Dear CRCS & ICRS students, faculty and guests, We kindly invite you to participate in the CRCS & ICRS Wednesday Forum of this week. Wednesday forum will have Dr. Wening Udasmoro (Core Doctoral Faculty, ICRS-Yogya) as the speaker who will talk about “To Veil or not to Veil: Struggle and Resistance in French Inter-Culturalism”. Some information about this forum can be read as follows.

Date: Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Time: 12.30 pm – 2.30 pm (free lunch)
Venue: Room 306, UGM Graduate School Teknika Utara, Pogung
Speaker: Dr. Wening Udasmoro

The lecture-presentation which was delivered by Prof. Dr. Carolina Lopez C. during the Wednesday Forum held on April 21, 2010 was “Moving beyond Violence: Potential Applications of Cognitive Restructuring Theory for Conflict Transformation.” And Faqiudin A Qodir acted as moderator.

For her opening, Prof. Lopez introduced the Center for Dialogue & Human Wellbeing (CDBH) and their involvements in various types of dialogue-related work such as Peace Education, Conflict Transformation Work, Healing of Historical Memories to name a few. After that, she explained that in doing their job an analytical tool is utilized for the entire process which is known as Ideological-Structural Analysis Micro-theory that explores the “formatting”? of memory stores in the brain, and how these are activated leading to habitual violent pattern of response to particular inputs. According to her, in conflict situations where violence has become normativized, ISA-based workshops offer the participants the possibility of consciously choosing peaceful alternatives responses to the stimuli which provoked violence behavioral outputs on their part.

Dear CRCS & ICRS students, faculty and guests, We kindly invite you to participate in the CRCS & ICRS Wednesday Forum of this week. Wednesday forum will have Prof. Dr. Carolina Lopez C. (Centro de Diálogo y Bienestar Humano Tecnologico de Monterrey & Centre for Civilisational Dialogue University of Malaya) as the speaker who will talk about “Moving beyond Violence: Potential Applications of Cognitive Restructuring Theory for Conflict Transformation.” Some information about this forum can be read as follows.

The theme for the March 31, 2010 Wednesday Forum was “Matthew’s Contradiction”? which was delivered by Ahmad Saber, an ICRS-Yogya student held again at Rm. 306 at the Graduate School Building. Dr. Robinson Rajagukguk acted as moderator.

In his presentation, the speaker, simply called Saber by friends and colleagues at ICRS and CRCS, discussed the various contradictions he and the Christian scholars found in the Bible, most especially in the New Testament.

Saber said that countless books have been published by Christian scholars on the topic of the various contradictions in the Bible. However, he said, most of these books have gone one of two different routes, either: reconcile every single discrepancy through abstraction and so forth, and when they are presented with two conflicting versions of one story in the Bible they simply choose the one they personally prefer and claim the other was a scribal error, or claim that Jesus was no more than a legend and a myth, and that the Bible, the apostles, and even Jesus himself were only figments of someone’s imagination. Saber, on the other hand, did not go with any of these routes. He, however, took a different route which is that Jesus was indeed a true prophet of God but that His message was corrupted by those who came after him for personal gain.

The decision of the Indonesian Court Constitution on the Judicial Review of UU No. 1/PNPS/1965 is about to be given this month. The review process is still hotly going on, and in March, the situation in the court was colored by the clash between pro and contra groups. During the review process, CRCS also took part by writing a position paper to the problematic law.

The position paper that had already been sent to the Court was written by CRCS team consists of Zainal Abidin Bagir, Suhadi Cholil, Mustaghfiroh Rahayu, Ali Amin, Endy Saputro and Budi Ashari. Several months ago, the team followed and criticized the review process.

The theme of the CRCS-ICRS Wednesday Forum held on March 24, 2010 was “Sanctification or Subordination? Traditional Jewish Marriage and Alternatives within Rabbinic Literature” presented by Melanie Landau from the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Dr. Siti Syamsiyatun acted as moderator. The forum cum videoconference was conducted at the Conference Room at the Faculty of Law, UGM.

Ms. Landau discussed the traditional elements of Jewish marriage, two legal authorities or modification to Jewish marriage and the new interpretation to traditional marriage; she also included the aspect of the acquisition of the woman by the man, as elaborated in ancient and medieval rabbinic texts.