Rahmah el Yunusiyah

Rahmah el Yunusiyah (Van Ophuijsen Spelling Rahmah el Joenoesijah, 26 October 1900 – 26 February 1969) was a Dutch East Indies and Indonesian politician, educator, and activist for women's education.

Born into a prominent family of Islamic scholars, she was made to leave school in order to get married as a teenager.

After a few years of marriage, el Yunusiyah obtained a divorce and returned to her education.

El Yunusiyah was born on 26 October 1900 in Bukit Surungan, Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.

She was the youngest child of an elite Minangkabau family which belonged to the ulama; her father was a well-known qadi named Muhammad Yunis bin Imanuddin and her mother was named Rafi'ah.

Her grandfather, Sheikh Imaduddin, was also a well-known Islamic scholar, astronomer and leader of the local branch of the Naqshbandi order.

Although she started to get basic Islamic tutoring from her father, he died when she was only six years old.

After that she began to receive an education from some of her father's former students, and learned to read and write.

She also received some training in midwifery at a local hospital.

El Yunusiyah's family had long been involved in Islamic education in West Sumatra, and in 1915 her brother Zainuddin Labay el Yunusi had founded the Dinayah School; Rahmah became a student there.

Her family arranged for her to be married to a scholar named Bahauddin Lathif in 1916, while she was still a student in Padang Panjang, and she was required to leave school.

However, she continued to study Islam in private study circles starting in 1918.

In 1922, her husband married two more wives, and el Yunusiyah obtained a divorce before returning to her education; they had not had any children during their marriage.

After returning to study there when her marriage ended in 1922, she led study sessions among the girls outside of class.

This study circle was influenced by Ruhana Kuddus's Amai Setia; it was called the Women and Girl's Association.

El Yunusiyah was unsatisfied with the level of Islamic education for girls in the schools they had access to, as well as the social dynamics that prevented them from fully accessing education in mixed-gender schools.

In 1923, she founded Diniyah Putri, the first known Islamic school (madrasa) for girls in the Indies.

As the school grew and established itself, el Yunusiyah helped found three more schools for women and girls as well as a teacher training institute.

An Islamic nationalist, el Yunusiyah was imprisoned by the Dutch authorities before Indonesia's independence.

She consulted with local ulema, and with the support of her brother Zainuddin and her study circle, opened a school specifically for girls in November 1923.

This school, located in Padang Panjang, was called Diniyah School Putri; it is generally thought to be the first Muslim religious school in the country for young girls.

At first, the school did not have its own building and operated out of a mosque, where she was the main teacher.

The initial cohort of students consisted of 71 women, mostly young housewives from the surrounding area; the curriculum consisted of basic Islamic education, Arabic grammar, some modern European schooling, and handicrafts.

The existence of a modern school for girls was not fully accepted in the community, and she faced some hostility and criticism.

El Yunusiyah, a deeply religious woman, believed that Islam demanded a central role for women and women's education.

The nationalist figure Rasuna Said had been a student in the mixed gender Dinayah school, becoming an assistant teacher in the girls' school in 1923.

Said incorporated politics explicitly into her courses, causing a disagreement with el Yunusiyah.

In 1924, a permanent classroom for the school was built in a local house.

The same year, her brother Zainuddin died; despite fears that the loss of his sponsorship would mean the end of the school, el Yunusiyah continued her efforts.

El Yunusiyah also started a supplemental program for older women who had not had proper educations, although it was cut short after the 1926 Padang Panjang earthquakes destroyed the Diniyah school building.

The classes met in makeshift buildings for several years and Muhammadiyah approached her with an offer to take over the operation of the school and help to reestablish it; she decided not to accept the offer.

She toured widely in the Indies to raise money and a new permanent building was built and opened in 1928.

Said left the school for Padang in 1930.

The school continued to gain popularity and by the end of the 1930s had as many as five hundred students.

The scholar Audrey Kahin calls Diniyah Putri "one of the most successful and influential of the schools for women" in pre-independence Indonesia.

El Yunusiyah disdained contact with the Dutch; unlike other modernizing female figures such as Kartini, she did not have European friends and in turn did not have a high profile among them.

She purposefully did not accept government subsidies for her schools, and despite incorporating some elements of European-style schooling, the dress, calendar cycle and curriculum were focused squarely on Islam.

Like the Taman Siswa movement of independent schools, she fought hard to avoid being penalized by Dutch regulations against so-called "wild" or illegal schools.

In 1955 she became one of the first women to be elected to the People's Consultative Assembly of independent Indonesia as a member of the Masyumi Party.

She died aged 68 in 1969 in her hometown, Padang Panjang.