Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - December 7, 2004
Jerry Norton

The two-day meeting had begun with a call for tolerance by President Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia and a condemnation of terrorism as the enemy of all religions.

Participants at the International Dialogue on Interfaith Cooperation ranged from Buddhist monks in orange robes to Muslim muftis and Catholic cardinals. Jews, Protestants, Hindus and Confucionists were also on hand.

"I think the conference has been extremely successful for us from Papua New Guinea," that nation's Social Welfare and Development Minister Lady Carol Kidu told Reuters.

"It has brought some of our very major faith-based leaders together in a way we have probably never been together before ... when we go home we've made this resolution to maintain this ongoing dialogue and expand it."

She mentioned a talk with a Philippine expert on conflict resolution as providing useful ideas on solving her country's problems of communal and urban violence.

Such problems are not unique among the nations at the meeting. Majority Buddhist Thailand is struggling to cope with a restive Muslim minority, as is the mostly Christian Philippines.

MUSLIM HEARTLAND

Indonesia, whose government helped sponsor the meeting, suffers from sporadic deadly Christian-Islamic clashes and in recent years from bombings that in the worst case killed 202 people in Bali, mostly tourists.

Eighty-eight of those victims were Australian. Australia and Indonesia's second-largest Muslim organisation, Muhammadiyah, were the other sponsors of the meeting in the ancient royal capital of Yogyakarta in Indonesia's Muslim heartland.

The Bali attack as well as other blasts in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian militant Islamic group linked to al Qaeda.

Komaruddin Hidayat, a religious philosphy lecturer in Indonesia, told Reuters he was optimistic the meeting would make things tougher for terrorists.

"It gives good impact in declaring that we are against terrorism, so it narrows up the space for them if government and society can be working hand in hand."

More than 100 religious and community leaders and interfaith experts from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were delegates at the forum, held at a luxury resort hotel where tight security included an armoured truck mounted with a machinegun.

But ASEAN member Malaysia, a Muslim country whose nationals have been among the leaders of violent militant groups like Jemaah Islamiah, was effectively a non-participant, belatedly sending just one representative from its embassy in Indonesia while no other country had a delegation of fewer than five.

Despite that absence, delegates from elsewhere in ASEAN saw the meeting as worthwhile.

AIDS, FAMILY VIOLENCE AND POVERTY

"It really broadens our perspective on how to obtain peace," said Genesis Udang, president of the Evangelical Ministers of the Philippines.

A Catholic colleague, Elmer Abacain, who works in a peace programme with other religions, said he would go home with useful ideas on bringing youth into interfaith efforts.

"With the sharing coming from (other) countries, we have a new approach, for instance the idea of the young people to come together ... trying to erase the prejudices and biases of one another," he said.

Other delegates said they had picked up tips on how to deal with social problems like AIDS, family violence and poverty which can breed religious extremism.

Participants were spending Tuesday in closed-door plenary sessions discussing the outcomes of various workshops the previous day and how to implement their recommendations.

Indonesian President Yudhoyono wants the interfaith dialogue to become a permanent process involving more countries.

He told the delegates on Monday that tolerance was "imperative to human and social development" while terrorism "must be regarded as the enemy of all religions".

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