FAH UIN Jakarta holds international seminar

FAH, UIN News Online – Faculty of Adab and Humanities (FAH) UIN Jakarta holds international seminar, Wednesday (07/03/2019), at FAH theater room, campus III of UIN Jakarta. By raising the theme on “Romanization, Nationalization, and Secularization of Bahasa Indonesia since Independence”, this event presents Kevin W Fogg (Research fellow, Basenose College and Faculty of History University Oxford) as a keynote speaker. Also present in the event, Dean of FAH UIN Jakarta, Saiful Umam.

Saiful Umam in his remarks said that this seminar aims to broaden the knowledge of the Adab and Humanities Faculty students. According to Saiful, before using the Roman alphabets, the people of Indonesia has use other alphabets that developed in the archipelago, such as the jawi alphabet.

Meanwhile, Kevin in his presentation said that the Romanization had unintended consequences for Islamic communities across Indonesia, many leaders were rendered illiterate due to their inability to write Roman Letters.

“Ahmad Bone for example, he is a well respected Islamic community leader in south Sulawesi at the time.  Due to his inability to write Roman letters, he was unable to participate in the policy discussion on eliminating social issues,” said Kevin.

He also added that the standardisation of Indonesian language pushed the language even further from Arabic (Jawi) towards European languages.

For information, Kevin W. Fogg is a research affiliate and lecturer in the Faculty of History and Brasenose College, University of Oxford. He earned a BA from Duke University in History and Asian and African Languages and Literatures (now Asian and Middle Eastern Studies).  He then continued on to Yale University, where he earned an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History, also working closely with the Council on Southeast Asia Studies. His work centres on the place of Islam in Southeast Asia in the 20th century, especially in Indonesia.  (usa)