T

he “middle path” approach should not be defined using a simplistic interpretation, especially in politics, academics and religious figures said on Wednesday on the second day of the seventh biennial World Peace Forum.

Indonesia introduced as a concept the “middle path”, which is defined as an approach that emphasizes ethics and morality, based on its traditions and experiences in promoting peace through Pancasila, its national ideology.

Presidential special envoy for interfaith and intercivilizational dialogue and cooperation Din Syamsuddin said in the forum’s opening ceremony on Tuesday that the world should not be trapped in extremities based on religious beliefs or national ideologies and it should instead take the middle path.

Muhammad Hossein Mozaffari, a professor of international law and director of the Center for Interreligious Dialogue of Iran’s Islamic Culture and Relations Organization, said the middle path was not equidistant between the two extremes.

“The middle path is not equal in distance from the two sides of the spectrum. It has dynamism, offering us a lot of notions and choices and alternatives that you have to explore,” he told a briefing after the second day concluded.

A professor of political sciences at the University of Paris, Delphine Alles, told the briefing that the middle path should not be used to claim that there is only one solution.

Alles said, especially in the case of politics, the middle path bore the risk of being used as a way of discrediting the opposition by presenting a political solution as if there were no alternatives.

“It is a way of legitimizing ideas that say, ‘Well this is obvious, this is the center, this is neutral.’ It’s very often related to technocratic politics of the solution,” she said.

While speaking at a panel discussion, Alles said the middle path concept could be used to avoid pluralism and she defined it as arbitrary, citing as an example an unsubstantiated middle path in Syria, where its government sought legitimacy by demonizing those on the extreme end of the spectrum.

She said it was important to uphold the notion of being reasonable as, in complex politics, there were many actors and issues that needed to be properly understood, not simplified. “We should promote the middle path as a method, not the end.”

Former foreign minister Alwi Shihab said Indonesia’s middle path, embodied in Pancasila, was challenged by radicalism.

“New ideologies recently brought over from the Middle East that undermine Pancasila and our unity are starting to penetrate [our society],” he told reporters, adding that existing Islamic organizations like Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama and Washliyah were based on Wasatiyyat teachings, or moderation.

In May, Indonesia held the Wasatiyyat Islam conference in Bogor, West Java, where some 100 Muslim scholars from around the world committed to promote Wasatiyyat Islam, which is said to have been practiced throughout history, since the era of the Prophet Muhammad.

Islamic scholar Azyumardi Azra said because of Pancasila, political violence and uprising was far less frequent in Indonesia compared to other Muslim countries in the Middle East.

In addition to the implementation of the middle path approach in politics, the participants also attended separate panels on religion, national ideologies and economics.

In the case of national interest, panels identified that, for some countries, national interests conflicted with universal values, such as humanity, making the middle path approach a challenging one to promote at a practical level.

Alwi, who is also a presidential special envoy to the Middle East, said Indonesia’s national interests were embodied in Pancasila’s third principle, unity.

“Pancasila is the unifying factor between many ethnic and religious groups,” he said.