Community-Embedded Management of Islamic Education in a Maritime Society: Integrating Local Wisdom in the Sapeken Islands

Abstract

Islamic education in Indonesia's marginal maritime communities faces a double pressure: the erosion of local wisdom under globalisation and the thinness of formal educational infrastructure. While existing studies treat local wisdom as curriculum content, the management of Islamic education in such settings remains under-examined. This study aims to analyse how Islamic education is sustained and managed in the maritime community of the Sapeken Islands, Sumenep, and how it forms a harmonious relationship with local wisdom. It employs a qualitative approach combining ethnography with a phenomenological lens, drawing on in-depth interviews with six purposively selected informants, participant observation, and documentation, analysed through the Miles and Huberman model and validated by triangulation and member checking. The findings reveal that religious meaning is generated where doctrine meets maritime life, that conservation is experienced as worship rather than external obligation, and that educational continuity rests on communal infrastructure the community owns rather than receives. These findings imply that Islamic educational policy for maritime and remote communities should recognise and strengthen each community's own cultural and religious infrastructure rather than impose external institutional structures, and that pedagogy in such settings is most effective when it grounds religious values in maritime life.