Integrating Islamic Ecotheological Values into Indonesian National Education Policy: A Critical Policy Analysis of Malay-Islamic Cultural Resilience in the Multipolar Era

The marginalization of Islamic epistemological values within Indonesia's national education policy architecture represents a persistent structural challenge with profound implications for Malay-Islamic cultural sustainability in the contemporary multipolar era. This study critically examines the extent to which Islamic ecotheological values — grounded in the principles of tawhid (divine unity), khalifah (stewardship), mizan (balance), and maqasid al-shari’ah (objectives of Islamic law) — are reflected in Indonesian national education policy, and proposes a framework for their systematic integration. Employing qualitative Critical Policy Analysis (CPA) as its primary methodological approach, the study examines a corpus of national education policy documents, including the National Education System Law (Law No. 20/2003), the Kurikulum Merdeka (2022), and relevant Ministry of Religious Affairs regulations for madrasah education. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), following Fairclough's (2013) three-dimensional framework, is applied to identify how Islamic ecotheological values are constructed, marginalized, or absent within these policy texts. Drawing on classical Malay intellectual resources — particularly the works of Hamzah Fansuri (c. 150–1599) and Nuruddin al-Raniri (1586–1658) — alongside contemporary Islamic ecotheological discourse, the study identifies three critical structural gaps in current policy: (1) an epistemological dualism between Islamic and general subjects; (2) the instrumentalization of Islamic identity in policy texts; and (3) the absence of a coherent ecotheological framework within the national curriculum's environmental dimension. The findings demonstrate that a tawhid-centered ecological worldview, when systematically embedded in educational policy, offers an interdisciplinary framework capable of bridging Islamic epistemology and modern educational governance. Comparative analysis with Malaysia's Falsafah Pendidikan Kebangsaan further illuminates the gap between Indonesia's current policy framework and the requirements of genuinely ecotheological educational governance. This study advances a three-pillar policy framework — epistemological integration, classical Malay intellectual heritage integration, and ecotheological environmental education — to address these gaps and strengthen Indonesia's Islamic educational framework as a pillar of Malay-Islamic civilizational resilience in the multipolar era.