There is a dire need for developing a civil discourse embedded in the universally acknowledged democratic values ensuring no voice remains unheard. A pluralistic discourse is a must to achieve a democratic society, were views expressed by the learned scholars from the US and Indonesia while speaking at Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) Rawalpindi and National Institute of Science and Technology (NUST) on June 5, 2014.
The dialogues are a part of a series “Governance, Community and Religion (GOCORE)” with Pakistani universities students, intelligentsia, academia and civil society jointly organized by Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in collaboration with Heinrich Bӧll Stiftung (HBS).
Democracy and development can be achieved simultaneously. The option of free exercise of religion and religious freedoms should be offered to all the citizens by the state, indiscriminately, as a measure of ensuring caring, inclusive and harmonized society as well as equal citizenry. Liberal democracy is the way forward to build nations on egalitarian democracy.
Dr. Shabana Mir, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Global Studies at Millikin University, USA said that the religion could have multiple roles in politics while sharing the American perspective of dealing with the multicultural diverse society and underscoring the need for the separation between religion and politics. She argued that the States’ attitude to religion must be based on community while explaining US founding fathers firmly believed that the intertwinement of religion and politics and state religion could be very harmful for the society populated by multiple ethnic group.
She said, “a pluralistic discourse is a must to achieve a democratic society”, adding that to promote social harmony and development one needs to get over history and romanticized ideas to replicate models that are no longer in sync with the contemporary context. “State has nothing to do with religion in the United States in order to accommodate the American diversity”, she added. “The public schools in the US cannot propagate neither impose upon the students religious views”, she explained. Dr. Shabana underscored the need for all government actions to be based on public good, as determined by democratic means. “A pluralistic marketplace of religious law should exist in a separate legal realm parallel to that of government law”, she said while adding that the State attitude to religion must be based on the diversity and communities living in the society.
Dr. Shabana stated that according to American experts’ separation between religion and politics was important keeping that the ecclesiasticism could corrupt the state and the state could possibly pollute the church likewise”. The overt pre-dominant purpose of the law should not be religious but it should be rather the public interest”, she said. Dr. Mir clarified that Americans did not believe in religion and that was why they separated religion from politics is more of a myth. The reason is simply for them all religions are important and therefore do not mix it with politics. Dr. Shabana Mir further added that State was reasonably tolerant and accommodating towards the American diversity while quoting an example of Presidents’ Happy Holidays Wish instead of Merry Christmas. Dr. Shabana also referred to various clauses prohibiting the government from establishing any religion as official or favoring one religion over the other while terming the US State-Religion relation not static and as a ‘shifting porous wall of separation’.
“Secularism is more consistent with Islamic history than modern Islamic state movements because Islamic history was not fundamentally different from Western societies regarding the relationship between religion and the state”, she quoted Abdullahi An-Naim’s perspective, Author of “Islam and the Secular State”.
Mr. Endy Bayuni, a prominent journalist from Jakarta Post who writes about the evolving political cultures, Islam, democracy, foreign affairs, economic development, and the changing media landscape termed Liberal democracy as the way forward for Muslim majority nations building on egalitarian democratic principles, including guarantees of freedom and basic rights. He said Indonesia is among the top 16 developing economies of the world and that was not possible without the accommodating approach towards it ethnically diverse society. “Public services are being rendered to all the ethnic groups without any preferential discrimination of cast, color or religion in Indonesia as guaranteed by the constitution”, he added while referring to the fact that Islam in Indonesia was treated like any other religion without any prejudice.
He said in the ongoing democratization process Indonesia was confronted with political challenges quite similar to Pakistan. He said democracy and democratic values were taking roots in several Muslim countries, however, the challenges to become modern secular states still needed to be dealt with shared experiences and understanding about the modern democracy based on the notion of equal citizenry. He said despite efforts by the hardliners to change the discourse of Indonesian state, the people had shown a remarkable commitment with diversity and modern democratic values. He said that Indonesian people had made it clear that they deemed democracy as the only way forward to keep intact the integrity of one nation state.
Mr. Bayuni said various groups in Indonesia had been attempting to manipulate the constitution and to impose their version of religious dictates. However, he said, people in general were aware of the consequences of such efforts and were hence raising their voice for strengthening democracy in the country. “The existence of all religions is constitutionally guaranteed, and so is the right to practice and the right to build houses of worship”, he said while adding that Indonesian founding fathers recognized that the diversity of the nation may be divisive elements in building the nation, but it might also be the one that would help unite and strengthen the nation. Mr. Bayuni in his presentations also highlighted co-habitation and state level acceptance of Indonesian diversity which was a pre-dominantly Muslim majority country through various examples of minorities working on key government positions.