Santri, Achievements, and Religiosity

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In general, Indonesian History’s lessons taught by its scholars is how our prestigious nation can be “freed” from colonization bondages. The lessons captured how impassioned our predecessors to fight for the sake of our national freedom is. But there is one huge mistake that the standard syllabus of National History taught: how the “santri” word seems purposedly excluded, not mentioned in so many spots it should have, inside the History.

From my point of view, they are leading to a massive misunderstanding of Indonesia history. Since factually, as I will provide evidence soon enough, most of the prominent Indonesian history figures, who participated enormously through their effort on Indonesia freedom, are the Ulama, who essentially is a santri.

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Back to the ages before the ethical politics being well-known as ‘the pioneer of Indonesia resurgence’ since there are so many education foundations built as the idea of ethical politics started to mushrooms, such as HIS (Hollandsch Indlandsche School), MULO (Meer Uitgebreid Lagare Onderwijs), AMS (Algemeene Middlebare School), Kweek School.

The Islamic education has developed well, as the existence of Pesantren has given Nusantara a centre of culture and education development that is super competitive to the quality provided by Indische’s school in general. Something to be noted is the Indonesian History syllabus has never, scarce, mentioned the existence of pesantren and its contribution to national independence in the past.

Well, there are more of it. The glorious battle of Surabaya is an example, and the syllabus mentioned enough how civilians contribute meaningful participation to the struggle—but fully excluded the fact that the Jihad Resolution was written by Hadratus Syeikh KH Hasyim Asya’ari, a well-known national hero and acknowledged as santri and ulama leader at that moment. Thus, just 18 days before the war begins is the trigger behind why the civilians are even willing to participate in the war in the first place.

By the thought of Hadratus Syeikh, the resolution mentioned that there is an outstanding obligation for every person, fardhu ain, in a radius of 94 kilometres to contribute to the battle. Meanwhile, it is a ‘representative obligation’ or so-called fardhu kifayah, not necessarily obligate every person but just the representative, out of the radius of 94 kilometres, to contribute to the battle. Thus, this resolution successfully triggers Surabayas civilians to win the fight. Since then, 10 November 1945 known as “Hari Pahlawan“.

These descriptions are crystal-clear evidence of how the santri movement contributes massively to our national independence history. Moreover, they emphasize the santri contribution and dedication has already existed from the era of colonialism.

After the post-independence era, santri credibility has to transform simultaneously with globalization. According to KH Makruf Amin on santri definition, santri is a person who obedient to ‘Kiai’, the fact whether he lived a pesantren live and is capable of reading Islamic heritage book, well-known as ‘Kitab kuning‘, or not is unnecessary.

The title santri is appropriate. Whoever is obedient to Kiai cares about what Kiai struggling for and contributed to it. Considering this as a valid definition of santri, we will identify many public figures as santri. Our first president is an example. Since plenty of sources on the History clarify, he was once admitted as santri of a KH Ahmad Dahlan.

Another example would be KH Idham Chalid, who had a crucial political position as a deputy prime minister in the Soekarno era. Specifically, he sits at cabinet Ali Sostroamidjojo (24 Maret 1956 – 9 April 1957), cabinet Djuanda (9 April 1957-9 Juli 1959, and two periods as Minister at cabinet Dwikora (22 February 1966-25 Juli 1966). Then we got KH. Wachid Hasyim, who served as a cabinet minister. And there are more well-known figures we can identify as santri.

The existence of the santri struggle on nation freedom once again could be emphasized by the Djamaluddin Malik resolution. It was 1967 when General AH Nasution still served as MPR speaker. In the middle of the general assembly of MPR, the resolution of Djamaluddin Malik proposed two things in general: to remove Soekarno from his president position and replaced him with Soeharto.

But, instead of publishing of Djamaluddin Malik resolution, the Indonesian history lesson says supersemar is what caused the removal. But thanks to a nahdlatul ulama santri at DPR GR who succeed to clarify this to the public. However, this resolution might still seem unfamiliar to some historians since it is not published well. Therefore, I want to add two more great examples, which everybody knows for sure. First, Gus Dur, a phenomenal santri, succeeded in being the number one person in the republic in 1999. Second, the fact that the current vice president is a santri.

As History started to roll over and globalization accelerated the change of culture and trend. Plenty of culture shape transformation begins to take place to grow on the worldwide community, including Indonesia. Westernization of local culture started to be introduced to us. Much of the novel, either bad or good, value successfully brought into the civilization. Moreover, santri and pesantren culture has also developed in many aspects, including technology and media, but remain the same in the knowledge and value transfer principle.

Due to this status quo, some societies create inconvenient views about pesantren as an out-of-date education culture. Although pesantren is one of the oldest education cultures in Indonesia, pesantren has successfully managed to survive in the era of globalization. Moreover, it has gorgeously made many of its scholars – santri – successful and seized a lot of achievements during globalization. For example, a North Sumatra santri, namely Ja’far Hasibuan, has brought a gold medal from the China Shanghai International Exhibition of Inventions due to his invention transforming shrimp waste into medicine.

So does the existence of MBI Amanatul Ummah santri domiciled under the Welirang mountain on Mojokerto whom trademark is pen and heritage book, manage to successfully win the mathematics Olympiad and robotics competition at the ASEAN level. And there is a santri who won the international audition on Holy Qur’an recitation, and there are still a lot more achievements santri have achieved as time passed. These facts have just proof how unacceptable is the statement of pesantren as an out-of-date education culture.

We have been talking a lot about pesantren. You may already recognize some of the unique, extraordinary things that make it a great role model in education. Now, slightly, I want to talk more about santri. Santri has a lot of things in common with the typical students, those who do not spend their education time on pesantren. However, there is something significant that differ between santri and students in general.

The education model taught in pesantren emphasizes the value and knowledge transfer principle, which means not only transferring knowledge. But, also being responsible for the process and making sure how the process would create the santri to be well-being humankind through the knowledge he learnt and obtained something called religiosity.

The value and knowledge transfer principle convince santri to do everything based on Islamic – religious – morals, which is usually called akhlaqul karimah. This behaviour is successfully attached in their daily activities and successfully influence their capability on solving the problem in everyday life or – moreover – in competitions. This point allowed started to makes me think, “well, is it the very thing that makes them be a step further from the rest of the students in general?”.

Well, maybe it is. However, we can observe in the competitions that generally happens to everyone in the field that everybody is putting themselves on an outstanding level of struggle and effort to maintain the output they would expect successfully. This is a major common thing that will happen to the competition participants, either he is a santri or a student in general.

Everyone is maximizing their effort in every aspect to win the competition finals. However, there is an effort that santri will always maximize. Usually, students do not, which is the spiritual effort or so-called as their x-factor, hidden factor that unexpectedly succeeds them in a lot of events. The rate of how high santri would maximize their spiritual effort depends on how high their religiosity is.

The fact that they live in a society with a spiritual role model, such as a Kiai, seems to keep their religiosity increasing day by day flourishingly. Ultimately, religiosity is what created santri daily activity to be greatly meaningful to them. It successfully affected their mindset in almost every moment. So, any public and media mindset sometimes do not bother them so much. It has never been a problem for them, and the most urgent matter is that as the world gets older, santri credibility has never decreased. And positive social view toward santri as a a religious and full-of-achievement community of Indonesia should never end.

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