Speech of Din Syamsuddin

We are all now facing tremendous challenges in today’s world. The promise of peace dividend brought about by the end of the Cold War is yet to materialize. Our common dream of a new world civilization based on social justice, equality, prosperity and harmony has yet to become a reality. It is indeed disheartening to see that conflicts and wars remain a defining characteristic of today’s world.

 

When we look at the world today, the absence of peace continues to be a key feature of most countries in the world. Internal conflicts –either in the form of communal violence, conflicts for self determination, genocides, or separatist conflicts-- are mostly found within developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. There were 118 major armed conflicts in 80 different locations since the end of the Cold War. The majority of these were civil wars. From the year 2000 to the present  there are 21 armed conflicts occurred in many locations throughout the world. Of course, the current Russia-Ukraine war is the most threatening since it may pave the way to a global insecurity and instability. There are 47 intrastates armed conflicts and most of them have been internationalized. The  increasing internationalization of conflicts in the past  few years is a worrisome as such conflicts last longer and difficult to solve. 

 

On the other hand, human civilization has faced degradation by the emergence of multi-facet of damages in the world in the last a few decades. The  modern civilization has demonstrated global disorder, uncertainty, and accumulative damages, compounded by poverty, illiteracy, injustice, discrimination, and many forms of violence, both at the national and global levels.

 

What needs to be done?

So far, there are numerous interfaith dialogues. There have been declaration produces from these dialogues. Of course, dialogue is not everything. It is not a panacea that could heal any diseases. Dialogue is just one struggle to find a common ground and shared responsibility. Despites some over-stated criticism on inter-faith, we need to extend dialogue which involves more people from the ground, the grass-root and ordinary people. 

 

But, more importantly, we need to explore ways to move beyond political and theological dialogues. We need to develop a new paradigm of dialogue, including interfaith dialogue. We need to develope cooperation as part of well-grounded dialogue amd dialogue of action. It is this cooperation that reflects and represents our common concern to heal the world. Together now, we face a serious climate change and environmental damages. We witness people who suffer from poverty, energy crisis, water crisis, hunger and other human calamities. It is our humanity duty to find ways for a more positive and constructive cooperation on the ground. By so doing the people of different faiths need to explore a common ground among themselves in order to meet the challenges of our common enemies. Our common enemies are not religious others, but problems of humanity such as poverty, illiteracy, injustice, discrimination, violence, terrorism, ecological collapse, and cultural tsunami.