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Now, in a country like in Indonesia, of course the role of religious leader is very
important because religion is important. I think in many countries, the role of leader is
providing with inspiration and guidance to the people. Again, if you look at the US,
the level of intolerance increase because the leader kind of giving inspiration to the
intolerant group. Only recently, there was a shooting in Synagogue and a couple days
ago there’s another shooting in California, for in stance, because of the rhetoric of the
leader is really inciting conflict. And therefore, I think if religious leaders can provide
guidance and inspiration to the common people on how to use religion as not as
energy for conflict, but actually is instrument for peaceful coexistence, and they will
contribute very important role in that case.
I want to post a little bit further there that multiculturalism is a new category, is
a modern category. Dr. Pintavanicha lightly mentioned that for centuries we’ve been
living together. Plurality is not something new. But pluralism seeing diversity as
positive, because from differences, we can learn from each other, is actually
something new. And multiculturalism is also something new.
Besides tolerance that was mentioned and explained by Dr. Chantana, for
multiculturalism or multicultural society, we need four conditions.
Tolerance is the first condition.
The second one is recognition. You don’t only tolerate others who are different,
but we need to recognize, and by recognition it leads to positive accommodation. If
you have different languages. Your children go to school. The school, the state should
meet the school profile education that fit to that group. If you are from particular
religious group, and you need place for worship, the society should recognize that.
This community has every right to have that house for worship. That’s positive
accommodation.
But most important of all is that it should be guaranteed by the law that
everybody is equal. Regardless of the minority or majority, everybody should be
treated equally. That’s multiculturalism. Again, in that case religious leaders in working
with other leaders can lead peaceful coexistence. One example, when I was in the
US, there was a Christian priest, because of his hatred, collected the Quran, Islamic
scripture, and he declare what he call as the international burning day of the Quran.
So, it’s really very provocative. However, other Christian leaders, as a counter to that
movement, invite leaders from US community, invites leaders from Muslim community,
and other communities, and create what they call an International Interfaith Prayer
Day. So, on one side, there’s a group, frenetic group, is burning the Quran to provoke
the hostility against the minority in the US, Muslims in this case. But the other groups
celebrated as a location to pray together, Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other
religions. So eventually, actually the Interfaith Prayer Day is more influential than the
Al Quran burning day. I think because of the role of the religious leaders. Thank you. ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
