TERRORISM AND PESANTREN (ENGLISH SPEECH)

Dear  ladies and gentlemen,

Do you still remember Bali bombing in 2002 and 2005? Or bombimg in Marriot Hotel in 2003 and Australian embassy in 2004? Those bombings have caused hundreds people died, hundreds others were injured and thousands of their family were badly in grave. Those bombings are horrible and have curved great pain to the heart of people all over the world. And those bombings have caused our country labelled as a home of terrorists, a country of bombers. What a shame!

As we all know, the bombers, which are so-called terrorists, are considered as Islam fundamentalists or Islam extrimists. And the most bitter fact is some of them are graduates of Pondok Pesantren. Therefore, many people have put Pondok Pesantren under suspicion because Pesantren is a place where they study about Islam. People were suspicious that Pesantren teaches their santri about Islam extrimist, so that terrorists might come from Pesantren. The question is “is it true”? Or is it even the other way around?

            To begin with, let us have a little discussion about the history and the cause of recent terrorism done by Islam fundamentalists in the world. Do you think those Islam terrorists do terrors because of their Islam ideology? It is not their main reason. Their main reason is anger. George Walker Bush, the former president of America,has diseminated the idea that Islam fundamentalists are the next America and world threat after Cold War era. This idea has been strengthened after 9-11 bombing  After the bombing of WTC, all Americans were put in anger and totally supported Bush to erase terrorism. Bush after that spent $US 40.000 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The American soldiers killed thousands of unsin people in those countries. Kids, Old people, babies, women. The reason was because they wanted to sweep over the Islam fundamentalists. This is so ridiculous because they also killed unsin people. The American brutal invasion made moslems there angry because their rights to live and do their religion as they want were taken. So, they started to take their revenge. They trained some people to get involved  in Anti-Western organization and do terrors, such as bombings and others, and they called  it jihad. As time goes by, they trained more people from other countries including Indonesia. So, terrorists from Indonesia are not products of any Islamic institution in Indonesia. So, it is clear that Pesantren has nothing to do with terrorism. Ladies and gentlemen, on the other way around, Pesantren teaches their students or santri to be a good, sociable, pluralist human, or we can say non-terrorist religious moslem. What is the evidence then?

First, Pondok Pesantren  teaches all complete knowledge about Islam, such as: Fiqh, History of Islam, Hadits, Tafsir, Arabic, etc. Therefore there are lots of things that teach them to be a good human. For example, they learn how kind Rasululloh treats his enemy. When Rasululloh was thrown with camel feces, He just kept being patient. The next example is santri will not get wrong definition of jihad. They will see one ayat in Alqur’an from many points of view; from point of view of history, hadist, etc  People  who never study in Pondok Pesantren will get a wrong definition of jihad easily when there is a terrorist agent recruits them. The recruiter will explain that Jihad is a matter of killing and war, but actually jihad means so many things, not only that. Studying is a jihad. Delivering a baby is also a jihad. Those people  can be influenced and easily recruited as the next Umar Patek.

Second, students in Pondok Pesantren will learn how to be pluralist and tolerant in Pondok Pesantren. We all know that santri in one Pesantren must come from various cities and background of culture. For example, we have Arif and Andi. Arif comes from Jombang and Andi from Papua. There must be some different cultures between them. But when they meet and become friends in Pesantren, they learn how to tolerate and understand each other’s culture, although they both learn and hold Islam for their way of  life.

Third, Pondok Pesantren emphasizes to develop the students’ knowledge, as well as their personality. As the data says, Indonesia is a home of more than 14.000 Pesantren, most of which adhere Aswaja values. Values of Aswaja , according to Imam Ghozali, is faqih filmashalih al-kholqi fiddunya, which means making people live in peace, harmony, keep maslahah al-ummah, not mafsadah. So, Pesantren in Indonesia teaches their students to have good, humanist, and tolerant personality. It avoids any violance because iot breaks Islamic law.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Terrorism basically exists not because of Islamic ideology, but because of people’s reaction toward the brutal violance toward Islamic people in Islamic countries. Pondok Pesantren, which notabene teaches Islamic knowledge, surely has nothing to do with terrorism. It even gives good contribution to develop humanist, tolerant, good Moslem in Indonesia because, first, Pondok Pesantren teaches all complete knowledge about Islam, so the students will have no wrong intrepretation of “jihad”; second,  students in Pondok pesantren learns how to be pluralist because of the heterogeneous students there, and ; thirdly, because most of Pondok Pesantren in Indonesia adhere ASWAJA values which avoids violance and creates maslahah al-ummah.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

That is all my speech about terrorism and Pesantren. I hope those who blackmail Pesantren will see the real fact what Pesantren is and  hopefully Pesantren can always contribute to diminish terrorism in the world. Allahu Akbar!