Islamic Education in Indonesia: Political Currents, Democratic Possibilities
and
The New Veiling: Religious Modesty and Women's Rights in Post-Soeharto Indonesia

The Indonesia Programme at tne NCHR invites to a joint seminar with Prof. Robert W. Hefner and Dr. Nancy Smith-Hefner

Date: Thursday June 12, 2008
Time: 12-4pm
Venue: NCHR, the seminar room

Programme:

12:00 - 2:00: Prof. Robert W. Hefner: Islamic Education in Indonesia: Political Currents, Democratic Possibilities

2:00 - 4:00: Dr. Nancy Smith-Hefner: The New Veiling: Religious Modesty and Women's Rights in Post-Soeharto Indonesia

Robert W. Hefner is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Program on Islam and Civil Society at the Institute on Culture and Religious Affairs, Boston University. During 2007-2008 he is also the Distinguished Lee Kong Chian Fellow in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and Stanford University, and the incoming President of the Association for Asian Studies. He has edited or authored some fourteen books, and is currently completing a book on Islam, education, and democratization in Indonesia.

In the aftermath of the downfall of the authoritarian Soeharto regime (1966-1998) in Indonesia, certain Islamic boarding schools were discovered to have ties to the terrorist groupings who carried out the Bali bombings in October 2002. Other schools were found to have sponsored the formation of armed militias for combat in eastern Indonesia. At the same time, however, other Islamic schools have played a leading role in civic education and democratic reform. Hefner's presentation discusses the state of Islamic education in Indonesia. It examines the relative balance of democratic and radical forces, and suggests that the struggle for hearts and minds in Islamic schools both here and in other Muslim-majority lands will play a decisive role in the Muslim world's political future.

Dr. Nancy-Smith Hefner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the
Department of Anthropology at Boston University. She has carried out
research on Cambodian American immigrants to the U.S., as well as, for more than a quarter century, questions of gender, Islam, and cultural and linguistic change in Indonesia.

In this presentation Smith-Hefner will use the optic of trends in veiling to discuss general shifts in the landscape of women's rights and public participation in the Post-Soeharto period.