Religious Moderation in the Halaqah Education System in West Sumatra, Indonesia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37680/adabiya.v21i1.8116Keywords:
Halaqah, Islamic Education, Minangkabau, Religious Moderation, SurauAbstract
This study examines the construction and reproduction of religious moderation within the Minangkabau surau–halaqah–pesantren tradition by conceptualizing halaqah as an epistemic system rather than merely a pedagogical method. Employing a qualitative interpretivist–constructivist approach through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study investigates how religious knowledge, authority, values, and social dispositions are internalized through educational practices in West Sumatra. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis involving tuanku, ustaz, santri, and pesantren administrators across five areas of West Sumatra. The findings reveal that halaqah functions as a socio-epistemic mechanism integrating ta‘līm (knowledge transmission), tarbiyah (character formation), and tazkiyah (spiritual cultivation) through talaqqi, kitab kuning learning, sanad continuity, and adab-based interaction. Through Berger and Luckmann’s social construction framework and Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, religious moderation is produced as an embodied disposition rather than an externally imposed doctrine. Furthermore, the Minangkabau surau represents an indigenous epistemic field where ABS–SBK (Adat Basandi Syarak, Syarak Basandi Kitabullah) mediates the relationship between local cultural rationality and transregional Islamic intellectual networks. This study contributes to Islamic education and religious moderation scholarship by demonstrating that moderate religious orientations emerge through historically embedded processes of knowledge reproduction, ethical internalization, and contextual interpretation.
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