Religions can help build bridges to peace

Putting aside their fundamental differences, most organized religions can help build bridges with the goal of attaining world peace through dialogue based on shared values, eminent Swiss theologian and philosopher Hans Kung says.

The founder and president of the Germany-based Global Ethic Foundation told a seminar in Jakarta on Monday that even as Christianity, Judaism and Islam are continually undergoing shifts in paradigms, there are constant elements that underpin all of these three religions together as well as most other faiths, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, thus making dialogue possible.

One of the principles taught in all of these religions is that “all human beings must treat other living things humanely”, he said. Another value commonly found in all of these faiths is the golden rule of “do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you,” he added.

Kung was addressing the seminar on “Religion, Ethics, Dogmatism in Indonesia — Fortering Understanding of Current Challenges”, jointly organized by the Swiss Embassy in Jakarta and the Jakarta-based International Center for Islam and Pluralism (ICIP). Contributing to the discussion were former Muhammadiyah chair Ahmad Syafii Ma’arif, chairman of the Nahdlatul Ulama Said Aqil Siradj and Franz Magnis-Suseno of the Driyakara School of Theology.

Swiss Ambassador Heinz Walker-Nederkoorn put the issue succinctly in his introductory remarks by asking whether religion and ethics were considered part of the problem or part of the solution to current global conflicts.

ICIP executive director Syafi’i Anwar said the world today had become more complex, more pluralist and more multicultural thanks to the process of modernization, globalization and liberalization, and that these created new challenges in the way nations and communities addressed their problems.

Kung recited his most famous line in arguing for a role for religion: “There will be no peace among nations without peace among religions, and there will be no peace among religions without dialogues among religions.”

He also referred to the speech on global ethnicity by then United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan who said that “no religion or ethical system should ever be condemned because of the moral lapses of some of its adherents.

“If I, as a Christian, would not wish my faith to be judged by the actions of the Crusaders or the Inquisition, I should be very careful to judge anyone else’s faith by the actions that a few terrorists may commit in its name,” he quoted Annan’s 2003 speech.

On the need for global ethic, Kung said all religions shared four basic principles that could be used as the basis of their dialogues. They are:

• You shall not kill, murder, torture, rape. In positive terms, this means to have respect for life.
• You shall not steal, exploit, bribe or corrupt, which translates in positive terms as dealing honestly and fairly.
• You shall not lie, deceive, forge or manipulate. In other words, you must speak and act truthfully.
• You shall not commit sexual immorality, cheat, humiliate or dishonor. In positive terms, this means to respect and love one another.

Kung said all three religions underwent changes of paradigms throughout their history.

The argument in all of these three religions has always been how much and what to preserve from the old paradigms, with one camp arguing to preserve everything and the other extreme arguing for discarding
everything.

But as all these three religions have undergone modernization in the past century or so, some of the old or even ancient paradigms have remained and are often competing side by side for influence.