Asserting Religiosity in Indonesian Muslim Urban Communities through Islamic Education: An Experience of Indonesia

Abstract

Urban Muslim communities in Indonesia are growing in different cities. Not only as a forum where social interaction is established among Muslims, but also this urban Muslim community is transformed into a social institution, which is unique, and influencing the social order. There are various forms of urban communities, and one of them appears in the form of a majelis taklim (taklim-assembly): a community, which was established independently, and non-formally by the Muslim community. In its development, the majelis taklim was transformed into a non-formal educational institution that can increase the religious knowledge of the pilgrims, or participants who joined the majelis taklim. In this regard, the problem that arises is whether the existence of the majelis taklim and its Islamic learning process, automatically increase the religiosity of participants or pilgrims. In this case, this study aims to assert religiosity in Indonesian urban communities, through the influence of majelis taklim Islamic learning motivation and satisfaction on religious cognition and attitude. The Stata 16.0 multivariate regression analysis was also used to select 348 participants from 24 provinces. In this process, both the motivation and satisfaction of Islamic learning dynamically contributed to two religiosity dimensions of the urban communities (Majelis Taklim), namely cognitive and attitude. The results showed that religiosity was a complex concept not increased by just one dimension of a set of variables. However, it needs to be systematically improved through multiple variables. Keywords: Gender, Learning motivation, Learning satisfaction, Muslim urban communities; Majelis Taklim, Religiosity, Urban communities