Wedforum | Hary Widyantoro 

Islam and politics has been difficult to separte. This is reflected in the situation in some Muslim countries, such as Mali and Somalia where violent struggles have shifted to periphery. In other regions, revolutionary movements like the Arab Spring were hampered by the politics of religion. On February 19, 2014, Dr. Andreas Radtke, the political counsellor in German Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, discussed these issues of political Islam in global terms at the regular Wednesday Forum lecture series hosted by CRCS and ICRS.

For this week, Wednesday Forum held on March 13, 2010, Ms. Mucha-Shim Q. Alquiza, an ICRS-Yogya student, spoke in behalf of all tri-people Filipinos in Southern Philippines regarding Inter-faith Dialogue; and Dian Maya Safitri acted as moderator.

With her carefully chosen theme “From Mission to Transformation: Dialogic encounter of peoples of faith in the bleeding Promised Land.” Ms. Alquiza presented her paper in three parts. First, she showed to the attendees the methodology she used for her paper; which is Michel Foucault’s theory on Knowledge, Power and Governmentality. Second, she traveled the audience to Southern Philippines with the aid of a map showing the places where the Bangsamoro people inhabit before where they occupied majority of the land and the present state where the Bangsamoro people occupy bits and parcel now of the land; the history of the Bangsamoro People; and their population since the first time there was a census until 2000, it showed that the population of the Bangsamoro people has decreased. And the third part, she presented the history of the dialogic encounter of peoples of faith in Mindanao and Sulu.