Andreas D. Arditya, Jakarta – Following in the footsteps of other Muslim-majority regions in the country, the Jakarta administration will issue a regulation requiring Muslim school students to learn to read and write passages from the Koran.
Governor Fauzi Bowo said his administration would work with the provincial office of the Religious Affairs Ministry to draft a gubernatorial decree on the Koran proficiency.
"I will sign the decree as soon as it is ready," Fauzi said during the launch of a Koran recitation campaign at At-Tin Mosque at Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) in East Jakarta on Tuesday.
The campaign was organized by the Religious Affairs Ministry. Ministry provincial office head Sutami said that achieving proficiency in reading and writing passages from the Koran would be a prerequisite of applying for public and private Islamic schools.
"Our objective is to motivate Muslim children to spend time reading the Koran rather than wasting their time messing around and watching TV," he said later on Tuesday.
Sutami said the program would only target young children at first. "Later we will make it mandatory for people of all ages," he added.
A draft of the gubernatorial decree is being prepared by a special team formed by the ministry's Jakarta office and the Jakarta Mental and Spiritual Agency. "We expect to have it ready for the governor to sign later this year," Sutami said.
A number of local administrations have issued regulations requiring students to master reading and writing passages from the Koran. They have said that achieving such skills could help them win places at schools.
Koran recitation tests are mandatory in regencies and municipalities in West Sumatra, West Java, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, Southeast Sulawesi and West Nusa Tenggara.
In addition, 19 municipalities and regencies have issued their own sharia-based ordinances, following in the path of Solok regency in West Sumatra, which imposed a sharia-based bylaw in 2001.
Rumadi, a pluralism advocate at the Jakarta-based think tank Wahid Institute, said the proposed ordinance infringed on children's basic rights.
"It's certainly a good thing to motivate children to master Koran literacy, but it's a totally different thing to make it part of the conditions that would enable them to pursue a higher education," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
The Wahid Institute is a research institute founded by late former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid to promote religious pluralism in Indonesia.
In a survey it conducted last year on the sharia-inspired bylaws, the institute found that many local ordinances violated the law on regional administrations by issuing legislation that contradicted higher laws and the Constitution.
Rumadi lambasted the plan for having a bearing on public elementary school entrance opportunities. "It would be acceptable if a private Islamic school did such a thing. But it would amount to discrimination if they imposed this on public schools. You know there are children who subscribe to different faiths," he said.
Rumadi called on the public and religious leaders in particular to reject the plan.
He said the proposed decree could be one of Fauzi's ploys to win over Muslim voters in the 2012 gubernatorial election. "But I'll give him a fair warning; this plan could backfire," he said.