Arabic language education as language policy: disentangling discourses, ideologies, and practices in Indonesia

This study examines how Arabic language education is interpreted and enacted as language policy within Indonesian Islamic educational institutions. Using a qualitative multiple-case study, data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed alongside policy and curriculum documents. Guided by Machin's (Citation2013) framework of recontextualisation, the analysis explores how language policy is reconstructed through the processes of addition, deletion, substitution, and evaluation. The findings show that Arabic is enacted not merely as a foreign language but as a religious, educational, and symbolic resource shaped by local ideological and institutional priorities. While communicative functions receive comparatively limited emphasis, Arabic is primarily associated with religious literacy, institutional identity, and Islamic scholarship. The study contributes to language policy and planning scholarship by demonstrating how policy meanings are continuously recontextualised through everyday educational practice, offering a context-sensitive understanding of language policy enactment in religiously oriented educational settings.