THE NAHDLATUL ULAMA

The Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, the revival of Ulama) is a Muslim Scholar Organization. Founded in 31 Januari 1926 with the goal to maintain and develop Ahlussunnah-wal-Jamaah Islamic teachings and follow one of the four madzhab in Islam in the Republic of Indonesia under the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution. Since its establishment, Nu has demonstrated itself as a social movement based on religious values such as sincerity, attachment, devotion to its course, intimacy and trust among each others. The characteristics of its movement are reflected among others on the endless spirit of NU leaders in managing various kinds of community activities without material gain as it considered as a struggle for course.

NU has develop an organization with leadership hierarchy from the capital, provinces to the villages, however, basically all member of the leaders work together without questioning their position in the organization. Under board of executive there are 10 autonomous bodies, 12 institutes and 5 committees. The function of autonomous bodies is to help NU on implementing its policies related to certain groups of community according to the target group of the respective autonomous body. While the institute is a unit of departements in central NU organization. NU has also business entties moving in the rural areas, such as NU Rural Credit Bank (Bank Perkreditan Rakyat) and pilot project for income generating. Up to now, NU has 279 brances in 26 of hte 27 provinces of Indonesia, except in East Timor.
The socio-cultural base of NU is the rural society -- as it has about 35 million members, mostly reside in rural areas--; Islamic boarding schools -- as its birth is pioneered by the Moslem Scholars (Kyais), mostly Pondok Pesantren leader --; and religious gathering (tahlil and khaul). In the rural community where the pesantrens reside, the influence of the kyai and NU movement have given particular mark to the strucutural system. The kyai is the person to be asked about all aspect of life, they are the "learned man" in the forming values in the rural community.
The NU leaders, both local and national level, have shown their capability to adapt to the challeanges of modernization,as they continually reformulate their positions regard to successive issues confronted by the nation, including the need for reconciliation between religious orientation and nationalis political ideologies, such as the imperative of the acceptance of family planning, the adoption of a co-educational school system. Moreover, many national programmes owe their success to ability of NU religious leaders understanding the need for social changes. The lack of nation-wide religious extrimism of militancy is almost entirely attributable to NU's accomodative approach toward modernization programme proposed by the country's succesive governments.
In family planning, there were various meetings, workshops and training had been done, particularly the programmes related to servie delivery and its expansion support whose objective is to improve family planning, health services in NU community by establishing NU medical health centre and NU institutions. Furthermore, NU has done assistencies for its institutions and its societies and has provided medical and non-medical equipment and/ or has renovated the NU's social facilities -- including health facilities.