Religious Education for Aliran Kebatinan Community in Contemporary Indonesia

This paper is a literature review of the fulfillment of the rights of Aliran Kebatinan/Kepercayaan followers, or Penghayat Kepercayaan, to obtain religious education in Indonesia. Aliran Kebatinan or Kebatinan is a religious community that has been discriminated since the Independence of Indonesia. Up to these days, Kebatinan has not been recognized as one of the official religions in Indonesia. Specifically, this study examines two issues, namely; the discrimination experienced by the Kebatinan followers in Indonesia, and the fulfillment of the rights to religious education in accordance with the beliefs of Kebatinan followers. This study revealed two findings; first, Kebatinan still becomes a marginalized minority community in Indonesia even though the followers of this belief is quite large. The followers of Kebatinan had continuously been discriminated until 2017 when the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia recognized their rights. Second, since the Independence of Indonesia until 2016, the Aliran Kebatinan community was “forced” to learn other religious education such as; Islam, Christian, Hinduism, Buddhism or Confucianism at schools even though they were not the adherents of one of these six official religions. In 2006, the Government of the Republic of Indonesia through the Ministry of Education and Culture issued a regulation on religious education in formal education institution. Finally, the students who are the followers of Kebatinan were given religious education named “Religious Education”. Thus, the Government of Indonesia began to have a commitment to provide religious education services for adherents of Kebatinan in Indonesia