Building Moderate Islamic Thoughts in Indonesian Students Through Dialogue-Argumentative Methods

Although the Indonesian Constitution guarantees freedom of religion for every citizen, the problem of religious harmony is still existent. Intolerant Islamic groups are very active in voicing that non-Muslims and minority schools of thought are deviants and infidels. The term ‘religious harmony’ is one of the competencies in the national curriculum of universities but is unfortunately weak in implementation. These research results showed that most students have an exclusive and intolerant religious mindset. Therefore, this study aims to test the effectiveness of the dialogue-argumentative method in Islamic Religious Education (PAI) to build moderate thinking patterns among students by employing a quasi-experimental research method. The research sample, which comprised 300 students participating in the PAI course, was divided into 150 persons, each placed into the four experimental and control classes. Before and after the lecture, pre-tests and post-tests were provided for both groups of students. The research proved that the dialogue-argumentative method was a more effective alternative in building moderate Islamic thinking patterns among students. However, the researchers also need to find models, methods, or other means that are much more effective than these findings.