VP tells religious leaders to stop selling heaven

Adianto P. Simamora ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 05/15/2008 1:20 AM  |  Headlines

Vice President Jusuf Kalla urged interfaith leaders on Wednesday to stop "selling heaven very cheaply" to their followers as it could provoke or worsen sectarian conflict.

"Religious leaders often sell heaven very cheaply. They say to their followers 'if you go to battle or burn more churches, you are going to heaven'," Kalla said when opening a meeting of the Asian Conference on Religions for Peace (ACRP) in Jakarta on Wednesday evening.

"Or (they say) 'if you kill your friends because they are of different religions, you are going to heaven'," he said.

He said religion could be used to promote peace among followers of different faiths but could also easily be used to instigate conflict.

"It is like a knife that can be used to kill people but it is also useful to make nice food."

He asked Asian religious leaders to help overcome the economic crisis hitting the region by improving the wellbeing of their people.

Many religious conflicts are caused by inequalities in economic and welfare levels, he said.

"That's why peace can only be achieved if our people live well. Religious leaders should help resolve the crisis and improve welfare conditions to create peace," he said.

According to Kalla, conflict and violence across the world, including in India, Ireland and Iraq, were triggered by people's limited knowledge of their own religion's teachings.

Such conflict, he added, could become worse when religious leaders used "heaven" to provoke their followers, particularly groups of poorer people.

The vice president spoke of his experience of the sectarian fighting in Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi in the 1990s.

"The violence in Ambon and Poso were not because of religious elements. They started from political and economic problems but then changed into a religious war," said Kalla, who managed to broker peace talks to put the fighting in the two areas to a halt.

Hundreds of religious leaders and followers of Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism are attending the two-day meeting.

The ACRP is the world's largest regional body of religiously-inspired people working for peace and harmony in their own countries.

The conference aims to seek input for the seventh assembly of the Asia Conference on Religions and Peace scheduled for Oct. 17 to 21 in Manila, the Philippines.

ACRP president Mir Nawaz Khan said peace in Asia was linked to peace around the globe.

"For peacemaking, collective efforts by peace lovers and problem solvers are imperative and their sermons and preaching for nonviolence must be action-oriented," Khan said.

"Revenge should be substituted for forgiveness."

He said each religion should honor the survival of the human race.

"On the other hand, violence means destruction and human lives and property are endangered."

"Let us join hands and work together against violence and create a nonviolent and peaceful society in the world for the entire human race, which has the common parentage of Adam and Eve," he said.

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