OPENING REMARKS
DR. SUSILO BAMBANG YUDHOYONO
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
AT THE BINA ANTARBUDAYA
INTER-CULTURAL SEMINAR
ISTANA NEGARA
24 AUGUST 2007
Bismillahirrahmanirahiim
Mr. Taufik Ismail, Chairman of the Yayasan Bina AntarBudaya Board of Governance,
Mr. Francisco Cazal, President of AFS Intercultural Programmes,
Mr. Tanri Abeng, Co-founder of the Yayasan Bina AntarBudaya,
Excellencies and Distinguished Guests,
Distinguished Participants,
Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh,
It is a unique pleasure and privilege for me to speak to you who have gathered here to commemorate the 50th year of the American Field Service (AFS) in Indonesia and the 60th year of the AFS Programmes Worldwide.
To the officers and members of the AFS and its Indonesian partner, Yayasan Bina AntarBudaya (YBA), I offer you my warmest congratulations not only on the momentous anniversary you are observing, but also on the good work that you and many other like-minded organizations are doing.
That work is making a difference in a world that would otherwise be in the total grips of conflict, violence, hatred, prejudice and ignorance.
Through your inter-cultural exchange programmes, young students leave for a significant period of time the comfort of their homes and familiar surroundings to immerse themselves in a society with different ways, different traditions, different world views and different patterns of thought.
I can imagine that this experience, at least in the beginning, can be disconcerting. To a few, it can be traumatic. But it does not take long before the participants become happier and wiser, and develop a profound respect and appreciation of another societies cultures, traditions, sensitivities and feelings.
They begin to nurture a genuine love for human beings who seem at first to be entirely different from them but who, it turns out, are as human as themselves with the same human needs, aspirations and final destiny as any other human being.
That is a vitally important achievement: the recognition of your own humanity in another person is the beginning of caring and the advent of wisdom.
And that is why I think you could not have chosen a better theme with which to celebrate the golden anniversary of your work and your organization in Indonesia : “Islam and the West: From Co-existence to Engagement.�
My Friends,
Two years ago, an irreverent caricature of the Prophet Muhammad salaallahu alaihi wassalaam was published in a local European newspaper and enraged many people in the Muslim world, resulting in riots and other acts of violence.
It strikes me today that if every human being enjoyed the intellectual benefits of your intercultural exchange programme, nothing of that kind of inter-civilizational clash would have happened. A Western journalist who has benefited from your programme, moved by the same creative impulse that made his colleagues produce irreverent cartoons, would have found a way of honouring the legacy of the Prophet instead of perpetrating an insult.
Having lived with Muslims, he would know that an insult against the Prophet would be a knife driven into the heart of every devout Muslim. And he would know that his own Western civilization owes much of its vigour to the Islamic intellectual legacy. He would create a positive and constructive message instead of provoking anger.
By the same token, a Muslim who has lived and has been adopted by a Western family would have nothing to do with riots against Western establishments in the Muslim world. He would know that freedom of expression is sacred in the Western democratic tradition and even when it is misused and therefore subject to legal reprimand, it should never be the target of irrational violence.
Thus he would be in the best position to plead for peace and to work for peace. He knows that when a Western journalist, in his ignorance, is in effect telling you that Islam is a religion of violence, you should not prove him right by becoming violent. You should hold a lamp to his error and show him that Islam is a religion of peace by holding your peace and making peace between him and you.
And thus through this intercultural exchange programme, you have contributed not only to world peace but also to the solution of the world’s problems.
In our own way, we in the Government of Indonesia have tried to do our part to build bridges : when the global controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet was still raging, we organized in Bali a Global InterMedia Dialogue, a meeting of leading journalists from the Muslim world and the Western world to share views and insights on freedom of expression and cultural sensitivity.
The resulting consensus was robust and clear: both freedom of expression and cultural sensitivity are vitally essential, and neither can be sacrificed to promote the other. It was also agreed that there should be more dialogues of this kind.
Hence, the Global InterMedia dialogue has been repeated in Oslo, and next year it will be held again in Indonesia. Meanwhile, we have been holding regional interfaith and intercultural dialogues in the context of our bilateral relations with like-minded countries such as Australia, and in the framework of our interregional relations between Asia and Europe, the ASEM Interfaith and Intercultural Dialogue has now become a regular annual event.
In our efforts to promote and sponsor the holding of dialogues, we have discovered that dialogue is also necessary within the same faith. Thus, in the context of the quest for peace in the Middle East, we held very early this year in Bogor a dialogue among Sunni and Shi-ite religious leaders on how they could work together to achieve peace in Iraq.
By promoting these dialogues, we are aiming fo more than just coexistence. Coexistence is by nature tentative and precarious. It does not go far enough into active, positive cooperation. Coexistence says: Leave that other person alone. Do not intrude into his life and you will have no trouble with him.
Thus, with coexistence we can be assured of peace. But that peace will not save us from the challenges and problems posing a deadly threat to humankind.
It will not save humankind, for instance, from the devastation of climate change. It will not save the teeming millions of the poor in Asia and Africa and in the slums of the developed world from the death-grip of poverty. And it will not save us from deadly pandemics that can decimate whole populations.
What the world needs today is the same kind of enlightenment that comes to those who undergo your intercultural exchange programmes: that is when you get to know another person so well because you have lived with him and have become a part of his household. You start to understand him so well that you care for him, and he feels the same toward you. Then you begin to be responsible to him and for him. You do concrete things for his benefit. And he responds in kind.
When that happens, there are so many things that you can do together, because you have become a community. You have transcended coexistence and moved into engagement. Perhaps, you have become partners in an undertaking greater than yourselves.
And for a similar purpose we in the Indonesian Government are advocating and conducting various kinds of dialogue, including and especially interfaith and intercultural dialogue, at the national, regional, interregional and global levels. We would like to see dialogue lead to mutual appreciation and understanding, and then to deep engagement through the formation of partnerships and communities.
That is how we are building an ASEAN Community in this part of the world by practicing dialogue and cultivating the habit of caring and sharing among the ten Southeast Asian nations and our dialogue partners.
That is how, we hope, an East Asian Community, and an Asia-Pacific community will eventually be born through engagement that comes from dialogue.
And that, ultimately, is how, we hope, a global partnership for sustainable development will be generated between the developing world, to which the Muslim world belongs, and the developed world of the Western nations. This is the only way in which we can ensure long term peace and the final triumph of the human race over such challenges as climate change, poverty, and the many conflicts that stem from prejudice and ignorance.
In the final analysis, there is no essential difference between what Indonesia is trying to do in the community of nations and what you are doing in the American Field Service and the Yayasan Bina AntarBudaya.
In a very real sense, you are a stabilizing force in a world that is fundamentally unbalanced. You are spreading the light so that a large part of humanity is saved from its own darkness and ignorance. And you are building bridges between societies so that we can reach out to one another and engage with one another to meet common needs and address shared problems.
You are genuine peacemakers. May your deliberations be fruitful. And may your members increase.
Thank you.
Wassalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh,
Jakarta, 24 Agustus 2007
Presiden Republik Indonesia
Dr. H. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono