I attended a talk by Luthfi Assyaukanie, head of Jaringan Islam Liberal, on Friday 14 December 2007, at Shah Village. The invitation came from Khalid Jaafar, whom I met earlier that day at Bangsar Village.
Luthfi’s talk was on “Kebebasan Beragama, Bukan Dialog”. He argued that interfaith dialogues do not have too big an impact on the relationship between faiths. For a dialogue to be effective, all parties involved will have to show tolerance and understanding towards religious differences. He believes it is very difficult to convince religious individuals to ignore the differences between religions, for it is the differences that make a religion unique. If the differences are fundamental, then interfaith dialogues would not work. For example, the mainstream Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia would not easily be coaxed into a dialogue with the Ahmadiyah group in those countries. The same applies to the Catholics and Protestants. A true dialogue requires acceptance total acceptance of equality between the parties involved. This simply would not happen between the religious groups, or even between the sub-groups within each religion. That is why, according to Luthfi, interfaith dialogues have failed, and would not work.
Luthfi believes that the alternative is to work on achieving freedom to practice one’s religion (kebebasan beragama). This has to be constitutionally guaranteed, and a specific provision must exist in the constitution to safeguard freedom of religion. In his own words: “Pelanggaran-pelanggaran terhadap hak asasi manusia dan kebebasan beragama umumnya terjadi karena pemerintah menerapkan kebijakan-kebijakan politik tertentu untuk menjaga kekuasaannya (biasanya karena tekanan dari kaum konservatif) atau karena masyarakat yang memang tidak cukup liberal dalam memahami konstitusi dan undang-undang. Kesimpulan: pertarungan ke depan adalah pertarungan konstitusi dan undang-undang.”
Good event. Interesting topic. But it was a pity that I could not stay to the end as I had to rush to Endah Parade – my fellow Alam Shah schoolmates were playing futsal. You must have your priorities right!
Filed under: Freedom & Liberty, Malaysia
Recent Comments