Lived Religion and Daily Routines: Reading Indonesia’s “Seven Habits of Great Children” in Muslim Family Life

Abstract

This conceptual article examines how the state-led initiative Gerakan Tujuh Kebiasaan Anak Indonesia Hebat (7-KAIH; “Seven Habits of Great Children”) can be translated into the lived religious practices of Indonesian Muslim families. It locates 7-KAIH within Indonesia’s nation-building agenda and the four centers of education (school, family, community, media). Drawing on an interdisciplinary synthesis of policy documents, Islamic educational thought (adab, akhlāq, tarbiyah), and scholarship on lived religion, habitus, and educational ecologies, the article develops a routine-based model of character formation that links worship, health, learning, and community participation. The model specifies mechanisms through which policy prompts are domesticated family routine design, ritualization, and reflective monitoring and delineates boundary conditions including resource constraints, caregiving schedules, and media saturation. The study advances contextual Islamic studies by formulating falsifiable propositions for future empirical testing and by clarifying the implications of 7-KAIH for civil Islam and state-society partnerships in Indonesia and, cautiously, other Muslim-majority societies. While 7-KAIH is designed as a legally religion-neutral national initiative, this article's argument is intentionally confined to Indonesian Muslim families whose daily lives are governed by ritual and religious obligations.   The analysis does not empirically evaluate the programmer’s appropriateness for households without ritualistic beliefs or for non-Muslim communities, and future research in character education is needed to examine how its assumptions and mechanisms operate in those contexts.