THE FUNCTIONS OF MINISTERY OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS FOR CREATING THE RELIGIOUS HARMONY
THE FUNCTIONS OF MINISTERY OF RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS
FOR CREATING THE RELIGIOUS HARMONY
I have the good moment for giving the speech in the dinner meeting, between The Ministry of Religious Affairs (MORA), The UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, and The Delegation of Malaysian team for supporting HE. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, and the team of Chinese for supporting the V. Prof. Dr. Master Chin Kung. This dinner meeting is placed in the Ball Room of Mulia Hotel in Jakarta (13/06/20014). V. Prof. Dr. Mater Chin Kung and his team is to visit the Indonesian people for celebrating the Buddhis Waisak Ceremony.
And for HE. Dr. Tun Mahathir Muhammad is for celebrate for giving the Doctor Honoris Causa (Dr.Hc.) for the political development science from The UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Dr. Tun Mahathir Mohamad is the man who has many contributions for the political stability in Malaysia and also for the world order in general. By this contributions, so that UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta propose to give him the doctor of honoris causa , as a recognition for it.
I said to the audiences that Ministry of Religious Affairs has two functions, as well as the other functions. The first one is about the functions for education. MORA is not only to guide the religious community, but the big program is for developing the religious education. In this term is not only the education of Islam, but for the other religions. So that, we have the Buddhism education, Christian education, Hindus education and Kong Hu Cu education. In this program, MORA sees that religious education is very important for preparing the human resources development in the next.
In Islamic educations, we have the Madrasah, pesantren or Islamic boarding school, and Islamic higher education. For Islamic education, we have 46.000 madrasahs, 43.000 pesantrens, and 53 Islamic higher educations. For madrasahs, we have primary educations, secondary educations, and for higher educations we have Islamic Higher educations. And for pesantren, we have Islamic non formal educations. We have many kinds of pesantren, for example entrepreneurship pesantren, environmental pesantren, Islamic educations for preparing the Ulama etc.
For developing of religious educations, we have the strategic planning for along time. If we use the strategic planning for 2010-2014, so we know that the first strategic is to extend of our access in education. The actions for this one is to give the Bantuan Siswa Miskin (BSM) or poverty student fund, Bantuan Operasional Sekolah (BOS) or Schools operation grant. By this scheme we know that madrasahs or schools can be developed step by step. The amount of student can be increased. By this program, we know the increasing of total student can be designed more rapidly in all around of Indonesia.
The second strategy is about the developing of quality of educations. We know many peoples doubt of our quality of educations. We need the improvement of our process of learning, the improvement of our teacher or staff of educations by the means in order to increase the quality of educations. In the other hand, we need the quality of infrastructure of educations, for example the quality of library, the quality of media of teaching, methods of teaching etc. we must prepare the quality of education in general because of the need for preparing our next generation for facing the demographic bonus. We don’t want to lose in the golden age of Indonesian independence. For that, we must prepare the excellence education for our students.
The third strategic is to manage of our educations. The madrasahs or pesantren and the Islamic higher educations need the quality of management. There two words for showing the indicators of the quality of institutions of education: transparency and openness. By these qualities of transparency and openness, we can understand more about how to manage of our education institutions.
The second function of MORA is to make the religious harmony. Indonesia is the plural and multicultural state. There are 17.000 islands, at about 500 ethnics and languages. As the pluralistic societies as long as the multicultural societies, so we need the common platform for making unity for all of us. As a nations, we are lucky because we have the national conscience as we call Pancasila, UUD 1945, Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia (NKRI), and multiculturalism. These four national consciences can ensure the sustainability of our nations. We believe the Indonesian nationality can be developed step by step by the education of all of Indonesian peoples.
Religious harmony is one pillar of Indonesian society. If we want to know about the development of Indonesia, so the basic of perquisite is about how to empowering the harmony among of religions. We need the religious intern religions and extern of religions. Harmony is not only in the surface structure but the important one is in the deep structure. Not only dialogue between or among the leader of religion but in grass-root of people.
We understand that many problem or issues about the relation between the followers of religions, suddenly in the hard situation. But we have the long experience for manage the conflict of religion in order to gain the harmonious situation. For example for to manage the conflict of religion in Poso, Ambon, East Nusa Tenggara etc. We believe by the best management on how to reconcile about this conflict, so we can gain the good one.
Dr. Suryadharma Ali, the Minister of Religious Affairs, in many meetings usually said that without harmony there is no unity and without unity there is no more about the development. Because of that, harmony of religions is very urgent for the development of Indonesia at all.
In the next, we hope the contribution of Ministry of Religious Affairs can be increased in order to make the harmony, unity and development must be exist more expressive in around of Indonesia.
Many thanks for the supporting for modern Indonesia, now and the next.