Building a Shared Home: Investigating the Intellectual Legacy of the Key Thinkers of Inter-Religious Dialogue in Indonesia

Abstract

How does inter-religious dialogue in Indonesia transform and being transformed by the New Order authoritarian regime in the creation of a strong civil society and a religiously plural and democratic country? By discussing the politicization of religion and mobilization of religious communities by the New Order regime to fight against the Communists in the wake of the 1965 tragedy as the background, this dissertation seeks to analyze the anatomy of inter-religious relations in the country, including its historical roots, pivotal events, enduring issues and consequential development in the later period. The discussion is placed in a wider theoretical context on the role of religion in public life. Based on the analysis of topical biography, academic works, media reports and other reliable unpublished documents as the main sources, the dissertation investigates the intellectual legacy of four selected key thinkers in the field of inter-religious dialogue. It critically discusses the complex interplay between religion and politics in particular relation to such issues as religious pluralism, religious tolerance, exclusivism, human rights, freedom of religion, legal discrimination, and minority-majority relations. It highlights why and how the contesting discourse within a particular religious community about other group, between different religious communities, especially the Muslims and the Christians, as well as between religious communities and the regime move toward certain direction in particular context and then move towards the opposite direction in other context. Despite the wide spread conflict towards the end of the New Order regime and during the 2000s, the dissertation proved that inter-religious relations in Indonesia in general developed from antagonism to more dialogical relations over the period. The four selected key thinkers of inter-religious dialogue and their intellectual legacy demonstrated how religion could make fundamental contribution in the creation of democracy in a religiously plural society.