TEACHING MODERATE ISLAMIC THOUGHT: PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES TO FOSTERING RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN INDONESIAN EDUCATION

Religious diversity in Indonesia requires Islamic education to cultivate strong religious commitment alongside tolerance, ethical disagreement, and respect for plural social realities. This study aimed to examine pedagogical approaches for teaching moderate Islamic thought and their relevance to fostering religious pluralism in Indonesian education. A qualitative multiple-case study involved four secondary educational institutions, drawing on interviews with teachers, school leaders, curriculum personnel, and students, classroom observations, and document analysis. The findings showed that dialogic learning, contextual case analysis, reflective learning, cooperative interaction, and interpretive literacy created meaningful opportunities for students to practice respectful disagreement and ethical reasoning. Moderate Islamic principles such as tawassu?, taw?zun, i‘tid?l, tas?mu?, and sh?r? became more educationally significant when embedded in concrete learning processes rather than presented only as normative concepts. Critical digital religious literacy emerged as an important but comparatively underdeveloped dimension, despite students’ extensive exposure to online religious content. The study concludes that moderate Islamic thought is most effectively taught through an integrated framework linking normative content, pedagogical process, and student meaning-making. Such pedagogy can strengthen pluralism-oriented competencies without requiring theological relativism, while preparing learners to engage responsibly with religious differences in both classroom and digital environments within Indonesia’s increasingly complex contemporary educational landscape.