ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a notorious pesantren (Islamic boarding school) near Surakarta (also known as Solo) in Indonesia, referred to here by the pseudonym ‘al-Firdaus’. This community has been labelled ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘extremist’ and its leaders do not agree with gender equality in a conceptual sense. Despite this, women at al-Firdaus now increasingly stress the value of power. They have cleverly used the movement for the implementation of Islamic sharia in Indonesia to take some first steps toward power, even though syariah is widely seen as being anti-empowerment and a source of oppression for women. The pesantren women have, for example, pushed for female students to be managed by the women themselves. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the women of al-Firdaus have said ‘no’ to a system that is purely and unconditionally male-dominated, despite centuries of conservative tradition to the contrary.
