Empowering the moderates, pluralists

Bondan Winarno, Jakarta

Peaceful communities and religious tolerance will be the focus of a dialog on interfaith cooperation themed Community Building and Harmony to be held from Dec. 6 to Dec. 7 in Yogyakarta.

In a recent speech welcoming the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: "We would truly feel sad if world opinion, deliberately or not, aimed to put Muslims in a corner as identical with violence and terrorism."

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, has been a victim of terrorism.

"Certainly, Muslims will reject being regarded as the masterminds of terrorism in this world," said Susilo, who took office last month, vowing to fight such violence.

Over the past two years, Indonesia has been hit by three major bombings that authorities blame on the Jamaah Islamiyah regional fundamental Islamic network. The most serious attack killed 202 people in October 2002 on the resort island of Bali. An attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last year killed 12, while the most recent attack in September killed 11 people outside the Australian Embassy, also in the capital.

The idea for the dialog was first aired by Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda at the 2003 APEC Summit in Bangkok, and reiterated in July during the ASEAN Regional Forum in Jakarta. The idea gained the support of Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who agreed to co-sponsor the event.

The successful staging in February of the International Conference of Islamic Scholars here -- organized jointly by the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, and the foreign ministry -- must have set a good precedent that resulted in Indonesia's winning the wholehearted support of its Australian counterpart.

In his APEC speech last year, Wirayuda floated an argument that the discussion on curbing terrorism must not stop within the bounds of theology, but must also cover economics.

"Poverty is one of the root causes of terrorism," he said, implying that Muslims faced an ideological conflict between fighting injustice and oppression, and promoting and preserving life.

He is not too far off the mark here.

It is no coincidence that Messrs. Amrozi and Imam Samudra, two of the convicted Bali bombers, both come from underprivileged families. On the other hand, almost all moderate Muslim leaders in Indonesia have evidently pursued graduate studies in Western countries.

The empowerment of moderate Muslims must therefore be promoted further. In this imminent dialog, Indonesia must take the lead in soliciting the support of developed countries to assist Muslims in developing countries with livelihood programs, such as education and small and medium enterprise (SME) training. The program to achieve this does not need to be reinvented, either. The much neglected -- if not forgotten -- Agenda 21, for instance, is an obvious choice among several others.

President Susilo also said Islam taught peace and justice: "We are prohibited from committing violence and arbitrary acts."

The Koran, like other sacrosanct religious tomes, teaches mankind to be compassionate, not aggressive. It is unfair to focus on those sections of the Koran that speak of holy war, because they constitute only a minor part of the religious text.

Unfortunately, many fundamentalist leaders deliberately use this highly sensitive subject -- spiked with sermons covering disparities and injustices. In the process, they steer their followers away from the religion's principle tenet of tolerance. One moderate Indonesian Muslim leader, not long after President George W. Bush was reelected, said on a personal occasion: "It will be difficult for the war against terrorism to succeed if the U.S. continues with their current strategy. The Muslims will have no choice but to continue to be defensive, because in their eyes the U.S. sustains what they call 'terrorism by the state' to disguise what they call the 'war on terror'."

Thus far, the nonviolence dictated by religion has been mere theory, for Muslims and Christians alike. Both religions -- and all religions, for that matter -- need to put it into action.

Next month's interfaith dialog in Yogyakarta must also focus on the similarities that exist among all religions and faiths, not on their differences. Greater likenesses prevail between Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism than discrepancies.

The delegations of religious leaders from participating countries -- Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste and Vietnam -- that congregate at the dialog must discuss the universal values of humanity they all share.

Nuts and bolts may be different, but they become an indispensable tool only when assembled.

Living together in diversity is indeed a challenge. However, through a constructive, interfaith dialog, the spiritual beliefs of each individual can be heard and accepted in an atmosphere free of dogmatism, discrimination, fear and hate.

Peace can be achieved through listening to each other with love, tolerance, compassion and mercy. Surely, this is not an impossible goal.

-- The writer is a Jakarta-based columnist.