By MADHUPARNA DAS / The Print
New Delhi: In a first-of-its-kind event, Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country, will host a global summit of religious leaders modelled on the Group of Twenty (G20) intergovernmental forum.
Called the ‘G20 Religion Forum’, or R20 for short, it will be a parallel event to the annual G20 summit that Indonesia will host this year, and is being seen by scholars as an attempt to “quell the ideas of radical Islam and extremism and promote moderatism”.
Organised and hosted by one of Indonesia’s most influential Islamic think tanks, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the two-day R20 summit will take place on 2 and 3 November in Bali, around two weeks before the G20 summit is scheduled to be held there on 15 and 16 November.
In an exclusive email interview with ThePrint, Muhammad Najib Azca, vice-secretary general of Nahdlatul Ulama and spokesperson of the R20, said that the religious summit would leverage the G20 “to help ensure that religion in the 21st century functions as a genuine and dynamic source of solutions, rather than problems”.
“The R20 will seek to accomplish this by creating a global platform through which religious leaders of every faith and nation may express their concerns and give voice to shared moral and spiritual values,” said Azca.
ThePrint has learnt that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) not only supports the idea, but also Ram Madhav, a central committee member of the organisation, is among the event’s prime movers from India.
Earlier this year, Madhav had met the office-bearers of NU in Jakarta to firm up the concept of hosting a summit like this, and to make it a permanent global platform for religious and spiritual leadership. He will be one of the main speakers at the event.
Speaking to The Print, Madhav said, “The entire global narrative and agenda is currently controlled by political leadership, big corporations, some economic think tanks or some extremist and terrorist groups. We need to bring a balance.”
“The idea of hosting such an event was mooted by Nahdlatul Ulama. We from India join hands with them to address the challenge of radicalism, terrorism, war, and violence. Right now, there is no role of spiritual or civilisational leadership. R20 is aimed at developing a global platform of cultural, religious, and civilisational leadership that can pro-actively help countries in tackling some of the 21st-century challenges,” he added.
The event is also being supported by the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs, which has recognised NU as the coordinator of the event in 2022.
“The G20 Religion Forum constitutes a natural outcome of NU’s efforts over the past decade to prevent the political weaponisation of identity, curtail the spread of communal hatred, and promote solidarity and respect among the diverse peoples, cultures and nations of the world,” said Azca.
The R20 this year will focus on four major topics — historical grievances, truth-telling, reconciliation and forgiveness; identifying and embracing values shared by the world’s major religions and civilisations; recontextualisation of obsolete and problematic teachings of religion; and the values we need to develop to ensure peaceful co-existence.
According to Hadza Min Fadhli R., an Indonesia-based academic and Islamic scholar, Indonesia is trying to “promote the idea of moderate Islam” through the R20. Muslims constitute around 88 per cent of the country’s population.
“It is very significant for the global community to watch that a Muslim-majority country is hosting a summit like this to promote moderate Islam. One of the primary agendas is to quell the ideas of radical Islam and extremism. We were told that the Ministry of Religious Affairs is supporting this summit. The broad ideas of the summit include democracy, development and moderatism,” said Hadza Min Fadhli R. to ThePrint.
This story was originally published in theprint.in . Read the full story here
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