Making a difference - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 11: Getting Smart
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Megan Kinninment
MAGGI ADMITS IT IS AN IDEALISTIC PLAN, but she too is the product of sponsored education. Born in Didcot, middle England, she was the first in her family to stay in school past the age of thirteen and was later given a grant to attend teachers' college. "I am so grateful for my education," she says. "I was the first of my generation to learn Latin, to learn French. You could have a discussion with the headmaster about why we are here. My education taught me to think and question life."
Religion was also a formative part of Maggi's childhood. "I wanted to join the missionaries when they came to town when I was about thirteen," she recalls. "I went to a meeting. It was a bit like a Billy Graham meeting. Missionaries in those days went to Africa to teach the poor little black children about Jesus so they wouldn't be condemned to eternal hell because they were heathen," she laughs.
At eighteen, she started to question the ideology of the religion in which she had been indoctrinated. "Why such a cruel God?" she began to ask after witnessing disasters such as a train crash at Didcot that killed many. "I started seeing things happening in the world, things that you couldn't put down to man, volcanoes and things," she explains. As she surveyed such suffering, it was humanity that emerged as saviour, not some abstract god.
Now her spiritual reference points are inspired by the great revolutions, and revolutionaries, of modern world history. She is more likely to quote Mahatma Gandhi than the Bible, worship Nelson Mandela over Jesus and cite the crash of the Berlin Wall as a sacred event in quasi-religious tones.
However, Maggi has been cautioned not to apply missionary zeal or make naïve generalisations over religious education in Indonesia; not to view Muslim students attending a madrasah (religious school) as potential little Amrozis, and not to present the West as the saviour of the Muslim world.
A volunteer working at the State Islamic University in Jakarta wrote to Maggi in 2004: "When I read your letter about the peace school I couldn't help but be saddened by your brief and inaccurate summary of Islamic education in Indonesia. Not all pesantren (boarding school) and madrasah breed terrorists. Far from it, many of them are working very hard indeed to ensure that their students receive a well-rounded education with a strongly moral and ethical basis in Islam, a very peaceful religion."
The volunteer explained that many of her university colleagues were educated in such schools and "utterly condemn the behaviour of terrorists who carry out their bombings and killings in the name of Islam, when, in fact, Islam teaches peace and tolerance. Unfortunately, many pesantren and madrasah suffer from severe under-funding and low-quality teaching."
Maggi, however, argues it is chronic poverty and lack of opportunity that makes students vulnerable to teachers like Bashir and that is what she is trying to change – not the religion itself.
EDUCATION AS A TOOL TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY is also recognised by Australia's foreign aid agency, AusAID, which spent $12.6 million on basic education (primary and junior secondary) in Indonesia in 2003-04. In 2005, AusAID began a $30 million, five-year assistance program specifically for Islamic schools with the aim of upgrading teacher skills, improving school management and providing essential education resources.
"Indonesia's educational outcomes are poor by regional standards," states the Australian Agency for International Development in its 2003-04 annual report. "Many teachers lack formal qualifications, educational resources are scarce, education in life skills and vocational subjects is very limited, drop-out rates are high and there is uncertainty about the roles of national and local governments in the resourcing and regulation of education. Poor non-government schools, most of them Islamic, suffer from a particularly severe mismatch between the capacities of their teachers and the needs of their students."
While Maggi's peace-school idea appears to marry in with AusAID's aims and objectives, there is little scope for partnership between the government foreign-aid organisation and individuals, such as Maggi, who may have the money to offer but no one on the ground in Bali to facilitate the use of it.
To gain AusAID funding and assistance, a project has to have the support and backing of an accredited non-government organisation (NGO), of which there are none operating in Bali in the field of education.
MAGGI LUKE'S INITIAL REACTIONS TO THE BALI BOMBINGS was a textbook study of this Bali Disaster Information advice offered by the Department of Foreign Affairs to victims and their families as to what they might experience:
Shock: disbelief at what had happened, numbness, the disaster may seem unreal, no understanding of what has happened.
Fears: for the safety of family and friends, or death, of a similar disaster happening again.
Anger: at who caused it or allowed it to happen, outrage at what had happened, at the injustice and senselessness of it all.
Before the peace-school idea took form, her struggle to make sense of the bombings led to rage against the Howard Government's decision to enter the Iraq War. Trained for protest from when she was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Maggi signed petitions, marched in peace protests and rallied in the media against the war. She even joined a "peace bus" convoy that travelled from Byron Bay to Canberra and heckled John Howard in the Parliamentary gallery.
Hanabeth, too, was outspoken about the Iraq War. After gaining an international media profile through the photo that first appeared in The Australian, followed by Time magazine, she debated British Prime Minister Tony Blair on BBC television, urging him not to perpetuate the terror by invading Iraq.
The Lukes believe the 2005 London and Bali bombings vindicate their warnings that the war on terror has not only failed, it is causing more retaliatory attacks. But this vindication offers no relief.
"You never get over something like this," said Hanabeth, after hearing the news of the October 2005 Bali bombings. "The Coalition of the Willing has to realise the war on terror is not working," she said. "Violence is never the answer. The anger towards the West is just escalating."
In the aftermath of both the 2005 London and Bali attacks, Maggi Luke has an even stronger resolve to support the Bali Peace School – but the plan has now stalled because of Indonesian politics.
To co-ordinate the funding of the school, Maggi had searched for, and found, a reputable charity based in Bali that was created after the 2002 bombings, founded by members of Rotary International. The YKIP (Humanitarian Action for Mother Earth) agreed to provide a secure and transparent conduit for donations from the international community towards the school. However, Maggi received an email from the Annika Linden Foundation that oversees the administration of YKIP's work, telling her that the project could not go ahead as planned – because the peace school was religious.
"One of our major principles is that we are a non-religious organisation. We currently fund several educational projects ... but we are careful not to fund any religious schools. A fundamental principle of your school is that the children should wear Islamic dress and participate in Islamic studies. Although we do not wish to be backers of the project, we wish you every success in your efforts," wrote a representative of the foundation, Mark Weingard.
Seated at her computer, below a wall plastered with press clippings of Hanabeth, Maggi reads the email out aloud. Her exhaustion and frustration are palpable. She is convinced that her plan for a peaceful cultural exchange between young Muslims and Westerners could work.
With private initiatives such as Maggi's having no place within AusAID policy and without the assistance of YKIP, or another NGO on the ground in Bali, the peace-school plan remains on hold. But Maggi is not giving up. She intends to now approach "moderate" Muslim organisations within Australia and England to see if they can help.
"This is an idea that could develop over years," she insists. Surely, after everything her family has experienced, if she can find it in her heart to support the Muslim culture, others can.
"If these people get to know each other, then nobody will want to kill each other," she says, exasperated that such a simple idea could become so very complicated. She dryly cites another simple idea that humanity seems to be following to the letter: "An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind." ♦