Written by: Saherman

Attending 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 better to have a dialogue not on the belief such as divinity but rather on practice things. There will be good dialogue between religions on, for instance, global warming or violence against women and how the religions can take its role on such issues.

It is called me up to the program which Komnas Perempuan (the National Commission on Violence against Women) conducted last year. The program called Survivors' Notion of Justice and the Role of Religious Institutions. Komnas Perempuan was engaged in a dialogue with strategic representatives from the most influential religious institutions. As we know, religion is often used to legitimize discrimination against women. However, there is a space of dynamism and debate within religious communities in Indonesia about women's rights and gender justice. We created dialogue among religious leaders and institutions, which is not merely theological, but empirically-based and policy orientated.

The program got started with dialogue between Komnas Perempuan, survivor of the violence against women, NGOs Activist, and religious leader. This forum bridged the religious leader to survivors so that the survivor can reveal what they experienced in and how the religious leaders and their institutions should response. The survivors wanted justice and support from the religious communities. They don't want to be condemned and expelled from their communities. Religious communities and leaders are where the survivors try to find justice. But, commonly, survivors always expelled because the leaders and people in their communities perceived survivors are disgrace for the communities. For instance, it happened to woman who is raped in conflict area or by her boyfriend the got pregnant. They are not allowed to do worship in her church. Another example is women who is survivor of the domestic violence, they are perceived as the one who don't obey her husband and deserved to have such violence.

After the diaologue, key religious institutions from Islam (Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama), Catholic (KWI) and Christian (PGI) write a book on topic of violence against women and the justice for the survivor with the perspective of each religions. Along with the institutions, Komnas Perempuan then published the books to spread up the notion of justice for the survivor of the violence against women. We hope that the books can be references for religious leaders and become part of the struggles on the elimination violence against women.

The program ended with reflection from the key religious leaders who were involved. Each leader was happy to have collaboration with another religious leaders. They think it's nice to have dialogue and collaboration on such humanities issues. They all hope to have another program to work with, of curse, on other human rights issues.

Although many didn't agree with Amina's rejection on the dialogue on divinity of each religion, but for me such interfaith dialogue in practical things is a possible. We did it on human rights issues. Now is time to create more dialogue for humanities issues.