating effects, these characterisations contribute to the conception, supported by traditional Islamic elites in countries such as Indonesia, that Islam education is difficult to integrate into contemporary educational infrastructure. This paper is a case study of the academic outputs of Indonesia's Dakwah faculties, as well as the characteristic concept of dakwah on which they were founded. The findings suggest that state-supported Islamic education will succeed when it satisfies the same output measurements as are applied to secular sciences: performance management, quality accreditation etc. Moving beyond the de-authenticating characterisations of functionalisation and systematisation, these evaluative mechanisms point to the viability of Islamic education in the post-colonial present.