AUSAID'S Indonesia director Jacqui De Lacy flatly dismisses the notion that Australian aid to Indonesian Islamic schools fuels religious radicalism: "In fact, we're doing the exact opposite.
"Our program is working very hard to strengthen the hand of moderate Islam in this country, firstly by focusing aid entirely to those schools teaching moderate and inclusive Islam," Ms De Lacy said. "Secondly, we're building goodwill towards Australia and the West in literally thousands of Islamic schools and communities across the nation."
Education is the biggest single component of assistance to Indonesia, which takes the largest Australian aid share of any country. About a quarter of AusAID's Indonesian spending goes to schools and about a quarter of that to Islamic schools.
Tony Abbott wants to "suspend" the whole Indonesian education commitment, not just the Islamic schools' share, for four years to help pay for Queensland's flood damage.
The Australian foreign service is seething because the row has encouraged the mistaken belief that our aid money is paying to radicalise children.
Children like Nunung Mujawaroh -- a tiny 13-year-old who is in Year 7 at the Balaraja madrassa, a new Islamic junior high about 40km southwest of Jakarta.
Nunung does, indeed, hope to become a religious teacher when she grows up, but at a school like Balaraja's, "because I want to make other children smart".
She gets that chance only because AusAID committed 716.4 million rupiahs (about $80,500) to building the school.
Older sister Nymas Neneng Syuhada goes to the desperately overcrowded local state high, which has closed off enrolments.
Their mother, Hanof Laila, who supports the whole family cutting and selling cassava leaves for Rp7000-15,000 daily, was distraught that Nunung would have to join her in the fields. "What else do we have if our daughter cannot go to school?" she asked yesterday. "I can face God later if I have given her an education."
Ms De Lacey hears that from almost every poor family at every AusAID-funded school.
Twenty two per cent of Indonesian schoolchildren are at Islamic schools, which are generally poorer, less expensive for parents and lower in education quality.
That's why the Education Ministry asked AusAID to devote aid to raising quality in existing schools, rather than building more. If Mr Abbott's cuts were applied, most of this progress and 330,000 places would be lost. As Nunung's principal, Bay Makmun, sees it, that would be radicalism's victory.
"We have a system of education here that prepares children to face the future as good moral people and we teach Islam as the way of peace. There is no radicalism here, I will guarantee it."
