About the Course

This International Short Course is designed to introduce participants to Indonesian Islam as a lived tradition through the experiences of women ulama, pesantren communities, and contemporary Islamic scholarship.

Participants will explore how Islamic knowledge is interpreted, negotiated, and translated into social transformation in Indonesia. The programme highlights the intellectual contributions of the Kongres Ulama Perempuan Indonesia (KUPI), a pioneering movement that reaffirms women as legitimate producers of Islamic knowledge through collective ijtihad, ethical reasoning, and commitments to justice, compassion, and human dignity.

Indonesia offers one of the world's richest contexts for understanding the dynamic relationship between religion, culture, and society. As the world's largest Muslim-majority country, its Islamic traditions have developed through continuous interaction among religious scholarship, local cultures, pesantren, civil society, and democratic institutions. This diversity has produced distinctive forms of religious authority that demonstrate how Islamic teachings can respond constructively to contemporary challenges while remaining rooted in classical intellectual traditions.

A central focus of the programme is the emergence of the Kongres Ulama Perempuan Indonesia (KUPI) as an innovative movement of Islamic scholarship. Beyond promoting women's participation, KUPI offers a distinctive epistemological framework that integrates classical Islamic scholarship with lived experiences, maqāṣid al-sharī'ah, collective deliberation, and ethical commitments to justice and human dignity. Through this perspective, participants are invited to examine what Islamic texts say and how religious knowledge is produced, who participates in its interpretation, and how Islamic ethics can contribute to addressing contemporary social issues.

The course presents knowledge as a collaborative process shaped through dialogue between scripture, scholarly traditions, lived experiences, and contemporary social realities. Participants will critically examine how ethical reasoning, collective deliberation, and contextual interpretation contribute to addressing global issues such as gender justice, peacebuilding, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion.

A distinctive feature of this programme is the live-in experience at Pesantren Kebon Jambu, one of Indonesia's leading pesantren in promoting women's religious leadership and gender justice. Participants will live alongside the santri, taking part in the rhythms of daily pesantren life, including religious learning, communal activities, and interactions with women ulama and community leaders. This immersive experience enables participants to gain first-hand insight into how pesantren education cultivates religious scholarship, ethical leadership, and community engagement.

Through this community immersion, participants will explore how the pesantren serves as an institution of Islamic learning and as a social space where ideas of justice, compassion, and gender equality are nurtured and translated into everyday practice. By experiencing the educational environment from within, participants will better understand how Pesantren and the KUPI movement have contributed to the development of women ulama and to broader efforts to advance gender justice in contemporary Indonesian Muslim society.