R

eligious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saefuddin said Tuesday that in spite of its status as the country with the biggest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia had yet to deliver high quality Islamic higher education to its citizens.

Lukman said that as the world underwent what he called a spiritual crisis, the country should boost the quality of its Islamic higher education institutions, which could combine intellectual capacity with deep religious understanding.

'€œSecularism has proven to have weaknesses because it has failed to create harmony between spiritualism and materialism, and that is something that Islamic higher education could deliver,'€ Lukman told participants of the International Conference on Quality Islamic Higher Education jointly organized by Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta and UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang in Central Jakarta.

Lukman also said that with the rising numbers of foreign universities in the country, improvements should be made to local universities. According to Lukman, UIN Syarif Hidayatullah and UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim were one of the few Islamic higher education institutions that had the potential to become world-class universities. '€œThe transformation of the two universities into world-class universities is necessary for the country to face global challenges,'€ Lukman said.

Mansur Ma'€™shum, a board member of the National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (BAN-PT), however said that it could take a while before Islamic universities could compete with its secular peers.

He said that many problems plagued Islamic higher education in the country.

'€œMost Islamic higher institutions are mediocre and we also found that most of the students came from poor families,'€ Mansur said.

Data from UIN Syarif Hidayatullah said that only 53 out of 1,134 Islamic higher education institutions in the country were managed by the government. The same data also showed that only three of them had obtained A-level accreditation from BAN-PT: UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim and UIN Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta.

Based on the Higher Education Law, the management of Islamic higher education institutions is controlled by the Religious Affairs Ministry.

Many have called on the House of Representatives to amend the law that would allow the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry take over the management of UIN as the Religious Affairs Ministry has long been known as one of the most corrupt ministries in the government.

Meanwhile, Mudjia Rahardjo, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim rector, said that management of his university as well as UIN Syarif Hidayatullah and UIN Sunan Kalijaga, had a long-term of goal of promoting progress in the Islamic world.

'€œUIN rectors are committed to being highly competitive so that we can bring back the glory days of Islamic civilization,'€ Mudjia said.