Blitar, NU Online
The Religious Affairs Ministry’s office in Blitar, East Java, has finally recommended the closure of six Catholic schools for refusing to provide Islamic teaching for their Muslim students.<>

Office head, Imam Mukhlis, said his office had recommended Blitar Mayor Samanhudi Anwar take legal action based on existing regulations against the schools.

“We made the recommendation after the two Catholic foundations managing the six schools refused to follow the regulations,” he told The Jakarta Post recently.

He added that the office had summoned executives of the foundations and the Blitar Education Agency to a closed meeting on Saturday to find a solution.

The schools have refused to implement Blitar Mayoral Decree No. 8/2012 which requires Muslim students to be able to read and write Koranic verses.

The decree, according to the ministry’s local office, was based on Government Regulation No. 55/2007 on religious teachings, which is in turn based on Law No. 20/2003 on the National Education System.

Imam contends that the schools have also violated Religious Affairs Ministerial Decree No. 16/2010 on Religious Management at Schools.

“Article 4 (3) of the religious affairs ministerial decree stipulates that any school is required to provide a religious subject if there is a minimum of 15 students of the same faith,” he said.

“In fact, 70 percent of some 3,000 students at the six schools are Muslims.”

The mayor said he would study the religious affairs’ recommendation saying that closure was not the best solution.

“I will invite the schools and related agencies to discuss the matter,” Samanhudi told the Post over phone.

“We have a duty that our younger generation understand their religion, so as not to commit adultery, free sex and other actions outside religious guidance.”

He maintained that Catholic schools all over Indonesia should provide Islamic lessons to Muslim students studying there.

He previously had also said that the regulation did not apply to Catholic schools only and that he would obliged Islamic schools to provide religious instruction for their non-Muslim students.

Meanwhile, the Surabaya Catholic Diocese’ vicar-general Father Agustinus Tri Budi Utomo declined to comment so as not to create controversy.

Previously, Father Antonius Benny Susetyo, executive secretary of the Indonesian Conference of Bishops’ Religious and Faith Relations Commission, said that there was no problem with Catholic schools providing religious lessons to non-Catholic students as long as it was outside the school.

Yohanes Gabriel Foundation and Yoseph Foundation had refused to implement the mayoral decree arguing that Article 55 (1) of the 2003 education law implies that Catholic schools were entitled to implement a curriculum following their own religious, social and cultural norms.

Executives from both foundations said that parents agreed with existing school regulations.

Yoseph Foundation manages the Santa Maria elementary school while Yohanes Gabriel Foundation runs Yos Sudarso elementary and junior high schools, Yohanes Gabriel junior high school, Diponegoro senior high school and Santo Yusup vocational high school.

An executive of the Islamic Anti-Discrimination Network, Aan Ansori, expected all parties to be unemotional when responding the Blitar case for fear the mayoral decree would lead to the expulsion of Muslim students from the Catholic schools.

“When compared to Islamic schools, the Catholic schools are more open by accepting students from different faiths,” he told the Post.

Editor : Sudarto Murtaufiq