, The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 02/23/2007 8:55 AM | Opinion
Mirza Tirta Kusuma, Berkeley, San Francisco
Once popular theories of global progress and secularization commonly held that modernization would relegate religion to an insignificant role in public affairs.
Even today, when we try to assess the value of religion over and against other dimensions of civic life, we often do so with the assumption that religion, per se, shares nothing as an idea or even as an experience with pluralism, liberalism and secularism, which are regarded as the defining criteria of modern democratic societies.
But the surge of Islamic political activism that crossed the first threshold of historical visibility in the Iranian revolution of 1979 demonstrated the erroneousness of these predictions and thus, among other things, opened the way for Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington to reintroduce religion as a relevant category for understanding post-Cold War geopolitics in their ""clash of civilizations"" thesis.
To assume that we are living in a secularized world is to make a false assumption. The world today is as fervently religious as it ever was and in some places more so than ever. It is no exaggeration to say that today religion is one of the most powerful and pervasive forces on earth.
Even the most cursory glance at the history of religions tells us that throughout most of recorded history humanity has experienced a rich plurality of religions. From certain theological perspectives, this phenomenon is due to the manifold nature of divine revelation and of its human response in an astonishing variety of different cultures and historical contexts.
Many, however, are quick to point out that the contemporary globalizing context of religious pluralism is unlike any of its precursors, in that never before have so many different religious communities and individuals existed in such close proximity to, and been interdependent upon, one another.
In fact, I would argue that the very existence of the fairly recent interreligious movement is an indication that today the world's religions are interacting on an unprecedented scale. If the shelves of bookstores from Berkeley to New York, Rome, Istanbul and my hometown Yogyakarta are any indication, there seems to be an increasing curiosity about other religions that is sometimes positive and sometimes negative. The phenomenon of reading each other's scripture and about each other's religions seems to be growing more popular.
Depending on our own socio-cultural location, those of us who engage in interreligious inquiry are inspired, perplexed and in some cases even repulsed by what we surmise as each other's insights and practices. Optimally speaking, we find that our various traditions share some of the same fundamental values that each of us cherish in our own religions, albeit expressed in different ways.
That great pioneer of the modern discipline of the history of religions, Friedrich Max Muller, once famously wrote, ""He who knows one religion knows none,"" perhaps largely referring to those who aspired to become experts in the study of a particular religious tradition.
In today's increasingly religiously plural social contexts, these words suggest not only that a failure to engage in pluralism is an act of self-marginalization, but that without some understanding of the faith of our neighbor, the religious person (or community) cannot understand oneself (or itself).
Theological explanations of this plurality vary from tradition to tradition. In the Abrahamic faiths such explanations tend to fall into two distinct, but not always mutually exclusive, categories. There are those explanations that attribute religious plurality either to ignorance of the truth, or perversity in the face of truth. And there are other explanations which suggest that religious plurality is somehow a part of the divine design to bring humanity together as one family before God.
In Islam, the Koran is the single most important source of inspiration for interreligious dialogue. It may be that the Koran is unique among the Abrahamic scriptures -- and perhaps other scriptural texts as well -- in the explicit manner to which it refers not only to dialogue between adherents of different-faith communities, but also to the divine ordainment of religious diversity and consequently to the spiritual validity of these diverse religious paths. Koranic discourse presents these paths as many outwardly divergent facets of a single, universal revelation by the unique and indivisible Absolute.
The current global crisis we are experiencing raises questions which, in the view of many, transcend differences of culture and religion. This crisis stands as a challenge to the various religious communities of the world to forsake isolationism and to work together to address social ills. Though these ills are not caused by religion, interreligious dialogue and activity can possibly become a basis for joint reflection and action.
As a historian of religions and a Muslim theologian, I can say that in today's world to be authentically religious one must be authentically interreligious. The challenge to be authentically interreligious is inherent in the challenge to be authentically Muslim in today's world for two important reasons. The first is that the concept of justice (adl) stands second only to the concept of realizing the oneness of God (tawhid) as one of the most elemental teachings of the Koran.
Koranically speaking, Islam itself is about working toward justice in every relationship in which the human being finds her or himself: in a relationship with the divine Creator, in relationships with each other and in relationship with all of the created order in which we humans are an integral part.
The second reason is the establishment of justice in the inter-human realm and between human beings and the environment. This necessitates the universal establishment of human rights and a universal obligation to care for the earth.
Neither of these goals can be meaningfully achieved without interreligious coalitions of thought and action.
The writer is a Ford Foundation, Cardinal Bernardin and an International Institute of Islamic Thought scholar in Chicago. She can be reached at mirzatk@yahoo.com.
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