A Christian student from Madagascar, East Africa graduated with the best Bachelor of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences from Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) Jakarta, Indonesia.
Together with 1,041 other students, Rahasimamonjy Lovanavalona Allison Candy is the only non-Muslim graduate who completed her studies at UIN Jakarta.
She was born in Betafo, Madagascar on May 5, 1998. Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean. It is the world's second-largest country that consists primarily of islands, after Indonesia.
UIN Syarif Hidayatullan Jakarta is one of the State Islamic Religious Colleges (PTKIN) in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Candy is a Christian from Madagascar who avails scholarship from the Indonesian Government.
Coming from Madagascar, she was proud to study at UIN Jakarta, where the majority of students are Muslim. Even though she is a non-Muslim, Candy does not feel and thinks exclusion in the university.
Candy also admitted that she does not consider religion to be an obstacle in her learning activities. On the other hand, she feels comfortable when she relates to and mingles with other Muslim students on the campus where she studied.
"I consider this as a challenge, where I have to learn a lot about Islam and Arabic, she said as quoted from the uinjkt.ac.id page.
Candy said that the biggest challenge she faced in the school was learning Arabic because for her the language is still foreign. Moreover, in daily life, people in their home country use French as the national language.
As a foreign student, Candy also shared her experience in mastering Indonesian as the medium for lectures. To learn Bahasa Indonesia, she joined a course organized by the Language Development Center (PPB) UIN Jakarta.
She passed the entrance admission at UIN Jakarta through the Independent Examination selection. She is one of the students who received a scholarship from the Darmasiswa Program of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia.
The scholarship program is offered to all foreign students from countries that have diplomatic relations with Indonesia to study the Indonesian language, arts, and culture at 54 universities in Indonesia.
Darmasiswa was founded in 1974 as part of the initiative of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN.
Islam is the largest religion in Indonesia, with 86.7% of the Indonesian population identifying themselves as Muslim. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim-majority country, with approximately 231 million adherents, and is home to 58 State Islamic Religious Colleges (PTKIN). - Emiliana Saptaningsih
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