Progress but no end to holy wars

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): The coming of the third millennium was appropriately celebrated as a global phenomenon. Starting with the Chatnam Islands and Kiribati, moving westward at an hourly rate, passing Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Egypt, Paris, the United States and finally, Samoa.

As we celebrated, occasionally watching CNN's live coverage, we reflected on the past century, and the past millennium. What was the second millennium to us? It was certainly a millennium of knowledge, marked initially by the Renaissance. This cultural movement, which started in Italy and influenced much of Western Europe, found its basis on science, and led to many advances in scientific knowledge. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Copernicus found that the universe was heliocentric rather than geocentric; Galileo discovered the laws of falling bodies from the leaning Tower of Pisa; and Newton formulated the laws of motion and gravity.

Technological progress could be seen as a result of the advances in scientific knowledge, and in the 19th century, Europe enjoyed the Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century, Einstein's theory of relativity advanced science significantly.

It was also a millennium of exploration. In the 13th century, the Viennese Marco Polo visited China. Almost 150 years later, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He marked his presence and dominance over the seas between Asia and Africa through seven voyages. After having sailed westward instead of eastward from Spain, Columbus reached the West Indies in 1492. Many great voyages around the globe happened thereafter.

On the other hand, the second millennium was also a millennium of conquests.

Starting with William the Conquer's conquest over England in 1066; Genghis Khan's campaign over Asia about 1200; the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans in the 14th century, and its capture of Constantinople in 1453; the Aztec and Inca invasions in the Americas in the 15th century; and finally, the European colonization of Asia starting in the 16th and 17th centuries.

It was a millennium plagued with war. Of course, the invasions and conquests mentioned above all involved wars. In the last century alone, the world had experienced two world wars, and many others. While we can still feel the aftermath of the Vietnam war, the wars in Bosnia have not completely ended, and as we celebrated New Year's Eve, Chechnya was still being raided.

Closer to home, a few days before New Year's Eve we heard of fresh clashes in Ambon. This civil war in the Maluku islands leads us to reflect how significant the war of the Crusades is to this millennium.

Comparatively speaking, the struggle between communism and capitalism which affected the world so much this century, and also effected politics in Indonesia, is much less significant. The communist-capitalist struggle lasted for a little over 150 years, ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Started in 1095, the Crusades was a "holy war" in which Christians from Western Europe fought to retrieve their holy land from the Muslims. The struggle between Christians and Muslims continued for another 400 years. The Crusades ended by the end of the 13th century, and finally the Ottoman Empire seized Constantinople from the Christians in 1453.

However, after the declaration of the independent state of Israel in 1948, following the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews, religious conflict once again surfaced as a global issue. Every decade, wars erupted in the region, and even today the conflict has not died down entirely. Yasser Arafat vowed to declare the independent state of Palestine in 2000.

While it is an avenue to peace in the region, at the same time it may also become another trigger for war. Serious effort on the part of Israel and Palestine will be necessary to foster peace between the two countries.

The crumbling of Yugoslavia and the wars in Bosnia alerted Indonesians that following Soeharto's strong rule over the country there would most likely be similar disintegration. Sure enough, like Bosnia, it was ethno-religious conflict between the Christians and the Muslims that sparked unrest in Ambon. Once boasted as the most tranquil places on the planet (Sarah Ferguson retreated to the province following her separation from Britain's Prince Andrew a few years ago), and where religious harmony was to be a model for the rest of Indonesia, now the Malukus has become shattered with religious warring.

In radio coverage just before New Year's Eve, a Halmahera resident connected via telephone with the station was asked what it would take to end the violence there. He answered: "Only if either one of the parties involved, whether it be the Christians or the Muslims, are finished, will it all end."

What sparked Ambon? Perhaps, most significantly, it was the conflict in Ketapang, Jakarta, in November 1998. There were rumors of a group of Christian Ambonese youths who intended to destroy a mosque. Hearing this, Muslim youths killed the men they suspected and vivid photographs of this incident appeared in the Dec. 8, 1999, issue of Time, and later the Ketapang Church was burned.

In an interview with CNBC in early 1999, in which he was asked to comment about the amount of churches burned during his term, the then president B.J. Habibie turned to the interviewer to ask how many mosques where destroyed before his rule. Hopefully, now Habibie understands that is not the point. One mosque, or one church, destroyed or burned, is one mosque or church too many.

What can be done about restoring peace between Christians and Muslims? That is the point, and that should be our agenda for this third millennium. Hopefully, it does not have to take one entire millennium to accomplish this; the sooner, the better. Let us hope that the end of the second millennium also signifies the end of religious conflicts around the globe.

The writer is a museum specialist and freelance writer.