Moh Yasir Alimi
This article examines Islamic Religious Education (IRE) in Indonesian higher education as a site where inner life is ethically organised under late-modern conditions. It asks how everyday classroom practices organise attention, time, and presence in ways that shape students’ ethical orientation towards uncertainty and moral responsibility. Drawing on a semester-long ethnographic study of 55 undergraduate students in a compulsory IRE course at Universitas Negeri Semarang, the article analyses silence, waiting, and attending as attentional forms embedded in everyday classroom interaction. These forms are enacted through ordinary pedagogical rhythms—such as pauses, delayed closure, and modes of presence—that regulate expression, temporality, and responsiveness. Rather than viewing IRE primarily as ideological transmission, therapeutic intervention, or formal moral instruction, the article conceptualises it as an institutional mode of ethical governance organised through attention, termed attentional governance. By foregrounding these attentional dynamics, the study offers an anthropological account of how institutional Islam enables students to inhabit uncertainty without resolving it, contributing to debates on ethical and spiritual formation in Religious Education. © 2026 Christian Education.
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Semarang, Indonesia
