It is not an exaggeration to say that the religious activities of the reformist villagers start from pengajian (religious meetings aiming mainly to listen to sermons) and end with it. Apart from the routine pengajian held at least once every two weeks, every special occasion in Islam such as the descent of the Quran (Nuzulul al-Quran), the end of the fasting month (Syawal), sacrifice (Idul Adha), the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina (Hijrah), the Prophet’s birthday (Maulud) and the Prophet’s flight from Mecca to Jerusalem and His ascent to Heaven (Israk-Miraj) are commemorated by pengajian.

Due to the emphasis placed on it by the reformist Muslims, pengajian plays a role in connecting reformist intellectuals in the city to illiterate peasants in the rural villages. The khatib (preachers) who give their sermons in the hamlet masjid become the audience of pengajian in their schools or offices. ^[2] Those who deliver sermons in these schools and offices are the audience of pengajian where reformist intellectuals from Islamic universities or national Islamic organisations become the khatib. In this manner, the ideas of reformist intellectuals spread gradually from the city to the countryside.

In Kolojonggo, the routine pengajian (pengajian rutin) started in the mid-1980s. At the initial stage, the participants were restricted to adult women. Later, men and children were included in the congregation and it started to be held in the masjid after its construction in 1988. The number of villagers attending the routine pengajian fluctuated in 1993-1994. Sometimes it reached thirty to forty while at other times, it was seventy to eighty. The frequency of celebration also varied. It was sometimes held weekly, sometimes fortnightly. The main reason for this variation was the difficulty of finding suitable khatib for pengajian. It often happened that those in charge of inviting a khatib could not recruit anyone, so that pengajian was postponed for a week.

To recruit a khatib was not an easy task, due to the qualifications that a khatib had to have. First, the khatib had to have enough religious knowledge to lead the sermon for an hour or so and he had to be fluent in reciting Arabic. Many of the school teachers and government employees living in the rural villages had this capability but only a few of them fulfilled the second requirement of the khatib: humour. As villagers of all ages sat together in one place and many had no education beyond primary school, those who could not hold the attention of the audience with humour were seldom invited. It sometimes happened that the sermons of the khatib who were known for their boring speech attracted only a few participants. As a result, the organising body of the pengajian was quite cautious in selecting the khatib.

A variety of religious issues connected to Islam were dealt with in pengajian, many of which were closely related to the villagers' life. For example, the Hajj, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, was seldom discussed in the pengajian except for a brief comment on it during the pilgrimage season. On the other hand, the personal experiences of the khatib and their interpretations of these experiences were frequently mentioned in sermons. The passage below provides an example of a pengajian held in Kolojonggo. The khatib, Pak Bibit, was a high school teacher living in a nearby village.

Although somewhat discursive, the sermon of Pak Bibit was one of the most popular ones in Kolojonggo. As he inserted many personal experiences and his interpretations of them, his pengajian was not like a formal religious class in schools but more like story telling. Laughter was one of the important elements in his sermon. This characteristic of his was shared by most of the khatib who gave regular sermons in Kolojonggo. They avoided being excessively scholastic, but used their personal experiences as similes to convey their ideas to the audience. As they were born and lived in the rural area, their experiences easily appealed to ordinary villagers and could hold their attention.

Compared with religious programs for adult villagers, the pengajian for children were more dynamic and experimental. Efforts were constantly made to renew the pengajian and to add new programs to it. The two hour pengajian per week was divided into two. The first half was devoted to learning to read Arabic, the skill which the reformist villagers regard as one of the most important duties of a Muslim, while the second half was to learn the recommended behaviour of Muslims, short Arabic prayers and anecdotes about the Prophets. Four to six youths became teachers and the primary school children were the main participants, although a few pre-school children and junior school students were also present.

All the participants in the children's pengajian were divided into several groups in accordance with their ability to read Arabic: a preliminary course to learn Arabic script, a secondary course to learn to read Arabic phrases and an advanced course to learn how to read the Quran. Except for the advanced course, the others used a six-volume text which could be easily bought in the market. The teaching was done on the premise that children did not review their previous learning at home. A progress report was made for each child on which the volume and page that they had learned the previous weeks and the teacher’s evaluation were written, so that the teacher could check the lesson that a child had learned before. As a result, progress was slow. Each week only two or three new pages were added. In this way, it took two to three months or longer to complete one volume. In the beginner's course, one teacher dealt with one child at a time. The pronunciation of each character was taught to the child, who was asked to repeat it. In the secondary course, one teacher taught two or three children at one time while in the advanced course, the group was the main unit for study. A child read a certain phrase of the Quran, which was repeated by the teacher and other students.

After the meeting with a teacher which lasted for around 10 minutes, children were given free time for play. Playing with others for a short while, children were called again for the next session, consisting of story-telling, a short sermon, collective exercise of Arabic prayer, sing-along, reading poems and so on. In the case of the sing-along, the original text of a song was replaced with that related to Islam. Below is a new text of 'Burung Kakak Tua', one of the most popular children’s songs in Indonesia:

Compared with other well-developed organisations in the city claiming that six months or less is enough for them to teach a child to read the Quran, the progress of children in Kolojonggo was slow. Even a year was not enough for ordinary children to master a six-volume textbook, which was considered as the prerequisite to start reading the Quran. Children's lack of passion for learning Arabic, lack of any effective teaching method and lack of time seemed to be responsible for that.

The efficiency of the pengajian, however, did not bother the teachers. They were of the opinion that accelerating the pace of learning was not the primary goal of the pengajian. The more important points were to mobilise children regularly to religious activities and to let them get accustomed to a religious environment. The childhood experience of the teachers confirmed the relevance of this approach. They learned to read Arabic with less well-developed textbooks and teaching methods and their progress was much slower than the present children. There was even a teacher who said that he had spent almost six years in the course before he could begin to read the Quran. Despite this, they did learn to read the Quran in the long run and were more active in religious activities than others who had been quicker to read. As the remarks of the teachers show, the role of the pengajian for children was not just to teach how to read Arabic but to build a bridge to connect children with religious activities and to solidify the bond between the teachers and children who would replace the teacher’s position in the future. When this bond was established and children came to be conscious of the need to read the Quran, learning to read Arabic was said to be only a matter of time. Even a week was enough for someone to learn to read the Quran.

The routine pengajian alone was not sufficient to maintain the bond between children and Islam on the one hand and between children and the Islamic activists on the other, since children’s interest in Islam was not retained with ease. They were quickly bored at the pengajian, as was easily recognised by the gradual decrease in the number of participants in it. To overcome this setback, the teachers organised special activities. In 1993-1994, they held three special meetings for children. As no meetings were held for children in village life, these occasions were enthusiastically received by children. Almost all Muslim children appeared, although it started around eight and finished around ten in the evening. In these meetings, several children came to the fore to recite Arabic passages from the Quran and to sing a song while the teachers prepared a short drama. The effectiveness of this measure to mobilise children was quickly proved. After these meetings, the number of participants in the routine pengajian increased dramatically.

Like those for adult villagers and children, the routine religious activity for the youth was called pengajian and held regularly once a week. Differing from other pengajian, that for the youth did not have any fixed format, and the organisers made programs rather spontaneously. In 1993-1994, these included recitation of the Quran from the first to the last page, courses to learn to play musical instruments and to sing songs called Qosidah, courses in how to give a sermon, and meetings with the youth from other villages or from the city. The participants in the pengajian for the youth were confined mainly to the anak masjid and the youth outside this group seldom attended it.

The anak masjid constituted the core group to make the acceleration of Islamic development in Kolojonggo possible. They were the main body planning, organising and carrying out all religious activities with the help of a few adult villagers. According to my estimation, the anak masjid consisted of nineteen youths aged between 15 and 25, about one fourth of the total Muslim youth in this age group, while three unmarried villagers in their late twenties could also be added to the anak masjid. ^[8] My estimation largely coincided with the opinions of some youths who were not included in this group when they were asked to enumerate the youths who belonged to the anak masjid.

Everyday life of the anak masjid could not be separated from religion. Apart from daily prayer, they were involved in a variety of religious activities both within and outside the hamlet. Observing these activities merely for a month is enough to appreciate how closely their life was connected to Islam or, in other words, how they Islamised their life. As an example, the monthly schedule of Mas Sigit, an unofficial leader of the anak masjid, is presented below:

Table IV-1 shows that Mas Sigit attended religious meetings more than four or five times a week. However, the above table just shows the official side of his religious activities. Apart from participating in these meetings, he spent extra time preparing for them. For example, he called at dozens of households to collect alms for the BAZIS meeting and visited Islamic leaders to invite them as the khatib in the pengajian. The preparation for the special occasions in the Islamic calender also required his time. When three large-scale gatherings for children were organised, he spent two to three weeks each time in rehearsing the drama which would be staged at these meetings. In the fasting month, he stayed in the masjid all evening and sometimes until dawn. For Maulud, Israk-Miraj and Hijrah, he went to several pengajian held in the neighbouring villages while he prepared for the same kind of pengajian in Kolojonggo. Tahlilan was another occasion in which he spent many of his evenings, since he also attended irregular tahlilan held after the death of Muslim villagers. ^[12]

The participation of other anak masjid in religious activities was almost the same as Mas Sigit. The male youth, in particular, attended pengajian, tahlilan and other religious meetings, and in the fasting month, slept together in the masjid. The common activities of the anak masjid was not confined to religious ones. In the evenings when there were no religious activities, they played together in the masjid or in the house of one of their members. The close relationship both in the religious and non-religious domains made possible strong peer group solidarity among the anak masjid. Their solidarity, however, was not always advantageous for them to carry out religious programs among their age group. As their group had a clear boundary, those placed outside of it felt uneasy mixing with them.

The anak masjid were quite conscious of the fact that their religious activities were too exclusive to incorporate the youth outside the boundary of their group. In order to overcome this limitation, they organised several special occasions, aiming to incorporate as many Muslim youth as possible. They visited the masjid in other villages to discuss religious issues with the youth there and made several recreational visits to tourist destinations. In the latter case, participation was open only to the Muslim youth, signifying that these visits were parallel with other religious activities, although religious elements were not clearly visible in them. These special activities incorporating other Muslim youth had the same purpose as those for children, namely, to consolidate the relationship between Muslims rather than to deepen their knowledge of Islam.

Since the masjid was constructed in the late 1980s, the Muslim community in Kolojonggo has seen an increase and diversification of religious activities. All Muslim villagers are allocated to certain routine activities such as pengajian and tahlilan while celebrations of the special Islamic days and of the fasting month play a role in breaking down the ordinariness of routine religious activities. One of the impacts of this development is that more opportunities have been given to the children born after the 1980s to be raised in a different religious environment from their parent. While the adult villagers as children accompanied their parents to tombs to ask blessings from the deceased, visited dhukun for healing or wandered around sawah eating offerings made to the goddess of rice, children now go to the pengajian with their mother, eavesdrop on the Arabic recitation in tahlilan, see their parents donate to BAZIS and witness the last breath of a sacrificed bull or sheep in the front yard of the masjid. This development does not imply that the religious atmosphere has been totally changed to the extent that traditional religious elements which are perceived to be incongruous with reformist Islam have been uprooted. These still constitute a part of village life (see Chapter V and VI). Rather, the importance of the expansion of Islamic activities has been that these provide the younger generation with more opportunities from their childhood on to be in constant contact with an alternative mode of religious life to the traditional one. Unlike adult villagers who spent their childhood walking several kilometres to watch wayang (shadow play) and sleeping there until the end of the performance, the children of these days go to the masjid with their mother and sleep there, hearing Arabic prayers and religious sermons as lullabies.