INDONESIA: Islamic Schools Preach ‘Green’ Activism

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kafil Yamin

JAKARTA, Jun 6 2005 (IPS) - In the last two years Indonesia’s West Java province has been regularly hit by natural disasters – from erosion, violent storms and floods to prolonged drought – bringing the province’s economy closer to collapse.

Since early 2005, floods have inundated at least 26,000 hectares of rice fields in West Java, 6,112 ha of which could not be harvested.

Simultaneously, hills and mountains – striking features of the area – are being blasted and turned into settlements as cities expand into suburbs and small towns are born in rural areas.

Everywhere, the Earth has suffered from a lack of land management and development planning. Forests were cut and trampled on. Riverside areas became common locations for factories because their operators could dump waste without properly treating it. Predictably, fishes have disappeared and age-old fishing, bathing and washing practices have slowly ebbed away.

Government attempts to halt the environmental destruction have not taken root so conservationists have looked for alternative solutions. They might have found one – the area’s thousands of ‘pesantrens’, Islamic boarding schools.

The Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI) is building a strategic alliance with the schools, which teach students of all ages using classic Islamic texts and a curriculum that includes theology, law, behaviour and social norms.

These days senior students are also trained to growing seedlings to help rejuvenate their natural surroundings, supported by financial assistance from The World Bank.

Data from the ministry of religions shows that 1,311 of West Java’s ‘pesantrens’ are located in mountainous areas, 1,065 in agricultural estates, 87 on coastal lands and 114 on the riverside.

Over the years the schools have incorporated into their curricula teachings that reflect their close relationship with the land, including agriculture, animal husbandry and maintaining the social and natural environment.

The institutions are also influential in their ‘kampongs’ or villages and surrounding areas, thus able to mobilize tens of thousands of residents to help rehabilitate arid and degraded lands and erosion-prone areas by convincing them that saving the environment is a religious duty.

Most of all, ‘pesantrens’ commitment to environmental sustainability is undoubted. Islam carries strong messages on conservation and gives the issue a high place. Many verses of the holy Qur’an and hadits (the Prophet’s sayings) assert the pivotal significance of conservation and the environment.

Students and their leaders see themselves as guardians of their own soil. “Protecting the environment is a religious duty,” saysKH Mansyur Ma’mun, leader of the Al-Amanah boarding school in Cililin, Bandung regency.

This ‘pesantren’ “re-greening” movement has made the hilly village of Pasir Meong, which looked dry and bare three years ago, now green and blooming with various kinds of fruit trees, such as avocado, rambutan, jengkol and suren. Villagers are seen working enthusiastically on their farms, watering seeds or cutting wild grasses growing between plants.

Critical lands alongside Saguling Lake are also covered with fruit trees, luring people to a lakeside stroll, where they can pick up fruits. Al-Amanah started the ‘green’ project in 2003, urging local villagers to use the lands, which were previously abandoned, to provide their own living.

In contrast, efforts by the Indonesian government to rehabilitate the area have faltered.

After imposing a logging moratorium in West Java, it launched the National Campaign for Land and Forest Rehabilitation. In 2004, the campaign targeted 500,000 hectares of degraded lands to be replanted every year, 219,852 ha located within forest areas and 280,148 ha scattered among 373 regencies and cities. This year, it set a target of 600,000 ha; for 2006, 700,000 ha; and for 2007, 900,000 ha.

But the 2005 planting has yet to begin, and millions of trees planted in 2004 died. ‘Pikiran Rakyat’ daily newspaper reported that at least 19 million trees on rehabilitated lands perished.

KH Mansyur Ma’mun is determined to make Pasir Meong a success story. But it is just the beginning of a larger endeavour he has planned for the next five years: “We are determined to convert the critical lands alongside Saguling Lake into an agro-tourism site.”

Efforts to date have travelled beyond the lakeside, with the hills around the Saguling dam now much greener. Villagers have high expectations for the economic benefits of the venture, although only time will tell whether these benefits actually reach the targeted rural people.

Al-Washilah boarding school in Garut regency is also fighting to seed degraded lands scattered among settlements, mountains, hill areas and even plantation estates belonging to the State Forestry Corporation, Perhutani.

Under the school’s Pondok Pesantren Communication Forum, students and villagers work together on the conservation and greening campaign, from growing and planting seedlings to maintaining. 35,000 ha of degraded areas. To date their work is on schedule.

Garut’s ‘ulamas’, Muslim scholars, have gone a step further and issued a ‘fatwa’, or religious decree, ruling that harming nature is a serious violation of Islamic law.

It adds that planting trees and saving the environment is an individual’s responsibility, while protecting and rehabilitating the wider environment is up to the community. Those who harm nature can be punished via the Shariah criminal code, putting such acts in the ranks of a serious sinful deed.

Thantowi Yahya Musaddad, leader of the Al-Washilah ‘pesantren’, has made an all-out effort to protect the environment, even composing a ‘shalawat lingkungan’, or song of praise to Prophet Muhammad, containing environmental messages.

“I see this green campaign as a calling,” he said in an interview. “Now people begin to see it the same way as I do. This is a faith matter. And nothing can beat the faith.”

Under the agreement with the LIPI, 575 ‘pesantrens’ in Garut regency have become the main protectors of their own forests, healers of degraded lands and enemies of forest exploiters.

Thantowi said he and other religious leaders in the area have modest hopes for the movement – “to see in the near future the majority of people utilize degraded lands and protect the forest from trespassing”.

Joining this ‘pesantren’-championed green campaign are groups of farmers, village cooperatives and youth organizations.

While conservation has become a trigger for making Islamic teaching more relevant to today’s society, it has an additional benefit – to dispel the image that ‘pesantrens’ are factories for fabricating bombs and organizing suicide attacks on ‘kafirs’ (infidels).

“We have more knowledge and skills on seedlings than on producing explosive devices,” said KH Ma’mun Mansyur.