1 1 THE EXPERIENCE OF ADOLESCENT STUDENTS IN MODERNIST ISLAMIC BOARDING SCHOOLS IN WEST SUMATRA, INDONESIA 1 Lyn Parker lparker@arts.uwa.edu.au Asian Studies, M211 School of Social and Cultural Studies The University of Western Australia The global growth of Islamic education is an important part of the worldwide process of Islamisation or Islamic renewal (tajdid). Media images of young students in madrasa, rocking over their Qur’an as they “mindlessly” learn to recite it, combine with respectable intelligence reports of the involvement of Islamic boarding schools in acts of violent terrorism (e.g. ICG 2006 and 2007) to give Islamic schooling a bad name in the West. However, it is important to understand the diversity and the growing popularity of Islamic schooling. In Indonesia, Islamic education has become an increasingly popular choice for Indonesian parents over the last decade or more (Diknas 2006; Jackson and Parker 2008: 4-5). In Indonesia, scholarly accounts of Islamic education have focused on pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) in Java, and on pesantren where a traditionalist version of Islam was reproduced (e.g. Dhofier 1999). However, in West Sumatra, where I have 1 This paper was presented to the 17 th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Melbourne 1-3 July 2008. It has been peer reviewed via a double blind referee process and appears on the Conference Proceedings Website by the permission of the author, who retains copyright. This paper may be downloaded for fair use under the Copyright Act (1954), its later amendments and other relevant legislation.