University-community engagement as a mode of knowledge production in Indonesian Islamic Higher Education: Philosophical, Methodological, Policy Considerations

Arguing that a policy is not a copy-paste like enterprise, this paper is going to consider philosophical, methodological, and policy challenges that might be encountered by the Indonesian Islamic Higher Education (IIHE) in pursuing university-community engagement as well as possible solutions that could be proposed. Knowledge production in the IIHE is mainly sought in a disciplinary mode regulated by values, norms, and methods generated deductively from the divined resources, especially Qur’an and the prophetic traditions (Sunnah). This mode of knowledge production is influential enough in informing the way many scholars within this system perceive and approach knowledge and its production. They tend to deal with issues and problems from religiously loaded perspective. Instead of pondering what and how things operate, they are often tempted to see things from what they should be and how they should be. Consequently, they are most likely to face difficulties in discovering facts, leading to parochial knowledge. On the other hands, those who are less disposed to this mode, especially disciplinary experts in non-religious sciences, tend to see knowledge production as neutral activities. Both sides nevertheless have less cognitive and cultural competence to develop transdisciplinary exchanges in a distributed knowledge society.