Knowledge & Change Spotlight: Religious Pluralism in Indonesia

The ‘spotlight session’ provides a daily preview of key events of our upcoming Knowledge Dialogue. Today a preview of ‘Indonesia: Mapping and interpreting diversity’.

Indonesia frequently features in Western media when religious tensions rise. Although the country is commonly referred to as the country of ‘moderate Islam’, incidents of interreligious violence and Muslims response to Wilders, Danish cartoons and other anti-Islam sentiments in the West are regularly making news stories.

This workshop presents a map of Indonesian diversity and its main problems and potentials. Focus will be on religious diversity though inevitably it is connected with other forms of diversity, such as ethnicity and gender. The presenters, academics and civil society activists from the Indonesian Pluralism Knowledge Programme, will describe the findings of studies on (1) laws and regulations and its contribution to a civic pluralist society and (2) local communities’ practices in dealing with diversity.

Issues that will be discussed are attacks on places of worship, introduction of local Shari’a regulations and the debate on annulling the Religious Defamation Law.

Time: Wednesday 29 September, 14.00-15.45 hours. To participate in the Knowledge Dialogue, you can register here