No Ordinary Boarding School

The Al-Zaytun Islamic boarding school, or pesantren, which has grown into the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia within only six years, has been charged with "deviant teachings" and land grabbing. Is there any truth to these charges, or are they only a manifestation of envy?

July 9, 2002

Thousands of men dressed in yellow uniforms and riding on bicycles, move like an army of ants toward the rice fields, the cattle farms, the chicken coops, the steel workshops, the garment and furniture producing factories, and the giant laundry in the vast school complex. From the sixth floor of the dormitory, one looks down at an expanse of green, a panorama that reflects the lyrical prose of a couplet _ `a human mass moving in the morning s

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