Female Religious Authority among Tarbiyah Communities in Contemporary Indonesia

Abstract

This article analyses female religious authority among members of Indonesia’s Tarbiyah movement. It focuses on how women members at the lower levels of the organisational hierarchy of the Tarbiyah movement regularly and continuously build their own religious authority through liqo (weekly religious trainings) and how they perceive and practice religious authority in the liqo designed by the movement. This article argues that liqo is used not only as a means for developing members’ Islamic knowledge and religiosity, but most importantly for building its members’ religious authority. However, although women joined liqo in a very disciplined way to have more authority in their community, religious authority generally is still dominated by men. The only religious authority that these female members have comes through the structure for becoming a mentor in the liqo.