Faith and diplomacy

Religion has moved into the realm of international affairs with the first interfaith dialog of the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM), a forum involving 39 countries, in Bali this week. Religion and politics in many countries don't mix and thus it was strange to see religion taking center stage at an international forum like ASEM.

During the two-day meeting, religious leaders and scholars briefed diplomats and observers about the need and the way to approach dialog between religious communities around the world.

There is a particularly good reason why religious faith has now become a diplomatic issue. Tensions between people of different faiths have risen in many parts of the world in recent years -- in some places such tensions have even turned into full- blown conflicts. Indonesia, a country that for long prided itself on its ethnic and religious diversity, has not escaped being tested in this regard.

Even those European countries that were formerly homogeneous have now become multiracial and multireligious through immigration and greater mobility of people. And globally, there has been growing tension between Islam and other faiths since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and on the Pentagon in 2001. This month's London bombings threaten to further strain the relations between Islam and the West.

If interfaith dialogs in the past have been confined to religious leaders within nations and within communities, then the ASEM dialog in Bali is the latest effort to raise the dialog to the international level. Inevitably, governments, whether they profess to be secular or not, are becoming involved in something that is widely considered to be a very private domain: Religion.

Those who have taken part in similar dialogs in the past know full well the value of these gatherings. Dialogs, if conducted genuinely, can overcome misunderstandings between different groups, and they help to dispel fears, prejudice and hatred of "the other". If that is the case, dialogs at all levels, national and international, are welcome.

It is commendable that the Indonesian government should have taken the initiative to organize the first dialog at the Asia- European level. Indonesia also held the first such gathering at the Asia-Pacific level in Yogyakarta in December. And it is even more commendable that the government restricted its role to facilitating the dialog, leaving religious experts to discuss the substance of interfaith matters.

Whatever transpires from Bali this week, whatever course of action the meeting recommends in promoting interfaith dialog and cooperation, the diplomatic language of the Bali declaration still need to be translated into practical terms for the adherents of the faiths represented there.

Beyond the interfaith dialog in Bali, governments and religious leaders have their work cut out for them in ensuring that the substance as well as the spirit of cordiality shown can be replicated outside at the grassroots level. For at the end of the day, it is at the grassroots level that interaction between people of different faiths takes place. And it is also there that many of the misunderstandings and tensions arise.