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EDITORIAL: Women ulema for the world
The gathering was the radicalism we need — “amplifying the voice of women ulema, asserting values of Islam, nationhood and humanity,” as the title of the international seminar preceding the congress said.
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Students walk to Kebon Jambu Al-Islamy Islamic boarding school in Cirebon, West Java, on Tuesday. The school hosts a three-day national congress where hundreds of female clerics from across the country discuss challenges Indonesian women face. (JP/Nurul Fitri Ramadhani)
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he first-ever national congress of women ulema, and the world’s first, organizers claim, was held from Tuesday to Thursday in Cirebon, a major area of Islamic heritage from which Islam spread to West Java. The host, in a province with one of the highest numbers of discriminatory bylaws in the country, was Nyai Masriyah Amva, leader of Kebon Jambu Al Islamy boarding school, which has about 1,000 male and female santri (students.)
Amid the rise in political tension, news of the congress brings fervent hope, though the term “ulema perempuan” sounds strange — people are more familiar with fiery female preachers, the ustadzah, female teachers of Islam, or the revered nyai, wives of the kyai or male pesantren leaders.
Indonesia’s congress presented to a restless nation and the world the concept behind women ulema — female, but also male, Muslims with “a deep knowledge, fear of God (integrity), noble personalities, a developed sense of justice and [who] act to bring blessings upon the whole world.”
The presentation is not limited to the Islamic world as the women ulema, as the congress witnessed, turn misogynistic Islamic teachings on their head — teachings with a similar spiteful mind-set as those justifying senseless cruelty to anyone disagreeing with extremist views.
Therefore the gathering was the radicalism we need — “amplifying the voice of women ulema, asserting values of Islam, nationhood and humanity,” as the title of the international seminar preceding the congress said.
These were the voices of leading nyai responsible for thousands of male and female students, but with a barely formal education themselves, to that of academics with a string of degrees.
As extremism, violence and intolerance have become horrifically “normal,” the voices at the gathering were indeed radical, though not new. Take the opening of the international seminar with the national anthem “Indonesia Raya” and the singing of praise and prayers (shalawat) for egalitarianism between males and females; and the congress opening symbolically displaying its foundations — the Quran and Hadith (Prophet’s sayings), the body of classical texts used across many pesantren (kitab
