Negotiating Religious and Cultural Tolerance through Intercultural Encounters in an Indonesian Islamic Boarding School

Abstrak

Religious and cultural tolerance in faith-based education is often examined through curriculum, leadership, and institutional values, while less attention has been paid to how tolerance is practiced through daily encounters with religious and cultural differences. This study examined how tolerance was cultivated at Ummushabri Islamic Boarding School in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, where Muslim students and educators interacted with non-Muslim foreign teachers and international participants. Using a qualitative case study design, data were collected from January to October 2024 through semi-structured interviews with 26 purposively selected participants, classroom and extracurricular observations, and document analysis. The data were analyzed thematically and triangulated across sources. The findings showed that tolerance was practiced through the interaction of tolerance-related curriculum, everyday encounters with foreign educators, extracurricular and international activities, and institutional support. These encounters occurred within maintained Islamic institutional boundaries and were not uniformly accepted, as concerns from some teachers and parents revealed continuing negotiations over religious differences. The study conceptualized tolerance as an institutional–relational process in which institutional arrangements structured opportunities for intercultural contact, while everyday relationships gave tolerance a concrete social form. The findings contribute to discussions of tolerance in Islamic and faith-based education by demonstrating how engagement with religious difference can occur within a clearly defined religious environment without requiring the suspension of institutional identity.

Kata kunci

• Faith-based education
• Intercultural encounters
• Interreligious tolerance
• Islamic boarding school
• Pesantren
• Religious Education
• Religious Studies
• Art and Humanities (miscellaneous)
• Social Sciences (miscelenious)