Beyond Islam and the West Mario Rustan  ;   The writer teaches English and Australian cultural studies at Uni-Bridge, St. Aloysius High School, Bandung

JAKARTA POST, 06 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

Indonesia recently hosted the 6th UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) global forum, the first Asian nation to do so. The initiative began when al-Qaeda and its affiliates bombed Western and Christian targets worldwide, and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq created deep distrust among Muslims of Western civilization, as represented by the US, Australia and the EU. Although officially the forum is interested in dialogue and cooperation between all civilizations, it emphasizes dialogue between the Western and Islamic worlds. Dialogue between Christians and Muslims is the most common and expected kind of inter-religious conversation both in Indonesia and internationally. By no means should it be the only one. Yes, Prime Minister, a 1980s British comedy, suggested the expansion of interfaith dialogues in Britain to involve Atheists and Marxists too. More seriously, unfortunately the much-needed dialogue between Muslims and Jews seems to be unheard of. So why are we talking about religions when talking about civilizations? The late American academic Samuel P. Huntington had something to do with it. He warned that the post-Cold War world would not be a peaceful one, with cultural and religious identities replacing political ideologies (i.e. capitalism and communism) as the main source of conflicts. He divided the world into several civilizations — political units larger than nation-states that shared common cultures, values and yes, religions. Western civilization is a post-Christian civilization. Founded by the Protestant and Catholic Christians of Europe and their colonies in America, Australia and New Zealand, now it is driven by secular laws. A Westerner is not necessarily white — they can come from any part of the world and practice any faith. What makes someone a Westerner is his or her citizenship. The Orthodox world is another face of Western civilization and it has many different values to Protestant and Catholic civilizations. Ancient Greeks developed democracy and secular philosophy, but modern Greece is driven by Orthodox Christianity, which in general is conservative and does not welcome secularism and modernity. Russia in the 21st century defies and confronts the US and the EU and unsurprisingly, sees itself as the successor of Byzantine civilization (which practiced Orthodox Christianity and spoke Greek). The East consists of several different civilizations — the Hindu civilization in India, Buddhist civilization in continental Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, the unique civilization of Japan, and the Sinic (Chinese) civilization in China, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. The Japanese and Sinic civilizations are influenced by Buddhism but they do not communicate with the Buddhist civilization and their lives are still strongly governed by Confucianism and folk religions. Indonesia belongs in the intercontinental Muslim world, which is spread from northern Africa to Southeast Asia. Yes, we can say that Indonesia is a diverse nation of different faiths and ethnicities, just like Malaysians say that they are a nation of all Asians. The fact remains, however, that Islam is the centerpiece of politics and daily lives in both Indonesia and Malaysia. Finally, there is the sub-Saharan African civilization, where nation states were formed out of colonial territories and where clan and tribal allegiances trump citizenship and religious creed. Muslim (and left-wing Western) commentators often criticized Huntington for stoking Western animosities against Islam with his “clash of civilizations” thesis, and events following the 9/11 tragedy seemed to confirm the view that the West had chosen to wage war on Islam. Huntington, however, believed that the clash of civilizations would happen not only between West and Islam, but between all different civilizations. In recent years, China has replaced Iran and even al-Qaeda as the strongest critic of Western values and ideas — while the Gulf emirates are inviting Western professionals to work and live in their boomtowns. Buddhists persecute Muslims in several Asian nations and Russia demands that Poland and Ukraine look away from Europe and follow Russian leadership. Another of Huntington’s famous concepts, which is also used against him, is “the West and the rest” (he did not invent the term, the Singaporean academic Kishore Mahbubani did). Huntington believed that conflicts between Western and non-Western civilizations would happen as non-Western civilizations believed that Western primacy in global economics, culture and politics endangered their way of life. Many Asian and Muslim commentators who accuse the West (and Huntington) of arrogance advocate an alliance between “the rest”. As interesting the concept of pan-Asian or Eurasian cooperation (or even Asian-African, which becomes the namesake of roads in Indonesian cities) is, it does not work beyond common criticism against the West (i.e. the US, Australia and the UK). Southeast Asians barely know and care about who lives next door (despite efforts made by regional media networks and airlines), East Asians are cursing each other and India still does not live up to its promises to become a multi-religious democracy. Russia has been much less successful than the Soviet Union was in securing military alliances and Latin Americans are eager to prove their Western credentials rather than antagonize the US and Canada.      Despite civil wars in the Middle East, strangely in the 2010s the relations between Islamic and Western civilizations are not in crisis. Perhaps the dialogues work. Therefore, it is necessary to move to the next step — dialogues with and within “the rest”. The possibilities are endless: Islam and Hindu, Japanese and Chinese, Western and Orthodox, and Latin America and the Caribbean. The two main priorities are dialogues between Western and Sinic civilizations and the holy grail of dialogues – between Jews and Muslims. ●