LIRBOYO CALLS: THE ROLE OF ISLAMIC BOARDING SCHOOL AS NU’S CULTURAL ANCHOR AMID THE PBNU CONFLICT
By: H. Adlan Daie
Political and socio-religious analyst
Today (Sunday, December 21, 2025), the moral appeal of Ploso, Tebuireng, and now Lirboyo Islamic boarding schools (Pesantren) comes with the call “Lirboyo Calls” for the Grand Conference: Strengthening the Integrity of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) Jamiiyah and ending the conflict within the PBNU elite.
This is certainly not about defending Gus Yahya, the General Chairman of PBNU, as has been the accusation circulating on various social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and others, that Gus Yahya is exploiting senior NU Islamic boarding school clerics.
Gus Yahya lacks the moral standing, cultural standing, or scholarly authority to direct the NU community and elders to hold any meeting for any agenda.
This is a “moral calling,” a calling to the moral responsibility of the elders of NU Islamic boarding schools to safeguard and care for the PBNU as the great house of the people, re-establishing it as a “guide” for exemplary conduct for the people, not a “showcase” of conflict in the public sphere.
The author agrees with the view of Gus Salam, the caretaker of the Denanyar Islamic boarding school in Jombang, one of the “mother” Islamic boarding schools that gave birth to Jamiyyah NU, that both the Rois Am and the PBNU General Chairperson are in a “doubtful” position and should be avoided, meaning they cannot be retained to lead the PBNU.
Gus Yahya is considered to have committed “syubhatul fail,” a serious violation in two ways: opening the way for Zionism to infiltrate Indonesia through the NU National Cadre Academy (AKN) and the PBNU’s financial management, which is considered non-transparent and unaccountable.
On the other hand, the Chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Executive Board (PBNU), KH Miftahul Akhyar, in Gus Salam’s religious view, is committing “syubhatul Thariq,” a “misguided” act, assuming that the Chairman of the Supreme Council (Syuriah) is synonymous with “supreme authority” above the Articles of Association (AD/ART).
The appointment of KH Zulfa Mustofa as Acting Chairman of the PBNU by the Chairman of the PBNU through a plenary meeting with insufficient legitimacy, and even a lack of quorum, according to Gus Salam, constitutes an act of “syubhatul Thoriq,” something that must be avoided within the NU community.
From this perspective, Gus Salam proposed the urgency of holding an Extraordinary Congress (MLB) or an accelerated Congress to avoid these two forms of “syubhat” and to maintain NU as a community firmly grounded in the Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah (Aswaja).
In this context, the author also hopes that the Lirboyo Grand Conference will strengthen the “reconciliation” recommendations produced by the NU elders’ forums in Ploso and Tebuireng, as well as NU aspirations in the regions, as a path to expediting the congress.
The reason is that the NU’s Articles of Association (AD/ART) are “exhausted,” unable to accommodate the over-ambitious debate of the conflicting PBNU elite. Their superiority in “Usul fiqh,” a strong tradition of Islamic boarding school scholarship, has become a tool for their respective justifications.
Prof. Moh Nuh, the PBNU Syuriah, is correct that the Ploso and Tebuireng forums, and now Lirboyo, cannot overturn the results of the PBNU plenary meeting initiated by the PBNU Syuriah. However, he forgets that NU is not just a “mass organization” but rather a social and religious ecosystem within Islamic boarding schools.
If the moral voice of the three “Pasak Bumi” Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) on the island of Java is ignored as a solution to “reconciliation” (reconciliation) to end the conflict, then the PBNU (National Board of Nahdlatul Ulama) will be nothing more than a political oligarchy without a congregation, a mere political “plaything” of the PBNU elite, lacking the religious mandate of the pesantren.
NU, as a Jam’iyyah (organization), differs from political parties, and even genealogically, from “modernist” Islamic organizations. NU is more than “just another organization.” NU was founded by kiai (Islamic scholars) and did not follow the theory of “global modernism,” according to Martin Van Bruinessen.
NU’s social ecosystem was established first through a network of religious cultural traditions within the pesantren, then structured into organizational formalism solely for legal and administrative purposes in relations with other institutions.
NU’s cultural strength precedes its structural strength. Therefore, winning the “conflict” within the PBNU cannot simply involve obtaining a formal legal decree from the government, but also gaining recognition for the cultural morality of the pesantren, an inseparable variable within NU.
It is in this context that the role of the Ploso, Tebuireng, and now Lirboyo Islamic boarding schools as NU’s cultural anchors is placed in the efforts to resolve the PBNU conflict, which is exhausting the community. Ignoring the moral voice of these Islamic boarding schools is an act of belittling the PBNU without the community’s moral mandate.
The author hopes that, as the Nahdliyyin grassroots hope, the Lirboyo Kubro Conference will become the final cultural solution after Ploso and Tebuireng, leading to “cultural reconciliation” and “constitutional reconciliation,” namely the Congress (Muktamar) in the shortest possible time.
The Congress is the path to constitutional reconciliation, ending the conflict completely and with dignity. The PBNU will once again stand as a source of guidance for the community.**
Indramayu, December 20, 2025
Wassalam
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