Written by: Serene KasimThe 5th of August 2009. Never thought I’d be here. Definitely never dreamt I’d be doing this. Sixteen people I had never met or heard of a month ago had suddenly become more than names from places that I had only ever seen on a map or read about in passing. They had assumed personalities, quirks, unique little likes and dislikes, strange turns of phrases. We, complete strangers, from strange cultures and backgrounds, with different experiences, had been put together here, told to mingle and mix and get along. It was demanded we like it. It was expected we learn from each other. The strange thing? We did. We liked it. Over four weeks we mingled and we mixed. We learnt to love the sounds that we brought from each of our strange lands. We learnt to describe smells and sounds to each other. We struggled over meals to tell each other how we missed a certain texture to our food. We struggled in classes to tell each other that each of our experiences, the good ones...

Written by: Anthony Magezi The 2009 summer school on human development and human rights (Indonesia) is such an immense experience that I can actually write a 200 page novel or even more about it. When I left Uganda three weeks ago, I did not expect to be engaged in all spheres of my stay, from the more detailed/immense “class” lectures to the casual but enriching conversations among the summer friends, to visiting unique and interesting places which already booked their places in Indonesian History books to meeting a Buddhist monk that instantly left a mark on my life. Am beginning to appreciate the fact that every year brings unique offerings to one’s personal journey, and to human history. You may not realize it at the time, but this summer school has a lifetime bond that will nourish my soul in the decades ahead.Understanding pluralism from a diverse perspective (human rights, sustainable development, identity, religion, philosophy etc) has opened me to new challenges that I beli...

Written by: Habibah JazilaIt only one week left from the one month full of Summer School. During the program I kept thinking how I can put my learning from this summer school into actions, how the readings required can increase the effectiveness of my human rights work. It reminds me of Pak Zainal’s warning at the Indonesian’s participant meeting before the summer school started. I do remember he said that this summer school basically is an academic program, so for those who are working in NGOs probably should not have the expectations that this is going to be training program that usually work more on developing skills etc, instead, this program will work more on theories. So, for people like me, who is used to have participatory training models rather than the expert model of lecturing, it’s quite hard to have some lectures with quite difficult reading materials for one month.Apart from my struggle with all readings, for me, what makes this program is special is because it tries t...

Written by: SahermanAttending Amina Wadud Class of Puralism, Development and Gender on July 24, is a nice experience for me as a participant of the 2009 International Summer School on Human Development and Human Rights. So far, I only heard and read any news about her as a Afro-American women Muslim scholars striving for gender equality in the Muslim Society.Amina explained how women are still perceived as second human. Women do not have enough chance to access public spaces. Women are being controlled as as result of misunderstanding of the Islamic teaching which is patriarchy perspective. Amina told that she digs Islamic teaching to promote gender equality in Islamic society. She believes that every religions has values of equality between man and women. She asserted that she just dig such values from Islamic teaching itself, rather than adopt from other religion.When she was asked is it possible to have interfaith dialogue on the beliefs of each religions, she replied that it is...

Written by Jimmy Marcos ImmanuelBoth John Rawls and Abdullahi An-Naim’s consider diversity and/or pluralism, with religion being one of the aspects of diversity, to be a given fact, especially in a society and/or state. Starting from that fact, they give their view on how religion has to be placed in public sphere and/or state. Public reason is central to Rawls’ view, An-Naim’s focuses more on civic reason, which is similar to Rawls’ but specific for Islamic context. To Rawls, public reason is a political idea. It belongs to the category of politics, and it is related to discourse of religion and democracy. Its content is given by the family of (liberal) political conceptions of justice satisfying the criterion of reciprocity. It doesn’t trespass upon religious beliefs and injunction insofar as these are consistent with the essential constitutional liberties, including the freedom of religion and liberty of conscience. So, there is no war between religion and democracy. The conflic...