RECONSTRUCTING MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION FOR ISLAMIC EDUCATION: A CRITICAL CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF JAMES A. BANKS’ FIVE DIMENSIONS IN INDONESIA

Abstract

Multicultural education is increasingly expected to address cultural, religious, linguistic, and social diversity without reducing difference to a problem of classroom management. In Islamic education, however, importing a Western multicultural framework without examining its epistemological assumptions risks producing a superficial form of compatibility. This article critically reconstructs James A. Banks’ five dimensions of multicultural education—content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture and social structure—through the normative and pedagogical resources of Islamic education in Indonesia. The study uses a critical conceptual literature review based on Banks’ primary theoretical writings and selected peer-reviewed scholarship on multicultural education, Islamic education, interculturality, social justice, and religious moderation. The analysis treats the relationship between the two traditions as one of selective consonance and productive tension rather than equivalence. The synthesis identifies five functional correspondences: content integration can be oriented toward taʿāruf and the recognition of diversity; knowledge construction can be connected to ijtihād, tafakkur, and contextual interpretation; prejudice reduction can be supported by tasāmuḥ and ukhūwah insāniyyah; equity pedagogy can be grounded in al-ʿadl and educational fairness; and an empowering school culture can be strengthened through shūrā, karāmah al-insān, and rahmah. The article’s central contribution is a reconstruction model that moves beyond value matching toward pedagogical translation: each Banksian dimension is reformulated as a set of educational practices while remaining accountable to Islamic epistemological commitments. The model provides a theoretically bounded framework for developing inclusive Islamic education in Indonesia and identifies propositions that require empirical testing in madrasahs, Islamic schools, and pesantren.