Foreword  by Her Excellency the Honourable Ms Quentin Bryce, AC, CVO

Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

"Wallaby Stew "Sid Harta Publishers Melbourne Australia

Between these covers you will read stories of courage and hope from young people,

collected by Diane Perkins whose friendship has been important and influential in our

family for many decades. We went to the same school, though not at the same time;

we didn't have to be there at the same time to absorb the school motto "Fortitudine et

spe", or remember, forever and a day, the melody and words of the school song ....

"To you, om school we owe so much that we cannot repay, whe'ere we go we'll ne'er

forget om days at Moreton Bay, the problems shared, the pleasures too, the games we

lost and won, the work and all the happy homs we spent when work was done ... ".

School days linger through our much longer lives, they feature in many of these

stories, all of which describe comage and hope. Om shared memories are of breezes

sloping in from the wide blue Pacific across the bay cooling the air flowing through

the Queenslander louvred latticed wooden buildings where we lived, the spacious

gardens shaded by old fig trees, poincianas and jacarandas where we relaxed, played

and read on the paspalum and couch grass. Lifelong friendships were formed as were

ideas of loyalty, duty and service. By traditional teaching methods of rote, discussion

and lively debate from a series of rather eccentric teachers we learned what was

essential on the voyage of life; our school badge included the star of hope, the rock of

courage and the sea of despair. The sea of despair had to be avoided at any cost,

though we should prepare for storms and wild weather; we were reminded of this

when we sang, at least once a term the hymn "For those in peril on the sea". The

school has since relocated, is a much larger establishment and boys attend; one

ponders the content of emails they send to their families; we wrote letters with pens,

usually fountain pens, and perfumed stationery was discouraged.

Two of my sisters also attended Moreton Bay College; Helene and Diane have

remained close friends though living oceans apart. The Perkins family raised their

family in Mt. Isa. Di's work ethic meant she was compelled to do something else as

well as teach in the high school and she wrote local history books to fulfill this need.

Each time I visited Mt. Isa I witnessed her vivacious and generous involvement in

community activities. Years later the family moved to Brisbane and Di, with her

husband Bill, frequently visited my mother at Mt. Tamborine; two mothers with much

to share, both having brought up four daughters. Together they poured over the family

collection of Box Brownie black and white photos, identifying places and

personalities. Mother delighted in being a primary resource for Di's research into the

Queensland outback. Country people have long memories of people and events and

our valued friend has gathered many in her books.

The voices in Wallaby Stew are of young people from differing backgrounds and

through the experiences related we glean their hopes for life in 21st century Australia.

The collection will gladden hearts; young people revealing hopes and dreams, being

frank about weaknesses and in a few cases surprised to discover their strengths.

Exploring the heights, depths and breadths of their emotions through relationships

with friends and families, they describe the importance of finding one's own direction

and of surviving false starts. In 'Disability is only in your mind' Candice advises

"don't let other people set your limits". The interviewer might have asked the easy

questions but these young people have struggled to find hard won answers; wishful

thinking, wistful reflection. Listen to them, they shape the society and community in

which we grow; family is central to all of the stories, these young people are wise

enough to recognise its value and influence.

Signed, Quentin Bryce, AC, CVO

Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

‘Pesantren’ (Islamic Boarding Schools) and radicalization

Pesantren or Pondok Pesantren are Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia. According to one popular tradition, the pesantren education system originated from traditional Javanese pondokan; dormitories; ashram for Hindu or viharas for Buddhists to learn religious philosophies, martial arts and meditation. Institutions much like them are found across the Islamic world and are called pondok in Malaysia and Southern Thailand and madrasa Islamia (Islamic madrasa) in India and Pakistan and much of the Arabic speaking world. Pesantren aim to deepen knowledge of the Koran, particularly through the study of Arabic, traditions of exegesis, the Sayings of the Prophet, law and logic. The term pesantren derives from the root word santri or student -- pe-santri-an or the place of the santri

As social institutions, pesantren have played a major role over the centuries. They emphasise cores values of sincerity, simplicity, individual autonomy, solidarity and self-control. Young men and women are separated from their families, which contributes to a sense of individual commitment to the faith and close bonding to a teacher. (Wikipedia)

The Islamic radicalism that evolved after the 1998 reform depicts a revival of Islam. Unfortunately, this resurgence also indicates a cultural and historical decline of Islam in Indonesia. The re-Islamization process in this matter is of course contrary to the nature of Islam in Indonesia which is cultural, tolerant and substantive.

Islam in Indonesia country is considered cultural, which is why politics is rarely used as a tool in conveying Islamic teachings.

On the contrary, Islam has been firmly entrenched in the culture of the country. Thus, Islam in Indonesia has given birth to a variety of manifestations of “Indonesian-Islamic culture” which are different from Islam in Middle East. This is the result of a process of indigenization of Islam, rather than re-Islamization, which has occurred since the 13th century AD.

The process of this inter-cultural encounter is considered a tolerant and substantive practice of Islam. Interestingly, tolerance and Islamic substance were developed by two religious disciplines regarded as “queens of the knowledge of Islam” in the country, especially in pesantrens or Islamic boarding schools. The two queens are sufism and fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. It seems that these “two queens of knowledge” could become the solution to Islamic radicalism.

At the beginning of this Islamization, fiqh-sufism appeared as the method and content of Islamic preaching. These particular methods of understanding and practice of sharia are carried out through tassawuf or spirituality. The discipline of law and spirituality began to be developed simultaneously by wise preachers known as Walisongo.

The wave of peaceful Islamization was historically enhanced by the Javanese ulema network in Mecca. After their return to the country at the beginning of the 20th century, they established pesantrens. In these schools, Islamic preachers such as Kiai Hasyim Asya`ari, Kiai Khalil Bangkalan, Kiai Mahfudz Termas, etc sharpened methods of sharia science in a comprehensive manner. In this way, the progress of Islamization in the archipelago fueled by the establishment of schools appeared to be based on fiqh-Sufi Muslims. What this meant to the level of religious behavior is that Islamic boarding schools were made up of people who adhered to fiqh through the deepening of tassawuf.

The Sufi nature of Islamic fiqh boarding schools not only renders Islamic law, but also holds it as a particularly spiritual religion. This results in two positive attitudes. For one thing, the Islamic fiqh boarding schools are neither rigid, nor black-and-white and completely conservative.

Why? Because fiqhiyyah practices are conducted in the framework of spirituality. In the words of Rumi, “Sufism changes the law into wisdom”. Hence, a religious boarding school is not an escape: ignorant and isolated from the world.

From these explanations, a conclusion can be drawn. Islamic radicalism can be cured through the introduction of Islamic legal rationality and the spirituality of Islam. At this point, the style of Sufi Islamic fiqh that strongly characterizes Indonesian Islam could be an ideal model for “healing” Islamic radicalism.

The discourse of Islamic boarding schools nowadays is generally moderate in nature. This belies some findings that show the phenomenon of radicalism in the pesantren world. For example, studies released by the Nanyang Technical University of Singapore (NTUS) in 2010, listed 102 Islamic boarding schools
as radical.

If this data is examined thoroughly, the 102 schools listed as radical are located in 15 provinces. The influence and networks of these Islamic boarding schools to the mainstream, moderate Islamic boarding schools are questionable. Another analysis shows that mainstream Islamic boarding schools do not or have not been contaminated by the radical movement.

Criteria used to classify one Islamic boarding school as radical should also be examined. For example, MAN I Serang Banten is categorized as a radical Islamic boarding school simply due to the fact that Bali bomber Imam Samudra studied at the institute. The reality is that MAN I was not what influenced the terrorist. It is also incorrect that madrasah and Islamic boarding schools are the same. As an Islamic educational institution, a madrasah is entirely obedient to government regulations.

Contradictory to these findings, a research conducted by the Indonesian Religious Affairs Ministry uses a framework based on the ideological history of pesantren, namely the ideology of Islamic boarding schools that are based upon tawassuth (middle way), tasammuh (tolerance) and tawazun (equilibirium). Most of the Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia, especially those affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), prefer salafiyah as an ideological basis for science-based classics and ahlussunah wal jama’ah as the methodology in the teachings.

The characteristics of moderate Islamic boarding schools are basically the same as findings of my historiographical quest concerning Sunni Islam from the perspective of Western scholars, namely: 1) no rebels against the established system; 2) rigidity and determination to maintain unity against all forms of disintegration and chaos; 3) preference for the concept of the congregation, and the supremacy of the sunnah, more widely known as the ahlussunah wal jama’ah; 4) adherence to the middle ground, tawassuth, striking a balance between theology and extreme politics (Khawarij) and Shia; 5) to manifest themselves as “a normative society” by maintaining the principle of spiritual freedom and upholding ethical standards and sharia.

In our studies, pesantrens are mostly moderate; only 0.38 percent of existing 27,218 Islamic boarding schools share potentially radical ideology.

Strategic steps to counter radicalism have been so far taken:
(1) dissemination of moderate thinking. This activity is carried out in several places through dialogue, focus groups and seminars. Moderate thinking in Islamic boarding schools is an example of one topic being raised. (2) Research Action. This activity is carried out through assistance to pesantrens that are potentially radical. One example of this is the action research in economics mentoring at al-Islam pesantren in Lamongan, East Java. Through these action research activities, a shift in ways of thinking toward openness and acceptance of others has occurred.

In the future, affirmative action is still needed both in the form of dissemination of ideas and development of moderate education in Islamic boarding schools that are assumed to be radical, more specifically in the development of national education standards.

Abdurrahman Mas’ud, Jakarta - UCLA graduate, is head for the Religious Education Research and Development Center at the Religious Affairs Ministry.

Islam, the internet and privacy-Dissidence and discretion

FOR young people of Muslim heritage, the internet can either be a deadly temptation or a breath of fresh air. At worst, for some frustrated kids with time on their hands, it opens a window into a world of extremism where all moderating influences from real life (parents, teachers, imams) can be cast aside.

For other Muslim kids, however, the web seems to offer an escape of a healthier kind. As a counterpoint to a real-world existence where they are obliged to think, pray and behave by hard-and-fast rules, the net can bring them into a modern or post-modern realm where many different ideas and cultural styles can be questioned, discussed, discarded or combined. That was the experience of Amir Ahmad Nasr, a young writer and entrepreneur of Sudanese origin who was one of the participants in this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF), an annual human-rights festival that attracts brave and enterprising opponents of despotism from all over the world.  At this year’s forum, the opportunities and perils of the net, and how to keep legitimate private communications safe, were much on people’s minds.

Back to Mr Nasr for a second. His own white-knuckle journey through ideological cyber-space is neatly encapsulated in the title of a book he has just written: "My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind—and Doubt Freed My Soul.” Not only did his surfings take him on a circuitous mind journey of his own, from conventional Islam to atheism to a sort of freewheeling Sufism. He also used the web to encourage lots of his young compatriots, whether in Sudan or in the diaspora, to explore new ways of thinking about their country, the universe and everything else. This was done through a blog called the “Sudanese Thinker” which he wound down in late 2012, having revealed his real name a year earlier.

As Mr Nasr acknowledges, there are times when he wants his pronouncements to be as public as possible, and other times when he needs to keep his communications private. It is, of course, comparatively safe to be an anonymous “Sudanese thinker” when you live, as he he does, in the Asia-Pacific region, thousands of miles away from the homeland. But he takes web-security advice and assumes that, despite his best efforts, most of his private e-mails are being read. Many of his compatriots back home are less sophisticated, and more vulnerable. A wave of arrests in Khartoum last summer was probably made easier by poor cyber-security.  All the authorities needed to do was get hold of a few e-mail passwords; that would have enabled them to see inside lots of digital inboxes and get an idea of who was promoting subversive ideas.

To protect his compatriots from their own impulsiveness, Mr Nasr strongly hesitates to start an e-conversation on a sensitive religious or political topic with a person living in Sudan, though he will reply if somebody else starts the chat.  One topic that is particularly risky for open-minded young Muslim Sudanese to discuss frankly in their e-conversations is secularism: the idea that the state should be religiously neutral. (Ironically, secularism is entirely consistent with devout adherence to Islam; but for those who believe in explicitly Islamic governance and law, the word is anathema.) Any Khartoum-based believer in secular principles would be well advised to keep his communications as private as possible.

In a previous generation, dissidents testing the limits of thought and speech in authoritarian countries used to beg their friends in freer places for printing presses; then it was laptops; now the mostly badly needed thing may be help with keeping their musings private when they want to.  “Our community of human-rights activists are infants in this field,” says Thor Halvorssen, the founder of the OFF.  "A government can easily shop around for software to snoop on its opponents, but it is harder for those opponents to protect themselves."

Just to prove the point, an Angolan corruption-fighter attending the Oslo forum, Rafael Marques de Morais, had his laptop inspected by Jacob Appelbaum, a fellow participant in the OFF who knows a lot about cyber-security and likes to help dissidents. His diagnosis? The PC had been infected with specially designed malware, resistant to most firewalls, that was taking snapshots of his screen every few seconds. Whether the preferred topic is malpractice in high places or new interpretations of Islam, any blogger subjected to that degree of surveillance would be well advised to mind what he types.

Not that anybody raised in the hazardous world of dissident politics in the Middle East expects to keep communications private. Ahmed Benchemsi, a veteran blogger from Morocco, says he was brought up to assume that all the family's telephone conversations were intercepted, even banal discussions about forthcoming weddings. But there were moments in his journalistic activities when he would have liked a degree of privacy to protect his interlocutors.

In the end, as one participant in the forum quipped, there are times when the ancient search for philosophical truth and the modern concern of cyber-security seem to converge. That remark came from Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister-in-exile of Tibet. When using his PC, he said, he reminds himself of the need to avoid opening strange attachments which may contain deadly viruses or spying software. He does so by recalling one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism: non-attachment.The Economist