Contemporary Indonesian Pesantren Novels:
Articulating Muslim Women Existence and Ideal Male-female
Relationship
Sri Muniroch
1
and Asni Furaida
1
1
Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Jalan Gajayana 50 Malang 65145 Indonesia
Keywords:
Contemporary Indonesian Pesantren Novels, Ideal Male-Female Relationship, Muslim Women, Women
Existence.
Abstract: Gender issues in pesantren literature have become an important topic through which readers of
contemporary Indonesian literature find ideas about Muslim women in Indonesia. Despite various
perspective of gender among Muslim in Indonesia, some pesantren writers offer their specific ideas about
Indonesian Muslim women. This article aims to find out the ideas, especially about Muslim women’s
existence and Muslim male-female ideal relationship the pesantren writers present in their works. In the
perspective of ethical literary criticism, the analysis explores the ethical and moral ideas concerning Muslim
women’s existence and ideal Muslim male-female relationship.
1 INTRODUCTION
Indonesian literature in the first period of twenty
first century recognized a large number of novelists
with pesantren backgrounds. They produced new
creative works, followed by their popularity and
influence on other media, such as film and
television, (Hoesterey and Clark, 2012; Rani, 2012).
The emergence of the large number of novels by
pesantren writers indicates their significance in
Indonesian literature and Muslim society as well.
The factors influencing the emergence of such
novels are the celebration of new freedoms by
Muslims after the suppression of the New Order era,
the emergence of a new Muslim middle class, the
commodification of Islam, and the revival of
religious expression (Hoesterey and Clark, 2012;
Fealy, 2008). Previous studies on pesantren novels
concern with patriarchal Islam, gender, Muslim
identity, popular culture, Islamic literature in general
and traditional Islamic poems (Abdullah,1996;
Candraningrum, 2007; Arimbi, 2009; Arnez, 2009;
Hellwig, 2011;Dewi, 2011;Rani, 2012). The studies
conclude that similar to other Islam-labelled
products (books, films, television programs, and
fashion) pesantren novels are produced for economic
and political reasons. Economically, they are closely
related to consumer capitalism, Islamic culture
industry, cosmopolitan culture and popular taste
(Howell, 2013; Hasan, 2009; Jones, 2010).
Politically, they are linked to the government’s
policy on democratic freedom that gives people
freedom of expression, including religious
expression (Heriyanto 2008; Widodo, 2008).
Gender issues as one of the main concerns of
pesantren novels are also found in the works of three
prolific writers, that is, Habiburrahman El Shirazy,
A. Fuadi, and Abidah El Khalieqy. The three writers
share the same ideas of a worldwide Muslim
community and devotion to Islam as the main
principle of life in their novels, that is, Shirazy’s The
Romance (2010), Fuadi’s Negeri 5 Menara (2009),
and Khalieqy’s Mataraisa (2012). As pesantren
alumni, they also share similar ideas and experience
about pesantren. Pesantren with various values,
including gender relation, can be found along their
stories that each focuses on different themes but
with the same spirit to proselytize Islam among
young Indonesian Muslims who are in the stage of
finding self-identity. In this stage, the need of
knowledge of male-female relationship is of utmost.
Hence, male-female relationship is the most
requested topic and the three writers discuss the
topic specifically among other topics they write. In
The Romance, for example, Habiburrahman El
Shirazy mainly talk about the way man finds good
way to be good and successful person in his life. As
generally in his novels, this novel also tells about
love romance story. The love story is included in the
576
Muniroch, S. and Furaida, A.
Contemporary Indonesian Pesantren Novels: Articulating Muslim Women Existence and Ideal Male-female Relationship.
DOI: 10.5220/0009912105760583
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 576-583
ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9
Copyright
c
2020 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
pursuit of a good life. Romantic relation between a
man and a woman is still considered important that
determines the happiness of their lives. Along the
story, the value about male-female relationship is
slipped but it still gets important portion among the
love stories.
In this article the discussion of gender issues
focuses on the ethical ideas of the issues. Discussion
of ethical ideas on the life of Muslim women
challenges the thorough explanation of three terms,
that is, ethics, women, and Islam that relate to each
other on the discussion of ethics of gender and
women in Islam. Ethics of gender gives a
perspective on how it is to be women and how it is
to be men ethically and what it is ethical treatment to
women and men. The discussion of women in Islam
relates to how women are viewed in Islam and this
includes the discussion of ethics.
This article aims to explore the ethical ideas
of gender issues presented in the three novels and
specifically focuses on women existence and ideal
male-female relations. It is expected to give some
perspectives about the ethical ideas of gender issues
in pesantren novels and open other perspectives
about the same topics or other topics in the study of
pesantren novels or literature.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Ethics and gender in western tradition is explained
by Parsons (2002) who tries to make relation
between ethics that has long established in the
tradition of western thinking with the notions in
gender theory and gender studies. Parsons defines
ethics as having three features, that is, ethics as a
discourse concerning good that should be learned by
participating in the discourse ourselves, ethics as a
textual field in which our lives follow its thinking,
ethics as a deliberate practice that gives a way to
shape our lives because ethics gives a bridge
between our lives and what is called good. To think
with gender leads to the way of thinking about what
it is to be a woman and what it is to be a man
(Parsons, 2002: 9-17). Gender issues are closely
related to the discussion of ethics in that the issues
challenge almost all dimensions of ethical thinking.
Ethics relate to gender issues in the question of how
the notions of good are defined in the context of men
and women’s reality (Parsons, 2002: 4).
The ethics of gender in the western
perspectives are here related to the view of Islam on
gender issues.Many Muslim scholars have paid
specific attentions on how Islam views gender
issues. One of the prominent discussions is
concerned with the interpretation of an important
verse of the Qur’an describing the relationship
between men and women that is proposed by
Chaudhry (2013). She focuses on the two different
interpretations of the verse (Q 4: 34), that is “Islamic
tradition” interpretation and gender-egalitarian
interpretation. The general interpretation (more
according to pre-colonial Muslim scholars or Islamic
tradition) of the verse into “Men are qawwamun (in
authority) over women, because God has preferred
some other and because they spend of their
wealth….” is interpreted in the perspectives of
egalitarian ethics. The spot of difference between the
Islamic tradition based and modern interpretation to
the verse is on the word qawwamuna that in
traditional interpretation it is interpreted as “having
authority to” while in egalitarian interpretation the
meaning does not suggest authority but equality so
that there is no subjugation of women. Chaudhry
focuses her discussion on the marital violence that is
legitimate based on the Islamic tradition
interpretation. She questions the ethical problems of
the domestic violence and the answer is to bring
egalitarian “that treat men and women with equal
human worth” (Chaudhry, 2013: 8). This also deals
with hermeneutical negotiation that meets its
correspondence to a gender-egalitarian Islam that
find its way to the fact about the compatibility
between Islam and modernity.
Concerning the position of men and women
in Islam, Amina Wadud (1999) criticises the
interpretation of traditional Muslim scholars to the
Qur’an that only uses verse per verse interpretation
from the beginning to the end of the Holy Book.
This kind of interpretation ignores the relation
between a verse to the others, among all the verses
and a verse to the whole meaning of the Qur’an. It is
not a holistic interpretation so that it could miss the
whole meaning of the Holy Book. Similarly, the
method that relates the various ideas, syntactic
structure, themes and the related principles is not
conducted. In this respect, the kind of interpretation
is only partial that the result is questionable. Modern
Muslim scholars inquire the traditional approach to
the interpretation of the position of women in Islam
in relation to men. However, the approach is still
used by most of Muslim scholars at present. Ziba
Mir-Hosseini (1999) in her study reports that one of
the approaches used by Shia religious leaders in Iran
to discuss gender issues is that of traditional
patriarchal interpretation that demonstrates
complementary but unequal relation between men
and women. This approach clearly represents the
traditional approach to the interpretation of the
Qur’an. One of the verses that arises so many
discussions about the position of women and men in
Islam is Q 4: 34.
Contemporary Indonesian Pesantren Novels: Articulating Muslim Women Existence and Ideal Male-female Relationship
577
Related to the context of Indonesian Muslim
women in pesantren, gender equality has obtained its
place in pesantren sphere. Ismah (2016) in her study
finds that the existence of female ulama is identified
as destabilising the male domination. Female ulama
have existed in the history of pesantren but their
authority has not been as strong as male ulama. In
contemporary development the condition has
changed in that the female ulama have now obtained
increasing supports from male ulama to get their
religious, social and cultural, and institutional
authority. In related context, in her study of Muslim
girls and religious authority in a Modernist Islamic
boarding school in Indonesia, Hefner (2016)
concludes that in spite of the decreasing interest of
girls to attend modernist Islamic boarding school
whose aim is to mould the future female leaders
even shows a positive change in that Muslim women
or in this study Muhammadiyah women involve in
broader scope and proceed to the higher ranks of
various social and educational fields. The movement
places women in to the position of higher education
and profession that show the fact about the role of
education as a powerful force for gender change and
their potential roles for transformation.
3 METHODOLOGY
This study is a literary criticism and uses ethical
criticism as the literary theory to analyse the novels.
Ethical criticism is employed to explore the ethical
ideas of women existence and ideal male-female
relationship. Ethical criticism is concerned with the
ethical and moral values of literary works and how
the values affect the readers (Gregory, 2010; Booth,
2005). As a literary criticism it assesses value
systems (Womack, 2002: 106-107). The significance
of ethical criticism has been shown in many studies.
Marshall W. Gregory (2010) shows ethical criticism
can even work to a literary work that does not
apparently show any ethical references. Stephen K.
George (1997) finds out that in spite of bad
experience the character still has responsibility and
moral progress at the end. This insight can only be
done by the application of ethical perspective to
literature. In another study James Phelan (1998)
analyses the ethical perspectives on the choice of the
main character to kill her children rather than let
them return to slavery. The choice is considered
beyond the standard ethical judgement, but it
clarifies that slavery is really an evil, not any more
an abstract evil. Ethical criticism enables critics to
explore such ideas.
4 ANALYSIS
4.1 Women Existence
The female characters in the novels by the
three writers are involved much in gender issues at
different levels. The issues lead to the identification
of women existence because when women fall
victim to the gender issues the result is always the
comparison between men and women and the
question about the existence of women compared to
men. The three novels have female characters with
different background and character.
The main female characters in The Romance
are Zizi and Silvie, young women with different
family backgrounds but a similar interest in Islamic
teaching and its application in everyday life. Zizi is a
daughter of a Kiai or Muslim scholar and pesantren
owner. She is a hafidhah or a woman who
memorizes the Qur’an and studies Islamic teachings
seriously in a pesantren since she was a child. Silvie
is a daughter of a rich businessman, a university
student and very fashionable but religious. The
choice of these two different characters is not
without any reason. The two women are involved in
romantic relationships with the same man, but at the
end of the story Sivie is killed in an accident. It
seems that the writer gives his preference to a
woman with a very religious background while also
givingrespect to the woman with non-specific
religious background but very religious. Although
the writer never directly talks about the existence of
women in the novel, through the main female
characters, the existence of women can be identified
from the novel. His idea on this matter can be
explored from the way he presents his female
characters, the way they build relation with the male
characters, and how the male characters treat them
as women.
In The Romance the writer presents the
female characters as bright and respected. As a
daughter of a Kiai and a hafidhah, Zizi has a very
high position as a woman in Muslim society.
Similarly, as a daughter of a respectable
businessman, a university student, and having good
religious knowledge, Silvie is also considered as
having high position. Both main female characters in
the novel are presented in a socially good position
and are described as ideal women to whom the male
characters idolize. Their relation with the male
characters is in equal position. Zizi, in spite of a
woman coming from a pesantren family she can
express her ideas freely among the men of the family
members. She also builds an equal relationship with
other male characters or even the other male
characters put her in a higher place than their own
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due to her position as the daughter of a Kiai. The
members of pesantren owner family have privileges
and honour from the society. In the relation between
man and woman, Zizi places herself as equal to
them, even in personal matters, such as marriage
proposal. It is actually rare in Indonesian people in
general, except in certain ethnics that women
propose for marriage but Zizi does it. The writer
does not consider the common custom in Indonesian
society but the Islamic rules in proposing a marriage.
Here, the writer also shows one of the Islamic rules
that are new and not recognized by Indonesian
people in general. This also shows that Islam treats
women and men as equal. They have the same and
equal rights, even in a very personal matter, such as
marriage proposal. The male characters and also the
other characters treat Zizi as a respected woman.
They listen to her and respect her. Correspondingly,
Silvieis also presented as a respected woman. Even
she has been treated badly by one of the male
characters, it is not because she is not respected but
the male character, Burhan, is actually a bad guy.
Silvie is Syamsul’s, the main male character, fiancée
who is finally dead because of an accident. The
accident leads to the engagement between Syamsul
and Zizi. The two women become models of good
women in Muslim society. Both of them represent
women from completely different background but
the same interest in Islam. They are the
representation of Muslim women in current
Indonesian Muslim society. Not only Zizi and Silvie,
but also all other female characters are treated
respectfully. None of them get bad treatment from
male characters. This shows that women described
in The Romance have equal rights and are respected
as men.
In Negeri 5 Menara Alif’s mother and Ustad
Khalid’s wife and daughter, Sarah, represent female
characters. Fuadi represents female characters that
also play important roles in the development of the
novel. Alif’s mother, Amak, is a very strong and
tough woman. For Alif, she is the best model of
woman. Compared to his father, Amak has stronger
power that finally makes Alif goes to pesantren.
With the background of Minangkabau culture that is
not patriarchal but matriarchal, Amak’s role in the
family is very significant. However, there is no sign
that the father’s role is not respected. The writer who
is also the narrator of the novel, describes Amak as
not only strong but also with all character that
supports her strength. She is discipline, self-reliant,
determined and decisive. Supported by the cultural
privilege as a Minangkabau woman who holds the
power of the family line, Amak is an innate strong
woman. The cultural privilege only supports because
personally Amak is a woman with strong character
who has great concern with the development of the
people, not only her family but also her community
and human in general. Such concern is represented
in all aspects of her life, as a member of a big
family, a mother, a wife, a teacher, a colleague, and
a member of society. She is concerned with the
character building and moral development of her
children, her family, her students, her colleagues,
and even her superordinates. She is a very brave
woman. Concerning with character and morality, she
has no accuse if immorality happens around her. It
starts from her strong personality that enables her to
do something that not many people have courage to
do that, which is, challenging whoever doing
something immoral, even her colleagues and her
superordinates. In a condition where people choose
to save themselves more than refining the condition
that may cause negative impacts personally, Amak
chooses to be in front of them to refine the
condition. She does not care who does that and she
is not afraid of any consequences that may be
harmful for her personally. But instead of getting the
consequences, Amak can motivate other people to
do the same, refining the condition and their
morality. For her family and her children Amak is a
model they use as a patron of doing good things in
their lives. Amak motivates Alif very much.
Whenever he loses his spirit of study, he remembers
Amak’s strong spirit in facing her life. Other female
characters, Ustad Khalid’s wife and daughter
represent women in pesantren environment. They
have only small role in the novel but significantly
present the writer’s presentation of women. As a
wife and daughter of an Ustad in pesantren, they do
the roles perfectly. They do not much involve in the
pesantren business but give big support for their
husband and father to be great ustad with total
dedication, ignoring their worldly needs to be
successful in general image. For Ustad Khalid,
dedication to the pesantren is a life choice, it is his
dedication to education and Islam. Without
considering his economic success, he devotes his
knowledge and energy to pesantren. His wife and
daughter fully support his choice. The support is
very valuable for Ustad Khalid to dedicate himself
to pesantren. Women’s roles in supporting men’s
career are considered very important and they must
support to each other. The description shows us that
women and men in this novel exist side by side in
complete harmony. Amak is a teacher and Ustad
Khalid’s wife is a housewife. Both of them play
their roles harmoniously.
Different from the two novels,
Mataraisa
questions and corrects many things about the
existence of women. Mataraisa looks at women
from the eyes of a famous woman writer, Raisa, the
main character of the novel. Her concern with
women inherently appears and integrates with her
Contemporary Indonesian Pesantren Novels: Articulating Muslim Women Existence and Ideal Male-female Relationship
579
personality as a result of long and deep experience
of male-female relationship in her personal life.
Since she was a child she witnesses uneven relation
pattern between her own mother and father. As a
young girl she has realised how man and woman
should relate to each other. Her concern with gender
issues is her innate capacity as a human being and a
woman. Her eyewitness of other women’s bad
experience of gender issues enriches this concern
from time to time. It seems that she was born as a
woman with great concern with her woman fellow’s
condition. As a result, this novel becomes true
portrait of women condition shot by the pure eyes of
a woman with deep and brilliant views of women’s
problem and gender issues.
As a writer, Raisa thinks that her noble duty
is to give enlightenment over the unfair condition for
women. She acknowledges that it is gender issues
that she is familiar with because she is a woman. For
her, it is not related to the label of a feminist, and
more, a liberal feminist. The statement implies that
women will understand their own problems in the
best way. Women can perfectly look into their own
situation. This novel seems a perfect novel to
portrait woman condition since both the writer and
the main character are women.
The representation of women in the novel is
viewed from Islamic perspective. Raisa has
pesantren educational background. As a woman
good in Islamic knowledge, Raisa has ample
capacity to talk about women and their problems in
Islamic perspective. Along the story, she not only
talks about her own problem as a woman, even she
talks more about women’s problem in her society.
She not only discusses the existence of women from
the very basic perspective but also tries to help them
overcome their problems. Her concern with women
includes in her duty of life as a human, a woman,
and a Muslim.
The first thing that Mataraisa questions and
corrects is concerned with the basic creation of
women compared to men. There is a common belief
that women are created from men’s bent rib. This
makes women become subordinate to men because
their function is only to complete men’s existence. A
woman is only a part of a man so that she has no
roles at all except as a complement of men’s
existence. This novel tries to correct that based on
the Qur’an women and men are equally created from
soil through gradual processes. Raisa’s witness of
how her father treats her mother leads her to ask all
the time about the real existence of women
compared to men, including the question about the
creation of human beings. Through Raisa this novel
wants to give appropriate answer for many questions
that have never been answered and still become big
questions for many people. All are basic questions
about the existence of women compared to men.
Another question is about women’s intellectual
capacity. Since a child, Raisa always listens to her
father saying that women’s brain is smaller than
men’s and the quantity of the brain influences the
quality of thinking so that women is considered
having less logical capacity. Raisa cannot accept this
even she is still a child and always refuses when his
father says that her mother is not clever because of
her brain size. Raisa is always so curious about the
truth about the size of women’s brain that finally she
read an article that the size of a cow’s brain is bigger
than a man’s. She is so happy to find the fact and
that she can mock his father to be more stupid than a
cow. One more, this novel tries to correct what
people think in general about women’s capacity of
thinking.
Clarifying the existence of women seems the
main mission of this novel. The creation of men and
women from the same substance, that is, soil, is the
essence of all concepts of the equality between men
and women. God give them distinctions to each of
them. The difference between them does not make
them unequal. They are equal with their own
distinctions, their own excellences by which they
can complete to each other. Women’s excellences
are that they have reproductive organs, they have
honourable positions as the mothers of human
beings, and they are given extraordinary power and
strong mentality. With the excellences women are
truly the mothers of culture and the subjects of
civilization. The excellences require them to access
knowledge to the highest level. The facts of
subordination to women are the results of distortion
to the excellences by some authorities for many
centuries. The facts that women in any situation and
with any background always experience bad and
unequal treatment are undeniable. Raisa in her novel
reveals that not only women from lower class
society experience such bad experience, but those
from upper class society and other milieus with
various background, such as pesantren, Arab culture,
intellectuals, students, artists and those with extreme
religious conception and the others. Raisa is directed
to be for Raisa, her novel is as her efforts to support
the thinking revolution concerning women’s
positions, especially after they reach intellectual and
economic independence and correct interpretation to
the verses of the Qur’an. Raisa always tries to
inseminate her ideas about women’s excellences in
all occasions.
From all of the presentation about women in
the three novels, we can see that the three writers
have no difference in concepts of women existence.
They may present in different ways and different
angles, but they have one similar concept on
women’s excellences.
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The ethics emerges in the novels include the
three dimensions of feminist ethics, that is, ethics of
equality, ethics of difference, and ethics of
liberation. Ethic of equality gives the idea of
goodness in equal relationship among human beings
regardless the gender. Ethics of difference is based
on feminist positive claim to the differences of
women and men. Women and men have natural
differences and distinctive qualities and
characteristics that even can be used to revalue them
as equal or even superior to those of men. Ethics of
liberation involves the notion of goodness in this
ethic is based on the belief that trueness and
goodness are the products of the particular historical
situation, material circumstances and social
conditions in which women and men’s lives are
formed into the roles and activities in order to keep
the good required in the social-economic condition.
The ethics brings a sense of responsibility for
women to shape their own lives and to change the
conditions in which they are living. The expected
result is more humane social relationship for women
and men.
4.2 Ideal Male-female Relationship
The concept of ideal male-female relationship in the
three novels seems refreshed and different from the
old conception of male-female relationship. The
three writers in their own ways present new
conceptions that will open the readers’ minds on
how Muslim men and women should interact and
relate to each other. The three novels seem to
remake and also refine the common concept of
male-female Muslim relationship. The common
concept in general asserts that men are the leaders of
women. This concept denotes that men will have
initiatives of everything and women should follow
men. This concept is redefined in the three novels.
Mataraisa clearly present the redefinition of
male-female relationship. Looking at her parents’
relationship pattern, Raisa learns how women and
men should relate to each other. Her father is typical
old-fashioned Muslim man who holds a belief that
men are superior to women. In relation to his wife he
determines everything and makes his wives only
stay at home and he is responsible to any economic
needs of their households. He believes that women
have no capacity to do something more than those of
domestic affairs. The husband or man in general
determines the relationship pattern between husband
and wife or man and woman. Women have no power
and capacity to determine any affairs, including the
domestic one. In short, women are only subordinates
who have to follow what men want and ask. Women
are only complements and have no important roles
in this world. For Raisa, the relation between her
father and mother gives many lessons and
perspective to redefine the relation pattern between
man and woman. Not only the relation between her
father and mother but also the polygamy in her
father’s households gives perspectives of an ideal
relationship between men and women. Raisa
witnesses how women in polygamist family feel
from the very inside hearts of her two mothers. They
can live peacefully because of their sincerity and
compliance to accept the condition. But the fact that
her mother always fell unhonoured as a woman
because of her father’s treatment cannot be denied.
From the personal experience, Raisa has her ideal
about male and female relationship that she wants to
create in her future and this is what she always
presents in her novels.
For Raisa, ideal male-female relationship lies
on the equality between men and women. Women
and men have the same rights and they are not
superiors and subordinates but equal partners.
Concerning the relation between husbands and
wives, both of them should complete to each other.
A husband and a wife are soul mates that will find a
part of him in her and vice versa a part of her in him.
Nothing is less and nothing is more. If people want
to know a husband, they can see his wife. It means
that a wife is the reflection of her husband and a
husband is also the reflection of his wife. That is in
accordance with a verse in the Qur’an, “Hunna
libasun lakum wa antum libasun lahunna.” If a
husband is bad so is his wife, if a wife is bad so is
her husband. In this context no one can say that men
are superior to women. In Islam the term ‘kufu’
meaning the same level is known in the context of
marriage. A husband to be and the wife to be are in
the same level. That implies that no husband or wife
is in lower level than the other. Marriage in Islam
will not distort women’s dignity. That is what Raisa
worries about before deciding to get married.
Marriage will make women busy with household
chores, childcare and other domestic affairs. Raisa
criticize the facts that some marriages trap women
into domestic affairs. They have no chance to
improve their capacity because they will be busy
with pregnancy, giving birth, caring for the children
while his husband can improve his career. At the
end, women will only be plunged in the corner of the
house without any hope to improve their lives, while
men will enjoy their successful careers. For Raisa,
the goal of marriage that only produces children
cannot be accepted at all. In a marriage women and
men should improve and develop their capacities
and potentials to make better and more qualified
lives, not only for them but also for their next
generation and society in general.
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She describes how men can voluntarily feel
and think as equal to women through her ideal man,
Fozan Ibadi. For a long time Raisa has been haunted
with her thought and imagination of how man will
treat woman because of her bad experience of seeing
how her father treatsher mother. Due to this thought,
she cannot decide to accept Fozan Ibadi as her
husband while she actually falls in love with him
and even decides not to get married if she cannot
find a man who can treat woman equally as a man.
The thought and imagination influences her so much
and it is a serious problem for her that she cannot
stop being worried about her husband to be. She
finally decides to accept Fozan Ibadi due to his
promise and her belief that Fozan is the man who
will treat her as a human not as a woman that is
different from man. Raisa can see that Fozan Ibadi is
different from her father and believes that he is the
right man who will respect her and understand about
the equality between man and woman. That is the
ideal man she has imagined.
Fozan Ibadi is an ideal man for Raisa. He is a
typical romantic but serious man. Their relationship
is little bit different compared to Indonesian people
in general. Fozan Ibadi is like an admirer for Raisa.
He not only falls in love with Raisa but also
voluntarily wants to be a person who will do
anything for her. Raisa’s character as a woman is
also different from Indonesian women in general. As
a woman, she is very independent, self-confident,
brilliant, educated, easy-going, and determined. The
character of both of them is compatible and
complete to each other. This creates an equal
relationship that is a requirement for an ideal male-
female relationship.
The ideal male-female relationship also
shows ethics of equality, ethics of difference, and
ethics of liberation. There is no fundamental
difference between women and men. Full humanity
brings about a fundamental equality of human
beings that is grounded in the capacity of human
beings for reasoning and for understanding. The
base of the emphasis on the capacity of reason can
be found in the theological insight. The insight is in
line with feminist idea that the common possession
of reason and moral consciousness refers to the
actual capacities of men and women.
Humans are gendered persons and the
abstraction about universal humanity. This becomes
an ethic concerning the differences between men and
women, the existence of gender differences, and the
importance of social order of roles and relationships
that enable our gendered identities to be manifested.
The notion about the naturalness and the function of
social order that enable differences to grow in
balance and in complementary will be the best for
women and men together.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In spite of different representation, the three
pesantren writers demonstrate somewhat similar
ideas about Muslim women existence and the male-
female relationship. The pesantren novels present
the excellence of Muslim women. They are
described as intellectual, independent, and equal as
men. Their relationship to men shows a new kind of
male-female relationship pattern compared to the
pattern in the previous era. Muslim women and men
have equal right and responsibility even they may
change their position in certain task. Ethical ideas
shown in the analysis include ethics of equality,
ethics of difference, and ethics of liberation.
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