Intellectualism challenges towards future literacy

By Shidqi Mukhtasor

As university students, building an intellectual movement on the basis of literacy culture is a crucial role to be played. However, the issue on literacy and the importance of intellectualism as well as the culture are yet to be mainstreamed among youth, even among university students.

Fajru Shofil Ula, an ex-Head of Strategic Studies Division of Indonesian Students Association of Malaysia addressed three challenges that students have when it comes to building an intellectual movement. He, currently a communication student in IIUM, was a panelist in a webinar titled ‘Bagaimana Masa Depan Literasi Pemuda?’ (How is the Future of Youth’s Literacy?) conducted by #GerakanMenulisIIUM, collaborated with Virtue IIUM.

Even though in an IIUM’s intellectual climate which has vast amount of literatures and influential intellectual figures supporting the university, apparently intellectualism is yet to be rooted in the student’s culture.

Knowing that while understanding at the same time that students play a huge potential role as an agent of change of the future, Fajru Shofil Ula brought up this issue to be noticed.

The Need to Write as an Intellectual Legacy

Fajru reflected the importance of writing to leave legacy and to move the world with ideas, as it is the theme raised by the #GerakanMenulisIIUM. He invited the audiences to reflect on the death of Karl Marx and his massive influence after his death, though disclaimed that he is not a Marxist.

He told that though Karl Marx wasn’t as famous as today when he lived, his intellectual legacy after his death influenced millions of people until today.

“There’s an interesting story after he wrote his well-known book ‘Das Kapital’. Do you know that when he died, his cemetery was not even visited by more than 15 persons? He perhaps wasn’t an orator or someone well known, but his book ended up inspiring millions of people many years after his death.”

He thus stressed the importance to write as an intellectual progress and to leave intellectual legacy. He as an Indonesian also spoke that literacy movement is a way to contribute to the community especially for international students who can’t participate directly in the movement in their countries.

“When I first came to Malaysia, I wonder how can we contribute to society, especially for (my country) Indonesia. Of course it is impossible for us (Indonesians) to demonstrate in front of Tun Razak Street, because that is just nonsense. When I consult with my seniors, they told me that literacy is a way to do so. And that’s why we try to expand literacy movements in our communities.”

Three Intellectualism Challenges Among Students

The first intellectualism challenge Fajru brought into the discussion is intellectual honesty. Other than plagiarism which is a huge issue among students, intellectual honesty is also central for an intellectual movement to flourish.

“(Intellectual) Honesty is a function and a part of intellectual (movement) which perhaps some have forgotten from us as a student. As we know, it’s already well-known that there are movements which are ridden by (pragmatical) political interests and others. And this has become our biggest challenge.”

Because of that, Fajru stressed that literacy should be a foundation for an intellectual movement to be established, not through pragmatical interest.

“Imam Syafi’I said that the biggest destruction is caused by the silence of the people of knowledge, but the loud voice of the ignorants is more destructive.”

Everyone could be an intellectual, Fajru said. However, one of the few groups who could do the function as an intellectual movement and control is students. On that basis, Fajru stressed that students should partake actively in gaining knowledge and use it for the good through a movement.

“Everyone can think and be an intellectual, as how one of my acquaintances ever told me. But one thing that sometimes being forgotten by us is that not everybody has an intellectual function. And that is what we as students should perceive as our burden.” he emphasised.

The second challenge according to Fajru is for one to be an intellectual rooted with their own community. An intellectual should be able to be with their community, and not become a different elite class that is separated from the community itself.

“Our biggest challenge is how we may be united as the part of our own community with our literacy capacities that we already established. One of the concepts that perhaps comrades here already knew is being an ‘intellectual organic’ as how Antonio Gramsci said.”

There are debates whether students are considered a different class of societies or not, according to Fajru, thus contextualising the debate with the importance of an intellectual organic. Nevertheless, the role to raise awareness among communities is a challenge for students to engage with.

“We want to establish an intellectual function by not only being an academic, but also to implement the intellectual function (in our communities),” said Fajru.

The last challenge in an intellectual movement mentioned by Fajru is this new technology era that flooded our information and media climate being very disruptive. In our current social media climate, we often occurred many prejudices, hate speeches and demagogues.

No matter how hard we already study the issue thus raising awareness about it, people on social media will judge us. And that is a challenge that one must face in an intellectual movement, as it is also to test our determination and solitude.

“We know this (very well). When we just tweet a thing on Twitter, people will automatically judge and categorised you into an antagonistic term (without processing the information itself). As how this is reflected in our current issue #Undi18 where people immediately judge ‘students don’t need to speak up’, ‘you are still small’, and others as such.” As Fajru elaborated, how disruptive our current social media climate is.

Understanding these three intellectualism challenges, Fajru stressed that students should not back down in trying to establish an intellectual movement and changes. The challenges are there to be faced and solved as it is a way to test students’ endurance an intellectual growth.

“Our mental (endurance) will be tested even more when we engage with the community, when we partake as an intellectual function.”

The event was conducted by #GerakanMenulisIIUM, a literacy movement that initiated by Indonesian student communities in IIUM which upload students’ articles in various websites managed by the movement through the link bit.ly/GerakanMenulisIIUM.

The talk was streamed at Sunday afternoon (28 March) on Virtue IIUM’s Facebook page alongside two other panels, Fauzan Anwar Sandiah (Editorial Executive Council of IBTimes.ID) and Aliff Naif (Head of Operational of Virtue IIUM).***

(The writer, Shidqi Mukhtasor is an author and editor at IBTimes.ID, and Head of Editorial Board of Islamic Studies Forum for Indonesia)

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