The relationship between religion and science has captured world wide attention from people in any way. Some believe that religion and science need to be put in different boxes because they work in different ways, but others believe that both of them need to be harmonized because they share the same goal. Bellow is the interview with Prof. Nidhal Guessoum, one of the speakers in the “The First International Conference on Knowledge and Values” conducted by CRCS, ICRS, and the 26th UGM anniversary committee. He is a professor of Physics at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) who had Ph. D. in Astrophysics from the University of California, San Diego, USA. He is also active in the area of popularization of science and the interface between science and religion.

Situasi keberagamaan antar pemeluk keyakinan yang berbeda di Indonesia masih diwarnai saling kecurigaan, kebencian, bahkan konflik kekerasan. Oleh karena itu, pada segmen Interview kali ini kami akan menyajikan liputan wawancara yang dilakukan oleh Team Website CRCS dengan Dr. Zainal Abidin Bagir (Direktur Program Studi Agama dan Lintas Budaya UGM) yang hadir sebagai pembicara pada Diskusi Buku “Dialog Antarumat Beragama: Gagasan dan Praktik di Indonesia”, diselenggarakan oleh Kementerian Agama, 18 April 2011 di Jakarta beberapa waktu yang lalu. Berikut petikan wawancaranya: 

“Buddhism is merely a minor belief system, a Buddhist is just the same as a Pacifist, and Buddhists are peaceful people…” that is what people in Indonesia or some other countries, where Buddhists are considered a minor community, say about Buddhism. But, what would happen when Buddhists are the major society in a country as in Sri Lanka and Thailand? How do they deal with one another? How do they manage conflict amongst them? How do they deal with diversity?

This would be more interesting if we extend the questions to a conversation about the internal issues of Buddhist communities nowadays. For instance, how are Buddhist knowledge and customs transferred from one nation to another, like the case of Buddhist education and ordination for monks and nuns? Are there any problems on power and gender relation in this regard? And, why do Buddhists consider the concept of “Early Buddhism” and “Engaged Buddhism” as alternative solutions in their everyday life in facing contemporary world and its complexity?

Since long ago gender relations have been problematized by many scholars in the global north as well as the global south seen from many fields of study such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and so on. The concept of masculinities is inside this debate. Along with the debates about gender relations and the form of masculinities, the relations of the global south and the global north have shaped various practices and forms.

The forms of relations occur as results of the various relations of both the global south and the global north. To say one of the examples is colonial encounter between the occupier and the occupied as said by Franz Fanon, an Algerian-birth France philosopher: “Every contact between the occupied and the occupier is falsehood”. This falsehood emerged in the form of articulating the concept of masculinities. Beyond that, the theorists that engage with the issues are merely dominated by the theorists from the global north using their own resources even in analyzing those issues in the global south. This fact creates the epistemic imbalance toward the studies aimed at concerning the issues of gender relations in the global south.

Talking about Islam in Indonesia, we have to put this huge discourse into some boxes of specific issues that we try to figure out deeply. As we know, Islam has been seen as a very important subject of study for the past decade. Many people started re-examining and questioning again about what we actually mean by Islam. Are there any critical shifts in the history of Islam itself? What kind of perspectives or approaches should we use to understand it? Here, we discuss about some general issues that often asked by scholars in understanding Islam especially in Indonesia.

Berikut ini adalah wawancara Team Website CRCS dengan Melanie Budianta

CRCS: Sejauh mana kekuatan narasi itu mampu memberikan kekuatan suara kepada orang-orang yang terdiskriminasi khususnya kaum perempuan di Indonesia?

Melani: Jadi sesungguhnya narasi mereka itu ada di sekitar kita, tapi belum tersuarakan. Dia bisa dipendam saja. Ada ibu-ibu yang menyimpan dalam buku harian, atau dalam hati saja mengenai pengalaman mereka sehari-hari. Tapi kaum minoritas mempunyai kemampuan lebih dalam menyensor diri mereka sendiri. Padahal narasi itu berisi pengetahuan yang mungkin justru bisa mengisi narasi-narasi besar yang ada dari negara. Jadi penting untuk menemukan narasi dan menyuarakannya. Jika orang tersebut tidak punya posisi untuk menyuarakan, maka penting untuk menemukan orang lain untuk membantu suara mereka terdengar.